“And then, one day, in he walked: Benny Booth, alive and well and returned from France, where, after parachuting out of a burning plane, he’d found refuge in the home of a widowed farm woman, where he hid from the Germans as she nursed his injuries.”
“Why didn’t he return home right after the War?”
“Well, he said he couldn’t remember anything; he had amnesia and he wouldn’t have even known his own name if it weren’t for his dog tags. All he knew was the life he was living with the French widow. All was fine until he began remembering things. He said it started coming back when he heard about the building of a bridge, to replace one destroyed by bombs. He knew a lot about such structures and facts about engineering, and he recalled quite suddenly his college studies, and after a while everything came rushing back.
“When he returned to the States and found that Johnny and I were married, he tried to make the best of things. Benny came to our apartment several times a week, for dinner, or to play cards, or just to chat. We’d drive to Coney Island or Rockaway on summer Sundays, and during Christmas we drove up to Vermont to ski. I’m ashamed to say, I lived for the times when Benny would walk through the door. But we never acted on our feelings, never spoke of them.
”Johnny was away on business a lot of the time the spring he died. I kept busy; I tried not to see Benny very often. The night before Johnny died, Benny came to take me to the picture show in the city. We planned to have dinner and then meet Johnny, who was working late, and then the three of us would go on to the show. Benny came to pick me up and our landlady saw us leave from my apartment. Mrs. Harris was elderly, a widow, and lonely, and when Johnny and I rented the apartment in her house she was very attentive, saying we reminded her of herself and her husband, Harold, when they were a young married couple fifty years ago. She cooled somewhat after Benny started coming around, and I figured she thought I was stepping out when Johnny was away. Even though it wasn’t true, I guess I couldn’t hide my real feelings about Benny from her, no matter how hard I tried.
“The next night, the night Johnny died, when he didn’t come home by ten o’clock, I telephoned Benny. I asked him to look for him. I went out looking, too, and when the police came to the house, it was Mrs. Harris they first spoke to about Johnny. Later, when she heard that the circumstances of his death were suspicious, it was she who told the police things that made it seem like Benny and I were stepping out behind Johnny’s back. She’d seen me and Benny leaving the house, ‘even last night,’ she told them. Suspicion grew that we had somehow played a part in Johnny’s death, and that resulted in the inquest.”
“Oh, how dreadful.”
“People said Johnny was upset, down in the mouth, and rumor made it all about me and Benny planning to run off, but it was the shellshock, of course, that hung over him. He’d started having nightmares again.”
I knew all too well what life could be like with a husband suffering the residual mental agonies of having endured months at the Front, so I could relate to all she had had to go through: Eddie’s addictions, the loneliness of feeling shut out from Eddie’s life, the end of any real intimacy between us, the resulting apathy he displayed, and his indifference to the needs of others as well as his own future wellbeing, took a terrible toll on me.
“After the gossip started about me and Benny, they wanted to lay the blame for Johnny’s illness on us; I received the brunt of it all. Women are always the temptresses, always the party to blame.”
Especially when a woman as strikingly beautiful as Bette is involved, I thought.
“There was no evidence to prove we contributed to Johnny’s death, so whatever they thought was going on between me and Benny never came up at the inquest. But was it suicide? That was bad enough, if they believed Benny and I drove him to it. But it was suicide, plain and simple. He was drinking. He was despondent. He killed himself.
“Even if Johnny ever suspected that there were strong feelings between Benny and me, even if he believed I would ever be unfaithful to him, that wasn’t enough to charge us with anything. But, even so, I became a marked woman. I’d lost my husband, and because of the way things looked, I lost Benny. I thought it best we didn’t see one another any more. And that separation made things worse for me.
“I had to move away, out of the nice little apartment. Even if Mrs. Harris hadn’t been so hateful, Hoboken is a small town, and just walking to the market was a trial. People would stare and whisper when I walked down the street. And then, I discovered that I was pregnant.
“With Johnny gone, his family slammed the door on me, convinced I was carrying Benny’s child. I gave up trying to convince anybody after a while. I miscarried in my fourth month. I found a job as a secretary at New York Life, and an apartment in Greenwich Village; I started a new life, the past behind me. Last year, I was sitting in Schrafft’s, when Benny walked back into my life. We determined never to be apart again, to move on with our lives together, without guilt or shame. We married last month and honeymooned in Europe, returning home on the ship where we met Madame Olenska. After arriving in New York, we’d planned on catching a few Broadway shows before going home to our new house in Connecticut. Madame called the hotel and insisted we were in trouble and needed to come to the séance last night.”
“Could she have had the information about you and Johnny and the inquest from an old newspaper?”
“It wasn’t a story the papers followed; just a suicide, so nothing after they pulled the car out of the river.”
What Bette said is true. This is New York, after all, and suicides and accidents aren’t violent enough to sell papers. Murders—as bloody as possible—trumps suicide headlines every time (unless the two are paired together, and then that makes for even more sensational speculation as the story can be rehashed over weeks, and perhaps even months, to sell papers). Murder, inspired by passion, greed, lust, jealousy, always makes better copy than suicide, which most people view as a cowardly escape from fear and despair.
“Madame did know that I’d been widowed,” continued Bette. “I never made a secret of it. And I did mention once that Benny and Johnny had been best of friends since schooldays and had fought together during the War.”
“And the other guests at the séance?”
“Yes?”
“As far as you are aware, none of them knew about your history?”
Bette began to sob, and I pulled her to me, patting her back, wondering what to say to comfort her. But, after a few moments, some subtle change occurred in her demeanor and I realized that her tears sprang more from fear than sadness.
When she regained her composure, I took her hand and lifted her chin so that her eyes would meet mine. “Benny went back to see Madame O last night, didn’t he?”
“I don’t believe that!”
“Bette, Benny is missing, not away on business, and you’re upset because he went to see her, and now she’s dead. And you’re afraid that he may have killed her.”
“He couldn’t have, I say!”
“All right, let’s presume him innocent. But, the fact that he’s nowhere to be found, that even you don’t know where he is, makes things look bad for him. And if he is innocent of the murder, we have to find out what happened when he went back to her house.”
“If only he’d call!”
“And then there is the murder of Miss Ada Leopold. I feel that the murders have to be connected.”
“She was alive when Lord Wildly and I left her. We didn’t get very far past the front door. She told us she was too ill to do a reading, so we left.”
I said, “Of all the spiritualists in New York, you and Lord Wildly drop in on her right before she’s murdered.”
“It was all arranged days ago. Madame Olenska arranged the reading with Miss Ada, whether or not she noted it in her appointment book. Lord Wildly had appointments with others, too. That’s why he came to the States.”
“Yes, I know, he is investigating the veracity of certain psychic claims. With
his track record, if I was a spiritualist, I wouldn’t let him in the front door. I wonder who else he’s planning to see?”
“He had a little list in a notebook he keeps in his pocket.”
“I’ll have to ask him about that. And the gun? Benny’s service revolver?”
“Lord Wildly told the detective about the skeet shoot on the ship.”
“Yes, well, all right . . . but, if Benny had shot Madame with that gun, and you claim not to have seen him since he left last night, how’d the gun get back into these rooms?”
“I don’t know.”
An hour later, after Bette and I joined the others of my gang in the Waldorf dining room for a bite to eat before the show, we taxied over to the theatre with only minutes to spare before the curtain rose on Chicago.
FPA, Aleck, Edna, Heywood, and Bette went in one cab, while I ushered Lord Wildly into a cab all our own. Mr. Benchley muscled in before I could slam shut the door. I do love the boy, but he’s no substitute for romance.
“I’m scheduled with a crystal ball reader tomorrow morning, and the night after tomorrow I will attend the rites of a secret society.”
“That they should survive your visit, Lord Wildly!” said Mr. Benchley, voicing my earlier sentiments.
“Ah, yes, you Americans have a rather singular sense of humor, what? If the crystal ball reader or various members of the secret society suddenly pop their clogs, it certainly won’t look good for me, what?”
I do love British euphemisms. I could dish out a few of our own: “How about after the show we trip the light fantastic toe?”
“There are opium dens in America?”
“No, I mean fidget the digits!”
“Nightclubs,” said Mr. Benchley, curtly, before returning to the topic of his interest: “Tell me more about this secret society—I’m curious,” said Mr. Benchley.
“A bunch of hokum, if you ask me. Satanists, I’ll bet. Meet secretly every month, I’ve been told by a past devotee. Claim to be able to control the weather, the stock market, and the price of gold, and have taken responsibility for the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand.”
“I thought it was the Serbians!”
“’Course it was, but why not claim credit? Who’s going to say they didn’t have influence? It’s been said, too, that this society is led by a bloke in Germany, and that many of its members rank high among the new politicians. The Grand Poobah is a fellow name of Peckinpaw, Percival Peckinpaw. He is to arrive by ship today in Boston, and plans to travel here, to New York, in time for the big shindig.”
I chuckled at his use of the word shindig. He’d picked up redneck colloquialisms from someone, and in his refined English accent it was amusing.
“Black magic. Hocus pocus. Still, I’d like to see their floorshow.”
“But if it’s a secret society, why would they let you in, of all people, ready to expose their bunk?”
“They’re not letting me in. I will be what you Americans refer to as a masher.”
“Oh, dear, you’ve got that wrong. A ‘masher’ is a man who—oh, never mind. The word is crasher. You will be crashing the party. From what you’ve just told us, these people sound fanatical. Won’t that be dangerous?” I asked.
“Whenever exposing fraud is concerned there is an element of danger.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Benchley, “criminals exposed can be dodgy. Mind if I tag along? I will do a story about these adventures, call it Spirits of an Evening, or some such rot.”
“Sounds like a romp through New York’s speakeasies,” I said.
Lord Tristan Wildly, 87th Earl of Buckingborough—
Tall and handsome, when he smiles the space between his front teeth lends this Brit an endearing charm. When Mr. Benchley expressed his surprise upon hearing the earldom was granted in 1748, and that there were so many earls preceding Tristan, the eighty-seventh earl replied that his right-handed predecessors were left-handed duelers. As dueling is no longer in fashion, Lord Wildly stands the chance of keeping both his title and his life for a few more years.
Betty
Benny
Chapter Five
“Gin and guns—either one is bad enough, but together they get you into a dickens of a mess, don’t they?”
So was quoted the presumed murderess on trial, Belva Gaetner, as she reflected on the shooting death of her lover back in ’24.
And then there was Beulah Annan, who shot the man she proclaimed to love. When she found him difficult to deal with, she put a bullet through his heart and ended the relationship.
Maurine Watkins covered the women’s trials for the Chicago Tribune, along with sob-sister news reporter, Eda Heinemann. The story was big! It had sex appeal: All that could go wrong when he “done you wrong” sold papers, all right, because there was glamour in fast men and loose women running wild, swilling gin, and packing heat. What could be more libidinously licentious than real-life people playing out the tempestuous dramas depicted by Hollywood? Did art imitate life? Or was it the other way around? Whatever the order, people ate it up!
Playwright Maurine Watkins couldn’t resist such a passion-packed story. The crimes and trials of these murdering hussies had pretty much written themselves into a three-act play. But, clever girl that she is, she turned an otherwise-tedious morality play into a black comedy, and in so doing created a powerful expression of our times. Sometimes crime does pay. These murders made these women famous. Actress Francine Larrimore had found a winning part in the role of Roxie Hart, and I thought, Wouldn’t this play make a wonderful book for a musical?
Bette Booth sat between me and Mr. Benchley, Lord Wildly next to me on my other side. During the play I thought over all that Bette had told me about her past, and during the play’s courtroom scene, the three-ring circus conducted by Roxie’s lawyer, Billy Flynn, I glanced over at Bette, wondering what her reaction might be to the chaos on stage. The stage lights glowed out to where we sat in the orchestra section of the Music Box Theatre, and Bette’s fine profile shone with classic Greek beauty. I don’t know what I expected to see, but I thought the scene, the entire irreverence of the play, might in some way upset her. Dead husbands, suspicions of foul play aided by mean-spirited observers and the press, adulterous love, inquests and the threat of prosecution were all too familiar to Bette. I realized that this play could be for her the worst of all possible entertainments this evening.
A smile lifted her lips, raising her gorgeous cheekbones, and when she turned, sensing my stare, she smiled broadly before turning back to laugh along with the audience. I was relieved that she didn’t appear to be reliving her unpleasant past. A couple of hours of distraction had done the frazzled girl some good, and by the time we left the theatre, if she was not in good spirits, the distressed woman of a few hours ago appeared more relaxed and almost light-hearted.
So why did the transformation bother me? Hadn’t I wanted her to feel better after the grueling day she’d had? Why would the display of inner strength, a brave face that comes from having known adversity and tragedy and having survived it all, make me uneasy? For a minute I churlishly entertained the possibility that there was nothing brave about her at all, and that the fear that I thought had motivated her hysterical behavior earlier in the evening had simply been fear for herself and not at all for her husband, Benny. And for a moment I wondered if she was in love with Tristan. Or he with her?
When Mr. Benchley suggested we taxi uptown to Harlem to make the late show at Small’s Paradise, I bristled, saying that Bette needed to go back to the hotel in case Benny called or came back to their suite, and I insisted we drop her back at the Waldorf. Did I read disappointment in her face? Or was I just imagining it all? For the unsavory thought crossed my mind that maybe she had killed Benny herself in order to clear the field for the Englishman. I imagined his still-undiscovered, bullet-riddled body floating in the river . . . . Or, was it the other way around? Had Tristan done him in? A divorce seemed less complicated. And what did any love t
riangle have to do with Madame Olenska’s murder, anyway? Unless she really was an intuit and knew Bette had killed her husband!
Lord Wildly gallantly offered to remain with Bette, but that didn’t please me one bit. Whether she sensed my suspicions or it was genuinely to Bette’s credit, she insisted she would be fine on her own and that Tristan should not worry at all about her. Should she need anything, she had the hotel staff at her disposal, and Tristan’s man, Godfrey, could be summoned as well. Tristan hesitated, and I watched him shift in his seat, as if about to follow her into the hotel when the doorman opened the door of the taxi. As we drove off, he was still gazing out the window after her.
As we taxied uptown, Tristan Wildly said, “She’s keeping a stiff upper lip, is what she’s doing.”
“She needs time to reflect, let her hair down,” said Aleck.
“Loosen the laces,” said Mr. Benchley.
I awaited the next cliché of commentary, but the men relented when Tristan suddenly turned his attention to the entertainment ahead. He’s not in love with Bette, I realized, when he cheerfully starting talking about jazz. Edna and FPA shared our cab, and after only a little coaxing agreed to join the party.
“Small’s Paradise is the best place to go, Tristan. It’s not segregated like Connie’s or the Cotton,” said Edna, referring to the whites-only audiences served and entertained by colored staff.
At dinner, Tristan had enjoyed a lengthy conversation with Edna about her bestseller, Showboat, and the subject of interracial marriage and miscegenation laws in the United States. Edna said that no one who’d read her book seemed to care about the social issues addressed in it, as the romance overshadowed what might be considered a contentious subject. Such issues were of little concern to the English, Wildly said, as race was unimportant. In England, birth determined class, and was of the utmost importance and dictated one’s position in life, whether rich or poor.
[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong Page 10
