“Americans are devoted observers of the class struggles of Brontë romances and the inane opinions and prejudices that plague the lives of Jane Austen’s characters,” I said. “Thomas Hardy is a real blast, too. Class and social climbing seems to drive the plots.”
He’d observed that Americans lay claim to class superiority, too, by inherited wealth of at least four prior generations; he’d read Edith Wharton. And Edna said, yes, that was true, but the Astors, the Fishes, and the Ward McAllisters had given way to the new celebrities: people of accomplishment and excellence in science, industry, and the arts. Tristan said that since the War, to be a member of the young “Idle Titled” was no longer fashionable, and Edna said that she did so enjoy P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories, to which I replied, “Don’t fret, Edna, dear, there is still that silly imbecile, Edward, Prince of Wales, to read about.”
Lord Wildly gave a hearty hoot, and did not take offense at my impolite jab at a member of the British royal family. “Right-o, Dorothy; who needs Wooster when we’ve got Wales, as the actress said to the bishop?”
Much impressed with the joyful and soulful musical strains of jazz, as well as the fried-chicken supper and bottles of whiskey we’d bought from the on-premises bootlegger, and happily imbibed, Tristan Wildly voiced his observations on the evening as we taxied downtown a little after three o’clock in the morning: “You Americans are an interesting race. Your music is wild and primitive and elicits unbridled emotions. One would think such things might prove dangerous! And then, on the other hand, one’s God-given right to partake in the pleasure of a snifter of cognac, a divine elixir that warms the spirit and encourages good fellowship, is viewed as encouraging crime and depravity.”
Mr. Benchley laughed and said, “And what do we get for banning the booze? Good old crime and depravity.”
I said, “That’s right! We’re depraved and it’s a crime!”
Let out under the marquee of the Algonquin, Mr. Benchley and I bade adieu to the others who were taxiing on.
“Come on up for a nightcap, Fred,” I said, after he pecked my cheek in farewell and was about to cross the street to his apartment at the Hotel Royalton. “I want to tell you about my talk with Bette Booth earlier.”
Woodrow must have been sleeping on my feather boa, which I’d tossed on the bed after rejecting it for wear this evening. He met us at the door with a pink feather clinging to his ear, giving his secret away. “Naughty boy,” I chided, picking him up. “Come, give Mama a kiss.”
“Oh, to be a cuddly, bug-eyed doggie!” said Mr. Benchley.
“You are a dog!” I said.
“I don’t get all the attention that one gets!”
“Just wait, I’ll call down for one of the bellboys to take you for a stroll around the block. Scotch? Neat?”
“Yes, please, Madame,” he said, as he tossed his top hat and coat to a chair, pulled open his bowtie, and plopped down on the sofa and lit a cigarette.
“Speaking of Madame . . .” I prefaced, and then went on to tell him in detail all that Bette Booth had told me about her and Benny’s history.
“It appears that Benny is the number-one suspect in the murder of Madame O,” he commented. “I smell a blackmail scheme behind it. But, to murder Miss Ada? What reason would Benny want to kill her, too?”
“And what about the Frankens? Where do they come in?”
“They, too, were at the scenes of the crimes.”
“A little too conveniently, if you ask me.”
“All right,” said Mr. Benchley, “I’m asking you: How conveniently do you mean?”
“I’m not certain. There is something . . . wrong about the Frankens, but whatever they’re into, I don’t think it is murder. I don’t think they’re stupid, and showing up at Miss Ada’s to strangle her, after we had witnessed the obvious discord between them, is a stupid thing for Siegfried to do. As for Frances, ‘the maid,’ she looked genuinely horrified at the discovery of Miss Ada dead at her feet.”
“And what about that fellow, Rabindranath? Does no one suspect him?” said Mr. Benchley.
“Oh, the Indian?
“Yes. A mystic, Madame O said he was.”
“And she said he was her friend. But what about the Brents—the cellist and soprano? I wonder where they fit into all of this?”
“They all crossed over on the ship. Donald Brent told me that he and his wife were returning from engagements in Europe.”
“Unlikely they know anything much about why Madame O was killed, but perhaps they heard or saw something on the crossing that might shed light on who did it, or why someone would want her dead. It’s a long-shot, of course, but, talking with them would be a good idea,” I said.
“Maggie Brent is opening in Carmen at the end of the week, and Donald has a concert at Carnegie Hall this weekend.”
“So let’s go see Madame O’s assistant Caroline Mead tomorrow. I’ll bet she could tell us a lot.”
“But, what about the report you found at Miss Ada’s this morning, the one from the detective agency?”
“Probably won’t lead to anything, Fred,” I said, throwing off my shoes and the elaborately embroidered floral headband before curling onto the couch beside my friend. “Perhaps Miss Ada was checking up on a man she was planning to do business with, someone she thought might or might not be of good character.”
“Yes, but with a rap sheet like that—well, it’s possible that her knowledge of him was motive to do her in.”
“Joe Woollcott could look into it further for us, even tell us where this person, Lee Whatsisname—?”
“Lee Pigeon—”
“Yes, about this person, Lee Pigeon. Joe can tell all that the police have on him.”
“I suppose I can give Joe a call tomorrow after I speak with Heywood, see if he’s discovered a connection between Madame and Miss Ada.”
“And who is ‘L’? The ‘L’ of the love letters we found? The end of the affair between Miss Ada and a mystery man?”
“Why should a letter written ten years ago shed any light on her murderer?”
“Don’t know that it does. Forget it, you’re probably right,” I said.
Belva Gaertner
Beulah Annan
Chapter Six
“Benny Booth came back after the séance, around two o’clock in the morning. He was very drunk, pounding on the door,” said Caroline Mead.
Mr. Benchley, Woodrow Wilson, and I sat in the drawing room of the house on Washington Square, the room brightened with sunlight pouring in through the bay windows. The light cast a pleasant, almost cheerful expression on the dour-faced statue of the Chinese goddess, Guanyin, in the wall niche; the fearsome collection of African and Caribbean masks and shrunken heads appeared childishly comical in the daylight, compared to the shadowy aspects cast by firelight the evening we first stepped foot into the house.
I turned away from the elaborately carved dragon whose fiery breath was nothing more than a sigh in daylight, and asked: “What did Benny want to see Madame Olenska about?”
“I really don’t know. Once she agreed to speak with him, she sent me away, insisting I return to bed.”
“Didn’t you hear any part of the conversation?” I asked.
“I’d not have had the willpower not to listen at the door,” said Mr. Benchley, with a gentle laugh.
Taking his comment as if he had called her a liar, she shot back: “Mr. Benchley, I do not make a habit of listening in on people’s private conversations. My bedroom is on the third floor, and Madame received him here, in this room. From where my room is located, I could not hear a thing.”
“But you found her shot in her room, in her bed. And you didn’t discover her until six o’clock this morning? You mean to tell me that a gunshot didn’t wake you?”
“I heard what I believed to be a car backfiring, waking me briefly, not long after which I fell back to sleep.”
“What about Rabindranath? Was he privy to the conversation?”
/>
“He was not here. He’d left hours before.”
“He doesn’t live here? I thought he was Madame’s butler.”
“You’ve got it all wrong, Mrs. Parker. Rabindranath is no one’s servant. On the contrary: Madame Olenska used to say she was at his service.”
I wanted to ask exactly what she meant by that comment, but instead said, “We’d like to speak with him.”
“He has an apartment on Christopher Street. And as far as I know, he’s already spoken with the police.”
“There’s one thing I don’t understand, Miss Mead,” I said, as she stood up, a clear indication that she was ending the interview and it was time for us to leave. “If Booth arrived here drunk in the middle of the night, ‘pounding on the door’ demanding to see Madame Olenska, didn’t you have any sense of danger in leaving Madame alone with him?”
Caroline sat down and ran a hand over her eyes. “Don’t you think I’ll regret that I left her alone for him to kill her?” She looked out toward the windows and beyond to the street and park, but she was seeing nothing that lay before her eyes, perhaps only the nightmare of her regret. I felt sorry for her, and a little ashamed that we had pressed her so hard when she appeared to be burdened with the guilt of having made some critically wrong choices.
Mr. Benchley looked accusingly at me, and when chivalry kicked in, said, “Miss Mead, we didn’t mean to imply—”
“Oh, I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by the questions,” she said quickly, appearing almost embarrassed that we thought she had taken offense.
“You’ve been with the Madame for a long time?”
“She had been a friend of my dear mother’s.”
“Had been? Do you mean that your mother is—”
“Dead, yes. Mother died almost two years ago; I was barely seventeen, and I was left alone, you see. I had no one. Father dead since I was a little girl, no brothers or sisters.”
“And Madame Olenska took you in?”
“My mother had spoken so fondly of her; they’d been school chums, but they had not seen one another for several years. We had moved to Maine, but mother kept Madame’s photo in a silver frame in her bedroom. When she lay dying, she made me promise to write to Madame, and then to go to New York and let her know it was Myra’s—that was Mother’s name—last wish that she might see me through until I came of age. There was very little money; Mother had no property, and I needed to find work, and Madame Olenska let me stay here while I attended the Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School to earn my certificate. I graduated this past June, and I would have been out looking for a job, but Madame wanted to take me on a tour of Europe before I went to work.”
“How generous of her.”
“She was swell! And she wanted me to stay on here, too; kept saying there was plenty of room in this house, and she couldn’t do without me.”
She paused, looking steadily at me as if to read what was on my mind, and asked: “Your interest in Madame’s murder seems so keen. I can see there is more to it than simple curiosity.”
She must have become suspicious of our motives for she switched suddenly to the offensive. “What’s going on here?”
This pouty-lipped, freckled-faced young woman with the long, old-fashioned hairdo, her unruly strawberry tresses collected in a velvet bow at the nape of her neck, wearing a dull blue sailor dress, popular several years back, had all the appearance of a child trembling on the brink of maturity—a little naïve, a bit unpolished. But instantly, as when a wind-fluttered curtain reveals a glimpse of something unsightly behind it, another aspect of the girl flashed through, something—unwholesome. I wanted to chalk it up to the sudden loss of her benefactress, leaving her once again alone in the world. After all, it was natural for such a girl to try to disguise her vulnerability with a frontal attack. (I should know. I’d been in her shoes when my father died.)
And yet, there was something—a hardness in her brown eyes—revealing a keen, or should I say, calculating intelligence that instantly betrayed any effort she was making to portray the orphaned waif. I instantly, if irrationally, disliked this girl.
Mr. Benchley looked at me, and through our split-second of eye contact communicated much. Unless the police or Bette or Tristan had told her, Caroline wouldn’t know we were at Miss Ada’s apartment at the time of her murder. Should Caroline be the murderer and learn of our presence at Miss Ada’s, she might come to the incorrect conclusion that we saw something that would give her away. Certain facts that we had learned earlier this morning, thanks to Heywood’s inquiries, didn’t absolve her from suspicion, but rather gave her motive to see both women dead. So, for all we knew, Caroline might have been at the Dakota, too.
I said, “We’ve had a chance to get to know Bette Booth over the past few days, and she’s frantic that Benny hasn’t returned to the hotel or contacted her.”
“The police haven’t questioned him?”
“Not yet.”
“If she knows where Benny is and she’s not telling the police—do you think she knows where he is but won’t say?”
Mr. Benchley said, “She’s aware he is a suspect in Madame’s murder. She’s his wife and would want to protect him, although she does not believe him capable of such a crime.”
“But, for what reason did he come back here, does she say?”
“She has no idea, and that’s why we came to ask—for Bette’s sake—if you might have heard or seen anything that would indicate why he was so distressed that he’d want to kill Madame.”
Caroline shook her head. “He’d seemed like such a nice fellow. When we met on the voyage home, he was personable, even if he did enjoy his liquor a bit too much. He liked to gamble, and he wasn’t terribly put out even though he’d lost a small fortune at the card tables.”
Aha! I thought: She’s just told us that Benny liked his booze, liked to gamble, and had enough money to bear the losses!
The telephone rang, interrupting our talk, and after Caroline replaced the receiver on the hook she told us that the call was from the police. They would release Madame Olenska’s body for burial. She had arrangements to make.
“Will someone help you with all the funeral plans?”
“I’m sure Rabindranath will help see to it.”
“Had Madame Olenska been friendly with Rabindranath for a long time?”
“She picked him up in Bombay last summer.”
The way Caroline tossed off the comment it was clear there was no love lost between her and the Indian.
Mr. Benchley and I stood to take our leave. “What are your plans for the future, Miss Mead?”
“Plans?”
“Will you be staying on here?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s home, now.”
“Just one thing, though, Miss Mead,” I said, turning in the doorway to see her immediate reaction when I dropped the news Heywood had ferreted out. “Ada Leopold held half-interest in this house with Madame Olenska.”
“Is that so?” asked Caroline, unable to control the flow of blood to her cheeks. I could see the wheels turning in that little brain of hers. Her eyes flitted from side to side; her lips lifted in a small, forced smile.
“It’s a coincidence, too, that Miss Ada should have been strangled only a few hours after Madame was shot,” I said. “Tell us about their relationship?”
“There is nothing to tell. I didn’t know the woman.”
Heywood Broun had called me earlier in the morning with information I’d requested at dinner last night. (Newspapermen have all kinds of resources.) Why had Miss Ada paid for repairs to the roof of Madame Olenska’s house, as indicated in the bill we’d found in Miss Ada’s files? He’d looked into it, all right, and the news came almost as much of a surprise to me as it was to Caroline Mead.
“Madame Olenska and Ada Leopold were sisters. Hadn’t Madame ever mentioned her?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Caroline.
“Surely you’ve noticed the photograph in the silve
r frame on the mantle, the one of a very young Annabelle Leopold—that was the Madame’s maiden name, of course, ‘Leopold,’ before she married thirty years ago and was soon to be the widow of Renaldo Olenska. The girl standing next to her in the photograph was her teenage sister, Adelaide.”
“Oh, yes, of course. Adelaide. Madame talked about her sister on occasion, but as long as I’ve been here we never met; I had the impression they were estranged. You mean the murdered tarot card reader was Adelaide, Madame’s sister?” she asked, and I wondered if the look of incredulity was real.
“Do you know if Madame Olenska made provision for you in the event of her death?”
“Oh, my, I can’t even think of such things at a time like this!”
“Why not? You must have wondered what you will do now, without a place to live or a means of support. But, then, you just said this house is your home now . . . . Whoever is Adelaide Leopold’s heir gets the house now, because when Madame predeceased her, Ada inherited Madame’s share of this house. Now it goes to whomever Ada left it to,” I said.
This revelation produced a very believable reaction, and possibly the only genuine response of the interview, for she stammered as she said, “I suppose I’ll have to find someplace . . . a job, too, of course . . . .”
I almost felt sorry for her. After all, after having escaped the sad ordeal of becoming orphaned and penniless, her life had been brightened until now through her generous benefactress. Suddenly, there was the likelihood of falling back into poverty. She was, again, all alone in the world. It had to be a bit overwhelming and frightening to the young woman. When my father died, and my brother disappeared, and all the money Papa made was gone, all I had was my sister, Helen. For a while, I didn’t know what to do. But at least I’d had Helen.
[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong Page 11
