“Isn’t there anyone who can help you till you get on your feet?” asked Mr. Benchley.
“I’m sure I’ll be able to stay here for a while at least. I’m sorry, but I do have arrangements to—”
“Of course, forgive the intrusion. Goodbye, and good luck to you, Miss Mead.”
We were on the front steps of the house when I leaned against the railing and turned to Mr. Benchley. “Young woman, all alone in the world, not only discovers her patron dead, but that the woman’s sister was murdered, too. And a boldfaced lie, saying she didn’t know that the sister and the tarot card reader were one and the same. Awfully strange.”
“Perhaps the sisters were estranged.”
“Perhaps, but Caroline’s reaction—she didn’t ask the pertinent questions, did she?”
“I’d say she hasn’t any idea what she should do at the moment.”
“That isn’t my point, Fred! Do you believe for a moment that Caroline didn’t know the connection between Miss Ada and Madame O? Broun said the women were both very well off, thanks to a father who’d made a fortune in California gold in the nineteenth century. I’d be surprised if Caroline didn’t think Madame O had left her share of the property and all of her money to her. We have to find out who is handling the estates.”
“Do you suspect her of murdering her benefactress for material gains?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, trying to find the words that could express my confused thoughts. There was just something mercenary about the young woman that gnawed at me. Was it the measured words? The absence of any real expressed grief? Was I not being fair? Perhaps she was just in shock, or frightened that, as she was the sole witness to his arrival the other night, Benny Booth might return to kill her, too. “Maybe you’re right, Fred, maybe she feels at loose ends and is just frightened of being suddenly left alone again in the world, and fearing for her life. Benny is the likely murderer, and he is on the loose, and she is the only witness to his return to the house.”
We remained on the steps, discussing the matter; Mr. Benchley agreed to call Joe Woollcott to find out who were the attorneys handling the women’s estates. And perhaps Joe also could tell us more about the person named Lee Pigeon, whom Miss Ada had investigated, so we could see if he might have had a hand in the women’s deaths.
“Do you think this Lee Pigeon character might have whacked our ladies?” I asked, as a postman approached the house with a late-morning delivery. “Hey! Do you think the mysterious ‘L’ of Miss Ada’s love letters stands for ‘Lee’?”
Mr. Benchley didn’t have a chance to answer when the mailman interrupted: “’Morning! Annabelle Olenska?”
I suppose from our postures—me leaning on the rail, Mr. Benchley a couple steps below and facing up at me—we appeared to be the occupants, lingering outside our townhouse.
“Yes, here,” I said, meaning he was at the correct residence. But he handed me an envelope addressed to Adelaide Leopold, her name encircled and the word “deceased” scrawled alongside it. The return address was Madame’s. I slipped the square into my purse as we moved down along the sidewalk, throwing a glance over my shoulder to see if Caroline was watching from any of the windows and might have seen me take the letter.
“You’ve just committed a federal offense, my dear.”
“The postman handed me the envelope! I didn’t steal it out of the box!” I hissed.
“Tell that to the judge.”
At the curb two doors up from Madame’s was parked a long, red limousine touring car, its polished-nickel fenders and headlights refracting sunlight like grade D diamonds. Rump up against a shiny enameled fender, one foot on the running board, the other stretched to the curb and forming his body into a character like the slash key on my Corona, there leaned a fresh-faced liveried chauffeur, visor cap pushed back away from his brow, cigarette dangling from his lips. We hurried past him, but as I was about to tear open the seal of the letter, Mr. Benchley turned to gawk at the automobile. He blew out a low whistle and said: “Bet she runs like a dream.”
“Sure does, a real honey.”
“What’s it called?”
“It’s the new Lincoln Model L Custom Berline.”
Mr. Benchley eyed the automobile with the lasciviousness of Woollcott regarding an éclair, and then took out his cigarette case for a Lucky Strike. Patting his pockets for his lighter, the chauffeur produced his own and lit Mr. Benchley up, as was the plan, I figured; my friend always has a light handy. It was the perfect entrée into a conversation with the fellow.
“Nasty bit of business going on in that house,” said the chauffeur, right on cue. “Shame about the old lady. You a relative?”
“Just friendly. My name’s Bob, by the way, and this is Dorothy.”
“Dudley, Dudley Dandridge.”
“You work for people along here?”
“Mr. Wilkins, two doors down.”
“Long while?”
“Couple years,” said the young man of no more than twenty years, flicking his butt to the street. “Hey, you mind answering me a question? I saw you coming out of that house. Don’t mean to be disrespectful of the dead, but was she, the old lady, well . . . heard talk that she was a witch. That so?”
“Oh, Madame Olenska was a spiritualist, you know,” replied Mr. Benchley.
“Yeah, that’s what I heard; talked to dead people.”
“She tried, anyway, and now I suppose she really does.”
They shared a chuckle, and then: “Lots of strange people going in and out of that place, let me tell you.”
“All right, why don’t you go ahead and tell me.”
“You got that Swami guy hangs around a lot, moaning and, what do you call it?”
“Chanting?”
“That’s it. When the window’s opened, you can hear the chanting. Can’t make sense of what they’re saying, though. And then there’s your high-class ladies, Fifth Avenue types—you know what I mean?—drive up in their big cars. Mr. Wilkins said the ladies pay the old woman to talk to their dead husbands, husbands who didn’t want to listen to them while they were alive, so why would they come out from the blue mist to listen to them now?” He enjoyed the joke a moment more than was worthy, before adding, “But you should’ve seen the weird ones I seen going in a couple weeks ago.”
“How’s that?”
“Guess it was a party she had, the old lady. Mr. Wilkins said he thought she was a witch. That’s what I asked you before, remember, if she was one? Because everybody went into the house, and then I saw all the lights go out and then there was more mumbling and stuff.”
“I suppose you see a lot, waiting around for your Mr. Wilkins. You see anything unusual the other night, the night she was—”
“—killed? Funny you should ask, but I was parked right out front here, waiting for Mr. Wilkins to come down out of the house. He wanted to stop home to change his shoes; got all wet; remember it was raining all night? His fiancée, Miss Harper, well, she’s waiting in the car; they was going uptown once he got his dry shoes on, and well, anyway, I’m standing here having a smoke, waiting, see? Mr. Wilkins don’t like me smoking in the car, see, so I’m standing out here smoking, got the umbrella and all, and this man gets out of a cab and runs up the steps to the old girl’s house over there. It’s late, you know, and the house is dark, and being an old lady, I figure she’s asleep, not expecting visitors . . . . Hey! Was he the one that whacked her?”
“We don’t know. Go on with your story.”
“Anyway, he goes right in through the door—”
“Who opened the door to him?”
“I can’t tell you who. He just went in. I wasn’t even finished with my smoke when he comes running out and down to the cab, again, the cab he had waiting for him.”
“Did any lights go on in the house? See anybody pass by the windows?”
“The house was dark, the curtains drawn.”
“What did the fellow look like?”
“
Just a man, couldn’t tell you more than that; it was dark, no street light over that part of the sidewalk.”
“Did you get the impression from the way he moved that he was young or older or fit?”
“Oh, yeah, I see what you mean: young and fit; took the stoop two steps at a time.”
“Do you remember seeing anything else? Anything unusual or out of the ordinary?”
“Nahh. Mr. Wilkins opened the front door and I ran up to meet him with the umbrel—” He stopped mid-word, and his eyes became big circles.
“I closed the car door behind Mr. Wilkins, after he got in, and I was closing up the umbrella when I looked up. I noticed something moving at the third-story window of the old lady’s house. And the young one, the one that lives there with her, she was peeking out at the street from around the window curtain.”
“Do you know Miss Mead?”
“Is that her name? Nahh, too snooty to trouble herself to talk to me.”
“Have you spoken with the police?”
“Would if they asked me.”
“Was anybody else about on the street that night?”
“You mean when I saw the man go into the house? Let me think . . . . What was it, twelve, twelve-thirty?”
“Two o’clock is when he got there.”
“Nahh, not that late. I picked Mr. Wilkins up from the theatre at eleven-forty-five, when the show got out; that’s how he got all soaked; stepped off the curb into a puddle, then got splashed by a cab. Roaring pissed, let me tell you!” Realizing he’d used questionable language, he added, “Oops, sorry, lady!”
“Awww, shit, don’t mention it,” I replied, waving his apology off.
Eyes widened in my direction, he got back to his story: “Got back here a little after twelve, so it was maybe twelve-fifteen, twelve-thirty that I saw the guy.”
“I wonder if there was anyone else around might have seen anything?”
“Can’t say, but you know, it’s an old neighborhood, this street. People’ve been living in these houses fifty years, some of ’em. The only thing going on around here after midnight is a lot of snoring, except maybe for folks coming in and out of the speakeasy ’round the block, and stumbling into the park to sleep it off. But, it was raining so hard, it would have washed the benches clean of any of the usual drunks.”
Mr. Benchley handed the chauffeur his card and asked him to telephone should he remember anything else about the night of the murder, just as the clumsy-footed Mr. Wilkins exited his townhouse. But Mr. Benchley had one more question: “Did you hear a gunshot?”
“No,” he said, touched his cap, and left.
“Two o’clock? It couldn’t have been Benny Booth arrived at Madame’s house.”
“Why not?”
“Because Bette says he left her side at two o’clock, and the police say the murder happened around that time. Midnight is too early.”
“And Caroline says two o’clock as well,” said Mr. Benchley. “If it was Benny who came to the house at midnight, Caroline’s been lying. Unless he made two visits—one around midnight and the other around two o’clock. He wasn’t pounding on the door to be let in on the first visit, and if he was roaring drunk, he couldn’t have taken the steps two at a time without a stumble. And, he couldn’t have murdered the woman in less time than it takes to finish a smoke. Anyway, a little after midnight is too soon, according to the medical examiner. Now, if Caroline was telling the truth about Benny, it had to have been some other person who came to the house a little after twelve o’clock. A youngish, fit man . . . could be any number of other people. There’s Brent and Lord Wildly, and probably any number of other young fellows we don’t even know about.”
“Two people? Why didn’t Caroline tell the police about the midnight visit?”
“It wasn’t in the police report that Joe Woollcott gave a copy of to Aleck.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to involve someone who had no connection to the crime.”
“You think some fellow was returning a borrowed book at that hour?”
“Maybe Caroline is seeing a man! Yes, a midnight tryst!”
“We’ll see.”
“Why don’t we just go back and ask her who came by at midnight and see what her answer is?”
“Not a good idea. Innocent as the girl may appear, she’s still a suspect in the Madame’s death, and had a motive to see her benefactress dead. Although it is possible that whoever it was that came to the house at midnight is an innocent party regarding the events occurring later that night, we now know there had been another visitor: Someone was at the house at midnight, innocently or with murderous intent. Now, if the murderer suspects that our chauffeur saw anything he wasn’t supposed to, he might not be safe from the killer’s wrath. There are other ways to find out from Caroline the identity of the visitor, but it will have to wait. Whoever it was arrived here at midnight by cab, there’ll be record of the trip with one of the taxi companies. But, now, my dear, what are you waiting for?”
“Hmmm?” Oh, the letter!
I opened the folds to read the short note:
Adelaide my dear,
I didn’t want to believe it, but seeing is believing, and I can see that you were right. The matter will be dealt with tonight, but as you have warned must be approached with cunning and care. It is said that the evil that men do must not go unpunished. Payment is required.
Have you considered the Pendragon connection?
Your loving sister,
Annabelle
“‘Annabelle’ was Madame Olenska’s first name,” I said, looking over the envelope for the cancellation date on the stamp. “She sent the letter to Ada the afternoon of the séance! But by the time the letter was delivered, both women were dead and the letter was returned to sender. What ‘matter,’ I wonder, ‘needs great care’? And what the hell does she mean by the ‘Pendragon connection,’ do you suppose? What is a Pendragon, anyway?”
“Isn’t it a speakeasy up near Carnegie Hall?”
“That’s Pendrake’s.”
“You’re right. I’ll check the telephone registry; perhaps it’s a restaurant.”
“Could just be the name of a boat or a new motorcar, or a hotel or an apartment building, or the name of a friend or someone.”
Mr. Benchley stepped off the curb to whistle for a cab, and then looked at his watch. “I have to stop at the Life office, and then I promised Gertrude—”
A growl of shifting gears announced the imminent arrival of a Moon roadster, which then swung wildly off the avenue and directly toward us. It bounded so recklessly close to striking down Mr. Benchley that I grabbed his sleeve to pull him back onto the sidewalk. The backfire made us jump.
“Gunshot!” said Mr. Benchley, while I stood cursing the driver and his progeny for the next ten generations.
“No wonder nobody heard a gunshot!” he said to me when my incantation was complete. “That’s the second time we’ve seen that car make that turn, resulting in a backfire.”
“Yes, I remember, when we arrived at the séance.”
A taxi pulled to the curb. “Go on uptown without me. The park is here; I’ll walk Woodrow and see you later,” I said.
“Be at lunch?”
“I expect so . . . .”
The door lever in his hand, he turned back to look at me. “Why the long face?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said, brushing him off; the man knew me well. I laughed. “Murder, mayhem, a run in my silk stocking. Go on, Fred. You’ll be late to do whatever you have to do. I’ll see you later.”
My mood had soured. That wasn’t unusual; it didn’t take much.
And while the noon sunshine warmed my face as Woodrow led me toward the park and then under the miniature Arc de Triomphe at the northern entrance of Washington Square Park, I shivered as if touched by a spectral hand.
We lingered a few moments at the fountain, and while Woodrow lapped thirstily, I took a deep breath, more of a sigh, really, and turned my face up to the sky, s
eeking succor; its blue was diffused by the intensity of the noontime sun. Shimmering light and shadows dappled the vibrant, golden leaves of the rain trees—leaves that to my fanciful, depressed mind seemed to express animal defiance in their tenacity to cling to the tree by their slender stems. Their release was imminent as the days grew cooler. They knew, as I did, that soon their weakening hold would give way to inevitable surrender, and tired of the struggle they would fall headfirst in a spiral down from consciousness, as all things that touch this earth must one day do.
I made a concerted effort to cheer up as I turned my eyes toward the life around me. I took in the pretty vignettes laid out along the pathway: nannies lingering on benches, chatting as they rocked their charges’ prams, throwing occasional glances at the older toddlers playing ball on the lawns; concrete chess tables occupied by grizzled old men catching the last rays of autumn warmth while engaged in neighborly gambling, nickels stacked within easy reach.
We walked along the path, Woodrow eager to investigate the sights and smells that delight the canine senses; certain tree trunks passed muster while others were ignored. Children were of interest to him, especially if they were tossing balls in the air. A stately standard poodle made a damn fool of herself nosing Woodrow’s rump. Woodrow ignored the brazen hussy and assumed an aloof strut in his step as we carried on. A dog’s method of living contentedly is to be fully engaged in the delights of each moment, every occurrence, and all chance encounters. A damn good argument against the pains of intellectualism.
Teams of old men in tattered hats and ratty, worn coats flung balls across the bocce court. Their laughter, convivial, prodding challenges, and feigned insults were universally understood and transcended the need for translation from Italian dialects. Their camaraderie made me smile; the smile made me aware that I was only a sad spectator passing through. The sun was shining, and I was outside under its beneficent warmth. So why could I not shake this feeling that I was in a cold, dark place?
With Woodrow leading the way, we left the park and walked along MacDougal Street. At Broadway, we turned west, mindlessly. I had no destination; Woodrow was walking me for a change. People were gathering from buildings, restaurants were filling, and merchants were enjoying brisk business.
[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong Page 12
