[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong

by Agata Stanford

  “What he means,” said Maggie, “is Madame’s interaction with everyone from the stewards to the ship’s captain, from the pompous millionaires and heiresses to the young boy in second class whose mother died two days out—she took him in to stay with her in her cabin and delivered him to his father, herself, upon reaching port—was heartwarming.”

  “Madame and Rabindranath would sit at the stern contemplating the wake of the ship’s path through the sea. And I swear, dolphins would appear following the ship, playfully leaping when they were back there. I’d pause in my walks around deck to rest beside them to watch. Odd thing, really, but others noticed that the dolphins appeared only when Rabindranath Tagore stood staring out from the stern, and then retired to the depths at his retreat. On the last days of the trip, crowds would gather, observing the phenomenon.”

  I wondered, cruelly but logically, if the Indian made his appearances at the stern when the remains of the galley were released into the ocean.Donald read my thoughts, or the expression on my face, when he said he’d considered the idea but was told that refuse was released at sunrise.

  But Donald touched upon a truth in his telling of the yogi and the dolphins. In the presence of Rabindranath one did feel a sense of tranquility, a sense that all was right with the world, in its perfectly imperfect disordered order. Of course, I have never been one to accept the philosophy of Voltaire’s myopic Dr. Pangloss, in which “all is for the best in this best of possible worlds.” On the contrary, my eyes are witness to the inequities of our world, and the truth is I find it so disturbing, I often wish to sleep and never again arise to the turmoil. Believe me, I’ve tried to leave, and I never get out the door. Whether there is oblivion on the other side, or a better world, I don’t know. But, I have found it difficult to live in a world where war and injustice and contempt for the creatures that share this planet are the fault of my species. So, I really can’t say, because I don’t know, what it is about Rabindranath that elicits such acceptance, such surrender of one’s heart, where before there was only struggle. Just as porpoises have been mesmerized, so have I been. And if the irritability I have been feeling since I left his flat is only because he stirred something within me that forced the release of refuse deep within my psyche to rise to the surface to be shed, discarded, eventually, to float away one day, leaving me better, cleaner, less toxic in spirit and more willing to live in this world, then I shall thank him.

  “The Frankens,” began Mr. Benchley, “you called them ‘refugees’?”

  “Well, that’s how Caroline referred to them. But we never really found out anything much about them or where they came from. Madame never spoke a word about why they were traveling with her. It seemed rude to press the question. They seemed vulnerable, you know? And even though we weren’t particularly enamored with them, it was the behavior of Caroline Mead, who was not fond of them at all—ignored them, treated them a bit rudely, I’d say—that made us want to treat them more pleasantly, at the very least. They hadn’t the . . . conventional manners, you see; thus the term ‘refugees,’ coined by Caroline with an accompanying sneer as if being a refugee implied criminality.”

  “German refugees?”

  “Ukrainian, we guessed, pretending to be Germans. Maggie’s grandfather is Ukrainian. She recognized the accent when they spoke in English. Maggie thought they might really be dissidents.”

  “I sense that you are not particularly fond of Caroline Mead,” I noted, “or perhaps it was your growing admiration for the Frankens?”

  “Yes to both,” admitted Donald. “The Frankens—well, whatever their names really are—stayed mostly to themselves. They are respectful and polite people. I think the reason we found it difficult to like them at first was because they saw themselves as being inferior in our eyes, and accepted that reflection. We Americans, no matter how inferior we appear to the upper classes of European society, always view ourselves as the superior race. We are not used to condescension.”

  He had a point there.

  Maggie jumped in: “I wondered if Madame was aware of Caroline’s acerbic nature, and of how her superior pretenses were expressed. Madame did tell me she was the child of a school chum who’d had an unfortunate life. Poverty and a dead mother brought her to the charity of Madame Olenska’s home. Madame would listen to no criticism of her. In Madame’s presence Caroline may have suppressed her urge to cut the Frankens down, but a couple of times we also saw her belittle members of the ship’s staff, and on one occasion, when she didn’t know I was standing within earshot, I heard her berate Frances to tears. She used the term, ‘Jew bitch.’ I’d made an attempt to inform Madame of what Caroline had said to Frances, but, Madame insisted I had probably misunderstood. So, no, I don’t find many redeeming qualities in Miss Mead.”

  “Just a sec—Franken is not really their name?”

  “Madame once referred to Siegfried as ‘Chaim,’ and then corrected herself.”

  “Chaim?”

  “It’s pronounced with a sound like the clearing of your throat: Cccchhaim.”

  “Like Chanukah or challah bread,” I instructed Mr. Benchley.

  “Caroline once referred to them as ‘those cat’s elbows.’ I thought she meant ‘cat burglars’ but we couldn’t figure out the joke, so I asked why she always called them that. She laughed and said that’s who they really were, ‘the cat’s elbows.’”

  Maggie added: “‘Cat’s elbow’ translates to Katzenelenbogen.”

  Chaim Katzenelenbogen—that was a mouthful! And it is a Jewish name.

  From what I’d been hearing, the Jews were having a bad time in Eastern Europe and in Russia. Of course, Jews have always had a bad time. I didn’t know how the Frankens could have figured in this blackmail scheme, and Caroline obviously disliked them. I wanted to know why she felt so strongly against them. Did she suspect them of planning something unsavory, and feared for Madame becoming involved with them? Was it because they really were criminals, or perhaps she had contempt for them merely because they were Jewish? Or just culturally different?

  “The Booths, Benny and his wife, Bette, how did they figure in?” asked Mr. Benchley.

  “Caroline and Bette hit it off right off the bat. Met in Paris, I believe. On the ship, Booth was spending a lot of time at the tables, gambling away his family fortune, so the two women spent time together. They seemed suited.”

  Meoooww! Maggie didn’t much care for Bette, either!

  And then, from left field (to use a term I’ve repeatedly heard this week during the World Series games), Donald said, “Bette, to be blunt, married up.”

  “That’s obvious,” I said, to echo his thoughts on the matter. I didn’t give a shit about class and financial status, and where ordinarily I’d have called Donald a pompous ass for making any distinction of one’s place in society, I didn’t want him editing his observations for propriety’s sake. In truth, Bette had married above her class, whether or not such things mattered anymore. Finding Madame’s murderer could very well rest on the insights of others, their prejudices, and their experiences with the suspects. And the truth was he’d expressed the very first impression I had of the class differences of the couple.

  “Well, Caroline and Bette got very cozy,” elaborated Maggie. “I suppose they’d found common ground between them.”

  I noted Maggie’s emphasis on the word “common.”

  Maggie laughed with wicked delight as she quoted Lord Wildly’s observation of Bette’s and Caroline’s personae at the gala on the last night of the crossing: “all fur coat and no knickers!”

  Donald pulled back the reins. “Lord Wildly does speak quite colorfully,” he said, and then a sharp look at his wife put the topic to rest.

  There was more here, but he was not about to let Maggie press on, as I was certain she would have, had we cornered her alone. Donald was a gentleman, by birth and by breeding, and gentlemen did not engage in loose gossip with acquaintances. He’d already let slip about Bette moving up the social lad
der, and from the look on his face, regretted the callous remark. I liked him for the regret, if not for the deep-seated prejudice, and silently forgave him.

  To look at Maggie, at the slim, pretty creature with honey-colored curls, elegantly poised in her chair, the cut of her Alice-blue wool suit and cream-colored charmeuse blouse and strings of real pearls rendered all the lovelier by her wearing, you’d not suspect an opera diva, but rather a young society matron after whom Emily Post had modeled her etiquette standards. There was passion here, judging from the spark of her blue eyes and the reviews of her stage performances, as well as a wicked glee and lack of fear in pointing out the defects and pretensions of persons she did not like. But there was a kindness, too, and a sense of humanity that had driven her to defend Frances from Caroline’s cruelty, and I really liked that about her. Maggie Brent was a refreshing cocktail of acerbic wit and downright decency, and would be great fun to have as a friend. Funny that my first impression, when we met at Madame’s, was that she was a small-town girl working in a five-and-dime!

  “How did Benny feel about the women’s new friendship?” I asked Donald.

  “I don’t know that he cared. Left him more time at the tables, to tell the truth, so he probably thought it a godsend. I am speculating, of course, as he never said or showed what he thought about it one way or the other.”

  “Is that all he did, gamble?” asked Mr. Benchley.

  “Spent the rest of the time reading, drinking.”

  “Did he enjoy any other deck activities? Shuffleboard?”

  “God, no! Called it an ‘imbecile’s sport.’”

  “Hated deck sports; would find any excuse to go indoors.”

  “Skeet shooting?”

  Maggie laughed when she replied, “The gunfire drove him mad and off deck. He was reading a book when Bette arrived begging him to join in on the shoot, and Benny, interrupted from his reading shouted, “I’ve no quarrel with fish! Where do you think the bullets go when they drop from the air?”

  “So Bette enjoyed shooting?”

  “Don’t know that she did; Maggie and I left the deck. What was it we did that morning, dear?”

  “I remember hearing him tell her to do as she pleased, he was going back to their stateroom for some shuteye.”

  “Marital problems?”

  “No, they were very lovey-dovey, actually. The fellow just had a hangover, is all. Benny got on with everyone.”

  “Lord Wildly?”

  “Now that man’s a bundle of contradictions,” said Maggie. “Gorgeous to look at—oh, Donnie, stop looking at me with such shock. He is a very good-looking man, after all, and the more so for all of his imperfections: the tiny gap in his front teeth, the squint, the monocle, the unruly curls, the occasional bumbling, those ridiculous British expressions—”

  “We get the point, dear.”

  “I think he’s yummy,” I said, “but for the language barrier.”

  “I think Madame was pushing him and Caroline together. He is a catch, you know; lots of money, to the manner born, as they say. But nothing developed from her efforts.”

  Mr. Benchley forced the conversation back on track: “How did Benny get on with Madame Olenska?”

  “Very respectful. Benny mostly kept to himself, like I said. He was always cordial and gentlemanly. Nice guy all ’round.”

  Donald said, “Madame Olenska was a grand old girl, and whatever happened at the séance the other night, as ridiculously as it all played out, she was an honest person, I’m sure of it! She even joked with us about the antics used by some so-called spiritualist mediums, and all that green smoke and flying silver had to have been a deliberate show, a joke, to entertain us. You see, she told me that it was unlikely we’d make contact with Mother, not to believe anyone who said they could reach her from beyond the grave. Madame’s séances, she said, were purely the means of channeling her spirit guide.”

  “What the hell is a ‘spirit guide’?” I asked.

  “She explained that it is an entity that navigates through the spirit world, and provides sources of information, insight, and spiritual guidance to the seeker.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, biting my lip, trying to keep a straight face. And I believed in fairies.

  “And as you witnessed, Mother never did break the barrier that night.”

  “Well, someone did,” said Mr. Benchley. “All those protestations in a baritone voice shouting, ‘betrayed!’”

  “Yes, but I don’t know what that was all about.”

  “Did Madame urge you to attend the séance because of any trouble she may have perceived in one of her visions?”

  Ah, I see—Mr. Benchley wondered if Madame Olenska had tried to blackmail the Brents, too.

  “Good God, no, old man!” said Donald with a laugh. “Why, she said she saw only success for Maggie and me when she looked into her crystal.”

  “But, excuse me, Donald; remember she told me that on opening night of Carmen—”

  “Yes, yes, of course, the sandbag. She told Maggie to have the crew check the ropes of all the sandbags backstage. And Maggie told the stage manager, and wouldn’t you know they found one rope badly frayed.”

  So Madame O wasn’t blackmailing the Brents. Or, hadn’t yet been at the time of her murder. Perhaps there were no skeletons in the couple’s closet, and nothing to hide. They were still young, I thought; in a few more years there’d be plenty.

  Who was this woman who called herself “Madame Olenska”? Was she genuinely a kindly old soul who had a gift of communing with otherworldly entities, whether real or of the wild imaginings of her mind, or was that all a pretense of a vicious hag, preying on her victims, using the sad circumstances of their lives for criminal ends? I believed Benny Booth’s story of blackmail. He was forthcoming about the night of Johnny’s accident, and although Bette’s version was not quite as detailed or factual, I believed in her basic honesty as well. But without the blackmail money recovered—surely Benny would have left the money as he said he had, even if he was indeed innocent of murder; his fingerprints would be all over the cash, proving that his reason for going to the Washington Square house was only for a payoff of Madame’s blackmail demand. If he hadn’t left the money, or if none was to be found, his story was weak.

  How to reconcile the Brents’ saintly Madame Olenska with the Booths’ heartless blackmailer?

  And how did her sister, Adelaide, enter into all of this? Why did Miss Ada have to die? What did she do that got her killed? Was it knowledge of something? Did the warning to her sister, alluded to in Madame’s returned letter, make what she knew so dangerous to someone that they wanted her out of the way? Could the two spiritualists have conspired in this blackmail scheme? If so, what role did Ada play? My thoughts kept going back to the returned letter from Madame to her sister, which I carried in my purse. What had the women been discussing, what matter needed to be handled with great care? Did it refer to the blackmail? Did they suspect that their lives were in danger from Benny Booth, or maybe even from other victims of their foul schemes?

  I also found it doubtful that a person named “Lee Pigeon” had anything to do with the murders. People often investigate people they plan to do business with—potential spouses, and employees. It was a smart thing for a woman alone in the world to do to protect herself and her money. There are lots of con artists and gigolos out there looking for vulnerable women to swindle. And that report from the Finders Detective Agency may have been requested years ago for all we knew. We’d found it stuffed and fallen at the back of the desk drawer, obviously long forgotten, and we didn’t find the first page or an accompanying letter from the agency that might reveal the date of the investigation or what it was all about.

  And who or what the hell was “Pendragon”?

  “Does the name Lee Pigeon strike a bell?” I gave the general description.

  “No, I don’t believe—sounds like you’re describing Maggie—except for the felonies!”

  “What a
bout something called ‘Pendragon’?”

  “Vaudeville magician?”

  “I don’t know, that’s why—”

  “There’s Arthur Pendragon, a British ventriloquist—”

  “No, dear Donnie, that’s Arthur Prendergast.”

  “That’s right.”

  As we rode downtown to the house on Washington Square a few minutes after leaving the Brents, with promises that we would attend tomorrow’s opening-night performance of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Carmen, I asked myself and Mr. Benchley many questions: Why had Bette lied about Benny firing his gun on the ship, and why had Lord Wildly corroborated the lie? Was the response a kneejerk reaction to the news of the police search finding the gun? Had she used the gun on the ship, wouldn’t she merely have said so? She might have just been a wife stepping up to protect her husband . . . .

  The taxi let us off at the south side of Washington Square Park, allowing us to approach the house undetected. We settled at a concrete table bearing a checkerboard pattern used by chess players who enjoyed lengthy games of strategy under the leaf-dappled sunlight of summer afternoons. The benches were cold now, and hard, but from where we were positioned they afforded a good view of the front door and steps so that we could watch for Caroline Mead’s exit from the house.

  Other such game tables were occupied by elderly men, and a young man in tattered togs appeared to have drawn several observers to the mastery of his chess moves. The nearly motionless poses and long silences marked a striking contrast to the rowdy bocce match being played a distance away. Today there were fewer nannies pushing prams, and I realized it was the hour of the afternoon nap or for picking up children from school.

  We were discussing how best to enter the house: Circle the block and try to enter from the garden? The houses were all connected, but there was a vacant lot around the corner that might give us access to the rear garden. We finally decided to go through the front door. I would provide the cover and Mr. Benchley would work his “open sesame” magic on the lock. With practice over the years, Mr. Benchley had become quite adept as an amateur cracksman. He’d been thrilled to discover an additional use for his Swiss Army knife, aside from prying open Coca Cola bottle caps, uncorking wine, cutting through packing string, and trimming his fingernails: He could jimmy most door locks.