[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong

by Agata Stanford

  My eyes burned, so I handed the receiver to Mr. Benchley to get the details while I downed the scotch from my glass and got up to pour another. The news left me restless inside, and yet I found myself stuck in the middle of the room, not moving left, not moving right, but stranded, until Woodrow, awakened from his nap in the corner of the sofa, let out his low, forlorn-sounding whine that cut through my own voiceless distress. I flung myself down next to him. He nuzzled his head under my arm with canine consolation.

  “Oh, Woodrow,” I bawled. He licked the tears as they fell from my eyes.

  Mr. Benchley stood grim-faced after hanging up, his cheek turning a dark shade of purple under the welt. He patted my head for wordless comfort.

  “When? Where did this happen?”

  “Heywood said Benny walked into it. Benny’s suite at the Waldorf. The police were waiting for him. He tried to make a break while an officer was cuffing him; he slugged a cop, grabbed the officer’s gun, and before he could get away, another cop shot him.”

  “He walked into it, you say?”

  The telephone rang again, and I asked Mr. Benchley to answer it. He dropped his usual smart-ass salutation of “Mrs. Parker’s funeral parlor and automobile repair shop! From where shall we fetch the wreckage?” He simply said, “Mrs. Parker’s residence.”

  “It’s Aleck,” he announced, cupping the receiver. “He’s found something that Benny left for him at his apartment; he obviously hasn’t heard about what’s happened to Benny.”

  He turned his attention back to Aleck. “I see. It had fallen where? And you just found it? Well, Aleck, would you read that note again to Mrs. Parker? No, this is not a game. Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

  Aleck’s booming voice bled through the receiver and across the room, growing louder and more clipped. I got up and grabbed the phone.

  “It’s me, Aleck. All right, it is I,” I replied testily after being corrected. “Now, will you read me the goddamn note you found!”

  His voice boomed officiously as he read Benny’s words.

  I hung up without telling Aleck of Benny’s fate. I was too upset to deal with the hysteria that would undoubtedly follow once Aleck was told that Benny was dead. For both our sakes, mostly and selfishly mine, I decided to let him get some sleep before he heard the news.

  We sat quietly for a while. And then, while Mr. Benchley paced the room, lit cigarettes, raided the icebox for something to nibble on, and then selected a recording to play on the Victrola (his way of thinking things through, I’d long ago discovered, not unlike Sherlock fiddling with his fiddle), I mindlessly picked up the high school yearbook and riffled through its pages. I thought Caroline was from Maine. What was she doing with the yearbook from a high school in Brooklyn? Homely, awkward faces stared back at me, and soon I became annoyed with the wide-eyed naïveté that had been, undoubtedly by now, worn away with a decade of living. I was about to throw the book aside when my eyes landed on a dedication around a boy’s photo. It was the salutation he had written that grabbed my attention. I turned the page, and there she was, staring out at me. I scrutinized the photograph. The name of the girl in the class photograph was printed below. An idea came to me in a flash, and I flipped through the yearbook, searching for one more connection. My hunch paid off.

  But before I could tell him of my discovery, Mr. Benchley made one of his own, as he dropped the needle on Irving Berlin’s “Always.”

  “Bingo!” he shouted, and then he whispered with awestruck disbelief his hypothesis. “She set him up!”

  Two heads really do work better than one.

  Half an hour later, at nearly four in the morning, as Mr. Benchley and I strolled passed the Yacht Club, escorting Woodrow on his constitutional, we attempted to put all the facts together.

  Walking a dog does wonders for the sorting and unscrambling of things floating about in one’s mind. The threads of mere speculation that had been woven into a very strong knot can easily unravel at a fire hydrant or tree guard. So it was after the barber pole, and before the imminent stream aimed at the tobacco store Indian, that our collective reasoning seemed to make some very good sense. We had a mission to accomplish and time was of the essence. And we’d walked only as far as 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, to the New York City Public Library, not too long ago the site of the city’s reservoir, when it all came together.

  A New York Times delivery truck turned down the avenue from West 42nd loaded with stacks of morning papers for destinations on the East Side; a street sweeper rumbled past us on its way downtown. The city was beginning to hum in a soft murmur.

  The toot of a tugboat whistle sounded in the East River, and was answered by the horn of a freighter, a deep, dull, despondent moan vibrating through the canyon between the tall buildings. Early morning trucks crossed side streets making deliveries to hotels and restaurants—meat from the stockyards, flowers from the flower markets in the West Twenties, fish from the Fulton Fish Markets. Vans with textiles from the mills of Massachusetts were headed to the Garment District.

  West of us rumbled and rattled the Sixth Avenue el train; in Bryant Park, pigeons began to gurgle and doves cooed at the dawn’s arrival. The lights were going out all over town, and we watched as the electric streetlamps on Fifth Avenue were extinguished, one after the other, like a line of falling dominos, all the way down as far south as the eye could see.

  As the sun rose gently over the East River, sending horizontal rays of gold and warm pink light to color and bring to life the sculpted white-marble lions that guarded the graceful flight of steps leading up to the library’s entrance, we made our decision, struck our plan, and hoped for the best. As if with foreboding, a vicious gang of blackbirds squawked angrily, soaring out of a berry-laden tree to spiral toward the sky at our approach. With no cabs in sight on the nearly deserted avenue, we hopped a lone streetcar heading downtown.

  Except for a young servant walking the family sheepdog along MacDougal Street, Washington Square and the surrounding environs were deserted of people.

  As we approached the house the sound of our shoes on the slate sidewalks echoed loudly in the air. We were about to climb the front steps when an automobile turned off from the avenue and pulled to the curb a few doors away. It was a familiar limousine, and as the chauffeur, Dudley Dandridge, whom we had met on a previous sojourn to the Square, bobbed out from the driver’s side, Mr. Benchley waved a greeting.

  We walked over to Dudley, who began to polish the nickel-plated headlights. “You’re out early,” said Mr. Benchley, for want of anything else to say.

  “Off to the Cape this morning. Mr. Wilkins has some deep-sea fishing he plans to do out of Provincetown. Early start. Some time away from the dames, know what I mean?”

  “Ah, I know what you mean: Too many, too serious, too soon.”

  Dudley laughed, “It’ll just be the two of us, which is fine with me. We’ll go tuna fishing, ever been?”

  “Not recently. Say, Dudley, anything interesting going on over at the house?”

  “ ’S that where you’re headed? Quiet, now that the old lady’s kicked the bucket. What you know about the new babe staying there?”

  “Babe?”

  “Yeah, a real looker, she is. Dark-haired babe, big blue eyes—Mr. Wilkins, he helped her up the stoop with her packages; she’s the old lady’s niece, here for the funeral, she said.”

  “Is that what she calls herself?” said Mr. Benchley, matter-of-factly.

  “Isn’t she?”

  “I suppose she can call herself a niece—or daughter or sister or imposter, whatever suits her fancy,” I said. “All fur coat and no knickers?” trying on the expression I had learned from Tristan Wildly.

  “A floozy? Yeah, right; lots of fluff, no substance, I get your drift. So something’s not right, that’s what you’re saying?”

  “Something along those lines.”

  “Then I’ll count the silverware when she comes to dinner.”

  “What would you say, Dudley, i
f I told you one of those two women in that house is a murderess?” asked Mr. Benchley.

  “Why, what’d she do, thrill some guy to death?”

  Mr. Benchley didn’t answer.

  “A murderess, huh? Nahh, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  “Nahh. Women got the vote, now—they can do all the things that men do. Anyway, they’ve been murdering men since the beginning of time. Slow deaths, know what I mean? Pretty poison.” He turned to address me directly. “No offense, Miss, but some, they kill with kindness, some with nagging. Then there’s the man-eaters—gold-diggers, they kill with—”

  “And all men are saints?”

  “One moment, please, Mrs. Parker, I’d like to hear a bit more of Dudley’s interesting, if perverse, philosophy.”

  Dudley puffed up nice and full—of himself—flattered that a figure such as Mr. Benchley was genuinely interested in what he had to say. With a swagger he leaned up against the limo, crossed his legs, pushed back his billed cap, and waved an index finger as he delivered his exegesis: “All I’m saying is that people are always going around killing each other, know what I mean? Men go to war to kill each other; women don’t go to war, they stay home, but they kill differently. There are lots of ways to kill a guy. I mean, what’s the difference if it’s slow murder over time, kill his spirit, drive him to suicide by his own hand? Men do it fast and clean, see? A gun, a knife—”

  “Oh, brother!” I mumbled, ready to give him a piece of my mind, but the insult would have been wasted.

  “Yes, we see your point,” said Mr. Benchley.

  The light bulb came on in Dudley’s head: “Oh! You mean one of them in there killed the old lady?”

  “Dudley, we’re going into that house, now, and we’d very much appreciate it if in about five minutes you pressed the call box down the street.”

  “Police?”

  “Yes. Would you do that?”

  “Come on in,” said Caroline upon answering the doorbell.

  Mr. Benchley and I entered the hall and followed Caroline into the drawing room.

  “I know why you’re here.”

  “Do you?”

  “I have the Sacred Book, if that’s why you’ve come. It belonged to Madame Olenska, and now it belongs to me.”

  “The key belonged to her sister, Adelaide.”

  “Adelaide is dead. That horrible goat, Pendragon, murdered her for it. I suppose I have you two to thank for helping me get these back.”

  “Really?” I said. “I thought you were one of his followers.”

  Caroline hooted a decidedly hard and unattractive laugh. “That windbag? Are you kidding? Why would I ever want to get mixed up with that lot? I think you’ve got things all wrong. Madame and Miss Ada were protecting the Sacred Book from Pendragon. In the wrong hands, evil hands, it could be used to conjure Lucifer.”

  “I don’t think you believe that crap,” I said. “It is a very valuable book, much sought-after by people like Pendragon, and the jewels encrusting that dagger are worth thousands.”

  “Doesn’t matter what I believe. Madame believed, and so did her sister. And what if it is valuable?”

  “Pendragon wouldn’t have murdered Miss Ada just for the key if he didn’t think he had a good chance of getting the book, too.”

  “Don’t think he hasn’t tried, but he’ll not get it again. He’s off to jail, thanks to you and your friends.”

  “He’s tried?”

  “Broke into the house.”

  “So there is no chance he murdered Madame Olenska?”

  “Had he, wouldn’t he have taken the book then?”

  “I see your point.”

  “Benny Booth killed Madame.”

  “We don’t think so,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “But of course he did. He was here.”

  “Not at the time you told the police. There’s a witness that will testify Benny was here long before the time of Madame’s death, and only for a few moments, not enough time for you to answer the door, go up the stairs to waken Madame and tell her to come down to the drawing room, as Benny Booth was demanding to see her, and then for you to disappear to your own rooms, and for Benny to walk up to Madame’s room, after you’d gone, to shoot her through the heart—or did you just shoot her while she slept in her bed?”

  “That’s crazy. Benny killed her. She was killed with Benny’s gun!”

  “Conveniently. After you set up a blackmail scheme with your friend Bette to lure him to the house,” said Mr. Benchley, “giving him a motive for murder. Bette would support the blackmail scheme, but the blackmail wouldn’t have anything to do with Bette, would it? Benny would be framed for Johnny’s murder—which really was an accident. Of course, Bette had an ironclad alibi for the night Johnny died. You’d provide that.”

  “It wasn’t Madame Olenska who was blackmailing Benny. It was you, wasn’t it, pretending to be Madame,” I said.

  Mr. Benchley didn’t give her a chance to answer the charge: “He was simply trying to protect himself and his wife from murder charges in the death of her first husband, Johnny. Benny made the payoff, the ten grand, which you took and stashed somewhere. You didn’t want the cash found, because it was logical that the police would wonder why Benny would have left all that money at the house after he had murdered his blackmailer. The money would link him—his prints were on the cash, all over the envelope—and why shouldn’t you have the money, you figured? But I’m sure the police will find it, eventually, and that will help to hang you, Lee.”

  “You’d better leave, or I’m going to call the police.”

  “I wouldn’t bother, Lee Pigeon, if I were you.”

  The mask dropped. “What do you want?”

  “You killed Madame, didn’t you?”

  “You’re off the mark.”

  I said, “Here you had a nice little scheme going with your new friend Bette, didn’t you—or was she really an old friend, a school chum? All was going nicely until Madame found out who you really were. Ada found out about you, was suspicious of you, probably because you didn’t know one very important fact of the real Caroline’s life: that Pendragon was her father.

  “How was it supposed to play out?” asked Mr. Benchley. “You blackmail Benny, first for ten thousand, then for twenty, fifty, who knows how far you could go? You and Bette split the profits. But then something happened that threatened your place here in Madame’s house. We found the file on you, Lee, in Miss Ada’s cabinet, the one written up by the Finders Detective Agency. Only, it was missing the first page.

  “I suspect that you found out—quite by chance—about Finders’ report. Had Miss Ada sent it to her sister with a note warning her that you were an imposter? Was the first page of that report a photo of you, like the one in your Erasmus Hall high school yearbook? Yes, Mrs. Parker found the yearbook. The salutation from a fellow school chum who signed your book gave you away: “Tweety.” All we saw in the last pages of the report was a description—reddish hair, five-feet-eight inches tall, hundred-and-thirty pounds—with a rap-sheet, to boot—and we didn’t put it together that such a nice girl like you was a little criminal.”

  I said, “We figured Lee Pigeon was a man. We never dreamed you weren’t who you said you were, the daughter of an old friend of the Madame’s. A little while ago we found out that Madame’s friend, Myra, had died, that was true, but so had the real Caroline, in a motor accident in Kennebunkport three years ago.”

  “Caroline” was cornered and looking desperate. I wondered about my own sanity, and Mr. Benchley’s. Whatever had possessed us to enter the house of a maniac? Now what was she going to do? She might try to get away, but she wouldn’t get very far. It was two against one—all right, it was Mr. Benchley against her, if it came to that. But the police would arrive soon, thanks to Chauffeur Dudley Dandridge. What the hell was she going to do? Pull a gun on us and kill us? How would she explain that?

  She pulled a gun on us—from out of the
desk drawer, to which she had been moving, closer and closer, while we confronted her with the facts.

  I froze, but Mr. Benchley barreled on, unfazed, voicing my own thoughts of moments before: “I wouldn’t plan on using that. The police will be here any minute, and their discovery of an illustrious poetess and the father of two remarkable young lads lying dead in the drawing room of your house would be hard to explain, wouldn’t you say? Anyway, you wouldn’t want to hurt that little dog Mrs. Parker is clutching to her chest, now, would you?”

  Aiming the gun at us, Caroline peeked through the draperies of the bay window at the street. “There’s nobody there—just the idiot chauffeur works for that man down the street.”

  “As I was saying . . .” continued Mr. Benchley, “you had to do something, didn’t you? You knew Madame Olenska had left you everything in her will. When she found out the truth, did she confront you, ask you to leave the house that night after the séance, after we all left? You could no longer wait for a more opportune time to kill her and make it look like an accident, could you? Isn’t that what you’d originally planned, after you’d assured yourself of her fortune? Suddenly, you had to act right away. You already had the blackmail scheme in place, and a plan to get rid of Benny—why not frame him for Madame Olenska’s murder? Yes! That was it! What a team you and Bette made!”

  “Madame bequeathed you everything in her will, but she didn’t tell you that she’d already written you out of it only that morning before the séance when she signed a new one.”

  I said to an obviously surprised Lee Pigeon, mortification paling her features, “Ah! Madame didn’t tell you! And why would she take the chance of telling you that night that she changed her will? Madame didn’t confront you that night, did she? She was alone in the house with a woman who’d lied to her, was in fact, a desperate criminal!”

  The look of disgust on her face confirmed my statement. There had been no confrontation with her benefactress. She had just shot her, cold-bloodedly, while she slept. She had a fall-guy in Benny Booth; it was all part of the plan.