by J. J. Murphy
“Oh, you poor dear—” Dorothy began.
Woollcott shoved his way into the room. “Enough griping, you chatterboxes. We need to talk to the police at once. Now, what’s the matter with this thing? Why couldn’t you place the call from Mr. Fairbanks’ suite?”
Mavis’ face soured. “Most of the lines are down because of the snow, sir. There’s one emergency line available, but it only goes through this switchboard. I can’t connect you through a room telephone.”
“Then connect us here, you obtuse operator,” Woollcott said in his most pompous tone. “Do you think we came all the way down from the penthouse for nothing? Go ahead, place the call.”
Dorothy wondered (and not for the first time), Why do some people think they’ll be helped faster if they act like first-rate arrogant bastards?
She patted the operator on the shoulder. “Just show me how to do it, Mavis. And then you go take a five-minute break.”
For a woman who seemed so tired, Mavis jumped up from her chair surprisingly quickly.
“It’s easy peasy! Just put this on,” she said, grabbing the headset, and shoving it onto Dorothy’s head.
She sat Dorothy down in the swivel chair and turned her to the switchboard. Dorothy faced a wall-like panel full of holes and little unlit lights. Below this, on a desk-like board at her fingertips, was an array of switches, more little unlit bulbs and the upright tips of many cords.
Mavis pointed to the end of a metal-pronged cord. “You pull that out and plug it in that red-rimmed socket up there. That connects you to the emergency operator.”
Dorothy did so.
Mavis continued, “When you’re ready, pull back your switch there. That’ll signal her on her end, and the light above the plug will go on. The light goes off when she answers. Flick the switch back to the middle position, and then ask her for the police. When you’re done talking, just unplug the cord. It’ll snap back into place on its own, so watch your fingernails. Easy as that.”
While she was saying this, she had taken off her thick sweater and adjusted her skirt. She puffed up her hair where the headset had been, and now she put on lipstick.
Dorothy said, “You’re coming back in five minutes, right?”
“Certainly, Mrs. Parker! The party in the lobby isn’t over yet, is it?”
“Not just yet,” Dorothy conceded. “There are still drinks to be had and men to accost. But wait a minute, Mavis. What if somebody in the hotel wants to place a call while we’re here?”
She waved her hand and laughed. “Ignore it. What’s so important at twelve thirty on New Year’s night?” But then she seemed to realize that she wasn’t being quite helpful. She spoke less flippantly. “Oh, just tell them the truth—the lines are down and no outside calls can be made.”
She closed her purse with a snap and disappeared out the door.
Dorothy faced the large switchboard with its neat lines of wires, rows of plugs, columns of switches and array of darkened lights.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Woollcott asked. “Place the call, woman.”
Dorothy imitated Mavis’ throaty and imperturbable operator’s voice. “Just a moment, sir.” Then she plugged the cord into the emergency line and flipped the switch as Mavis had instructed. A red light went on and then off again as a man’s gruff voice spoke in her ear.
“New York Emergency. What’s your call?”
“The police, please,” Dorothy said in her usual quiet voice.
“Police? Which precinct, Operator?”
“Oh, whichever is available at the moment.”
“Whichever is available? Who is this?”
Dorothy became a little nervous. “Which precinct is closest to the Algonquin Hotel?”
The man on the other end snorted. “Hold on. I’ll connect you.”
The little red light went on again. Oops, did I do something wrong? Then there was a click, and it went off again by itself.
Another man’s voice came through the headphones. “Sixteenth Precinct. What’s your emergency, Operator?”
“Can I speak to Detective O’Rannigan, please?”
“O’Rannigan’s off duty. I’ll put you through to the night desk instead.”
“Not so fast.” Dorothy spoke quickly. She didn’t want that little light to go on again. “Is Captain Church there?”
“When is he not here? Hold on, I’ll put you through.”
The line went quiet, but the light remained off. Next to Dorothy, Woollcott crossed and uncrossed his arms impatiently.
There was a click, then a stony voice. “This is Church.”
“Good evening, Captain. Or should I say good morning? It’s Dorothy Parker. You remember me, don’t you?”
There was a long, weary sigh at the other end. “I am afraid I do. Mrs. Parker, this is an emergency line—”
“I have an emergency. I’m at the Algonquin Hotel. One of the guests has died. A prominent guest—Bibi Bibelot, the Broadway starlet.”
She heard the scratching of a pencil on the other end.
“Bibelot . . .” Captain Church repeated. “What happened to her? How did she die?”
“We don’t know exactly.”
Woollcott leaned toward the microphone horn around Dorothy’s neck. “She was murdered!”
“Who is that?” Church asked.
“Alexander Woollcott,” she said. “Do you remember him, too?”
“I’m afraid so,” Church said.
“Bibi Bibelot was murdered!” Woollcott nearly screamed. “In cold blood!”
In response to his outbursts, Dorothy tried to sound as calm and rational as she could. “It wasn’t in cold blood, Captain. It was in a cold bathtub, actually.”
Church made that long, weary sigh again. “Mrs. Parker, if this is some kind of prank—”
“It’s no prank. Bibi was found dead in Douglas Fairbanks’ bathtub just a little while ago.”
“Fairbanks . . .” he said evenly. The pencil scratched again. Any other person would have screamed the famous name. “Why did Mr. Woollcott say she was murdered? Who found her?”
“Well—” Dorothy hesitated. “I suppose I found her.”
“You suppose? Is there some doubt?”
“No, Captain. I found her.”
“And was she murdered?”
“I can’t say. I’m not a detective—and neither is Aleck Woollcott!” She gave him a reproachful look.
“I am sending over a squad car. Do not do a single thing. Do not even touch the body.”
Dorothy decided that now was not the time to tell Church that they had not only touched the body but had already moved Bibi from the tub to the bed. Then she remembered something else. “Oh, and we need an ambulance, too. An elderly man has had an apoplectic stroke.”
She heard the rustle of papers on the other end.
“Just a moment,” Church said. “You said the Algonquin Hotel, did you not?”
“Yes, we’re—”
“Under quarantine. That changes things. A squad car is out of the question.”
“What?” she said, dismayed. “Why?”
Woollcott leaned close, trying to hear from the outside of her headphones. “What? What is it?”
Dorothy swatted him away. She focused on getting answers from Church. “You mean your officers can’t break the quarantine?”
“Not without permission from the Health Department.”
“Not even in a life-or-death situation? Because that’s what we have here, Captain. Life or death.”
“The earliest we could expect to obtain permission from the Health Department is in the morning. And that is an optimistic estimation.”
“Bibi’s dead body is lying in Douglas Fairbanks’ bed, and his wife,
Mary Pickford, is none too happy about it. Wouldn’t you call that a health violation? Don’t you think the health commissioner would make an exception?”
Church’s voice was sharp. “The dead body is in Fairbanks’ bed? I thought you said Bibi died in a bathtub?”
“Uh, what I meant is that the man with the stroke is in the bed,” she said without further elaboration. “So what about the ambulance? That could certainly break the quarantine, right? The ambulance boys could take away Bibi’s body while they’re here to see Dr. Hurst.”
“To be perfectly frank, I doubt it. Not at this hour. The wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly in this city—and that much slower in the early hours of New Year’s Day during a snowstorm.”
She was becoming impatient. “How about not being perfectly frank? How about you try being imperfectly frank? Would that change your answer?”
“Fear not!” Woollcott shouted into the microphone. “I’m on the case, oh, Captain, my captain! Your boys in blue may take their sweet time, because I’ll have this murder mystery wrapped up tout de suite.”
Church spoke sternly. “Tell him he is not to interfere with a police investigation.”
Dorothy turned to Woollcott. “The captain says if you get in the way, he’ll arrest you tout de suite.”
Woollcott grinned. “Ha! I’ll clear the way, not get in the way.”
Church’s voice was threatening. “Please repeat that he is not to interfere with this investigation.”
Dorothy said to Woollcott, “The captain says he’ll lock you in the Tombs and throw away the key.”
“Poppycock!” Woollcott sneered. “He’ll award me the key to the city. Mark my words.”
She ignored Woollcott and spoke again to Church. “If you can’t send over a squad car or an ambulance, how about a delivery boy with some Chinese food? We’re starving here.”
“Please hold the line, Mrs. Parker. Let me see what can be done.”
“About the Chinese food?”
Church sighed wearily again. “About the dead body. And the elderly man with the stroke.”
The line clicked and went silent, and she was relieved to see that the light remained off, which meant the line was still connected.
Suddenly Woollcott was like a fly buzzing in her face. “Did he hang up on you? He hung up on you! Some public servant! He should be tarred and feathered.”
She clucked her tongue at him. “He’s just on another line, you ninny. And, as a matter of fact, he is quite a public servant. He’s on the job in the middle of the night while everybody else is out whooping it up.”
Well, almost everybody, she thought glumly to herself. Whoop-de-do . . .
“Ha! He’s on the job, is he?” Woollcott shook his melon-like head. “Well, I’m the only one in this hotel on the job! And, to that end, I shan’t stand around here blowing hot air—”
“Too late.”
“I’ll resume my investigation posthaste!” He turned to leave.
Church came back on the line. “Mrs. Parker?”
“Yes, I’m still here, Captain.”
Hearing this, Woollcott paused in the doorway. He cocked his ear toward her.
Church continued, “I was just on the other line with Dr. Norris at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Do you remember meeting him?”
“Do I ever. We once went on a date. Let’s see . . . cold heart, warm hands—hands he wouldn’t keep to himself,” she said, but with only slight irritation. “Now, speaking of cold hearts, what do we do with Bibi?”
Church was matter-of-fact. “Dr. Norris said it is important to keep the body at a low temperature to preserve it. Since you are in a hotel, there is certainly an ample supply of ice there. Surround the body with the ice.”
“Ice?” Ice in Fairbanks’ bed? Oh well, Mary was going to toss it out anyhow.
Church replied, “Dr. Norris said that because the body is already in a bathtub, it will be a simple matter to easily add a large quantity of ice. That should be sufficient until we can obtain permission from the Department of Health to enter the premises.”
“How long will it take to get permission?”
“Perhaps by morning, as I said before. Or perhaps later in the day. The city government is officially closed on New Year’s Day, so it could even be the day after.”
“Of course we wouldn’t want to disturb anyone’s day off, would we?” Dorothy said sarcastically. Then again, she thought, Bibi’s not going anywhere. “But what about the elderly man with apoplexy? Will you send an ambulance for him?”
“No,” Church said simply. “Dr. Norris said to keep him stable. Very little else can be done for him right now, no matter whether he is in a hospital bed or in a movie star’s bed.”
“Eh, between you and me, very little could be done for him even before the stroke. I guess doing nothing will have to do for now.”
Church hastily ended the conversation. “Thank you for reporting this matter, Mrs. Parker. I will call the hotel if I have any news. I trust you will do the same for me.”
“I’ll shout it from the rooftops.”
The line went dead, and the tiny red light went on. Dorothy unplugged the cord, as Mavis had told her to do. The light went off.
“Well?” Woollcott stood at the door impatiently.
“He told me to keep Bibi’s body cold. To surround her in a bed of ice.”
“But what about me?” Woollcott asked petulantly. “What did he want me to do?”
“Go jump in a lake.”
Chapter 12
“Put her on ice?” Frank Case asked, incredulous. Dorothy and Case stood in the parlor in Fairbanks’ penthouse.
“That’s what the police captain said. It’ll preserve her until the Health Department says the police are allowed into the hotel.”
“Forget it,” Fairbanks called from the bedroom doorway. “There’s no ice in the whole hotel. We ran out even before the party was over.”
“Oh dear. Perhaps you’re right,” Case said. “Chef Jacques told me we were running low earlier in the evening . . . and with all the drinking that’s been going on tonight . . .”
“Maybe we can borrow a block from someone’s icebox?” Benchley asked. He was in the bedroom helping Doyle and Jordan lift Dr. Hurst into a rickety old wooden wheelchair.
Case eyed the wheelchair. “I have a better idea.”
* * *
“This is a terrible idea,” Benchley said sourly.
What had gotten into him? Dorothy decided to take an approach she rarely took with Benchley. The direct approach. “What has gotten into you? You were so lovely earlier. What has made you so cross now?”
“Well, Mrs. Parker”—his voice was artificially merry—“we’ve been dragooned into pushing a dead, naked woman in a wheelchair to take her to the walk-in freezer in the hotel’s spooky cellar in the middle of the night. What could I possibly find objectionable about that?”
With a wave of his hand, he took in the grim little service elevator and Bibi’s dead body in the wobbly wooden wheelchair in front of them.
Dorothy sighed to herself. This errand was her fault. When the idea had popped into Frank Case’s mind, he turned to Dorothy and asked her to do it. His reasoning was simple. It was too sensitive a task to request an employee to handle, and furthermore Dorothy owed at least two months’ rent, a repeated habit to which Case always turned a blind eye. And when he subtly reminded her about it, she couldn’t help but agree to his plan.
But was that what Benchley was really angry about? Was he indeed jealous, as she had wondered earlier? Did he treasure her so much that it would throw him into such an unusual fit? That actually made her feel good—that he would be so emotional about her, so jealous for her time and attention.
Then she thought of somet
hing else. Perhaps it had nothing to do with her at all. Benchley had a wife and children at home in the suburbs. Maybe he wanted to be home with them, not trapped in this hotel with her? And if so, was he now taking out his anger on her?
She had begged him to be sure to come to the party, and look what she had gotten him into. After feeling so cherished just a moment before, she now felt low, lower than low. Nearly worthless.
She looked at the woman’s body covered in a bedsheet. Well, at least she wasn’t dead like Bibi. She could be thankful for that.
But realizing this didn’t make her feel any better. It actually made her feel worse. Is that what my life has come to? To be relieved simply for not being a trampy dead starlet who’s about to be shoved into a hotel freezer? Is that the best I can hope for?
The elevator stopped at the subbasement level. She reached over the body and opened the elevator door. “Come on. Let’s just put this gal on ice and be done with it.”
Compared to the hotel above, the subbasement was like another world. Somewhere up there right now, Woollcott was probably pestering Lydia for answers. Down here it was airless and dark, lit by bare lightbulbs spaced far apart, with gaps of darkness in between. The floor was poorly patched concrete, dingy and dusty, causing the wheelchair to veer off unexpectedly. Wires and pipes ran overhead, creaking and clanging with steam. Narrow, dark corridors twisted off into even darker tunnels leading to who knew where.
Neither Dorothy nor Benchley had ever been in the subbasement before. Frank Case had given them directions, so they were unlikely to get lost—at least she hoped not. At the end of this corridor, they were to turn left. They did so, and as predicted, there was the thick metal door to the freezer room. The heavy door was dull metal, battered and scratched, but solid with no window.
Benchley parked the wheelchair, and Bibi’s body rocked to a stop. He moved forward and grabbed the long handle to unlatch the door. It pulled open with a shrill metallic shriek.
“Ouch,” Benchley said, wincing. “That was noisy enough to wake the dead.”
They both turned around to look at the body in the sheet. It did not move.
