A Friendly Game of Murder

by J. J. Murphy

  He turned away with a huff and leveled his irate gaze at Lydia Trumbull. “You!”

  She froze. Woollcott continued, “You have a veritable storeroom of sleeping potions and narcotics, or so I have heard. And, as a former army nurse, you know how to use them. Indeed, you poisoned Bibi with a lethal dose of chloroform, which you stole from Dr. Hurst, did you not?”

  Lydia’s eyes had widened to the size of half-dollars. Then her pupils rolled upward, and her eyelids fluttered. She swayed sideways, and, to no one’s surprise, she fainted.

  “Very well, let’s move on,” Woollcott said matter-of-factly. “Benedict Jordan!”

  Jordan folded his muscled arms over his broad chest and returned Woollcott’s stare.

  Woollcott, who stood safely across the room, was unperturbed. “You stole the locket from Mary Pickford’s bureau with the aim of returning it to your employer, Dr. Hurst.”

  “It was his,” Jordan said gruffly.

  “Oh, was it?” Woollcott said archly. “Or was it stolen from a museum in England?”

  By this point, Dorothy’s curiosity had gotten the better of her. She picked up Woody and weaved her way through the crowd toward Doug Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. They smiled when they saw her approaching with the little dog.

  “Happy New Year’s Day, Dottie,” Fairbanks said warmly. “Say, you don’t have anything to do with this lousy third degree from Woollcott, do you?”

  “Certainly not,” she lied. “Now tell me what you know about dry ice.”

  “Dry ice?” Mary asked. “Why do you want to know about that?”

  She didn’t answer directly. “You theater folk use it for special effects?”

  Fairbanks nodded. “We use it in the movies, too. Makes wonderful fog.”

  “Can it be harmful?”

  “Yes, if you touch it in its frozen state,” he said. “Its temperature is something like one hundred degrees below zero. It’d freeze your fingers right off your hand.”

  Again she thought of the shard of ice in the elevator.

  On the other side of the room, Woollcott was now loudly accusing Dr. Hurst in absentia. Jordan and Doyle—God bless them—were standing in to defend Dr. Hurst’s innocence in Bibi’s murder. Dorothy shook her head ruefully. Why did she get Woollcott involved? He only made things more difficult.

  She turned back to Fairbanks. “Dry ice melts directly into a gas, right? What do they use the gas for?”

  Fairbanks shrugged. “Other than stage effects, nothing that I know of. It’s pure carbon dioxide. You can’t use that for much.”

  She frowned. Perhaps her curiosity had led her down a blind alley after all.

  Woollcott was now widely accusing many of the partygoers of egging on Bibi. He singled out some of the men who had poured the champagne into the tub. Oh dear. She had to stop him soon and get the Murder game underway—otherwise there would soon be another murder on her hands: Woollcott’s.

  “Oh, wait,” Mary said to her husband. “Tell Dottie that story about the stagehand!”

  “Stagehand?” she asked.

  Fairbanks nodded, remembering. “Oh yes, that’s right. This is a funny story—well, not that funny, I guess. The young man nearly died. But in the end we all had a good laugh about it.” He smiled.

  “What happened?”

  “Well, this was a few years ago, before I had really hit it big. It was a small theater, a far cry from Broadway. One of the stagehands got stuck in an old basement broom closet or something with a carton full of dry ice. Of course the stage manager went looking for him. Everyone thought the fellow was out playing hooky, because he was a rambunctious young lad, and it was a lovely, warm day.”

  “But of course he wasn’t,” Mary said.

  “No, he wasn’t,” Fairbanks agreed. “He nearly asphyxiated in that broom closet. When the stage manager finally found him, his first thought was that the stagehand was falling-over drunk. Then he got a good look at the boy. His lips were blue, and so was the skin under his fingernails. He was nearly dead from lack of oxygen.”

  “Lack of oxygen?” Dorothy asked.

  He nodded. “On such a warm day and in such a small space, the dry ice had quickly turned to carbon dioxide. The stagehand was overwhelmed in less than an hour. Fortunately that kind of thing doesn’t happen every day, or stagehands would be dying off like . . .”

  Then a funny look came into his eyes. At the very same time, a thought popped into Dorothy’s head.

  “Dying off . . . like spring flowers?” she asked. “Dying off . . . like Bibi?”

  “You read my mind!” he said excitedly.

  She picked up Woody from the floor. “We’ll be right back,” she said to Mary. Then she grabbed Fairbanks’ hand. “Come with me.”

  She pulled him through the crowd. But there were so many people packed so tightly together that she progressed very slowly. Fairbanks halted her.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “The pantry. It’s through the kitchen.”

  “I’ll lead the way.” He stepped in front of her and zipped through the crowd like a speedboat cutting through calm waters. She quickly followed in his wake. Before they reached the kitchen, she had just enough time to consider how easy life must be if you’re a wildly popular masculine movie star—as compared to a petite, little-known female poet.

  But she pushed these thoughts aside as they emerged from the crowded dining room to the less congested but more frenetic kitchen.

  Suddenly Jacques the chef was yelling, pointing a large carving knife at her. “You stop bringing that filthy dog into my kitchen, or else!”

  As Fairbanks pulled her in the direction of the pantry, she called over her shoulder to the chef. “Or else what? You’ll turn him into tonight’s special?”

  Jacques’ face went beet red. “Don’t tempt me!”

  Looking behind her, she saw that Doyle and Benchley were now coming through the swinging doors.

  “What is this, Grand Central Station?” the chef yelled. “Stay out of my kitchen!”

  Now she and Fairbanks were in the service corridor and standing in front of the pantry door.

  “In here?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Afraid so.” She opened the door, and there was Bibi just as they had left her.

  “She almost looks alive,” Fairbanks said with a tinge of sorrow in his usually cheery voice.

  Woody jumped out of Dorothy’s arms and waddled up to the body. He took a quick sniff of Bibi’s leg, then moved on to the empty seafood carton again.

  “Something afoot?” Doyle asked as he and Benchley joined them.

  “Do you have a hankie?” she asked him. Doyle quickly produced an ivory-colored silk handkerchief. She took it from him and leaned toward the body. “Remember we noticed her thick lipstick? Watch this.”

  She rubbed the lipstick away from Bibi’s mouth—it required quite a few wipes—and stood back so they could see.

  “By Jove,” Doyle said. “Her lips are blue!”

  “She was suffocated,” Dorothy explained.

  “Suffocated? But how? Not strangled, surely! I saw no handprints or ligature marks on her neck.”

  “Carbon dioxide,” she said. “Someone filled the bathroom with carbon dioxide while Bibi was knocked out from the chloroform. So she asphyxiated. She ran out of oxygen and died. That’s why the bathroom was closed and locked up. That’s why the towel was placed at the bottom of the bathroom door, to keep the gas from escaping. If we chipped the polish off her fingernails, I bet they’d be blue, too.”

  “Well done, Mrs. Parker,” Benchley said admiringly. She smiled in return.

  Doyle looked skeptical. “How could anyone fill a hotel bathroom with carbon dioxide? That’s rather far-fetched.”

  “No
t if it’s in the form of dry ice,” Fairbanks said. “It’d be easy as dropping a bucket of it into the tub. Half an hour or so later, and Bibi is dead.”

  As the cold-blooded horror of the murder dawned on him, Doyle understood. “Asphyxiate her with dry ice while she lay there naked and unconscious? But who could have done such a vile, monstrous thing?”

  Dorothy stared at Bibi’s porcelain countenance as if the answer could be found there. She studied her delicate, motionless features—her sensuous mouth, her high cheekbones, her slender pixie nose—

  Suddenly Dorothy realized who could have done such a vile, monstrous thing. “The answer’s as plain as the nose on her face!”

  Chapter 39

  “You know who did this?” Doyle asked heatedly. “Show me the brute, and I’ll tear him limb from limb.”

  Dorothy wondered, Now where did I see him last? She couldn’t be sure. Finally she said, “I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to organize a manhunt.”

  “Gladly!” Doyle said. Even Fairbanks seemed thrilled at hunting down the murderer. Again she wondered what it would be like to be one of these virile men. What hot-blooded, callous thoughts rushed through their single-minded brains? She felt a mix of envy and repulsion.

  But Benchley didn’t seem quite so full of bloodlust. Actually, he seemed rather deep in thought. “What if,” he said slowly, “instead of a manhunt, we first try a dog hunt?”

  “Benchley’s right!” Fairbanks said. “We’ll hunt this murderer down like a dog.”

  “No, no,” Benchley said, amused. “That’s not what I meant. I mean we use the dog to do the hunting.” And he gazed down at the furry little figure of Woody, who had again hopped into the large, empty seafood carton and was busy sniffing about.

  “That’s it!” Dorothy cried. “Come with me.”

  She snatched up the dog and then grabbed the carton. She led the group out of the pantry and into the corridor. Then, to their surprise, she put the dog down again and shoved the carton to his nose. “Here, Woody, here.” Then she tossed the carton back into the pantry and shut the door. “Now, go! Find!”

  But the dog just stood there, looking up at her expectantly with his big, wet eyes.

  “Go, Woody. Find the smell!” she urged.

  The dog put his nose to the concrete floor and sniffed.

  “Good boy. That’s it!”

  He sniffed his way back to the pantry door, then looked up at her and barked.

  The men groaned.

  “No, my little man. Find where it came from!” she said desperately to the dog. Then she turned to Doyle. “I thought Kingsley said this would work.”

  Doyle shrugged his shoulders.

  When she looked back down again, the dog had trotted away. He was now sniffing along the corridor and moving away from the kitchen.

  “Good boy!” she cheered.

  “Follow that dog!” Benchley said. And they did.

  Woody scampered toward the street entrance of the service corridor. But before he reached the heavy door to the street (which was now locked and barred), he made a quick right turn toward the door to the lobby. He was moving faster now. But then he had to stop at the leather-clad swinging door and wait to be let through.

  Dorothy pushed open the door. Woody hurried into the lobby. They found themselves between the telephone operator’s office on the left and the front desk on their right. The lobby was deserted, but they could hear Woollcott’s nasal voice and the murmur of the crowd in the dining room at the upper end of the lobby.

  The dog zipped forward, then darted to the right toward the front foyer. He was momentarily out of sight, and they heard him give a quick bark. Then they heard a grunt, a thump and a plaintive yelp. Woody came sliding toward them across the tile floor, as though he had been given a hard kick.

  Dorothy was the first to round the corner and see the tall man at the front entrance. He wore a waiter’s clothes. He faced away from her and was shoving furiously and ineffectually at the locked doors. His clawlike hands ripped at the paper quarantine notice. He seemed to Dorothy to be both dangerously enraged and yet wretchedly pitiable.

  Then he saw her out of the corner of his eye and turned his desperate gaze at her.

  “You,” he sneered at her. “You and your pampered, precious friends—!”

  Benchley, Doyle and Fairbanks were behind her now.

  “You don’t even know me,” she said. “But I know you.”

  She stared into his bright eyes and studied his thin face, his high cheekbones and his narrow, pointed nose.

  “He’s not a waiter,” Benchley said. “He doesn’t even work here.”

  “Why, that’s the ice deliveryman!” Fairbanks said, perplexed. “The one who spilled that tub of ice at my party!”

  “Oh, but he’s much more than that. Aren’t you?” she said to the man. “In fact, you’re Bibi’s brother.”

  Her statement took the men momentarily by surprise—it was just enough of a moment for the man to make his move. He lunged forward and grabbed Woody by the scruff of the neck. Fairbanks, a natural athlete, rushed forward to tackle him. But the tall man flung the poor dog toward Fairbanks’ midsection.

  Fairbanks deftly caught the dog as though catching a football and tucked Woody tightly into the crook of his arm—but doing so slowed him down. At the same instant, Dorothy instinctively reached forward to grab the dog. She suddenly found herself entangled with Fairbanks, which prevented him from chasing after the man.

  Moving quickly, the man dodged around them and was now running full tilt toward the dining room.

  “After the blackguard!” Doyle yelled, leading the chase. Although he was a big and virile man for his age, he was no match for the younger man’s speed.

  The man reached the threshold to the dining room, shoved his way into the crowd and quickly disappeared from their sight.

  Fairbanks handed Woody over to Dorothy, then he sprinted forward and quickly caught up to Doyle. But the two of them stopped at the edge of the crowd and stood on tiptoes to see over everyone’s heads to determine where the man went.

  Fairbanks jumped straight up to get a better look. “I see him! He’s almost halfway to Woollcott already. Come on!”

  Fairbanks slipped into the crowd as though parting a curtain, and Doyle followed. But, like a curtain, the opening closed quickly. And Dorothy and Benchley found themselves against a seemingly impenetrable wall of people.

  “We’ll never get through this mob in time,” Benchley said.

  “We don’t have to,” Dorothy said. “We can go around.”

  She turned and hurried back through the lobby. Benchley followed. They rounded the front desk and pushed through the leather-clad door to the service corridor. They hurried past the pantry and back into the kitchen.

  “I thought I told you not to bring that dog—!” the chef wailed.

  She ignored him as they rushed through the busy kitchen.

  They burst into the dining room and nearly bumped into Woollcott. He was facing the crowd and holding the upturned top hat over his head. He was in the middle of making some kind of announcement.

  “And I have here the most valuable postage stamp in all the world—the invert tête-bêche, the ‘Bearded Lady’—in this very hat!” he said in his most theatrical voice.

  Dorothy tugged at his tuxedo. She hissed at him, “Never mind that game. It’s too late. We’ve already found the killer.”

  Woollcott turned to her with incomprehension inscribed on his face. “You . . . what? But our plan—”

  All of a sudden a tall figure leaped from the crowd toward Woollcott. Dorothy automatically clutched Woody closer to her and backed away, bumping against Benchley.

  But the attacker wasn’t the tall man in the waiter’s outfit as she might have gu
essed. It was Jordan.

  “Give it to me!” he yelled at Woollcott, and grasped for the top hat. But Woollcott’s chubby arms clamped the hat to his belly as tightly as a vise.

  Then, to Dorothy’s surprise, the tall man in the waiter’s uniform did jump into their midst. He shoved Woollcott and Jordan out of his way and raced toward the kitchen. Woollcott and Jordan fell down in a heap at Dorothy’s feet. But before the man could get entirely past her and through the doors, Woody lunged forward and snapped. The man yowled in pain but didn’t slow down. He shouldered his way through the swinging doors and into the kitchen.

  Jordan was now on his feet, with the top hat in his hands and a victorious smile on his thin lips. He pushed through the crowd to get away. Woollcott lay on his back on the floor, twisting like a tortoise unable to get to its feet.

  As soon as Jordan was safely out of their reach, he turned back around. He held aloft the hat, which was now crumpled into a tight ball in his hand. “Ha, I have it! Finally I have it back!”

  But from behind Jordan, the taller of the two nuns appeared. “What do you have, mister?”

  Jordan was slightly taken aback but not enough to quell his feeling of victory. “The tête-bêche! The ‘Bearded Lady’! I have it!”

  The taller nun, now joined by the other nun, said, “You sure about that? ’Cause then what do we have here?” and held up the silver locket.

  Jordan’s look of triumph disappeared. He reached for the locket to snatch it away, but the nun was too quick for him and pulled it out of his reach.

  “Uh-uh,” the second nun chided. “You can look, but you better not touch!”

  Then, with a taunting look, the first nun popped the locket open for Jordan to see.

  “But it’s empty,” Jordan said, and the victorious smile returned to his face. “Didn’t you dimwits even look inside it first?”

  The second nun grabbed the locket out of the other one’s hands and looked inside. “Damn it! He’s right. It’s been empty all this time! Where the hell is that stamp?”