[Dorothy Parker 05] - A Moveable Feast of Murder

by Agata Stanford

  “There!” said my friend, releasing the flap of the lock. And with a little assistance from Richard they parted the two sides of the steamer trunk.

  “What fresh hell!” I hissed when I saw the contents of the trunk. Nothing but old rags cushioning several very large rocks. “What kind of shit is this?” I yelled.

  “Manhattan schist, I believe,” corrected Mr. Benchley. “Manhattan’s full of it. Let’s see if there are any samples of upstate garnet in the valises—far more valuable.”

  Within a minute he had sprung open the cases to reveal more of New York City’s bedrock.

  “It appears our truant passenger was taking a little bit of home with him to France.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything illegal about that,” I replied. “Remember, Count Dracula carried the soil from his grave in Transylvania in a trunk when he fled the country.”

  “I’ve told you time and time again not to read those kinds of books,” said my friend. “Or if you must, at least draw the shades.”

  “Well,” said Soledad, “this is most peculiar.”

  “It’s weird, is what it is,” I said. “I thought I’d seen everything, but this displaces Eva Tanguay from the top of my list.”

  “Not only do we have a phantom traveler,” continued Soledad, “but his luggage appears to be a decoy as well. Very interesting . . . .”

  “Perhaps there never was a fellow by the name of Charles Latham,” I said. “There’s nothing in these pieces of luggage connected with anyone.”

  “But if he does exist, well, where is he?” said Soledad.

  “I think you might ask: What’s happened to him?” said Mr. Benchley.

  “Oh, Bob,” said Soledad. “There’s another trunk here. Your room number. I thought you said there was just the one steamer trunk.”

  “Perhaps I was mistaken. No, it’s not mine. I’m travelling light.”

  I suppressed a laugh. He was toting to Paris a steamer trunk, two valises, and more sporting equipment than seen at the Summer Olympic Games in ’twenty-four.

  The men set about pulling the trunk out from its nest, and again the Swiss Army knife appeared to do the trick on the lock.

  “More schist, I’ll bet,” I said as they lifted the lid.

  “No,” said Richard Hartley, quickly dropping the lid back down. But before he did so there escaped a most foul odor. “Mystery solved, I should say. We now know what happened to the mysterious Mr. Latham.”

  “Oh, look,” said Mr. Benchley, pulling out a case wedged between two trunks. “At last—I’ve found my typewriter!”

  Authoress Soledad Soleil

  Dr. Richard Hartley

  Chapter Eight

  I woke up around noon the next day, my ship’s bed rocking to violent waves. The storm abated in the late afternoon, and Woodrow got his walk around the deck while my hair curled from the damp. Mr. Benchley and I played cards after we had dinner in my room. We weren’t in a very festive mood after the past two days of consecutive deaths. Richard had stopped in for a drink before we called it a night.

  At dawn on the fifth day of our crossing, the S.S. Roosevelt sailed into Cork harbor and docked at Cobh, a picturesque little village once known as Queenstown.

  So this is the land from which had arrived the huddled masses, the wretched refuse, the homeless, tempest-tossed multitudes that stormed my city, my country, back before the new century. From this teeming Irish shore sprang the likes of Mary and Siobhan and Bridie and Colleen, young Irish lasses that I used to joke about my parents tearing from off the ships as they docked, “still bleeding,” to come to work as housemaids. I could sympathize with these girls. My German-Jewish father’s parents washed up in New York harbor in much the same condition from Prussia, after a thwarted revolution in 1848, from “the land of mud and flame,” as I always called it. And there was our Mary, Siobhan, Bridie, and Colleen represented in the statue at the end of the pier, of Annie Moore standing with her little brothers, the first people to pass through the Ellis Island Immigration Center in 1892. And sadly, Cobh was the last port-of-call before the Titanic sailed off on its tragic maiden voyage into the Atlantic. Many poor Irish emigrants, booked in steerage, died that night.

  It was damp and cold when I went out on deck with Woodrow; today the heavy fog that swept across the seaside village made me want to stay aboard our ship, even though my fellow passengers, Mr. Benchley, Richard, and Soledad, suggested we venture ashore. As reluctant as I was—I would have preferred staying cozily in my room—their argument had a point: We could have a pint at the little pub just a few steps off the pier, and Woodrow could benefit from a romp around the green and a sniff of the strange new land and generally engage in a little canine activity. I donned my wool coat and stuck a cloche on my head before venturing ashore.

  Cargo was being unloaded, along with passengers whose journey was at an end, this being their destination port. A contingency of local police boarded the ship, and I assumed their appearance had everything to do with our discovery of a decidedly dead gentleman in the cargo hold, as well as the death of Saul Gold.

  The ship would sail again at dusk, so we had plenty of time to see the sights, have lunch, and enjoy the really wonderful beers and ales Ireland had to offer. Hemingway and Mathew met us on the way down the gangplank.

  We lunched in the rustic pub, all dark wood and whitewashed, and drank our fill—at least I did. One can imbibe only so much beer, unless your name is Hemingway. Then we all had shots of real Irish whiskey, a smooth treat after the rotgut found in most New York speakeasies.

  By mid-afternoon the fog had lifted, if not the winter dampness. The spire of the Neo-Gothic St. Colman’s Cathedral that towered over the village was now clearly visible and grandly impressive on its rise of land. We walked around its gargoyle edifice and toured the arched interior. And later, a walk through Old Church Cemetery, where many of the dead lie buried since the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat in ’fifteen. More than a hundred souls who washed ashore after the tragedy are buried here: men, women, and so many children. Coffins were laid side by side and were buried with great ceremony. Later, others from the disaster were buried here in individual graves as they were found after the initial onrush. Hem wanted to come here; I did not. I’d had enough of death. But there was a sort of beauty in the place, in its starkness and unbroken silence. The wispy-gray-clouded sky provided a somber backdrop to the heavy, piled-up stonework at the gravesite, like a monochromatic study in charcoal. It was a fitting tribute to their memory.

  Where would Saul Gold be laid to rest?

  At dusk we sailed on toward Cherbourg. I left Woodrow snoring in my room to join the others at dinner. Upon my arrival, I found that our captain was not present at table, which delayed the questions I intended to pose and the answers he might give to update us about what the police were doing about the murders. We all wanted to know the particulars: Were they able to identify with certainty the dead man in the trunk? Was he indeed Charles Latham? It seemed probable that the fruit basket was meant for the man we found in the trunk, if he was Latham, and if so, had he died of cyanide poisoning? Or had he not been the intended victim, but an innocent bystander?

  Richard Hartley suspected some sort of violent trauma, as he had seen a good deal of blood on the corpse before closing the lid on it. We had summoned the captain once again, without remaining for any further examination after we told him we had found the corpse while searching for Mr. Benchley’s typewriter among the luggage. Of course, we didn’t think it necessary to tell him we had broken into the other luggage taken from the room where Mr. Benchley was residing only to discover a load of schist. No one bothered to ask how we got into the locked trunk to find the body in the first place, so we didn’t offer any explanation about that, either. Captain Fried had assured us that we would not be questioned by the authorities in Ireland, although he could not promise as much upon our arrival in France.

  So far, there was the incident of Mr. Benchley’s high
-flying act on the deck of the ship, resulting in a brisk dunk into the North Atlantic—an accident; the “spiked” orange juice that spilled and burned a pattern through table linen resembling the Soviet Union—an accident; the poisoning death of a gentle man—an accident; and the discovery of a body in a trunk—which was no accident. Upon a quick inspection of the corpse by the ship’s physician, Captain Fried had told us that no one could say for sure who the man was because there was no identification on his body; even the labels had been cut from his suit. The trunks and valises were bare of any identifying items, although we knew the rock specimens had originated in Manhattan.

  Somebody had covered his tracks pretty well, and I figured there had to have been more than just one “somebody involved” to have carried off this plan.

  And with the discovery of the corpse, I had come to the conclusion that everything that had happened to Mr. Benchley was definitely no accident.

  But it made no sense. Robert Benchley had no enemies. He was considered the sweetest man on Broadway, known as S.O.B. (Sweet Old Bob). Even as drama critic for Life magazine, he had never been banned by producers from reviewing their shows. (The Schubert Brothers had tried and failed on numerous occasions to block our friend, Alexander Woollcott, from entering their many theatres after he’d panned too many of their shows.) And no actor ever suffered from a Robert Benchley review the way they suffered from my stinging and often career-ending critiques. Even when he didn’t like a play, he never decimated it, and when he loathed a show he used humor, and never skewered the actors (the way I sometimes do). This led me to believe it had to be a case of mistaken identity. Some misinformed individual thought that my friend was really Latham, who had booked passage in that stateroom, the intended victim of a planned assassination!

  It appeared to me, as I rested on the bed in my cabin after our sightseeing day through the Irish port and before our last dinner aboard the S.S. Roosevelt, that in order for the deliberate attempts on his life to have occurred aboard ship, the murderer had to be sailing with us. I could think of no one we had as yet encountered who might be the culprit. I thought about the people we had encountered: Soledad Soleil, a famous mystery authoress preoccupied with finding new methods for murdering her characters, and Dr. Richard Hartley, physician and medical researcher. What did I really know about either of them, except what they themselves had told me? They claim to have been great friends from childhood. Perhaps they were in cahoots with each other. That idea seemed rather feeble. Unless, of course, the Soledad that I have come to know is not the real Soledad Soleil, but rather a criminal posing as the writer. And until we can wire the States from Cherbourg, I cannot confirm whether it has been the real Richard Hartley making love to me under the stars . . . .

  Mathew Hettinger—we had only his word that he was the son of a wealthy Philadelphian, wounded at Fossalta di Piave and nursed back to health at the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan—same as Hemingway. What a convenient coincidence. Was he really a journalist, sent to Paris as a foreign correspondent for the Detroit Register? I made a mental note to send a wireless to confirm.

  Then there was Ronnie, the British terror, formally known as the Marquis Ronald Everett Hampton-Crispin-Jones, also bearing the title of the Duke of whatever, on his French mother’s side, God help us! He could barely keep on his feet for what he imbibes, let alone string up Mr. Benchley—unless the drunk act was just a show. And his cousin’s wife, soon to be his blushing bride, the Lady Daphne Twinton? There’s a piece of work, I thought. Man-eater. But I doubted her modus operandi included anything more lethal than teasing a man to death.

  I eliminated our Captain Fried and his first mate from suspicion, of course, and Major Alfred Arbuthnot, albeit he is a cardsharp. With his leg brace an obvious physical restriction, he’d be an ineffectual assassin; the clicking would forewarn any intended victim he tried to sneak up on. Anyway, his primary interest appeared to be the welfare of his companion, the expatriated Russian Duchess, who suffered from a sort of shell-shocked paranoia with the strange belief that she might still be considered a threat to the Revolution and a target worth exterminating after all these years. She could barely conduct herself from her stateroom to the dining room, a good fifty-foot sprint, let alone stuff a man into a trunk.

  Were there any other suspicious characters lurking around who appeared inconsequential? There was the redheaded man, Claude Dubois, in the cabin next to Mr. Benchley’s. He peeked out from the door of his room on several occasions when I had gone to see my friend, with nary a smile, only a sort of wary inquisitiveness, and he was on deck when Mr. Benchley took his flying leap . . . hmmm, I’d have to think more about that.

  I tried to picture Mr. Benchley’s steward, Rodney. Was he the killer type?

  Mr. Benchley appeared among the passengers coming into the dining room with Hem and Mathew at his side. They took seats around the captain’s table, before we were joined by Soledad and Richard. Soon the Duchess appeared with the Major, the crowd parting to accommodate their peculiar stride. The men stood as she was seated. She looked at the faces around the table. I could almost hear what she was thinking, the poor thing, as she appraised our party: Who here at this table might be trying to kill me?

  I looked around the dining room with a similar kind of scrutiny, at the many strangers now eating and drinking on this last leg of our journey. Who among them were conspirators, murderers? The newlyweds? The maiden aunt escorting her adolescent niece on the Grand Tour? The many businessmen anxious to cut that Big Deal with their foreign affiliates? Perhaps that older couple, celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with a trip to the city where they had first met? The vulgar Jimmy Durante lookalike? The Frenchmen returning home from the States? The soon-to-be-young-expatriates searching for greater artistic and moral freedom in Europe? Some of them were poseurs, pretending to be who they were not. Paranoia swept over me, and I began to see complicity in the faces of the waiter, the elderly woman laughing with her grandchildren, the professional tennis player travelling with his coach—and what about the ship’s physician? He, more than anyone, appeared above suspicion, but had access to dozens of poisons.

  As the waiter began pouring soda into our glasses, and Mr. Benchley improved his with a stream from his flask, a thought popped into my head and I froze.

  Just then, Ronnie arrived and took a seat, and when Mathew asked the whereabouts of Lady Twinton, we were told she had a headache and was dining in her stateroom. Mathew and Hem looked disappointed, and that disturbed me for a second, but more unsettling was an urgent question.

  I turned to Mr. Benchley and asked, “The booze, the scotch we bought? How many bottles have we gone through?”

  “Why? Afraid there won’t be any left for the boat train? We’ll be in France, my dear; we can get all the scotch and champagne your little heart desires!”

  “I don’t mean that,” I whispered a little too sharply, because my friend frowned. “Just tell me how many bottles are left from the seven you bought from the guy on board?”

  “I just drained the third bottle we opened into my flask last night, so there are, let’s see, seven minus—”

  “All right, you failed math, now let’s go!” I stood up, causing the men at the table to stand up as well, not an easy task for the Major. I grabbed Mr. Benchley’s arm and he haltingly left the table, making his excuse, “Be right back; left a pot on the stove.”

  “What’s all this fuss about our liquor supply? After all, if you hadn’t taped your room’s Do Not Disturb sign on the case—a warning to me, no doubt, as if I’d drink your whiskey!—why, if you ask me, it was daring a thief to steal it!”

  “I’m not talking about my stolen stash.”

  “Hey! What’s this all about? You look a little crazed—in fact, you look a lot crazed, if you really want to know.”

  “I don’t really want to know!” I tossed back at him.

  We entered his room and I went straight to the closet where he’d hidden his onboard p
urchases. Next to the three remaining bottles stood a bottle of Irish whiskey bought ashore in Cobh, one of two; the other was standing on his desk, already half empty since everyone came back to his room for a taste upon our return to the ship. I inspected the labels securing the caps and corks. I suspected that one of the bottles had been tampered with because the paper stamp over the neck looked torn, and there was a yellowish stain where the broken edges might have been glued.

  “This has been opened,” I said.

  Now, the fact is that most disreputable bootleggers (and most bootleggers are disreputable) have been slapping counterfeit labels onto bottles of rotgut hooch since Prohibition began. And they’ve gotten pretty good at duplicating the real thing, on the packaging, that is. My problem now was that these bottles had been bought from one of the few honest bootleggers—I know, that sounds oxymoronic—and the bottles we had opened so far contained excellent Dewar’s scotch, and a smooth Napoleon cognac.

  Mr. Benchley took the bottle I held out to him and inspected it. “This hasn’t been touched, dear. What’s going on that you’re so upset?”

  “Poison.”

  “You’re afraid the Dewar’s is spiked with rat poison?”

  “You’re right,” I said, looking over the bottle once again. The yellowish stain was simply the smear of ink. “It’s just that I’m beginning to see murderers everywhere I turn. And all the things that were happening to you—well, I couldn’t stand it if you were murdered to death.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, my dear girl, and acquit you of just now murdering the English language!”

  I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. I vacillated between the two.

  “There, there, now, little Dorothy,” said my friend, holding me to him and patting my head while I had a little cry and drool on his nice dinner suit. The handkerchief appeared at my cheek, and I took it, blew my nose, and then attempted to blot the dark, wet circle my tears had left on his satin lapel.