Silent Murders

by Mary Miley

  I had to ask. “Do they know yet what sort of poison it was?”

  Our eyes met over the words neither of us dared voice aloud. “Not yet,” he said finally. But we both knew what they would find.

  Bichloride of mercury. The words fairly danced in the air between us.

  A popular choice for suicides, bichloride of mercury was commonly prescribed by doctors treating syphilis. In such cases, it was taken in minuscule doses or by injection. I knew it was odorless and colorless and supposedly had a metallic taste, but that could easily have been masked by the flavor of strong coffee.

  I also knew as well as Douglas what would happen after the laboratory had determined mercury bichloride to be the poison. Headlines around the world would scream, and all thoughts would leap to Jack Pickford and his late wife, Olive Thomas, who had died in Paris under such suspicious circumstances after drinking bichloride of mercury. Then they would speed straight to Mary Pickford. She was entirely innocent and uninvolved, but that counted for nothing. Fatty Arbuckle had been innocent, too, and he’d been ruined, his movies banned by his own studio. I felt sick to my stomach.

  The secretary gave a discreet knock and cracked the door. “Excuse me, Mr. Fairbanks, but Mr. Schenck and Mr. Keaton are here.”

  “Mary…” said Douglas feebly. “Find Mary and let her know. She and Faye are … well … and tell her ‘by the clock.’”

  19

  The gang fight was in full swing when I reached the Little Annie Rooney alley. As I watched America’s Sweetheart leap on the back of a young tough and flail away with her fists, director Beaudine talked through the scene, a megaphone at his mouth so the actors could hear him over the grinding racket of the Mitchell cameras.

  “Move in closer, Spec. Add a little more life there! Throw something else. Okay, Joe, pull her off now. Get ready for the cops—look left on three. One, two, three. Good. Cut.” A man holding the tail slate recorded the scene number and the cameras stopped.

  I approached Beaudine for permission to interrupt. When he learned I brought a message from Mr. Fairbanks, he nodded me onto the set. Miss Pickford motioned me over to a crate in front of a slapdash fence in the tenement alley. The gang children flopped to the ground for a quick game of jacks. As I picked my way over broken plaster of paris bottles, felt bricks, and balsawood clubs, someone turned off the fan, and the laundry above our heads, which had been flapping like pennants in the wind, hung limp.

  She was dressed like a scarecrow in a pompom hat, with the usual whiteface makeup to prevent skin from looking too dark on film. I apologized for the interruption, told her what I knew about Paul Corrigan and Faye Gordon, and repeated Douglas’s private code, “by the clock.” I didn’t know what it meant, but it meant something significant, that was clear. She sat motionless for a long moment, her face like alabaster, but I could feel her grief at the loss of her friend. Too much the professional to react publicly, she thanked me for bringing the information, then signaled to Beaudine that she was ready to resume filming. I stepped out of the way and nearly collided with the picture’s collaborator.

  “I just heard,” David said grimly.

  “Bad news always travels like fire in the wind.”

  “You look like you could use a stiff drink.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Come over to the commissary with me before you go back to work; I’ll buy you some coffee—er, maybe something else.” And before I could protest that I didn’t have time, David had me by the elbow and was escorting me behind the tenement set through the back lots toward the studio commissary.

  “They’re going to be all over her by tomorrow,” he said, ordering two cherry crushes. “Tell me what you know.”

  I did. I was brief. Honestly, it wasn’t much.

  “Thanks for the drink,” I said. “No hard feelings about last night?”

  He shrugged. “Somehow a bruised ego seems pretty trivial when people you just ate dinner with are getting bumped off. Besides, we’re going to see each other now and then in this town. There’s no sense in nursing grudges, is there?”

  “None at all,” I said, a little irked at how fast he’d recovered from my rejection. “But I have to go now, really. I need to drive the new makeup assistant to her hotel and then get back to work.”

  We left the commissary together. “You going to Heilmann’s funeral tomorrow?” David asked.

  “I thought I would.”

  “You were a friend of his?”

  I listened for a note of jealousy in his question but couldn’t hear it. “Only an acquaintance. I just thought I might learn something by being there.”

  “Can I offer you a ride to the cemetery? I’m escorting Mary and Lottie for Doug. He can’t go.”

  “No, thanks, I’m going to walk over with one of the girls who lives with me. But what’s your interest in all this, anyway? You didn’t know Heilmann, did you?”

  “You’re kidding me, right? I got a hundred thousand clams sunk in Little Annie Rooney and you’re asking why I care about the Pickford reputation? If the fickle public spurns this picture, I’ll be joining the drugstore cowboys on the corner of Gower Gulch waiting for work.”

  He gave me a grin, and I couldn’t help but match it. I could picture him strutting about in sheepskin chaps and spurs, chewing tobacco with the other hopefuls who congregated every day at Sunset and Gower, hoping to be picked up for a bit part in a western.

  “You’d get work. You’ve got that cowboy look.”

  We worked late that night on the cantina scene, and when Frank finally dismissed the crew, I practically flew home. Would there be a telegram from Angie waiting for me?

  Much was against it. There were many Chicagoans—eight, ten, twelve trains a day went in each direction, depending on the day of the week and the season—and Angie could have met the wrong one. She could have missed the telegram at the Riordin and received it at the Majestic Theater too late. She could have met the right train but missed Droopy Mouth in the crowd. By the time I reached the house, anticipation was eating me alive.

  “Hi, Jessie,” called Lillian when I came through the front door. “Boy brought you a telegram. In the mail basket.”

  Taking a deep breath, I ripped open the yellow sheet.

  SAW DROOPY TAKE CAB SOUTH MARRIED WALTER JULY ANGIE

  Exactly what I needed to know! Finally, things were starting to make some sense. I counted the words and laughed out loud. Trust Angie to keep it under ten for the cheapest rate. And she’d managed to get Walter to marry her, had she? Good old Walter. I’d have to send them a present.

  In all the excitement, I almost forgot about my mother’s playbills. But there was the unstamped envelope I’d mailed from Esther’s, safe and sound in the bottom of the basket, returned to sender for lack of postage. I ran upstairs to my room where I could open it in private. I didn’t want the girls to see me cry.

  A minute later, I heard quick steps on the front porch. The screen door banged open and slammed shut, and Myrna came pounding up the stairs two at a time. I smiled as she burst into my room.

  “I got the part! I got the part!” she sang, throwing herself into my arms for a congratulatory hug. “I got the part!” Twirling on her toes, she chanted the magical words several more times before collapsing on my bed in peels of laughter.

  I laughed just to see her pleasure. “Catch your breath, now, and tell me about it.”

  With a grin as big as a rainbow, she sat up and folded her shapely legs beneath her. Not for the first time, I was struck by her artless sexuality. No question in my mind, Myrna had enough of “It” to be an actress. Maybe even a star.

  “The company is Western Compass Studios. It’s small but decent. It’s over in Culver City, and they’ve made a few pictures.”

  “Which ones?”

  “I forgot to ask. This one’s about Greek mythology, a story about Zeus. I’m one of his romantic interests named Io. There were a dozen girls testing Monday when I was there—and I don’t kn
ow how many others on other days—but I got the part on the spot. Not an extra, a real part, with sixty dollars a week and my name in the credits!”

  “In letters as big as the Hollywoodland sign, I hope! Seriously, sixty dollars? That’s terrific, Myrna. I’m thrilled for you. What did your mother think?”

  “She’s very, very happy for me.” Her grin faded. “Daddy wouldn’t have been … all entertainment was burlesque to him. He didn’t approve of California.”

  “Then how did your family come to move—”

  “When I was a child, Mother got pneumonia, and Montana winters are so cold that Daddy sent her south with me and my brother to recuperate. Mother hated the cold, and she loved Los Angeles. We had a darling house in Ocean Park, and we moved back and forth between Montana and California for a few years, always wintering here. Then, after my father died, we returned to California for good and moved to the little house on Delmas Terrace.”

  “Will you go back there now that you’re going to be working in Culver City?”

  She shook her head. “Not if I can help it. I’m a grown woman; I don’t want to be a burden on Mother. Besides, I haven’t been signed to a studio contract or anything like that. This is just one part in one film. It’ll be over in a few weeks. But Johnnie Salazar told me it could work into others if I’m good enough.” She paused and gave me a sideways glance, as if to gauge my reaction to her next question. “How about you? What made you leave vaudeville and come to Hollywood?”

  “Well, it’s kind of hard to explain. I was staying with my grandmother in San Francisco last fall, recovering from a broken leg. San Francisco is a big vaudeville town, you know, with lots of theaters, so getting a job with another act was just a matter of time. With a roof over my head and three squares a day, I could afford to wait for the right act to come along. But something in my head kept urging me to give up the stage and go to Hollywood.”

  “You mean you heard voices?”

  I shook my head. “Not real voices. Not even real words. It wasn’t like my mother talking to me or a vision. More like a thought that someone kept putting inside my head again and again. You know how it is when a piece of a song won’t leave you alone for days at a time?”

  “Sure.”

  “It was like that. I couldn’t get away from Hollywood. A friend of my grandmother’s would come to tea and she’d mention something about Hollywood. My grandmother’s cook would say something about Hollywood. I’d open a newspaper and my eye would fall on the word ‘Hollywood.’”

  “That sounds kind of spooky.”

  “Sometimes I’d wake up in the morning thinking about Hollywood because I’d been dreaming about Hollywood all night long. I finally started asking my vaudeville friends if they had any contacts in the motion picture business. Several of them did, and that’s how I heard about the job at Pickford-Fairbanks. I figured it was a sign that I was meant to go. Mary Pickford had been my inspiration for years. And once I’d made up my mind to go, the music stopped.”

  “Gosh. Are you glad you came?”

  “Very.”

  “Me, too. I was telling my mother about you and—oh, I almost forgot. Mother saw the newspapers. I told her you and I had gone to Bruno Heilmann’s party. She was horrified.”

  “Everyone’s horrified,” I said, showing her the afternoon paper I had picked up and giving her the latest about Paul Corrigan’s and Faye Gordon’s poisoning. “I expect we’ll see that in tomorrow morning’s papers.”

  The afternoon editions tucked into the mounting scandal with the enthusiasm of a hungry man at a feast. WAMPAS BABY STAR DEAD shouted one headline, followed in smaller, quieter letters, Lorna McCall, 22, Drowns in Toilet. SECOND MURDER SHOCKS FILM WORLD said another, and DRUG-CRAZED FILM QUEEN IS MURDER SUSPECT.

  The reporters had tracked down the Hungarian maid, Magda Szabo, and pumped the poor woman for all she was worth. Evidently no one in Hollywood really knew Lorna McCall, but that only gave the reporters more room for creativity. Lorna had appeared in bit parts in a few films, landed a couple good roles and the WAMPAS Baby Star designation, and died “on the cusp of the heavens as she reached for the stars,” according to one enraptured inky wretch. A few of Lorna’s girlfriends provided salacious detail about her recent social life. Her family remained unknown. Obviously her name, like most Hollywood names, was a recent fabrication, and no one knew where she came from or anything else about her past. The story of her last day on earth began at Bruno Heilmann’s party where she consumed massive amounts of alcohol and dope and took a dip in the fountain. The dress she wore that night was described in detail … except she hadn’t been wearing that one when I saw her in the fountain. An anonymous tipster confided that Lorna returned later that night and shot her former lover, Bruno Heilmann. Despondent, she then swallowed a bottle of pills and passed out in the toilet where she drowned.

  I could almost hear Adolph Zukor saying, “Cut! Okay, now, let’s move on to the next scene.”

  20

  As it happened, Esther Frankel had a brother in Fredericksburg, Texas, who hopped the first train to Los Angeles as soon as he was notified of her death. I know because Augustus Frankel telephoned me Tuesday night and said he wanted to meet me while he was in town.

  “The police gave me your name, Miss Beckett,” he said. “I hope I don’t impose on your time, but I would so much appreciate a few moments. They say you found poor Esther and I, well, I’d like to know whatever you can tell me.”

  So first thing Wednesday morning I went to Esther’s. I hated going back into that apartment, but I figured her brother had a right to have his questions answered, at least as far as I could answer them.

  “Thank you for coming, Miss Beckett,” he said, meeting me at the door with a short bow.

  An odder-looking man than Augustus Frankel would be hard to invent. He was in his fifties, I guessed, with a head of thick, wild, snow-white hair that sat like a crown on top of a face crowded with bushy eyebrows and an enormous handlebar moustache, all black as soot. It would have been a great gimmick for the stage, but I knew in an instant that this man had not the slightest bit of fakery in him. A trace of a German accent lingered about his speech, and his courtly manners betrayed an old-world upbringing I always find endearing. I liked him at once.

  “My sincerest condolences, Mr. Frankel. This must be a very sad time for you and your family.”

  “Ach, yes. Such a shock. Little Esther … yes, it was a shock. She was always so full of life. Please come in. I hope it doesn’t distress you?”

  “A little, but I’ll be fine,” I murmured.

  The apartment showed signs of disarray. Mr. Frankel had already begun sorting through Esther’s belongings.

  “Please sit,” he said, indicating the sofa. “May I get you some coffee?”

  I declined. Coffee had lost its appeal, at least temporarily. He poured himself a cup and occupied the chair opposite me. “Please. Tell me what happened. The police have so little to say.”

  So I told him about the party where Esther had spotted me, how excited we both had been to connect again after all those years, and how she invited me to come over on Sunday morning. Only three days ago? It seemed like a year.

  There was a knock at the door and we rose.

  “Excuse us,” said a man’s voice. “We’re the Zimmers from across the hall. We heard Esther’s brother had come and wanted to pay our respects.”

  Mrs. Zimmer had brought a chicken dish. They stepped inside, saw me, and declined to sit. “We didn’t realize you had company,” she apologized. “I just thought you’d like some home cooking for dinner.” They stayed a few minutes and spoke kindly of Esther until Mr. Frankel’s eyes brimmed full.

  “We weren’t too close,” he admitted with a regretful shake of his head. “We sent cards at Christmas, and once, when her act came through Austin, oh, twenty years ago it was, Mother and Father and I went to see it. We were very proud of her. I wish now I had made more effort to keep in touch, but I thoug
ht … well, I guess we always think there’s plenty of time for such things.”

  “Will there be a funeral?” asked Mrs. Zimmer. It was something I had intended to ask myself.

  “Yes, but just for the family, back home in Fredericksburg. Little Esther belongs at home, in the family plot, with Mama and Papa.”

  The Zimmers offered to help in any way they could, and then excused themselves. I picked up my story where I had left off.

  “I found her in the bedroom. She’d been dead several hours. I located someone downstairs with a telephone who called the police.”

  “And what do you think happened?”

  “At the moment, this is what I think—I think she was returning to the Heilmann kitchen with the last few ashtrays, and she saw the killer coming through the front door. He must have figured the place was empty of guests, but hadn’t realized the caterers were still there. Esther probably smiled at him, maybe thinking he was a guest who had forgotten something. But he knew she had seen him, and would have been able to describe him once the murder became known. Heilmann was in the living room, looking out toward the patio, his back to the entrance hall, and evidently unaware of the man. The killer took out a gun and shot Heilmann from across the room. At least, that’s what the doctor said. Even if Esther hadn’t been hard of hearing, she probably wouldn’t have noticed the gunshot, because I think he used a silencer. No one in the nearby houses heard it and neither did the caterers. I’ve never heard a silencer myself, but I’m told it has a sound of its own, nothing like the bang of a gun. Then he probably went into the kitchen to shoot Esther, but she had gone out the back. The Cisneros truck was leaving by then, so he ran back to his car, which must have been parked nearby, and followed them. There wouldn’t have been many cars on the road that late at night, so following would have been pretty easy. The Cisneros brothers hadn’t seen him, only Esther, so when they dropped her off here, he followed her.”

  “How would this evil man know what apartment Esther lived in? There are more than a dozen in this building.”