[Dorothy Parker 04] - Death Rides the Midnight Owl

by Agata Stanford

  “All right, you two!” said Sgt. Joe. “Now, you kids shake hands and make up, or I’ll run you both in! Now, let’s get back to the matter at hand. Mrs. Parker, you say this fellow was following you. Now why would he be following you?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “Mr. Benchley, you’ll have to leave this car with me, so our crime scene men can look things over; the body must be removed.”

  “My friend at the dealership would appreciate that—”

  “There may be evidence here.” Joe told us to stay put, saying he was going back into the stationhouse to alert his chief to the situation.

  “What are you doing, Mrs. Parker!”

  “Well, he’s lying on my overnight case and there’s a bag of potato chips in there that I wanted—” I said after Joe had left. I nudged at the shoulder of the corpse, which was folded in a fetal position and wedging in my overnight case. But, I didn’t see the familiar blue leather.

  “Well, I don’t see the harm, but I doubt you’d want to eat the chips now,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “I suppose not.” I said, and then, rolling the fellow on his side, I said, “For God’s sake, Fred, where the hell is my overnight case?”

  Mr. Benchley looked at me and then flipped the fellow onto his other side. “How should I know? I thought the butler threw it in.”

  I remembered, suddenly, some confusion, and that the butler was called away to the main house by the housekeeper, but had instructed one of the Mellons’ footmen to load up the luggage of the departing guests. At the time, Mr. Benchley had been saying his goodbyes to a Broadway producer friend, and had assumed the bag was in the trunk as we drove out.

  “What are you doing, Dottie?” asked Tallulah, as I gingerly went through the pockets of the dead man’s coat jacket.

  “Mrs. Parker, you shouldn’t be doing that,” said Mr. Benchley as I struggled to reach for the fellow’s wallet. He helped me shift the body, which was rigid. “Nice suit,” he said. “Custom cut, Savile Row, H. Huntsman & Sons, London . . . where Noel Coward gets his clothes.” He rubbed the fabric of the lapel between his thumb and index fingers. “Quality.”

  “Passport,” I said, handing it over to my friend before continuing my search into the dead man’s right trouser pocket. I winced, made a little whooshing noise, and Tallulah caught my eye as I looked up with a frown.

  “He is—was—a big boy,” I said, and then my thoughts returned to the task at hand—I mean the reason for my search: “Hotel-room key.”

  “Bunny, write this down, will you?” said Mr. Benchley while looking through the passport. “His name was Charlie Fanshaw: Capital F-e-a-t-h-e-r-s-t-o-n-h-a-u-g-h. Fanshaw.”

  “Feather-ston-hauff? What kind of a name is that?”

  “Pronounced Fanshaw.”

  “Too many letters, old sport.”

  “That’s how the Brits pronounce it.”

  “But—”

  “Like Maudlin College: M-a-g-d-a-l-e-n-e.”

  “Magdalene, like in Mary, lady of the night? What’s in that flask?” asked Tallulah.

  “I was born in Wuster, Massachusetts: W-o-r-c-e-s-t-e-r—”

  “All right, you crazy anglophile, look at this,” I said.

  “—And I have a friend named Sin-Jin: S-a-i-n-t J-o-h-n. Oh, and there comes Sarjent Joe Woollcott, spelled s-e-r-g-e-a-n-t. Tell me that makes sense, Mrs. Parker!”

  Sgt. Joe was coming out of the station with three other officers. I grabbed the passport out of Mr. Benchley’s hand and replaced it in the inside jacket pocket from where I had taken it. I palmed the key because I had no time to tuck it back into his pants; the officers had arrived by my side.

  “You shifted the body?” asked Joe.

  “To get my case, but I don’t see it in there.”

  Joe threw a face, sighed, and said, “You can’t tamper with evidence, Mrs. Parker, you know that!”

  Something in my face must have given me away: “All right, hand it over. What’d you find that you shouldn’t have taken?”

  I handed over the room key—twenty-two-twenty-nine, which I recognized as a key from the new Sherry-Netherland.

  “Joe, if you haven’t yet identified the woman who was murdered on the Midnight Owl, has anyone even inquired about a missing person matching her description?”

  “No, no one has inquired.”

  “What about her things—her hat, jewelry, luggage?”

  “Whatever she had has been put into evidence. Coroner’s report should be in on Monday—that’s tomorrow morning.”

  “Could you—?”

  “Mrs. Parker, you’re gonna have my job—”

  “I don’t need to see it, just tell me what they found?”

  “Call me in the morning.”

  Mr. Benchley was issued a receipt for the car, which would be returned to the dealership after the trunk had been checked over for prints and any other evidence. As we hopped into a cab, our destination Tony Soma’s speakeasy, Mr. Benchley leaned out of the window.

  “You know, Joe, considering the circumstances, the dead body in the trunk, and all, you might be able to pick this beauty up for a song,” said Mr. Benchley, car salesman.

  Bunny wanted nothing more than to resume his place on the sofa in the lobby of the Algonquin, and Tallulah wanted a bath, so we dropped them off at home.

  Mr. Benchley asked the cabbie to drive us to Tony Soma’s, but I asked that we be taken further north to the new Sherry-Netherland, the apartment hotel on the corner of 60th Street at Fifth Avenue.

  “Now, Mrs. Parker, what kind of trouble are you planning to get us into?”

  “You saw the insignia on the hotel key that I found in the dead man’s pocket. It’s the Sherry’s logo.”

  “It’s distressing hearing you refer to the poor fellow as ‘the dead man,’ don’tchathink? I mean, he had a name—”

  “A ridiculous one, if you ask me. All right, I shall call him Feather-ston-hauff.”

  “Fanshaw!”

  “All right, Fanshaw! Gee, you’re a pill. We need to search his rooms before the police get here,” I said, hopping out of the cab. I looked up at the incredible feat of engineering that allowed thirty-eight stories to soar above the avenue. This was “the tallest apartment hotel in the world,” boasted the ice-cream-and-candy king, Louis Sherry, when he opened the doors for business a few months ago. The neo-Romanesque and Renaissance building towered over its travertine marble base and was topped with an elaborate Gothic minaret.

  Woodrow led the way into the gilded, chandeliered lobby, which was pretentiously modeled after the Vatican Library—vaulted ceilings, guarding griffins, and all.

  “Jeez,” I said, “give a tycoon a little bit of money and this is how he spends it.”

  “Don’t you like it, Mrs. Parker?”

  “It’s magnificent,” I replied, as we got on the elevator. The operator let us out on the twenty-second floor.

  “You can put your Swiss Army knife away; the door is open,” I told Mr. Benchley. A chambermaid had parked a cart outside the opened door of room twenty-two-twenty-nine.

  “I see, but how do we get in past her?”

  “Watch this,” I said, and then shook Woodrow’s leash to get his attention.

  “Ready, set, go!”

  Woodrow broke into a run around the cart and into the room, appearing to be leading me in through the door, but, like driving a horse-drawn chaise, I was at the reins. I feigned frustration at the behavior of my little devil just as the maid came out from the bathroom, and Woodrow and I landed on the bed, the former licking my face.

  “Now, Woodrow, what would our Mr. Fanshaw say if he saw us bouncing around on the bed?” I looked up into the face of the laughing maid. “After this nice lady over here went to the trouble of changing the sheets and all? By the way, have you seen Mr. Fanshaw?”

  She looked at me blankly. “There’s a Mr. Featherstone-haw or something like that in these rooms, but—”

  “It’s pronou
nced Fanshaw, dear. I know, I had the same problem when we first met, and being married to a man with a name like that is not easy, believe me, trying to explain all the time that it’s because he’s British that the name is spelled so ridiculously! I should have married a Smith or a Jones! Have you met him yet?”

  “Ahhh, no,” she said, a little flustered, and before she could finish, in walked Mr. Benchley.

  “Oh, hello, darling!”

  “Dear . . .” he replied for want of something to say. I wasn’t sure if he had caught on to what I was doing.

  “Did you send that cable to Bobby, Charles?”

  “Yes, uh, just sent it out, dear.”

  “You need to make that phone call, now, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he agreed, walking over to the telephone. He glanced over at the maid, who took the hint and left the room, pulling the door closed behind her.

  I said with pride as I rustled Woodrow’s little tummy—he was lying on the bed and enjoying all the attention—“Goes to show that people see what they want to see. Pretend you belong here, people assume you belong here.”

  Mr. Benchley went directly to the closet, which was empty, while I caught sight of two valises that were under the bed and appeared not to have been unpacked.

  Mr. Benchley lifted the valises onto the bed and unbuckled the straps. Inside one was a suit—jacket, vest, trousers—evening clothes, and a variety of shirts, ties, underclothes, a pair of patent dress-shoes, several casual flannels, and a sporty jacket. Evening suits and shirtfronts were folded within paper to keep the garments’ shape and press. Studs, white ties, and various other formal accessories were boxed, as were the patent dress-shoes. An opera scarf was folded over the flattened silk top-hat. Funny, I thought; none of the clothing appeared the least worn. It was as if the articles had been bought new, or at the very least, pressed and packed, but they had not been removed from the luggage. The dress-suit bore the name of a swanky British men’s clothier, according to Mr. Benchley. And yet, all of the times I had seen the now-deceased Mr. Featherstonhaugh, he’d been wearing the fawn-colored gabardine, and the royal-blue beret atop his head. The fact that he hadn’t unpacked his bags meant he hadn’t stayed in the room very much—or perhaps he had unpacked and repacked them because he was planning to check out of the hotel soon . . . ?

  An attaché case was filled with catalogues, news clippings, and envelopes, and a folder, like a dossier. In it were handwritten and typewritten notes and a couple of photos of rather poor quality. A large manila envelope contained several letters of introduction and a London bank’s line of credit, along with travel receipts that offered new understanding, especially the document that attested that Featherstonhaugh was a licensed private investigator. From all the various items it became clear that the murdered man had been hired to follow a Mrs. Joan Trombley, and the detective had traveled from London to South Hampton on the boat train and then to Boston on the very same ship, the Victoria, that brought the Mellons and Giusto to the United States. There was the connection.

  A photograph fell out from among the loose papers in the folder. A rather short dumpling of a man, looking ill-at-ease in the morning suit he wore, stood beside a taller, rather attractive woman holding a bouquet. A wedding photo? On closer inspection, the woman had very dark hair tumbling around her shoulders, but the pose was so animated, her chin raised, head thrown back, mouth opened in laughter, that it was hard to discern her features. I handed the picture to Mr. Benchley for inspection while I shuffled through the other photographs, mostly exterior shots of houses and landscapes and people wearing tweeds, with elderly gentry types, a few in hunting clothes, holding guns and dangling dead rabbits and birds from straps in group shots. Typically English, I surmised, from the wattle-and-dab Tudor structures and the sign above a pub depicting a man dangling by his neck from a rope and the words, The Hangman.

  The waste-bin had been emptied by the maid, so there was nothing else to tell us what he was up to, or whether he had found his Joan Trombley, and whether in fact she was the woman murdered in Bedroom Two. But, who had murdered him, and why?

  If there were papers or other valuable clues to be found in the hotel vault, they were unattainable unless you had a police warrant.

  “The man was interested in fine jewelry,” said Mr. Benchley. “Look at these,” he said, handing me a couple of sales catalogues from Van Cleef & Arpels and Cartier’s, listing various ornaments by name and description and to whom they were sold and on what dates, including carat weights in diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and other rare gemstones.

  “Jewel thief?”

  “Appears so.”

  In the drawer of a bedside table were scraps of paper—one a sad little drawing of a bird on the wing from a three-quarter profile. It was all angles and points and not at all lifelike, rather an abstract of a bird, and not very good. There was a big circle where an eye would be.

  “Let’s get out of here; the hair on the back of my neck is rising. I sense discovery by the boys in blue.”

  But, Mr. Benchley was again studying the wedding photo when the telephone rang. We looked at each other, nodded mutual agreement, and then he picked up the receiver of the ultramodern, streamlined, cream-colored-Bakelite telephone.

  “Yes?” I put my ear close to the receiver.

  “Charles?” came a halting, masculine voice through the line. “Charles?” repeated the voice, “It’s Freddie.”

  “Yes, ’course it is,” responded Mr. Benchley in an impeccable British accent.

  “Are you all right? You sound rather chuffed.”

  “Fine, just fine. Bit of a cold, is all.”

  “Well, what do you say, man? I received your wire; didn’t you receive mine?”

  “Yes, of course, Henry.”

  “What? This is Fre—someone is in the room with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. No wonder you sound so . . . odd.”

  There was a long silence on the other end, and I could almost hear the thoughts tumbling noisily around in “Freddie’s” brain.

  “Where are you calling from?” asked Mr. Benchley, attempting to keep the caller’s suspicions at bay through a casually tossed off query.

  “From the lobby,” came the reply. “For heaven’s sake, Charles, when you didn’t show up—I’m coming up to your room.”

  I didn’t have to tell my friend that the police would be arriving at any moment to search the dead man’s room.

  “No. Go into the restaurant, get a table in a quiet corner, and order three glasses of orange juice. I’ll be right down.” And with that, Mr. Benchley put down the receiver.

  We left the room, pulling the door closed behind us.

  “Freddie” was sitting at a table away from the center of the room, out of earshot of other Sunday afternoon diners. I recognized him immediately from the wedding photograph we had found among the papers in Featherstonhaugh’s briefcase. Mr. Benchley noted the three glasses of orange juice set before him on the table. Freddie looked confused and anxious as he searched the faces of people entering the dining room in groups of two and four, and as we approached the table, he impatiently peered around us, hoping Featherstonhaugh would appear.

  “Freddie?” asked Mr. Benchley, as he pulled up a chair from an adjoining table to make a third seat at the table-for-two. He saw me seated, much to the chagrin of the man, who was annoyed at the interruption of his appointment. And when my friend introduced us, producing his flask to pour a shot of gin in each of our glasses, the gentleman began to rise from his seat, a frightened look on his face.

  “We’re here because Mr. Fanshaw is unable to join us, I’m afraid.”

  “What is going on here?” he asked, eyes wide and looking as if he were ready to bolt. “Where’s Charles?”

  “He couldn’t come down to meet you.”

  He looked from one to the other of us with a frown that melted into sad resignation. “Charles? But—I just spoke with—he wired me. He said
he’d found her; I was to sail on the next ship.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Benchley. “And he asked you to come here because he found her.” A statement, not a question.

  “Joan. My wife.”

  Freddie obviously didn’t like what he read in our expressions when he’d said, “my wife,” because before we could even tell him of our suspicions, he assumed she had fallen to mortal injury.

  His voice broke. “Is she—?”

  “We don’t know. You see, last week a woman was murdered. Her name has not been disclosed as yet.”

  “But, you think—? For some reason you are convinced the woman was my wife, Joan.”

  His body stiffened and I thought he was about to keel over, for he gripped the sides of the table, as if to anchor himself.

  “Not for sure, no,” replied Mr. Benchley.

  “But, still, you wouldn’t be telling me this if—Oh, I should have guessed from his wire telling me to come to the States immediately that there was something more than the fact that he had finally caught up with her,” he said quietly. “I suppose I knew all along on the voyage over here that there was more to it. I just didn’t want to believe anything—horrible could have happened! But, don’t tell me Charles had anything to do with her death!”

  “We don’t know; it seems unlikely,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “We are not telling you that the dead woman is your wife. We just want to know why you were searching for her, why you sent Charles Fanshaw to find her, all the way across the sea.”

  “Did he ask you, the police, to break the news to me? Charles? I’m sure he wasn’t responsible for her death. I’d not hold him accountable, so—”

  “Mr. uh . . . .”

  “Trombley.”

  “Mr. Trombley,” I started, “there is more to tell.”

  Freddie began to rise from his chair.

  I covered Freddie Trombley’s nervous hand gripping the corner of the table with my own, and Mr. Benchley gently pressed his shoulder for him to sit. “I’m sorry to tell you that we have some very bad news: Charles Fanshaw is dead.”