Murder Your Darlings

by J. J. Murphy

  Sherwood shrugged it off.

  Woollcott’s nasal voice squeaked, “Yes, what was that nasty line Mayflower wrote in his critique of your play, Robert?”

  Neither Sherwood nor Battersby answered, both embarrassed that Woollcott would bring up such a thing at a somber moment.

  “I believe,” Woollcott continued, “it was, ‘Even the Savior himself couldn’t breathe life into this deathly boring drama.’”

  Marc Connelly, a Broadway playwright riding a recent tide of success, drew in a sharp breath. He sympathized with Sherwood’s first professional attempt at theater. “Oh, Aleck, really!” Connelly snapped. “This is no time for your juvenile jeering.”

  “I disagree,” Benchley said jovially, trying to revive the lighthearted mood of just a few moments before. “If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry. Please, Bud, join us.”

  “Join the Algonquin Round Table for lunch?” Battersby said, suddenly less stupefied. He quickly dragged over a chair. “How could I refuse?”

  “We’re the Automat Round Table today,” Dorothy said. “Come one, come all.”

  “Verily, that is true,” said Woollcott, eyeing Faulkner narrowly. “Now, Battersby, what can you tell us about Mayflower’s unexpected demise?”

  “What can I tell you?” He slumped in his chair. “I can’t tell you a thing. That’s why I’m here. What can you tell me?”

  “Very little,” Woollcott said. “They found Mayflower under our Round Table, stabbed in the chest with a fountain pen.”

  Battersby leaned forward. “A fountain pen? What kind of fountain pen?”

  “What kind?” Woollcott said. “The kind you write with, old boy. What else? Ask Benchley; he was there.”

  Battersby turned anxiously to Benchley, whose merry smile faded. “You were there? You saw who did it?”

  “Oh, no,” Benchley said. “I went in ... afterward.”

  “Well, I never,” Battersby muttered. “Did you see what kind of pen it was?”

  “Well, no. Is it important?”

  “I don’t think so. Not important, I hope. Just very odd.”

  “Very odd, indeed.”

  Battersby sat up. “What I mean is, Mayflower was the spokesman for Saber Fountain Pens. They run an ad with his picture in the Knickerbocker. The same ad runs in every Playbill.”

  “Good heavens,” Benchley said. “I think it was a Saber pen.”

  “The bottom of the pen had that texture—”

  “A herringbone kind of texture on the barrel, yes. Helps you to grip it better. What’s that slogan they have in their advertisements?”

  “‘If it’s not a Saber, it just won’t cut it,’” Battersby said.

  “By using a Saber pen to murder Mayflower, the one he himself endorsed, do you think someone was trying to give Mayflower a message?”

  “I’d say he got it,” Dorothy said. “But who? And why?”

  All eyes turned to Woollcott.

  “Why look at me?” he sneered. “I told you, I’d murder him in print before I’d ever lay a finger on his bony old body.”

  “Didn’t you try to get that endorsement contract for Saber pens?” she said. “Didn’t you talk to them about being their spokesman?”

  Woollcott’s fat cheeks puffed out. “By Jupiter, I won’t sit here and be accused like that.”

  “So go sit somewhere else, and we’ll accuse you anyway,” Frank Adams said, jutting his cigar in his mouth.

  Connelly said, “No one’s accusing you of anything, Aleck.”

  Battersby intervened, addressing Benchley. “Let me ask you again about the scene of the crime. Was there anyone else in the room? Did the police question anyone? Or did you see anyone strange or sinister in the hotel this morning?”

  Benchley shrugged. “There was no one else in the dining room, except for Detective Orangutan and me and, well, Mayflower. The murder had already happened before I got to the hotel. A small crowd had gathered in the lobby, but I didn’t take notice of anyone out of the ordinary.”

  “I saw someone,” Faulkner mumbled cautiously.

  Everyone turned to look at the young, scruffy southerner.

  “You saw someone?” Dorothy said.

  Faulkner, glancing at Benchley, tried to hide a gulp. “I saw him in the lobby. Very tough-looking fellow. His eyes were dark and hard, but vacant. I was in the lobby waiting to introduce myself to Mrs. Parker and—”

  Battersby interjected. “What did the man look like? Can you describe him? His height, his size, his hair color, that sort of thing?”

  “I’m not good at describing physical traits,” Faulkner said. “He had empty black eyes. That’s what I remember most. Like a bear’s eyes—black, hollow, soulless but full of mindless destruction. That, and he had a tooth on the chain of his pocket watch.”

  “Horsefeathers!” Woollcott cried. He threw his cloth napkin across the table at Faulkner. It landed in Dorothy’s coffee cup. “There’s a towel for your Dachshund, Dottie. He’s wet behind the ears.”

  She plucked the coffee-soaked napkin from her cup. “Dry yourself, Aleck. You’re all wet.” She flung it back at Woollcott.

  It landed with a soft splat against the silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. He swatted it away as if it was a tarantula. He stood up, aimed an angry glare at her and stormed off toward the men’s room.

  She looked at Faulkner. His face had turned red.

  Battersby also looked at Faulkner. Then, after a moment of recovery, Battersby said, “What’s eating Mr. Woollcott?”

  Benchley explained to Battersby how Leland Mayflower had planned to meet with Woollcott at the Algonquin. “Now Aleck will never know what Mayflower had up his sleeve. His curiosity is probably killing him.”

  Then Benchley described how the body had been found and the subsequent confrontation with the police detective. He said, “Woollcott thinks that whoever murdered Mayflower was really trying to kill one of us, one of the members of the Round Table. Mayflower simply arrived at the wrong place at the wrong time, Woollcott says.”

  Battersby nodded slowly, taking this in. He removed a pad and pencil from his jacket pocket and scribbled some notes.

  “What are you doing?” Dorothy said.

  Battersby continued writing, not looking up from his notepad. “I’ll have to write the story myself for an extra evening edition of the Knickerbocker. This is news after all.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Adams, chomping on his cigar. “Nothing stops the news. Mayflower would want it that way. But you’d better hurry. I telephoned in my story a few minutes ago. You wouldn’t want the World to scoop you on a story of one of the Knickerbocker’s own, would you?”

  Battersby looked up at Adams. He spoke plainly, without a trace of guile. “Didn’t you have a grudge against Mayflower? Something about a loan for a poker game?”

  Adams groaned. “Oh, let’s not start that again.”

  Chapter 7

  That evening, Benchley was dressed for the theater in top hat, black tie and tails. He sat down and unfolded the extra afternoon edition of the Knickerbocker News.

  That afternoon at the Automat, Bud Battersby had asked him to fill in for Mayflower as the Knickerbocker’s drama critic. This was the opening night of Ziegfeld’s new musical revue, Twenty-three Skidoo!

  Dorothy took her seat next to Benchley. She wore her best evening clothes—a midnight blue velveteen dress—and her hair up. She often accompanied Benchley to the theater in his professional capacity as a drama critic. And it was fun to play dress up—once in a while.

  She opened up the Playbill and flipped through it. Something caught her eye. Staring up at her was the gaunt but smiling—almost leering—face of dapper old Leland Mayflower. His black-and-white picture stopped just below his chest, which gave the appearance that he sat at a high writing desk. In his hand, he prominently held a Saber fountain pen. At the top of the advertisement was the familiar Saber slogan. At the bottom of the ad was Mayflower’s roller-coaster signature, with
its high, narrow peaks, its wide, arcing loops, and its sharp, plunging depths.

  Her eyes were drawn again to Mayflower’s photo. She couldn’t stop staring at his taut, unwavering, imperturbable grin.

  “Oh, dear,” Benchley said.

  “Yes, dear?” she said.

  “Look here.” Benchley leaned over and spread the tabloid newspaper for her to see. “It’s all about the murder of Mayflower at the Algonquin.”

  Benchley read the headline and the deck line. “KNICK CRITIC KILLED! MAYFLOWER MURDERED AT ALGONQUIN ROUND TABLE.”

  She suddenly produced, as if by prestidigitation, a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. She slid them on and scanned the headlines, the photographs and the tiny ten-point type. “It’s not just about Mayflower,” she said. “It’s about each one of us. The Vicious Circle.”

  Dorothy and Benchley pored over the newspaper. It was a flimsy tabloid, only twenty-four pages, with more advertisements and pictures than text. And that text was largely taken up by screaming headlines. (She once offhandedly referred to the Knickerbocker as “nothing but ads and adverbs.”) In this edition, the main body copy recounted the details of the murder, but several accompanying side articles reported the backgrounds of many of the Round Table members, even speculating about their animosities and disagreements with Mayflower.

  Benchley scanned through the main article about the details of the murder—how, when and where Mayflower’s body was found. Then he skipped past a few glowing biographical paragraphs about the deceased critic. The next few paragraphs caught Benchley’s eye.

  “Listen to this,” he said, and read it aloud.

  Imagine how simple it is for a great writer—with the world at his (or her!) fingertips—to cross out a word. Or, consider what a matter-of-fact business it is for an influential editor—flush with the power of his lofty position—to strike out an entire paragraph, or whole pages even. So, too, did this murderer rewrite New York history. It was as easy as this! A simple erasure. A blotting of ink. A word struck through with a line. This was how easy it was for a murderer to strike down the famous yet frail figure of Leland Mayflower.

  “Who wrote this?” she said. She sought the byline. “Bud Battersby? That son of a bitch.”

  Benchley continued reading.

  This coterie is the Vicious Circle, as the group “jokingly” refers to itself. Some joke! The name is apt, as was made clear when the group repaired to a nearby exclusive eatery, when their infamous Algonquin Round Table could no longer serve, and sat themselves comfortably down at the table—a regular rectangular one had to do. But did this inconvenience rain on their merry parade?

  No! They were as gay as ever, with Mr. Benchley splitting their sides with an intemperate joke (which is unprintable in a family newspaper). The entire tragedy of their late colleague’s death had fallen from their minds as quickly as the slightest of troubles!

  Certainly, if one of their number should prove to be the murderer—and the New York Police Force, with its aggressive interrogation of the members of the Vicious Circle, seems to indicate that this is so—then that soul shall not sleep easy tonight, especially if Conscience (that old-fashioned thing!) has anything to say about it.

  “How do you like that?” Benchley said, sinking in his velvet upholstered seat. “Someone stabs Mayflower in the chest. Then Battersby shows up and stabs the rest of us in the back. But you have to admit it. Battersby has a way with words, wouldn’t you say?”

  “A way up his ass, that’s what I’d say.” She considered a moment. “But there was no mention of Billy Faulkner and that suspicious man he described. Did you say something to Battersby? Tell him not to put the light on Billy?”

  “No. Did you?”

  “No. But it’s a good thing Battersby avoided it. No sense getting Billy any further mixed up in this.”

  “The answer is simple,” Benchley said after a pause. “Billy Faulkner is a nobody. The man Billy described is a phantom. Nobodies and phantoms don’t make for juicy headlines. They interfere with juicy headlines.”

  “Are you defending that skunk Battersby?” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you like having your name in the paper, not so subtly accused of murder?”

  “Well, it’s not that. Battersby is a publisher—although now he seems to be the editor, the reporter and the newspaper boy, too, for all we know. Since Mayflower can no longer spin those sordid tales, it falls into Battersby’s lap. What else can he do, with no obvious suspects, but point the finger at the people closest at hand—us?”

  “You’re just happy Battersby wrote that you were splitting everyone’s sides.”

  Benchley conceded a smile. “Guilty as charged.”

  “At least Battersby seemed to let the both of us off easy,” she said, pointing to the open pages. “Woollcott gets the worst of it. There’s half a page devoted to him and his rivalry with Mayflower.”

  A murmur rippled through the audience. Benchley and Dorothy turned to look up the aisle. Floating toward them, in his usual broad-brimmed hat and opera cape, was Woollcott.

  “Reading the newspaper in the theater, Robert? Tut-tut,” Woollcott snorted, settling into his seat across the aisle from Benchley and Dorothy. “What is that, the Knickknack News? I’d call it rubbish, but that would be an insult to rubbish.”

  Dorothy looked again at the tabloid, scanning for a mention of the name Dachshund. She worried that Battersby had described the man Faulkner said he saw in the lobby. If the police read about that, Faulkner would be in even deeper trouble for not reporting it to them. But she could find no mention of it.

  “And Benchley!” Woollcott suddenly bellowed. “How could you take a job from that yellow rag and that scheming silver-spooned Battersby? How can you sit in the seat so recently occupied by my nemesis? What a callous, cold heart you have, Robert.”

  Benchley wasn’t bothered by Woollcott’s tirade. He was agitated for other reasons. “I’m not happy about the job either, Aleck. When Battersby asked me at the Automat to substitute for Mayflower tonight, I thought I was doing the Knickerbocker a good turn. I didn’t know Battersby would do me a bad turn by vilifying our group.”

  “When you sit down with the dog, you get up with the fleas,” Woollcott said with a knowing look to Benchley and Dorothy. “That’s something each of you should remember.”

  The house lights dimmed, the conductor stood and the theater and the audience were engulfed in darkness as the orchestra thundered into the overture.

  As the stage lights brightened, Dorothy barely paid attention. For one, she preferred serious drama to this song-and-dance revue. For another, her mind wandered to the strange young Southern man once again hiding out in her apartment.

  Despite the bright lights and gaudiness onstage, and despite the blaring orchestra and the dancers’ tapping feet—a clamor like a team of old horses crossing a rickety wooden bridge—she drifted into a fitful doze.

  Dorothy awoke to an urgent whisper. “Mrs. Parker.”

  She was still in her velvet-upholstered seat next to Benchley. The conflagration onstage and the cacophony in the orchestra pit were still in full swing. She felt a tug at her sleeve, and again someone whispered her name.

  William Faulkner crouched by her side in the aisle. Rain had drenched his battered old hat, his thin scraggly beard and his oversized threadbare trench coat.

  “Billy! What are you doing here? I told you to stay hidden at my apartment.”

  “I wish I had, Mrs. Parker. I wish I had.”

  Across the aisle, Woollcott peered at them. “By Jupiter!” he grumbled. “Put the pooch back in his kennel and let the rest of us watch the show.”

  She grabbed Faulkner’s hand, and with an apologetic look to Benchley, who now saw what was going on, she led Faulkner up the darkened aisle and through the double doors into the brightly lit, ornate theater lobby.

  She was prepared to give the young man a piece of her mind and set him straight. But when she got a better look at his bedraggled appearance and
the hapless, even frightened, look in his eyes, she softened.

  “What happened? Why did you come here?”

  He sighed. “I came to New York because—”

  “No, I didn’t ask why you came to New York. I asked why you came to the theater when I told you to stay put—”

  “I’m getting to that. I came to New York to experience life, not to hide myself away. So I was sitting in your apartment at the Algonquin, and I was thinking, even if it is a bit dangerous, even if the police are looking for me, I should take the chance and go out. Why not? There are good experiences and bad experiences, but in any case, I need to have some experiences. Otherwise, why did I bother to leave Mississippi?”

  “Experience?” She frowned. “You know what I think? Writers are like fry cooks in a greasy spoon. No experience necessary. You know what else I think? You ought to listen to me.”

  “Well, I wish I had, because that’s only part of it.”

  “What’s the rest?”

  He looked over his shoulder, then stepped closer. “On my way here, I was followed.”

  “Followed? By whom? The police?”

  He shook his head. “The man I saw at the Algonquin this morning. The one who probably killed Mayflower.”

  At that, the music within the theater swelled and came to a noisy end. The audience applauded mildly, very mildly. In a moment, the double doors opened and the theater patrons swarmed into the lobby.

  “Intermission,” she said, and pulled Faulkner by the elbow and drew him toward the far wall, out of the way of the emerging flow of well-heeled theatergoers. Many in the burgeoning crowd lit up cigarettes and cigars and sipped surreptitiously from hip flasks.

  Dorothy, a full foot shorter than most of the crowd, looked anxiously for Benchley, but instead she picked out another Algonquin member from the throng.

  “Heywood!” she called. “Heywood Broun. Come here.”

  A bear of a man approached them. Despite his rumpled tuxedo, or perhaps because of it, he looked like a big pile of unwashed laundry.