Murder by Magic

by Rex Baron

  She returned the platter to the kitchen along with the knife and other objects before seeking the comfort of her bed and unenchanted sleep. The dead flowers alone resisted her inclination to toss them on the compost heap in the garden.

  As if still infused with energy from the ritual, they demanded a position of watchful commemoration of the event. She divided them into three bunches and placed them in vases without water. She deposited one in the circle where the ceremony had taken place, one in the drawing room, and one on the side table in the front hallway, then, yawning, she made her way up the stairs to her room.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Helen’s bungalow, Los Angeles

  The gramophone blared from bungalow six so loudly that by seven o'clock in the evening, already two of the adjacent tenants had pounded on the screen door to complain, but Helen pretended she didn't hear them or the threats of eviction. She sat at her dressing table, waxing the tiny hairs that had gone astray beneath the curve of her fine arched brow.

  She was pleased with herself because she had just gotten off the telephone with Richard Barthelmess. He had taken the trouble to bribe the payroll mistress at Lasky’s studio to get her telephone number, and she was still playing hard to get. She was delighted that he had found her so captivating at the Lasky party and was willing to make good on his promise to make up for, what he called, his unchivalrous behaviour in New York. She could not exactly understand why he intended to pursue her. Maybe he now saw her as someone whose career was on the rise and decided that it might be to his advantage to stay on her good side. After all, that was the way this town operated… align yourself with those on their way up and those on top, and cut yourself loose the moment a breath of scandal or a crash in box office receipts indicates that one of the chosen few was on their way out.

  But as long as his male ego kept him from remembering what a failure he had been at his half-baked lovemaking, Helen could play the role of the pretty young thing that he would have to pursue with every penny he had at his disposal. She tried to make light of his pursuit, and wanted to pretend that she was merely managing the advances of a famous and glamorous suitor, but she knew she could not. She found that she still hated him for the insults he had so thoughtlessly thrown at her that night in his hotel room. She had felt shattered and humiliated when she had left, and had carried that anger and self-doubt for months. She told herself that she should just forget it. After all, what did the past matter, now that she was on her way up, destined for success? She might just as well forgive him and maybe even consider allowing him to be a possible love interest. But she knew she was not the forgiving kind. She had struggled too long and too hard to allow some weak and arrogant fool like Richard Barthelmess to get away with humiliating her.

  She could not help thinking of the ridiculous naked photos she had of him in her top bureau drawer. She marveled at how anyone, who had been to a good school and been raised with money and privilege, could have been naive or stupid enough to fall for the old model routine. She conjured the image, in one of the photographs, of his extended buttocks, as he bent over a table in a pose that could scarcely be mistaken for anything other than pornography. She laughed aloud as the image of the young Richard presented itself in sharp focus, in her mind.

  Perhaps those photos will come in handy some day, Helen thought to herself. Maybe, one day, she might use them to get a little extra cash by selling them to the fan rags. But sooner or later, Helen smiled wickedly, she would use them to get back at him, and she would finally have her revenge on the man she loathed.

  She caught a glimpse of her reflection in her dressing table mirror and was reminded of the task at hand. She resumed the work of cosmeticizing her face, powdering, coloring, and penciling on an outline for a smaller mouth, when she heard Claxton's silver-headed cane rapping on the doorframe. The noise was accompanied by his voice, bellowing in song, along with the scratchy rendition of the gramophone’s popular tune.

  “I’m forever blowing bubbles… pretty bubbles in the air… I know you're in there my pet,” he shouted through the screen into the cluster of floral sofas and chairs that fully occupied the crowded drawing room. “Unless you died a miserable death of discord from this god awful caterwauling you've got playing.”

  Helen gathered her silk dressing gown up around her shoulders and padded barefoot to the door.

  “Really, darling,” he said,” I would have given you credit for something a bit tonier than banjo music.”

  “It's a ukulele,” she snapped, opening the screen door to let him in. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, no more points for charm than you got for music appreciation. Really, darling girl, I'm just going to have to teach you everything, aren't I?”

  She motioned for him to have a seat.

  “You really ought to have telephoned,” she said coolly. “I don't like people just dropping in. When I was growing up, that was considered bad manners, but I guess in your circle it’s considered spontaneous charm of one kind or another.”

  Claxton disregarded her scolding and roared.

  “That's true. It is considered a form of charm. You're a very perspicacious girl Helen, and the two things I truly admire in a woman are spontaneity and a well misplaced sense of wickedness.”

  Helen snorted her disapproval.

  “Face it Claxton, the only thing you like in a woman is where your fat little...”

  “Now, let's not get vulgar, shall we?”

  “You still haven't told me why you so spontaneously dropped by and graced me with your charm,” Helen said, drawing her dressing gown around her to close out his appraising stare.

  Claxton opened his jacket to make himself more comfortable. The casualness of the small intimacy annoyed Helen.

  “I just thought I might drop in and take advantage of the fringe benefits from our little agreement,” he answered with a raise of his brow.

  Helen laughed, clutching the dressing gown to her chest with knotted fingers.

  “Oh, just like that you come calling, unannounced, with a stiff leg in your trousers, and I'm supposed to open the door and pour you a drink like some well-trained little whore. I'm not a whore Claxton, in spite of what you believe.”

  “No, you are not a whore,” he said, recovering from her assault. “Truthfully, you are the most exciting woman I have ever been with, and I would be a fool, or worse, if I did not want to have that pleasure again.”

  Helen paced the room, then went to a cabinet and poured two glasses of bootlegged whiskey. She handed one to Claxton.

  “Store bought, or did you make it yourself?” he asked, choking on the harshness of the pale liquor.

  “A guy I know gets it from Mexico,” Helen replied, as she held the liquid to the light and frowned at the impurities floating near the surface.

  She sat on the arm of an overstuffed floral armchair and stared openly at the intense little man. He lifted his glass to her, a gesture that she did not return.

  “Our agreement was for the casting of the spell,” Helen reminded him. “What we did that night was necessary for the effect, that's all. There is nothing more to it. The bargain was filled and I'm afraid there are no sloppy residuals due you.”

  “I don't flatter myself that you've been getting yourself all done up for me. By the way, there's a bit of wax over your left eye,” Claxton said, waving a glove at her.

  She quickly touched her fingers to her lips, moistened them and rubbed vigorously until Claxton nodded that the spot was gone.

  “I'm expecting someone,” she said coolly.

  “It couldn't be Paulo Cordoba, our favourite idol of the idle, could it?” Claxton purred like a cat. “I'd hate to think so. After all, you expressly told me the spell was designed to destroy Lucy from the ground up, including on the emotional level, but you never said you wanted our little pawn for your own personal plaything.”

  “That's hardly any of your business.”

  “Oh but it is,” Claxton insisted,
raising an eyebrow. “I've taken you on, so to speak, befriended you, and helped you realize your fancies. You ought to reward me and not make me angry. After all, I am the keeper of the keys, at least when it comes to Solomon that is. I shouldn't think you would want me for your enemy.”

  Helen appraised him as if she were deciding whether to buy an expensive coat. Without a word, she poured him another drink and settled back on her perch, chosen because it placed her just above him, looking down at his puffy good looks and the polished nails resting on top of the silver headed walking stick.

  “Tell me,” she asked, “if you're so hot on having me as your lover, and are as powerful a man with the winds and the wizards as you claim to be, why don't you just enchant me, put a spell on me and have me drooling at your feet?”

  “Because it would defeat my purpose entirely,” he answered, as if the question were one he had long expected.

  “I want an equal, a companion, someone who understands and values what I'm about, and what I'm capable of doing.”

  “And what makes you think you've found that companion in me?”

  Helen sensed a fissure of weakness in him, an emotional need that she had, up until now, not been aware of.

  “I think I've met my match, as they say.” He ventured the comment with a real smile.

  “I doubt that you have, not at the present anyway.” Helen said, tossing her hair haughtily. “For the time being, I can honestly say that all of my emotional needs are more than adequately met, partly thanks to you of course. And for your part in making that possible, I shall be eternally grateful.”

  “Then you are expecting Paulo?” He rose to his feet. “That's why you've so skillfully painted your face on.”

  Helen shrugged her shoulders.

  “Well then, I have some bad news for you,” Claxton took excessive pleasure in announcing. “I happen to know that he's spending the evening at Bill Taylor's house, like so many other evenings. You can make whatever you like of that bit of information.”

  “He said he'd call at eight,” Helen responded, unshaken by his virulence.

  Claxton laughed to cover Helen's rejection of him.

  “My dear girl, unless you've taken to adopting British usage, the word call, in America, means telephone. I do hope you weren't waiting on the doorstep for the silver god to show up in person. Why should he? I do believe he has everything he wants and needs over at Taylor's house.”

  Helen gave him a hard shove toward the door.

  “Get out,” she shouted. “It's vicious of you to come here and say these foul things.”

  “The truth is often painful.” Claxton tossed the platitude, patting her on the cheek.

  Helen pushed him through the door and out into the courtyard, filled with the scent of oleander and the muffled sound of the eavesdropping neighbors, breathing behind the open cracks of their windows and doors.

  “Good night all,” Claxton called jauntily, as he clattered his cane along a metal fence just to be certain that the disturbance was complete.

  Helen slammed her door, and slowly, after an expectant minute or two, each of the neighboring screen doors creaked back into place and dim lights returned in the surrounding windows.

  •••

  By eight o’clock, in spite of the intrusion, Helen had finished dressing. She stepped up on the bench of the dressing table to get a better look at the seams at the back of her silk stockings. She looked beautiful, yet casual, so that when Paulo at last did appear, she might deny the laborious preparation and explain that she had simply been sitting at home.

  Even though it had been she who telephoned and asked him over in the first place, she did not want to appear eager. She sat carefully positioned on the divan, a neglected crossword in hand, and listened for his footsteps on the paving stones that led through the courtyard to number six.

  By nine-twenty Helen had slumped into an unattractive sprawling posture, the seams of her stockings wriggling up the back of her legs like two amorous worms. He hadn’t come.

  “He hasn’t even telephoned,” she said aloud, reminding herself of Claxton's annoying precision in language.

  She roused herself from the hollow she had made in the beastly old sofa, and checked the telephone in the niche in the entryway. It would be just like Claxton to have tampered with it or taken it off the hook, she thought. But he had not been near it, and when she raised the earpiece to her ear, the operator's voice came on the line. She quickly returned it to the hook on the side without answering. She went through a litany of possibilities of what might have detained Paulo, relieving him of the responsibility of standing her up. And yet, Claxton's insinuating words kept going through her head.

  “He has everything he wants at Bill Taylor's,” the odious little man had said.

  Without hesitation, she threw on a coat and grabbed the keys to the roadster from a hook in the hallway. The car belonged to the manager of the apartment complex, who had given her a spare set of keys, supposedly for safekeeping. In return, he had told her that she might have use of the auto whenever he was not using it. But she knew, without question, that sooner or later he would expect more for the use of his car than her vigilance in watching over its keys. Helen shook her head at what fools men were… knowing the fat manager was the sort that would settle for crumbs and could be kept at bay indefinitely with a kind word and a bit of harmless flattery.

  There was no sense in inventing excuses for Paulo, she told herself, as she put the car in gear and backed out of the drive, nor any reason to doubt the power of the spell she and Claxton had cast.

  It was clear that Claxton was trying to manipulate her emotions and throw her off balance... to sour her on Paulo by saying those dreadful things. She would simply see for herself what nonsense the hateful little man had invented.

  She raced the engine of the car and headed down Highland toward the apartments where William Desmond Taylor lived.

  She parked a block from the L-shaped series of bungalows and hid herself under an arbor of classical columns overgrown with wisteria and ivy. She listened for the sound of voices to indicate which bungalow William’s was.

  She knew the address from the lists published by the studios, but she had never been privy to his company, nor invited to visit this tasteful and elegant residence.

  She had nothing against the man. He had actually never done anything to her other than rebuff her advances when they had met in the café near Bullock’s. It was her own fault, in part, she thought upon reflection. She had come on too strong. And although she knew that he had a reputation with young women, she had failed to properly judge what her approach should be, and had thrown herself on him and given him the wrong impression. She realized now that he was the fatherly type and she would have been well advised to take more time in trying to create an alliance with him, and let him discover her. That is what men of his type liked, after all, wasn’t it? It would have served her better to show him a confused and troubled self that would have triggered his paternal and somewhat predatory nature. Then, he would have recognized her weakness and moved in to offer guidance and worldly advice in exchange for an intimacy that crossed the boundaries of fatherly duties.

  No, she had no real hard feelings against Bill Taylor. His only real transgression against her was that he had been kind to Mary Miles Minter, even if that was almost reason enough for hatred, in and of itself. What a pitiful judge of character he was to choose to befriend so weak and malleable a child as Mary, rather than someone who had so much to offer, like she did.

  She stole up to the window of the apartment directly at the end of the mews and peered in. An elderly woman was listening to the wireless, while her watchdog, long past his watchfulness, lay sleeping at her feet, unaware of being observed.

  She crept to the window on the facing side, mindful of the soft earth in the flowerbeds underfoot. An orange light glowed through the shade of a stained glass lamp, comprised of the wings of an enormous cast-iron praying mantis enf
olding a single Edison bulb.

  She raised her eyes carefully to just above the level of the windowsill and looked in past the blurred pattern of lace curtains. William was sitting on the sofa and next to him was Paulo, slumped forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his face buried inconsolably in his hands. She could hear their muffled words through the glass.

  “It always disturbs you so,” William said, putting his hand on Paulo's back for comfort. “Each time it distresses you and seeing you this way makes me sad.”

  “I'm all right,” Paulo's voice came muffled through his hands.

  “It's your religion, I suppose. One comes to believe in the right and wrong of things. It becomes so black and white that it's hard to find a place in your life for what you need, regardless of whether it is smiled on by the holy orders or not.”

  “It's only that it's so hard for me,” Paulo sighed, raising his head and looking into the face of the other man. “It so goes against what I am supposed to be. I am a lie. I need time to get used to that I guess.”

  “We all lie here, in this place. I have a wife, a daughter, an old life back East, but they don't exist out here. The man I was doesn't exist. Even my name is different. At last I can be who I need to be, and you can too.”

  Paulo looked pained and sad as the older man took his face into his cupped hands, drew it closer, and kissed him on the lips.

  Helen watched in disbelief as Paulo's lips caressed the older man's neck before, once again, passionately finding their way back to his mouth. She stepped backward and nearly fell, her heel sinking into the soft damp ground.

  She ran to her car, and once inside, took what seemed to be the first breath since the realization of what she had just witnessed came crashing down on her.

  She must think, decide what to do. Paulo was a fool, but he was weak, able to have his religious nature twisted into guilt and remorse, then preyed upon like a helpless animal.