[Dorothy Parker 01] - The Broadway Murders

by Agata Stanford

  Grand Central Terminal, with its great stone eagles, their wings spanning the exterior frieze, sat atop the sweeping gesture that was Park Avenue at 42nd Street. As I approached the building from its northwest side along Vanderbilt Avenue I passed the Biltmore Hotel. I was immediately brought back to the evening Mr. Benchley and I “visited” Lucille Montaine’s apartment, and the impression on notepaper we’d found on which had been scribbled “Biltmore 11:30.”

  By my wristwatch, I was early to meet the train, so I stopped short to look into a shop window, much to the displeasure of a gentleman walking close to my heels. He barely missed crashing into me for the gaining tide of pedestrians. He double-stepped to avoid impact, tripped, and that sent his bowler flying into the air. I retrieved the hat, apologized, and handed it back to him. “My hat’s off to you, Madame,” he said, his initial annoyance melting into a flirty, dimpled smile, before he bobbed onward in the sea of floating black hats.

  As I crossed the street through strings of motorcars, one of those new Chrysler 6 automobiles zipped round me like a shiny bright bluebird. Entering the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel, I looked at the bronze clock, the clock under which lovers meet.

  That was it! Lucille was meeting her lover! But who was he? Could he have been a resident of the hotel? Did he work close by? Or was it simply the ordinary meeting place? Perhaps, though, there was nothing clandestine about the meeting. Perhaps she was just meeting a girlfriend for lunch or shopping.

  It was all such a guessing game! But it would have been unusual for an attractive woman like Lucille not to have had a lover. Why hadn’t we even considered her death as an act of vengeful passion by a lover? It didn’t have to tie in with Reginald’s murder at all. If it did, though, perhaps it was her lover who’d done them both in. I vowed to pursue the identity of such a man, but for now, I had to meet a train.

  Mrs. McEnerny said that she would be wearing a gray herringbone traveling suit and a distinguishing gray hat with feather, so as the hoard of passengers poured off the train and walked up the ramp with porters in tow, it was anyone’s guess as to which of fifty-odd women, dressed in gray suits and topped with feathered caps, was my girl. I’d just have to keep my ground until she approached me. And she did.

  “Oh, Mrs. Parker,” said Brenda McEnerny, “you’ve found me.”

  If she wished to see it that way, I’d not tell her differently.

  The woman who stood before me was a head taller than I and looked not too many years older than her daughter. Some women are like that; they retain a youthful look well into old age. Her auburn hair showed no gray, and the skin around her eyes was tight, not bagged. I refrained from asking her age.

  “I recognized you from your photographs, Mrs. Parker.”

  “Please call me ‘Dorothy.’ ”

  “Brenda.”

  “Yes, then, Brenda,” I said shaking her hand. “I am so sorry about Marion. I can’t know what you’ve been going through.” I picked up one of the two small valises she had set on the floor, and turned to lead the way toward the street.

  The Beaux Arts interior of Grand Central occupies a vast space, its vaulted ceiling one-hundred and twenty-five feet high, and its marble floors gleaming, in spite of the constant foot traffic. One cannot help but look up at the magnificent ceiling, and is never disappointed by the celestial mural painted in gold leaf over cerulean blue depicting constellations that are lit with electric light bulbs. The grand staircase looms to the left of the main entrance, and was modeled after the one in the Paris Opera House. Melon-shaped, gold chandeliers light the hall, and sixty-foot-tall windows flank each end, making one feel quite tiny under the great expansive dome. I turned to glimpse the wonder of it all in Brenda McEnerny’s face. I suggested three things for her to remember during her visit to the city: First, if she wished a few moments to look at the sights around her, it was best to stand still and let the crowds flow around her while holding tightly onto her purse, and second, when crossing the streets at the corners, she should move with the crowd and never make direct eye contact with the drivers wishing to turn into her path. Eye-to-eye gives a driver license to cut you off. And third, if lost, get into a cab and tell the driver to take you to Mrs. Parker’s at the Algonquin. In the meantime, she needed to stick close to me.

  Once out the doors, she stopped dead to take in the marvel that was Midtown Manhattan. She’d applied her lesson well, but I’d failed to inform her to let me know when she intended to gawk, so that I wouldn’t leave her trailing behind a block or more. I raised my free hand, and a cab pulled to the curb.

  I asked Brenda if she’d like to stop for some refreshment before we headed up to Marion’s apartment, but she said she was anxious to go there right away. I gave the driver the address and we were off on a short tour of Manhattan.

  Brenda was silent throughout the ride, her eyes drinking in the sights outside the window. At one point, while stopped in a knot of traffic, she looked over at me and smiled. “I suspect Marion loved the excitement. It sure looks like an exciting place.” It was said wistfully, and I could see the mist forming over her eyes.

  “It can be very exciting, yes.”

  “And sometimes dangerous, too.”

  “Yes.”

  I felt an acute rush of sadness for this woman who emanated the pain of loss long before the news of Marion’s death had reached her. And not only loss; there was something else about her that showed through her stoic smile. I recognized it as a longing for something that she knew she could never come to possess. Such resignation in her face! Such a bleeding vulnerability! Loss and longing together can be unbearable, can turn your spirit into iron after a while. She was not iron, yet, but I could see by the way her mouth worked and her shoulders slumped that too much more pain would turn this sweet soul bitter.

  I wanted to hug her to me, or pat her hand at least, to reassure her that it would all turn out all right, but I knew that was a lie; to tell her such things, however heartfelt in the moment, would only serve me, not her. To make me feel better for not really caring too much or thinking too much or mourning at all the death of her daughter, a rich, married man’s mistress, a young woman not so very unlike me. I feared if I made a gesture, I’d only embarrass her. I feared, too, that I might make a bit of a scene, complete with tears—tears shed that would not really be shed for the loss of Marion, but for my own pathetic circumstances. Oh, miserable, selfish creature that I am! I pretended to look out of the window beyond her, and said nonsensically, “Marion lived in a very lovely residential hotel. There it is now.”

  Brenda offered to pay for the cab, but I objected and took care of the driver, and then, valises in care of the doorman, who handed her keys to the apartment, we rode the elevator up to the fourth floor. I wondered if the elevator boy was the very same one that FPA had spoken with. Arrived at the door, Brenda unlocked it and turned the knob.

  As if she were gripped by a strangling hand, a gasp escaped her throat.

  The living room, still bright in the westering autumn light, had been ransacked, and I doubted it had been the police who’d conducted this search. I knew immediately what the thief had been after.

  Brenda walked slowly into the bedroom. More of the same.

  But there was violence, here, for items were not simply strewn about haphazardly, but ripped and smashed and thrown across the room. A murderer did this, someone with hatred in his heart, not the police.

  “You’re coming with me,” I said simply, but firmly, touching her arm. I couldn’t in all conscience let Brenda remain in the apartment alone that night. “You won’t stay here. You’ll be my guest in a room at the Algonquin, where I live.”

  She didn’t argue with me; the state of the apartment had so confused and distressed her. But, the predominating emotion of the moment was fear. By the very violence with which someone had torn up her daughter’s belongings, I could see that she suddenly knew that her daughter’s death had not been an accident.

  I became so incense
d that I wanted to scream, to spew out a string of obscenities, but I couldn’t, because I knew it would only make it worse for her. She didn’t say a word; she didn’t cry or swear. The only indication of turmoil was the blank, paling, wide-eyed stare as she took in the room. I thought she may have gone into shock.

  Before we left the bedroom, Brenda picked up from the floor a little book. The pocket volume of Shakespeare’s As You Like It had been Brenda’s gift to Marion, years back when she starred in the play in her high school’s production, she said. The inscription was personal, and I did not ask to read it. Her expression looked strained, tears welled in her eyes, and then she turned in a rush to bolt toward the bathroom. I heard the retching, and then the sound of water running in the sink.

  As I waited for Brenda to collect herself, I leaned against the bedroom door glumly surveying the miserable state of the apartment. That’s when I glanced across at the fireplace, and my sights rested on the charred-edged remains of newsprint atop a stack of unburned logs: papers not just thrown in the trash, but meant to burn to ash. But whoever it was who’d decided to burn the newspaper, Marion herself perhaps, had not bothered to see it burned completely through. The logs beneath were barely scorched. I gingerly lifted the brittle papers—news clippings!—off the logs, and placed them flatly between the pages of a copy of Vanity Fair magazine I picked up from the floor.

  Within an hour we were home and Frank Case settled Brenda into a pleasant room two doors from mine. I suggested dinner in the Oak Room, but Brenda declined, saying she was tired and wanted to rest, as tomorrow she had many things to attend to, the worst of which was making arrangements to take her daughter’s body home.

  Woodrow Wilson greeted me at my door, and then ran to sit beside Mr. Benchley, napping on the sofa. He opened his eyes, sat up, stretched, and adjusted his tie.

  “Don’t you have a bed?” I asked.

  “’Cross the street.”

  “How inconvenient.”

  “Yes.” He patted an attentive Woodrow Wilson on the head, and proceeded to put on and then tie his shoes. “And dreary.”

  “You could get some furniture.”

  “It would be wasteful. I’m rarely there,” he said, standing and waiting for me to say something.

  “Drink?” I said.

  “Thought you’d never ask. There’s soda and ice, there. Oh, and I took Woodrow Wilson for a spin around the block.”

  I thanked him. “I’ve news.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Ladies first.”

  “Aleck’s not here.”

  “Pearls before swine.”

  “Which am I?”

  “I meant that I’ll go first,” I said, ending the stalemate.

  When I had finished telling him about Brenda McEnerny’s arrival and the destruction of Marion’s apartment, Mr. Benchley smiled and announced, “Ralph Chittenham was indeed in Egypt back in twenty-two; specifically, he visited the Deir el-Bahri dig. It was not an unusual thing to do, for a scholar to be interested in seeing the progress that was being made, even though he wasn’t representing the museum in any official capacity. His years at the British Museum and at the Met yielded him many friends in the field of archeology.”

  “But now we’ve linked him to the Golden Selket!”

  “That’s just it. There is no link, not really. I tried to speak with Dr. Fayed, whom we spied from behind our favorite drapery panel the other day, but he was not available.”

  I took his glass, and as I refilled it he explained.

  “There is a problem, you see: Several people have said that they had seen a Selket statue in the burial chamber they were excavating. But it was never catalogued.”

  “Are you saying that the chamber may have been looted after it had been opened, and before all the treasure was catalogued?”

  “There’s just no firm evidence either way,” he said. “But, I did get a chance to stop in and browse through one of the galleries where artifacts from that Deir el-Bahri site were on display, and while I was there, wouldn’tchaknow, the curator happened to be working on an installation of sarcophagi in the adjoining room, and I got to speak with him for a couple of minutes.

  “He was at the site when Ralph, who said he was traveling through, agreed to pitch in when several native diggers refused to work because of the rumor of a mummy’s curse, or some such nonsense, that was supposedly the reason several members of the company fell seriously ill. This curator and Ralph were working to free the entrance stones leading into what was believed to be a burial chamber. When it appeared that enough progress had been made to open the chamber, our curator sent word to fetch the director.”

  “So, he left Ralph alone with an opened tomb holding scads of golden icons?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t get it, then.”

  “The entrance was guarded until the director’s arrival. The director arrived, but Ralph had left by that time. Ralph had been suffering from stomach pain for some time, and it appears that his appendix chose that day to rupture. This coincidence sent many more native workers to flee the dig. Ralph was taken to a hospital and was still in surgery when the chamber was finally opened.”

  “Did he ever have access to the chamber?”

  “That’s just it, he didn’t. He was never through the entrance. Not that first afternoon, nor any day afterward. He was not part of any team that did the cataloging or photographing of the artifacts. So if we might have been secretly harboring suspicions that he stole that statue, there is no evidence that he did, or that such a statue was ever in that tomb.”

  “Wait a minute! Is there or is there not such a thing as a Golden Selket?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. The goddess Selket was a female goddess who donned a huge scorpion on her head, reminiscent of some rather Victorian, avian monstrosities that I recall my aunt wearing during my youth . . .”

  “Goddess of what, exactly?”

  “She protected the Great Queen Isis, wife of King Horus of the afterworld —of whom the pharaohs were incarnate—from insect bites, scorpions in particular, and a statue representing her would stand guard over the dead in a tomb. And although it was very likely that there was such a figure entombed at Deir el-Bahri, only a few witnesses claim to have actually seen it.”

  “We need to talk with Chitty.”

  “I think we do. But, I think, too, that we should let the police know what we suspect.”

  “What exactly do we suspect?”

  “That perhaps Ralph, ruptured appendix notwithstanding, may have aided in the theft of an Egyptian treasure.”

  I considered his last statement as I fed Woodrow Wilson a biscuit. I sat down next to Mr. Benchley on the sofa, slipped out of my shoes, and put my stocking feet on his lap. Mr. Benchley gave excellent foot massages.

  I said, “And what else do we suspect? Do we think Ralph killed Reginald Pierce, Lucille Montaine, and Marion Fields to get his hands on a statue that we’re unsure ever existed? Or do we suspect that he was the dealer who sold the Golden Selket to Reginald in the first place?”

  “I think we simply inform the police that we have reason to believe that Ralph Chittenham may have information leading to the arrest of the murderer, and that they may consider checking him out, alibi and all.”

  “But they have Gerald Saches. To them it’s a closed case.” I closed my eyes and said, “Bless you, dear Fred, my arches were killing me.”

  “At your service, Madame,” said Mr. Benchley, kneading the underside of my right foot with his able fingers. “Did you report the ransacking at Marion’s apartment?”

  “No. The police would say burglars hit it after they saw her obit in the papers.”

  “Then, let’s just ring up Joe Woollcott and let him know we’re going to pay a visit to Ralph later tonight, just in case we wind up dead and they want to know who done it.”

  “That’s encouraging. I’ll make the call. Hand over the telephone, please.”

  He did, and I asked the hotel
operator to connect me to the 20th Precinct. As I held the line I asked, “Where’s Aleck tonight?”

  “With Frank. Dinner at Jane’s and Ross’s.”

  “Did they track down Myrtle?”

  “Dunno. But Jane rang up while you were out, and I picked up. She said, if you weren’t busy she’d like for you to join them for dinner, and since I’d picked up, she invited me, too. Eight o’clock.”

  “You’d make a very excellent houseboy, now, wouldn’t you? Answering telephones, arranging dinners, napping on the sofa while the mistress of the house is out . . .”

  “Masseur and dog walker, confidant and dinner escort. Should my literary career stall, I may take it up. But I don’t come cheap.”

  I reclaimed my foot, and went into the bedroom to change into a modest dinner dress. An hour later we were in a taxi heading for numbers 412 & 414 West 46th Street.

  Last year, my close friend, Jane Grant, and her husband Harold Ross, a founding Round Tabler, bought two brownstone houses in Hell’s Kitchen, just west of Broadway. The idea had been to break through the common wall attaching the houses to create one large house. It proved to be a bit too big for the couple, who had no children, and had no plans for any, and Ross’s big idea of starting his magazine and using some of the space for the publication’s offices had not yet germinated.

  Aleck, who had a hand in the lives of all his friends, suggested renting out apartments on the third floor. Each of two more apartments on the second floor would be occupied by himself, and another friend, Hawley Truax. The two men would buy into the venture.

  On the first floor were rooms for Jane and Ross, along with a kitchen and dining room. It was in this dining room that plans were made for Ross’s new magazine, The New Yorker. The space doubled as a general gathering place for the home’s residents, and on Saturday nights the table was cleared for cards, cash, cigars, and cocktails, when the members of the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club met for poker.