“Ohhh, Mrs. Parker!” he said again.
“Are you going to ‘Ohhh, Mrs. Parker’ me all day? Pour me a drink for cry’n’outloud,” I said, biting into the popover. “I’ve had no lunch, no morning coffee, no nothing to—why are you standing there like the fool you are, holding the bottle and staring at the floor?”
“Ohhh, Mrs. Parker!”
“What is it with you?”
Leaving my comfortable perch I stepped over Woodrow, who was doing quite a number on the bone on the Persian carpet, and made a beeline to Mr. Benchley. He was standing there frozen. “If there’s no ice in the bucket, fine, I’ll take it straight up.”
“There’s no ice in the bucket, Mrs. Parker, because that proverbial bucket has been kicked.”
“What are you babbling about, you nincompoop, the bucket’s right there!” I said, pointing at the silver vessel on the cabinet. I popped the remainder of the bread into my mouth, took a tumbler from the tray, and then turned to retrieve the bottle that he held clutched against his chest.
And that’s when I saw him.
I swallowed hard, and the bread went down like a rock.
Father Michael Murphy lay prone behind the wingchair at the fireplace.
“Ohhh, Mr. Benchley.”
“My sentiment exactly.”
“I see what you mean,” I said, forgetting the glass in my hand and taking a nervous swig from the bottle. “Are you sure he’s dead?”
“He’s not catatonic!”
I peered around the chair that blocked much of the priest’s body to meet the opened-eyed stare of Father Michael.
“Ohhh, Mr. Benchley,” I whined, and Woodrow looked up from his dinner to concur with his own call of the wild.
“Let’s not start that again, Mrs. Parker.”
“Oh, the poor soul!” I could have cried then and there, but for the possibility that the murderer was still in the house. “What should we do?” I whispered.
“I don’t know,” he said, taking the bottle from my hand. He took a swig from it and handed the bottle back to me. I stood dumbfounded; my Mr. Benchley always knew what to do, and never would have taken his liquor from anything but a clean, iced glass. He worried me.
But, then, suddenly, like a hot poker shot up his—well, you know—he bolted around the chair and stooped to examine the dead priest.
Following his lead, I tripped on a candlestick that lay on the floor nearby. A bloody candlestick, I should say. I was about to pick it up to move it aside, when Mr. Benchley violently grabbed my wrist.
“Don’t do it!” he shouted, and I instantly understood. For I was about to do the one silly thing I had found so annoying in the books by popular mystery writer Ariadne Oliver! Her innocent characters were always picking up the murder weapon—guns, bloodied knives, pokers, frying pans, candlesticks—leaving prints to incriminate themselves. The poor saps were always at the wrong place at the wrong time, never had alibis, were the last to see the deceased alive, and invariably had a pair of muddy Wellingtons crammed into the back of their wardrobes. Now I realized that I was behaving like a character in an inane mystery story!
“I suppose we must call the police.”
“I suppose we must,” I whispered.
“Why are we whispering?”
“The murderer might still be—”
“Ahhh, yes; in the room.”
“In the house.”
“I see your point.”
“But, where is the housekeeper?”
“Mrs. Daniels, wasn’t it?”
“Perhaps she’s out doing her Christmas shopping or something.”
“Or she might be lying dead somewhere in the house!”
“Ohhh, Mr. Benchley!”
“Enough! We’ve already played that game!”
“You started it, and I can’t think of anything else to say.”
“We better search the house, see if she’s here.”
“Search the—are you out of your mind?”
“It’s been suggested—”
“But, what if the killer is still in the house?”
“Why are you so sure he’d risk discovery? Why would he be lurking about when he could be long gone by now?”
“The killer’s always lurking about in Ariadne Oliver mysteries!”
“Yes, that’s so, but we’re not in an Ariadne Oliver mystery, are we? We’re in a Dorothy Parker Mystery, my dear.”
“That’s true,” I said, seeing his reasoning. “But, shouldn’t we take a weapon or something before we go around dark corners and peek into closets?”
“Do you see anything around here that could be used to protect us, Woodrow Wilson notwithstanding?”
I scanned the room: A vase with chrysanthemums, the candelabrum, a picture frame, a paperweight, and a newspaper that might be useful in swatting a fly was all that was at hand. And then:
“This bottle might pack a wallop!” I announced.
“In more ways than one, I can see that.”
He took the bottle from the table, poured the remainder of its liquid into a tall glass, gulped a mouthful down—“for reinforcement,” and then we made our silent advance into the hallway, Woodrow at our heels, his toenails clicking like castanets on the marble floor. I picked him up.
The silence of the house was unnerving, so much so that when the doorbell clamored, I was so spooked I screamed out. Woodrow leaped from my arms, took up the cue and started yapping, running circles round me and Mr. Benchley, and then made an attack at the door.
As the knob turned and the door creaked open we watched with bated breath. Sunlight ushered in Alexander Woollcott.
“I thought I’d find you here!” he said accusingly, and then, looking us over, noting the bottle, gripped by its neck in Mr. Benchley’s hand and held high above his head, “You’re not going to strike me with that thing, are you?” He turned to me. “I heard you scream, Dottie. Bob didn’t strike you, did he?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Mr. Benchley. “Of course I didn’t strike her!”
“I demand to know what’s going on here!”
“Come all the way in and shut the door, for Chrissake!”
“I see you’ve finished off the bottle, all right.”
“How’d you know we were here?”
“I asked at the desk who’d called Dottie that she’d leave without a word!”
“Snoop.”
“Yes, that’s true, but after all that’s happened this past week, I was a little worried about you.”
I was about to say, “Aleck, that murderer is dead,” as I had been repeating to Aleck whenever he would fall into a funk over the burglary of his cape and hat, but now I was not sure that I believed all of us were safe from harm.
“What’s going on here? Where’s Father Michael, and why are you skulking about in the dark wielding an empty bottle?”
“We were about to search the premises.”
“The ‘premises’?” chuckled Aleck, removing his hat and loosening his red scarf. “You sound like the police investigating a crime!”
“We are not the police, but we are investigating a crime.”
Aleck turned to look at me for clarification. “Why are we whispering?”
“We were looking to see if the other murderer is still about.”
“Benchley, what other murderer? What fresh hell is this?”
“Be quiet, and stop stealing my lines, Aleck,” I said.
‘Well, Bob, want to explain what’s going on here?”
“Father Michael in the library, with a candlestick—”
“This would make a good board game,” I said.
“—and the housekeeper, Mrs. Daniels, is nowhere about.”
Aleck stood there coyly smiling, anticipating the punchline. When it didn’t come, he looked from one to the other of us and said, “And . . . ?”
“And?” I asked,
“Aleck,” Mr. Benchley reiterated, “Father Michael in the library, the murder weapon a candl
estick, and—”
“Yes, yes,” he nodded impatiently, “but I don’t get it.”
“What’s not to get?” Mr. Benchley was losing his patience.
“The joke, the game.”
“No game, Aleck,” said Mr. Benchley. “Father Michael’s lying dead in the library, the murder weapon is—”
“You serious?”
“Aaarrrggghhh!”
“Ohhhh, Mr. Benchley!” said Aleck.
“Not again!”
With all the noise we’d been making with knocks, screams, and whispers, whoever might have been hiding had surely escaped out a window by now and was long gone.
Aleck and I lined up behind Mr. Benchley, I sandwiched between the men, Woodrow taking up the rear, as we gingerly ascended the stairs, freezing at each creak of step, until we finally stood huddled on the top landing.
We were about to proceed along the hall toward the doors of the first bedroom when the front door flew open to reveal Mrs. Daniels carrying in a flood of sunlight, her door keys, and her grocery bags, and a startled expression upon seeing our shadowy figures atop the flight of stairs. She screamed bloody murder at the sight of us.
We returned to the first floor, Woodrow in the lead, and after retrieving the fallen packages, helped the housekeeper to sit on the velvet sofa in the hall. We explained our presence, our unpleasant discovery, and our relief that she was unharmed.
There was much wailing and chest beating, and when there was an opening to speak above the racket, I asked if I could call someone for her. Getting no reply, I led her into the kitchen, where I sat her down at the table. She grabbed me around the waist and cried wetly into my new lamb coat. But I didn’t mind, really, as I patted her surprisingly soft gray hair; and she smelled comfortingly like the housekeeper I remember from my childhood, a combination of soap and bleach.
I reached over to grab a towel from the sink rack to wipe her eyes, and then, as I’ve heard tell that the cure for all the maladies in the British Empire is a “cuppa,” I put on a kettle and searched for the tea. I tossed Woodrow a biscuit from a tin, took a seat across from the housekeeper, and waited for the water to boil and the men to return from their inspection of the house.
“At what time did you leave the house, Mrs. Daniels?”
“Eleven o’clock, to go see my sister in St. Claire’s Hospital. She had her gall bladder removed.”
“And was the Father alone when you left?”
“Yes, he’d just returned home from visiting Mr. Charles, the church deacon, who’s been down with fever.”
“Has anyone else come here to see him today, anyone visiting, anyone come to the door today at all?”
She shook her head, and said, “Just me and Father Timothy. He’s gone, now.”
“Timothy Morgan? Didn’t he leave weeks ago?”
“He stayed on.”
“I thought he’d just come to claim Father John’s body and was heading home.”
“No, Father Timothy sent his poor dead godfather’s body back to Tennessee, but he stayed on these weeks, and I think he would have stayed through Christmas, if Father Michael hadn’t told him a little white lie.”
“When did he do that?”
“Yesterday, it was. I don’t listen to private conversations, but they was in the hall, and Father Michael was saying that guests would be coming tonight to stay for the holidays. ’Course there was nobody coming, and I never heard the Father ever speak a lie before. But, good riddance.”
“You didn’t like Father Timothy?”
“I know them Jesuits is different sorts of priests, but he wouldn’t even assist Father Michael in the mass when our good deacon, Mr. Charles, came down with the influenza.”
“And how was Father Michael this morning? In good spirits?”
“Worried about our Mr. Charles, you know; the old man’s near ninety. And he didn’t read his paper, even; said mass at seven, hardly touched his breakfast, and he loved my eggs and kippers.”
“And . . . ?”
“Oh, and then he went to see Mr. Charles, and when he came home took the mail from the hall and went into the library like he did every morning I can remember, to read and answer his letters and make his calls. I heard him talking on the telephone when I left the house.”
“So he said and did nothing else unusual?”
She shook her head.
I measured out the Twinings from a tin, poured the boiling water into the teapot, and brought it to the table. As I fetched cream from the icebox and cups from the cabinet, Mrs. Daniels’s sobs rose in a series of crescendos.
“Mrs. Reynolds across the street,” she finally choked out.
“She was here?”
“No.”
“Shall I go fetch her?”
“No, I don’t want her here.”
“Then what about her?”
“Maybe she saw something. She’s always snooping out her window,” she said with contempt. And then, accusatorily, “Had her eye on the Father, she did.”
“You mean she was in love with him?”
“Fallen hard like the angel Lucifer, the devil! Always spying through her window. I saw her with her glasses one day.”
“Opera glasses?”
“Yeah, the little ones, like. Always coming here with cakes and muffins, after she’d see I stepped out the door. She was trying to tempt him into a life of sin!”
“Well, they say the way to a man’s heart is through—oh, never mind that. I get the picture. She had a crush on Father Michael.”
“No, Father Timothy!”
“I see what you’re saying. You think maybe she saw whoever killed Father Michael come into the house.”
“The brazen hussy!”
She fell into a crying jag after a sip of her tea.
I left to reenter the library to fetch something more medicinal to calm the hysterical woman. Trying not to look in the direction of the corpse, I went for the bottle of sherry in the cabinet before spotting an unopened bottle of Kentucky bourbon, which would not now, or in the future, be missed by the man on the floor. I grabbed the bourbon and shot back into the kitchen to spike Mrs. Daniels’s tea.
The spiked tea went down quickly, followed by another fortified cup, and then Mrs. Daniels took a sip of plain tea, too, and was more agreeable to taking a lie-down until the police arrived.
We would have to interview the brazen hussy across the street, it appeared, but shouldn’t we just leave it for the police? I was contemplating when best to call in the authorities when Mr. Benchley and Aleck entered the scullery, giving voice to my thoughts.
“No one’s about,” announced Mr. Benchley.
“Where’s the woman?” asked Aleck.
“Mrs. Daniels knows nothing much,” I said, and then told them about the conversation between Fathers Michael and Timothy, who’d obviously overstayed his welcome and was politely sent on his way with a little white lie. “Father Michael had no visitors before she left at eleven. He was in the library answering his mail and making telephone calls when she left. But there is the woman across the street who Mrs. Daniels says keeps a watchful eye on the house. Mrs. Daniels believes she had designs on Father Tim.”
“Then we should interview the woman, don’chathink?” said Mr. Benchley.
“Let’s do it then.”
“I’ll call Cousin Joe down at the precinct, let him know we have another dead body,” said Aleck.
“Oh, Aleck, I don’t want to spend another afternoon sitting around on hard oak chairs, staring at gas-chamber-green walls and criminals’ mug shots while trying to convince the knuckleheads that I didn’t kill anybody!”
“I can attest that you didn’t, my dear.”
“Thank you, Mr. Benchley, that’s very big of you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I won’t—ever again. Fred, dear, don’t you think, perhaps, that Father John’s murderer is not dead after all? I mean, are there two killers? I rather doubt it.”
“It’s an epidemic, is what it is,” said Aleck.
“That man who shot at you, what’s his name, Rowdy something, got killed in traffic, we know he stabbed Father John. But with Father Michael now murdered it means there’s more than just one killer around. Someone else is out there killing people, and until we three know why, we’re in danger, too,” said Mr. Benchley.
Something nagged at me.
“Father Michael not only wanted to tell us something about Father John’s murder,” I continued back on track, “he also wanted to show us something, before calling in the police.”
Mr. Benchley suggested that we look around the library for that ‘something’ Father Michael wanted so urgently to show us, something to do with the murder of his friend, Father John. Whatever he may have stumbled across, I doubted that we would find anything, if only because the killer probably wouldn’t have killed the priest without getting any incriminating evidence from him first.
Mr. Benchley put on his gloves, and standing in the doorway I watched as he quickly opened drawers and closet doors and file cabinets.
“Hot-diggitty-dog!” he exclaimed, pulling out a file labeled “John O’Hara” from the unlocked cabinet. He pulled out a handful of personal letters. “Return address, Father John’s church in Tennessee. These we read tonight, might be something in these.”
My eyes to the floor and away from the corpse, I registered something out of place. Either the floor was uneven and the priest had wedged a piece of cardboard under a leg of his desk, or something had missed the wastebasket and had not been retrieved by the scrupulously neat Mrs. Daniels. While Aleck stood at the desk, placing the telephone call to his Cousin Joe, I got down on hands and knees and pushed between Aleck’s legs to further inspect my discovery.
Aleck squealed, “I won’t even let my tailor do that!—Oh, not you, Joe, although I wouldn’t let you do it either. I was talking to—Oh, all right, we won’t touch anything . . . . No, I’m calling from the telephone in the library. Yes, a few feet from the body. Gloves? No, I’m not wearing any—oh! fingerprints? Well, I’m wiping mine off with my kerchief as we speak, and now the desk and—Why are you yelling at me? I’m sorry, would you repeat that? Dottie, dearest, stop crawling around, you’re making me nervous . . . . What, Joe? Damn! Hold the line! I just knocked over the inkwell! Bob, would you hand me something for the spill . . . . Yes, Bob Benchley’s here, too. He found the body. Yes, all right, Dottie, you found him, too—What? Oh, Bob’s just looking through some files. No! But he has his gloves on. All right, we won’t touch anything. All right, I’ll tell them. Joe? Joe? Operator?”
[Dorothy Parker 02] - Chasing the Devil Page 13