[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong

by Agata Stanford

She changed the subject: “You are successful in your profession.”

  “I am a famous writer.”

  I let out a Bronx cheer.

  She ignored my response and plowed on: “And you are a moving-picture star.”

  “Oh, no, not the pictures!” He actually giggled. “I’ve flitted around on the Stage for a season or two, but not in the pictures.”

  “That will come . . . .”

  Again, the silly laugh! “What an idea! Have I a chance of replacing John Gilbert in Garbo’s affections, do you think?”

  I snorted.

  “No,” said Miss Ada.

  “You’re right. I’m too much the funny man. A successor to Chaplin?”

  “More like Buster Keaton’s!” I corrected.

  “You’re not taking me seriously,” chided Miss Ada.

  “Well, the truth is, what you say is just so unbelievable!”

  “Imagine that big mug plastered ten feet high and all twenty feet long of it!” I said from the sidelines.

  “Now, Mrs. Parker, that’s not nice. Why, I’ll have you know, the other day a woman said that I have the profile of Barrymore.”

  “Oh, yeah? How much did you pay her to say that?”

  “I’ll have you know, she wasn’t the only one to say it.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. Everyone I’ve paid has said it.”

  In a huff Miss Ada scooped up the cards from the table.

  “Is that it? Don’t you see anything else?”

  “I see a lot, Mr. Benchley,” she said with a twisted little smile. “You will be as oblique on the movie screen as you are in life.”

  “Touché, Miss Ada!” I said. “Isn’t she swell, Mr. Benchley? Can you read my cards, now?”

  “Another time, Mrs. Parker,” she said, rising from her chair, a tiny queen, quitting court. “Your cards will be very similar to Mr. Benchley’s.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant by that; how could she know my cards were the same when I’d not yet touched them? I didn’t have the opportunity to ask her to clarify, because Mr. Benchley leaped in with, “Mr. Franken, whom we met when we arrived, is a client of yours, I see.”

  Miss Ada said nothing at the statement, only stared blankly at Mr. Benchley.

  “We met him last night, you see, at the home of Madame Olenska, the trance medium.”

  Still, she remained silent. There was no love lost between her and Franken, and I didn’t need a clairvoyant to tell me that, only the look on her face when she came to greet us and found him still lurking around her apartment. And when he saw her, he practically flew out the door. But, now, half an hour later, no emotion was betrayed on her face.

  Mr. Benchley persisted: “And Madame Olenska was found this morning, dead, shot in her bed by her assistant, Caroline.”

  I wanted to bang my forehead against the mantle.

  “I’ve seen the morning papers, Mr. Benchley, and you’ve twisted things around. I saw no mention that the assistant murdered Annabelle.”

  “Thank you!” I said, fed up with my friend’s ubiquitous obliquity.

  “What for?” she asked.

  “For everything—for putting things straight and in the proper order.”

  “So you knew the woman well?” asked Mr. Benchley.

  “Knew her well?” she replied with annoyance in her tone.

  “Oh, forgive me, I misunderstood. You called her ‘Annabelle,’ so I thought perhaps you were on a first-name basis.”

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Parker, Mr. Benchley,” she said, shaking our hands.

  “Oh, Miss Ada, it’s been delightful to meet you,” I said. “You’ve been a good sport. We’d love if you’d join us, that is, all of us, my friends and me and Mr. Benchley, for luncheon at the Algonquin. Can you make it this afternoon?”

  “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Parker.”

  “Call me ‘Dorothy.’”

  “Dorothy. I have readings all afternoon.

  “We’re there most days at one.”

  Woodrow reluctantly rose from his bed of slumbering Siamese cats to lead the way out of the apartment.

  We were getting out of the elevator when Mr. Benchley said: “Why, do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “Why was the Madame murdered?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Motive . . .”

  “How should I know? Never met the woman before last night. Perhaps she intuited something that someone didn’t want her to . . . intuit,” I said.

  “Eureka, Mrs. Parker!”

  “Oh, did I say something insightful?”

  “Probably not. But it brings to mind the idea that she may have known something about one of her ‘clients,’ and the knowing cost her her life.”

  “What could she possibly know about anyone? The woman was obviously a fake,” I said. “Oh, I’m sorry she was murdered, but really, all that green smoke and flying tankards—why, she probably defrauded one mark too many!”

  He stopped dead-still in our walk through the courtyard, and I turned to inquire, “What’s going on in that tiny little brain of yours? I can hear wheels turning.”

  He was staring at something over my shoulder. And then a smile brightened his face: “Why, if it isn’t Lord Whimsy!”

  “What fresh hell—” I turned to look at the man stepping out of a taxi. “Lord Wildly, idiot!”

  “They’re all out this morning. Who’s that getting out of the cab with him?”

  Lord Wildly offered his hand to a woman exiting the taxi.

  “It looks like Betty Booth.”

  “Does her husband know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Maybe, if we hang around here long enough, all of last night’s séance party will appear. They’re coming this way,” said Mr. Benchley, grabbing my arm and yanking me and Woodrow back toward the elevator, which was still at ground level, its matron ever-ready for a ride. As the doors closed on us we watched as Lord and lady walked to the concierge’s office. “Fourth floor, please. I forgot my gloves.”

  Upon leaving the elevator, Mr. Benchley picked up Woodrow and started guiding me around the corner toward Miss Ada’s door. He pulled me to an abrupt halt, and, glimpsing a figure coming into view on the staircase, pressed his back against the wall. I peeked around the curving wall in time to see the figure arrive on the landing—a woman dressed in an old-fashioned ankle-length moss-green cape. I couldn’t see her face, only a puff of dark hair escaping a large, wide-brimmed green hat made of the same fabric as the cape. A long white silk scarf fluttered as she walked down the hallway. She entered a door further down the hall from Miss Ada’s apartment.

  “The coast is clear.”

  “Hiding from the ladies, now, are you?”

  “Well, I have no desire to hide from the pretty ones.”

  “What are we doing?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You didn’t forget your gloves, dolt; they’re sticking out of your pocket.”

  “Wouldn’t you know?”

  “Why are we whispering? There’s no one around to hear us.”

  “There will be in a minute,” he said, as we heard the cranks and creaks of the elevator rising toward our floor. “Bet you anything Whimsy and his girlfriend are on their way up here to visit our Miss Ada.”

  “And you want to snoop on them, that it?”

  “You catch on fast.”

  “Well, it does seem odd that we keep running into so many friends from last night’s soirée. Does it appear to you that the door to Miss Ada’s apartment is ajar?”

  “So it appears.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for? We’ll not hear a thing from out here.”

  “Dottie, wait!” he said, as I made for the door.

  Only seconds after we entered, shutting the door behind us, the doorbell rang, making us both jump and Woodrow yelp. Soft footsteps from behind the red curtains padded in our direction. There was nowhere to go—out the door and we’d run smack int
o the visitors; staying put, Miss Ada would catch us. The only recourse was to pop into the huge closet cabinetry that lined the wall. And so we did—with no time to spare—trying to close the big mahogany panel while pressing in among the woolen coats and furs, stumbling on overshoes and being knocked in the head by hangers and hooks, just moments before Miss Ada arrived to answer the door.

  We froze when bejeweled fingers appeared on the closet door. It was still slightly ajar. We sighed with relief when she closed it securely.

  Muffled noises—the front door opened—then muted, mumbled greetings, and then, silence. They’d left the foyer.

  And now we would get out of the closet.

  “Mr. Benchley!” I squeaked when I felt a pinch on my derriere.

  “Shush!”

  Startled, I said, “You pinched me, you Italian maniac!”

  “Mrs. Parker, you know very well that I am not an Italian, although I—”

  I brushed my sore behind, and then my fingers found the culprit, the broken spoke of an old umbrella. “It’s a junk shop in here.”

  “Now, now; I’ve seen inside your closet, my dear.”

  I struggled to disengage a hanger caught in my hatband, my coat button dragging an archery bow that slapped my neck repeatedly. Then I lost my precarious balance, taking with me scarves, cloaks, and feather boas to the floor. The racket was enough for anyone in the building to suspect a structural collapse and come running. No one did.

  Mr. Benchley, Woodrow still in his arms, started laughing, and lent me a leg to grip on as I tried to find my shoe and then my feet.

  His chuckling ended abruptly, as he began flailing around in the dark, knocking me repeatedly on the head.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” I asked my tormentor, who kept thrashing his free arm around over his head. Woodrow struggled out of Mr. Benchley’s crushing cradle, and after a whimper, was lost somewhere in a tangle of clothing.

  “Spiders!” he said.

  “So why take it out on me?”

  “Dangling from my hat—trying to nip my nose.”

  I reached up and pulled the light cord; light flooded over the mess we’d made.

  “Not a spider.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “And for me, too,” I shouted, trying to push my hat back off my nose. “Let’s get the hell out of this torture chamber.”

  And that’s when we both realized we faced a problem bigger than spiders and hangers and umbrella spokes.

  No doorknob.

  “Awwww shit!”

  “My sentiments exactly, Mrs. Parker.”

  “Who doesn’t put a doorknob inside a closet?”

  “A good way to keep the monsters from getting out at night, I suppose.”

  “Have you gone completely out of your mind?”

  “Not yet, but soon.”

  “We have to get out of the closet!”

  “When Coward and Lunt do.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Hey, give me a light, would you?” I said, sinking down to the floor and fishing in my purse for my cigarette case.

  “Do you wish to be rendered crisply barbequed?”

  “Right, no ashtray.”

  I started knocking on the door.

  “And what will you say when Miss Ada answers the door and finds us going through her personal things?”

  “I don’t give a sh—”

  “Shush, we have to use our wits.”

  “My wits, you mean; you don’t have any.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then what’s this?”

  “A penknife.”

  “Now watch this,” he said, as he slipped the thin blade of his army knife between the door and the jam and pressed down along the metal catch. The door clicked open.

  Mr. Benchley and his army knife regularly got us into (and out of) all the best addresses. “If you should someday choose a life of crime, you’ve already proven yourself an excellent cracksman.”

  “May I expect your letter of reference?”

  I turned to look for Woodrow and found him curled up on a pile of coats, a Siamese cat lying over his head. He looked up forlornly at me with wide-eyed tolerance, not about to disturb the feline. I picked up the cat, which hung limply on my arm, freed Woodrow, and pulled the light cord again. No use running up the electric bill.

  The doorbell rang, and we retreated once again into the closet, pulling in with us streamers of scarves and gloves and hats that had been strewn about in our effort to get out.

  The doorbell kept ringing. No one appeared interested in answering the call, and we wondered, Why not?

  “I’ll bet Miss Ada left the apartment with Lord Wildly and Betty. We did hear the door close,” I speculated aloud.

  “That’s why no one came to see what was amiss when you reorganized the closet.”

  Mr. Benchley exited and peeked through the front-door peephole.

  “It’s Franken, come back.”

  The doorknob turned, and as Mr. Benchley moved swiftly to the space between the door and the wall, I closed myself back into the closet.

  “Miss Ada,” called out Franken several times, and then he hurtled through the red-curtained archway and into the depths of the apartment. I came out of the closet and there was Mr. Benchley plastered against the wall where he’d taken refuge.

  “Oh, where you are?” Franken called out loudly from within the apartment.

  “Good thing he didn’t turn and see me when he shut the door,” said Mr. B.

  “I’ve had enough of all this sneaking around, hiding in closets with you.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Parker, your reputation is at stake.”

  “It’s not my reputation I’m worried about; I ruined that myself, long ago, hobnobbing with the wrong crowd.”

  Siegfried Franken’s voiced was raised, and an uncharacteristically shrill, childlike whine sounded. We strained to hear what he was yelling about, but neither of us understood his rant. He was speaking in a foreign language. Glass shattered; something had fallen.

  Footfalls sent us back into our new home, and after a few seconds we heard the front door slam.

  I pulled the light cord and looked around our new accommodations.

  “A little paint, a little paper, new curtains . . .”

  Woodrow looked up at me. He’d made a new bed on a velvet cloak adorned with appliqués of crescent moons and a five-pointed star.

  “Come on,” said Mr. Benchley, stepping out into the foyer. “Let’s pretend we’ve just arrived back, and I’m looking for my gloves.” He stepped out the front door and rang the bell.

  No answer.

  We reentered, and Mr. Benchley called out, “Knock-knock! Anybody home?”

  No reply.

  He led the way in through the curtains, calling out Miss Ada’s name, past the reception room and into the drawing room, continuing to call out to the tarot reader.

  I saw her first; she was lying on the floor behind the davenport and between two palm trees. A lamp had fallen from a side table, and two Siamese cats were making beds in her skirts. The third cat, our closet companion, joined her siblings and started batting at the charms of the bracelet on Miss Ada’s arm, which was thrown out from her side in a gesture of abandon. The lady’s eyes, huge green pools, were wide open with frozen surprise.

  Miss Ada Leopold was quite dead.

  Miss Ada Leopold looked as young today as she did in this photograph taken a couple of years before the War.

  The Dakota Apartments in winter— As a little girl I could see the Gothic building from the Central Park Lake.

  The Dakota Apartments as seen from Central Park West

  Chapter Three

  “You know, Mr. Benchley, this whole situation does not bode well for us.” I knocked back the tumbler of scotch that he had poured for me after rooting out, like a boar would a fine patch of truffles, the Haig & Haig from a cabinet in the corner.

  I was sitting on the sofa, behind which la
y the startled-faced corpse of Miss Ada. Cats were climbing all over me. One was pawing rhythmically at my lap, sensing my nervousness, I suppose; another was climbing the back of the sofa, knocking my head repeatedly; and the third demon was threatening my hose as it batted at the bow on my shoe. I stood suddenly, throwing them off, except the one on my lap that clung for a time with claws hooked into the fabric of my skirt.

  Mr. Benchley had just hung up the telephone.

  “Joe is sending over the murder squad; we’re to ‘stay put and not touch anything,’ he said.”

  The Joe to whom Mr. Benchley was referring is Joe Woollcott, Aleck’s cousin, desk sergeant at the police precinct, and from the less “artistic” side of the Woollcott family. Joe’s the man we call whenever we stumble over dead bodies, or so it has come to pass.

  There was a blood-curdling scream, and there are such screams, because I felt the blood in my veins congealing. The glass flew out of my hand; a feline frenzy sent cats leaping and scattering under the furniture. I turned to look behind me, toward pocket doors that opened from parts unknown of the apartment.

  A frightful-looking woman, her mouth opened so wide I could see her tonsils quivering, sucked in a great breath before releasing another mind-numbing blast. Her eyes, cheeks, and brows, contorted below frizzy hair, looked electrified from shock. Her arms were thrown out from her sides, her legs, palms, and fingers spread wide—reminiscent of Jolson belting out Mammy—as she stood in the middle of the room. She wore a maid’s uniform, and looked from the body at her feet, to us, and back again, repeating the gesture several times before bolting wildly from the room, arms flailing as in an effort to take wing, screaming, “Murder!”

  “We should go after her! She thinks we killed Miss Ada!”

  “She’ll get over it,” said Mr. Benchley dropping down into a red plush chair. “Anyway, she looks too dangerous to tackle. Did I ever tell you about my escapades on the Harvard football team?”

  “Awww, hell. Now we have to deal with the police! Shit-shit-shit! Questions-questions-questions!”

  “It’ll be over in no time.”

  I looked around the room, vainly searching for a place to start snooping. “Just you wait until they finger us as suspects in two murders!”