[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong

by Agata Stanford

  “I never believed Johnny killed himself. I think he was probably shot when the gun fired while we were struggling, but I never thought he’d been hit. It was dark, and I pushed him aside and ran. I watched him walk back to his car, and then I don’t know what happened. Maybe he disengaged the brake and instead of putting the gear in reverse, passed out or something, accelerated forward. He was very drunk. Maybe he passed out. I don’t know.”

  “And the gun?” I asked, “Did they find the gun?”

  “Yes. It was in the car when they pulled it out of the river.”

  “So your story about Johnny pulling a gun on you, and the struggle, and you leaving, believing he hadn’t been shot—”

  “Who’d believe any of it?”

  “I’d like to know who the witness is that Madame Olenska used as leverage for blackmail,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “I can’t possibly imagine. I don’t recall any cars driving by, and it wasn’t the kind of place anyone would be walking around at that time of night. No watchman about . . . . I wished there had been someone who had seen what happened. That way we’d know what really happened to Johnny after I ran away, and I’d be free of suspicion.”

  “So you didn’t believe Madame when she said there was a witness. But, somehow, Madame O knew you were there,” I said, “or suspected as much. And there was nothing in the papers about Johnny’s car being fished out of the river? Or gunshots being fired?”

  “It did hit the papers, yes, that a man was found dead in his car that had careened into the river. No mention that he had been shot. The coroner determined he died from drowning. There was only a small mention about the inquest and the findings. I suppose it wasn’t newsworthy. Just another drunken-suicide-ran-his-car-off-the-road sort of thing. The police never believed the landlady. They chalked it up to the imaginings of a busybody. Johnny’s melancholy was well known, and he’d begun drinking heavily again.”

  I said, “Bette didn’t think he’d fallen off the wagon.”

  “Bette never wants to believe that people don’t keep their promises, or that they are anything but truthful.”

  “But, she must have seen him—” I wanted to say “drunk,” because it’s a hard thing to hide from a spouse. Instead, I proceeded with, “Do you think Madame O knew the landlady?”

  “Mrs. Harris? Anything is possible; rumors travel easily to the ears of strangers, and are fodder for blackmail. But the coincidence of it! We met Madame and Caroline in Paris. Strangely, we were booked on the same ship home. That she should even know a woman like Mrs. Harris is too much of a coincidence—I find it hard to believe.”

  “Could the details of Johnny’s death have been mentioned to Madame in passing?”

  “I doubt that. Bette doesn’t ever talk about what happened to anyone.”

  I wanted to know something more important: “But the police must have asked you for your alibi that night, based on the landlady’s accusation.”

  “I was at Bette’s and Johnny’s apartment.”

  “Not all the time. The landlady saw you—what?—an hour after you left him?”

  “Bette gave me an alibi.”

  “But why do that?” I asked.

  “But the landlady—” said Mr. Benchley.

  “Yes, Bette said she’d invited me to dinner, and that Johnny had never returned home at seven o’clock as he’d promised to do. By ten, she was worried something had happened to him and sent me out to look for him. The landlady saw me only because I went to report to Bette that I’d not found him. I know it seems contrived, but she wanted to protect me, and it worked. She knew I could never have harmed Johnny.”

  “Bette knew the truth of what occurred at the pier?”

  “Yes. I had to tell her.”

  “And of course when you heard us speaking in the hotel room she didn’t risk telling me the truth about what happened the night Johnny died.”

  “Had Johnny confronted her about an infidelity before he accused you?” asked Mr. Benchley.

  “She said he never mentioned a thing.”

  Aleck put in his two cents’ worth of commentary: “Lies beget more lies . . .”

  Benny looked at him, misery personified. “You’re right, of course. But, at the time, the alibi seemed the wise thing to do, considering we were innocent of any wrongdoing and the whole truth would have condemned me. As a matter of fact, about what she told you, Mrs. Parker, about our relationship at that time? When I returned to the States I didn’t know that Bette still had feelings for me after all those years. She’d married Johnny. I had moved on, and I thought she had, too. After the War, well, you know, everything—the way we used to be, how we did things, felt about things—changed. We weren’t kids anymore. Our romance was part of our youth, you see, a world lost to the past . . . . When I came home, I was still mourning my wife’s death. It surprised me when Bette told you that she had always been in love with me.”

  “You were married?”

  “Yes. Bette omitted that, didn’t she? She told you a little, but not all, about the Frenchwoman who rescued me. Lorette was her name, and she used to joke that I parachuted into her fields to rescue her. I suppose Bette feels that she is my wife, now, and that Lorette was only a brief interlude at a desperate time in my life. I let her believe that. I never spoke much to her about Lorette. Johnny knew. He knew what she meant to me. Don’t misunderstand; I love Bette, I really do, but I know it isn’t wise to speak about a grand passion to your new wife. It’s hard for a living, breathing woman to compete against a cherished ghost. You see, Lorette died giving birth to our son. The child died, too. That’s the real reason why I came back to the States.”

  We all sat silently for a few moments at this revelation. Bette had omitted so many facts when we’d talked the other night. But, really, she had no obligation or reason to reveal every detail of her personal life to me. She had the right to maintain some degree of privacy. I sensed that she’d been grappling with feelings of having been Benny’s second choice all along. There is no joy in that.

  “The other night, at the séance,” I said, “why didn’t you just make the payoff to Madame O there and then? Why’d you have to return later in the night?”

  “First, let me tell you that after Madame Olenska made her demands and told me to bring Bette to the séance, she telephoned Bette to say she had a vision that I was in trouble, insisting we come to the séance. I realized that her call to Bette was insurance that I would come through with the cash. I figured she conjured up Johnny’s ghost to scare Bette into wondering if maybe I had murdered him, and whether everything I’d told her about that night had been a lie. Bette thought we were going to a real séance, and when the spirit that took over Madame’s body pointed to betrayal, she believed it was Johnny come back from the grave to accuse us.”

  “Didn’t you ever consider that Madame O would continue with the blackmail?”

  “I couldn’t take the chance—”

  “Did she give you any proof of the existence of this cagey witness?”

  “I know I look like a fool, but I couldn’t take the chance. I got the ten thousand, and then waited for the séance to end so I could place the money where she told me to put it. She knew too much about that night; someone knew I was out there with him! Mrs. Parker, I’m worried about Bette. I’m afraid to call her, because the call would have to go through the front desk at the hotel, and I’ll bet any calls she receives the police will know about or listen in on. And then they would hound her for my whereabouts.”

  “I’ll go see her for you, of course, tell her you are safe.”

  “Gee, you’re swell! Thank you, thank you so much. Just tell her I’m all right. I don’t want her to know about the blackmail or anything. It will distress her, and as I’m innocent, all she need know is that although I went to tell Madame Olenska to keep away from us, from trying to frighten her with her phony séance tricks, I changed my mind about seeing the woman. She needn’t know about the blackmail. I’m hoping I can fi
nd Madame’s real murderer before long.”

  “Do you have any leads to go on?” asked Aleck.

  “Not as yet.”

  “The police searched your hotel room, Benny, and they found your service revolver, which has been fired recently,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “What?” said Benny, his face turning ashen, his voice flat. “Why, that’s impossible!”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, I took it with us on the honeymoon trip, for protection, but I didn’t take it to Madame Olenska’s. Last time I looked, it was in a drawer of my steamer trunk. Why, I haven’t fired that gun in years!”

  “Where’d you get this gun?” asked Mr. Benchley, picking up the pistol.

  “A pawn shop on Sixth Avenue.”

  “Why didn’t you return to the hotel after going to Madame Olenska’s?”

  “But, I did. Straight back. After leaving the money I returned to the hotel, but I just couldn’t rest. Bette was sound asleep—remember I said I gave her a sleeping powder? I went out to walk, to clear my head. Walked down to the river, back up to Central Park, bought an evening paper at the Plaza Hotel newsstand, had a cup of coffee in the dining room, and then, just after dawn, got back to the Waldorf.”

  “The police arrived looking for you.”

  “Yes. When I got back, Bette told me they had come looking for me and had just left, said she’d made up a story that I was called away on business. I couldn’t understand why she’d lie, I told her, but she said the detective frightened her, made her think I had done something wrong, and as she didn’t know where I was, she just made up the story to protect me. An hour later, breakfast arrived with the morning paper. The headline said it all—Spiritualist Murdered!—I left Bette on the pretense that I really did have to leave for a time, that I had in fact received a wire of an emergency at the Croton Dam. I don’t know that she believed me, what with the timing of the news about Madame Olenska, the arrival of the police looking for me, all on the heels of Madame’s warning about danger and the fiasco of the séance, but she looked at me steadily and said, all right, she’d be fine for a day or two while I was gone, and that was that. Somehow I got past the policemen stationed in the lobby. They never knew I was already in the hotel, so I was able to just walk out of the elevator and through the lobby doors unnoticed.”

  Many questions swirled through my mind: Why didn’t Bette tell the police Benny was with her all night and just went out for an early morning walk? Why the fabrication of a late-night call about an engineering problem on the dam? Why lie to the police? But then, Caroline said Benny had come to the house in the middle of the night. And the taxi company would confirm the fare from the Waldorf to the house on Washington Square. Benny didn’t have an alibi.

  ”Where have you been staying?”

  “Central Park.”

  “Isn’t there anywhere else you can stay, for a few days, anyway, until we can figure this all out?” asked Mr. Benchley.

  “I daren’t risk a hotel, I can’t go home to Connecticut or my lodge in the Adirondacks, or stay with any of the family—”

  “We get the idea,” said Aleck. “Young man, you’ll stay with me. There is no connection between us, so no one will think to look for you at my home.”

  A grateful Benny Booth thanked his attacker, and the men rose to leave.

  A thought popped into my head: “Benny, have you ever heard of a man by the name of Lee Pigeon?”

  “No . . .”

  “Think hard, perhaps he’s someone you’ve met casually, or worked with, or—”

  “You know, the name sounds a little familiar.”

  I remembered the description on the detective’s report: “Five-eight, hundred and thirty pounds, reddish-blond curly hair, blue eyes, and a bad reputation?”

  “No, don’t know anybody by that name or who fits that description.”

  “What about Pendragon?”

  “Pendragon? I’m not sure, but isn’t that the name for a big lizard lives on Easter Island? Wait, no, that’s not what it’s called . . .”

  As the door closed behind Aleck and Benny, Mr. Benchley threw his topcoat over his arm and reached for his silk top hat, appraising the damage. “We have to do a little more snooping Mrs. Parker. Let’s see what happened to Benny’s cash.”

  “I’ll say we do. But I’ll need a few hours’ sleep before we do.”

  “And we’ll have to make sure this time we don’t spend any time in a closet.”

  “A telephone call will do the trick.”

  “Oh? What do you have in mind?”

  Washington Square

  Chapter Nine

  I pinched my nostrils with thumb and index finger, and when the line was answered after the third ring, I spoke my lines: “Miss Caroline Mead? Am I speaking with Miss Mead?”

  “Who is this?”

  “I am the personal secretary for Martin P. Moore, Esquire, of the law firm Billings, Billings and Moore. We are handling the estate of the late Annabelle Olenska, and Mr. Moore asks that you come down to the law offices this afternoon to sign papers and affidavits pertaining to the distribution of monies left to you by Mrs. Olenska. I am so sorry for your loss, by the way. Is it possible to come down to our offices at Sixteen-hundred Broadway, seventh floor? Say, three o’clock?”

  Caroline Mead was happy to do Mr. Moore the favor of appearing at his office at three o’clock.

  I hooked the receiver. That gave us at least an hour of undisturbed snooping. Finding the estate attorneys for the sisters had not been at all difficult. Joe had the information handy, right on Detective Morgan’s desk. In cases of murder, motive is usually about money, jealousy, or revenge. Knowing where the fortunes were bequeathed could point to the killer. Both Annabelle and Ada had the same lawyer, a senior partner at Billings, Billings and Moore. Mr. Benchley had called Mr. Moore’s office, and was told by a secretary that Mr. Moore was out of town, but returning the following day. It would be several days at least before the terms of the wills were read to the parties involved. So I made the call to Caroline, assured she would not meet up with Mr. Moore today. Tomorrow we should hear from Joe who got what.

  Next, I dialed the number found in the directory for the Finders Detective Agency. That was the private eye agency that had sent the report to Miss Ada about the mysterious Lee Pigeon. Mr. Benchley told me it was unlikely the detective would give us any information on why the dead tarot card reader had hired the agency to investigate. He might be obligated to talk with the police, though. And when an operator came on the line after the third ring to say that the agency’s telephone was not in service, I knew that Sgt. Joe Woollcott was our only means of finding out more about Pigeon.

  After scolding us for withholding information in a murder investigation, Joe said he’d look into it himself.

  “Joe, have your people matched the bullet that killed the Madame with Benny Booth’s gun?”

  “Look here, Mrs. Parker, that’s information that can’t be released.”

  “Well, can you tell me if Benny Booth is still your main suspect?”

  “He should just turn himself in, is all. Every precinct in the city has his mug plastered on their walls.”

  Well, that told me a lot. Ballistics matched the bullet to Benny’s gun, and he’d been upgraded from merely a suspect to a fugitive from justice.

  In the meantime, Mr. Benchley and I had a couple hours before our trip to the Washington Square house, so we arranged to meet with Donald and Maggie Brent. The performers we’d met at Madame’s séance were staying at the Plaza. Maggie had a scheduled rehearsal at the Met mid-afternoon, but was available and eager to meet for a noontime luncheon in the hotel dining room. I was anxious to spend an hour with the couple. There had been little time to socialize at the séance fiasco, and artists of their caliber always interest me. Anyway, my vicious little circle of friends was mentally fixated on the baseball World Series games, and, frankly, I’d heard enough about the “Fat Man” up to, and through, the Pennant.
A day or two more, and the Series would have been won or lost for New York, and more interesting subjects would arise.

  “Madame Olenska was really a swell old girl,” said Donald, when, after discussing the politics of the opera house with Maggie and the concert circuit with Donald and comparing friends we had in common, we drifted toward the common tragedy that brought us together: Madame’s murder.

  “How’d you become friends? Are you interested in spiritualism?”

  “I wouldn’t say we have an interest—”

  Donald interrupted his wife: “My mother passed away last winter while I was on tour, and I thought, well, I know it sounds a little foolish, but if there was even the smallest chance to, uh, contact her spirit, I wanted to at least try.”

  “He never had the chance to say goodbye,” said Maggie, slightly flushed from embarrassment, or perhaps shamed for belittling the idea, I didn’t know which. It was obvious that “Mother” was a first love with whom she could never compete.

  “Only natural,” said Mr. Benchley.

  Maggie said: “We met on the return voyage.”

  “Madame made no pretense of knowing anything about us, about my mother or anything. Of course, she knew who Maggie and I were; it was no secret. There was a big send-off when we set out, and once arrived in New York the reporters were all over us.”

  Donald continued with affectionate and humorous recollection: “Can’t say we weren’t intrigued by her party: An Indian yogi, a couple of ragged, rundown Russian refugees in ill-fitting evening togs, her ward bearing a striking resemblance to a young Lillian Gish, and the Madame, herself, floating arthritically about, her caftans as bright as her fiery curls. Incongruous crew, they were, and on a vessel filled to the brim with the crème de la crème of boring first-class society, we naturally gravitated toward them.

  “Together they were a fascinating mix of humanity. I don’t know how best to describe it, but there was humor and wisdom and total disregard for convention. They all had genuine joy and fine appreciation for the simple fact of being alive, and a profound respect and compassion for the welfare of others. There is a high morality in that, you know.”