[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong

by Agata Stanford

  So as we were discussing the best approach for entering the house, a couple of old men walked up to our table, and blocking out the fine, warming sunshine, shadowed over us. “You got no business just sitting here if you’re not going to play,” said an old coot wearing a sorry-looking costume of shapeless brown checked pants under a herringbone topcoat the color of mud. His plug hat appeared to have collected all the soot of the city, and I reckoned the soles of his shoes bore numerous holes, judging from the top shoe leather scuffed to gray. When I looked up from his feet to his face, I was surprised to see beneath the scruffy five o’clock shadow of several days past and the untamed brows under charcoal hair the almost-lost but still-visible good looks of his youth. I thought, he must have been a stunner twenty, thirty years ago. Life hits some people hard. “That’s not right, Harold,” chided his companion, a similar version of the old coot, but not as sadly attired and clean-shaven under a cleanly brushed derby hat.

  Mr. Benchley, ever cordial, stood up and offered me his hand.

  “Oh,” said the man in the derby hat, “you don’t have to—”

  “Perfectly all right, we were just leaving.”

  Caroline Mead, in moss-green cape and hood, was walking down the stoop.

  “Very kind of you. You see, some habits—well, we have a game most days at this time,” said Derby Hat, as he began to remove chess pieces from a wooden box as the Old Coot settled in on his bench, placing chessmen on the squares.

  Mr. Benchley said, “Ah, then you must know lots of people in the neighborhood, see things that would probably make good stories.”

  “I suppose so. How do you mean?”

  “Well, you probably know the fellows playing at the other tables. That young fellow over there—”

  “That’s Mike. Mike’s a student at NYU, and after classes he’ll come by for a game or two. Play him at a price, though. Two-bits a shot, and he always wins.”

  “And the Italians down there playing that game?”

  “Don’t understand the lot of ’em, ’cept for Tony, the guy in the big brown wool coat. He was born here, and sometimes he brings a gallon of wine his father makes in the cellar of their place on Mulberry Street, and if we stop by, he’ll give us a swig or two.”

  Mr. Benchley turned his attention to the row of houses beyond the white stone arch north of the park. “And the nannies and the neighbors from the residences—”

  “Watched lots of babies grow, and lots of nannies leave for other families, yeah.”

  “You know Mr. Wilkins, across the street?”

  “The stockbroker with the chauffeur and new limousine? Lots of stories, I’ll bet. Know his driver, Dudley; he don’t talk much about his boss, but we see the traffic.”

  “Traffic?”

  “Women.”

  “Ah, I see. What about the old lady got murdered the other day—”

  “Lots of traffic there, but a different kind.”

  The Old Coot looked up from his concentrated gaze at the table to exclaim, “Freaks!”

  Derby Hat said, “What Harold means is that, when he sometimes sleeps in the park in the summer, when his room is too hot to breathe, he’s seen and heard some peculiar things, haven’t you, Harold?”

  Harold grunted assent.

  “What have you seen or heard, Mr.—?”

  “Hayes. But he prefers ‘Harold.’”

  “Harold, then; tell me about it.”

  “Let’s go! Make your move!”

  “He doesn’t like talking about it; got spooked when he peeked in through the window.”

  Another grunt.

  “The big one, he looked right at Harold, and for a week he couldn’t eat or sleep and had the shakes.”

  “You mean he saw the Indian yogi?”

  “Not that one. No, the Indian comes and sits with his legs crossed over there on the grass, and doesn’t move for hours on end. The other one.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Big! Black fellow!”

  “A colored man?”

  “Nahh, not colored. Dark, black hair, crazy, evil eyes.”

  “Devil!” spat out the Old Coot, suddenly drawn in and interested, if horrified at the memory.

  Derby Hat explained: “The robe he wore made him look like the Devil. The old lady didn’t like him—that’s for sure!”

  “’S that so?” asked Mr. Benchley.

  “Yep. He came running out the door one time, the cape flying behind him like wings! And then she came out waving her fist at him, slammed the door, and next thing I know the old lady comes out the door again, only this time she’s got something burning she’s holding, smoking up a storm, and she’s waving it around the stoop and the arch of the door and saying strange words like a prayer or something.”

  “When was this? How long ago?”

  “Maybe . . . last year.”

  Derby Hat raised his eyebrows, and chuckled; the Old Coot frowned.

  “Last night,” said the Old Coot.

  “You saw the Devil last night?” asked his friend.

  “What was he doing?”

  “Who?”

  “The man looks like the Devil. You said you saw him again last night?”

  “Sitting right there!” said the Old Coot, pointing at a bench along the path. “Waiting for me! He come to get me! In disguise, he was—hat, coat, like a normal human being, but I knew him when I saw him and he turned those evil black eyes on me. No cutting through the park no more for me, no-sir-ee, Bob!” He shivered, as if shaking off the thought. Then, turning his attention to the man in the derby, he said, “Let’s get going, here! I don’t have all day!”

  Derby Hat excused himself, and after looking over the board, moved a pawn.

  Mr. Benchley and I walked across to the row of houses. There was no one walking along the street, and the old men were deep into their chess game, so we casually walked up the front stoop.

  After ringing the bell (there was, after all, a possibility that someone, a servant, perhaps a cleaning lady, might be inside), I blocked Mr. Benchley from view of the street as he applied the pick to the lock. In a couple of seconds we were in.

  The drawing room was bright with sunlight, and we went directly to the chair where Benny had indicated he had placed the blackmail payoff. The cushion lifted, we found no envelope of money, but for good measure, we checked every other seat cushion in the room. No envelope. Only two dimes, three nickels, and a silver dollar fallen under sofa pillows.

  Where was the ten grand?

  It was unlikely that the money would have been hidden in this room, but we looked around for anything that might speak the name of the killer. No such voice rang out, only the tock-tock-tock of the grandfather clock’s pendulum keeping a timely beat out in the hallway. We climbed up the stairway to the bedrooms. The clock’s steady heartbeat underscored the otherwise-profound silence that permeated the space. The short hallway at the top of the landing led to several doors before ending at a back stairway rising to the third floor.

  We opened doors on either side of the hall, searching for Madame’s rooms. Facing the street and with curtains drawn was a smallish sitting room with an arched-alcove bedroom. It was a warm, friendly suite, we saw (after flipping the light switch—we didn’t dare part the curtains), which contained all sorts of fascinating items reminiscent of the inventory of a Dickensian curiosity shop. I had not an inkling of the identity of a stick-like item carved of bone, with a tassel at one end, red twine, and a feather dangling off the other end that I presumed was plucked from some extravagantly plumed tropical bird! Was it a pipe? Well, whatever its purpose, be it smoked or whistled through, it was an amazing piece of carved ivory, tipped with gold.

  A photo album bound in Moroccan tooled leather with an oval inset displaying an ornately carved letter O lay on a side table. I opened the gilt-edged book and there was revealed a family history in photographs, going back more than half a century from the looks of the old tintypes and posed studio prints of
people dressed in elaborate hooped and bustled gowns. I turned to the later photographs and there were the sisters in various states of development over the years, as well as group pictures of men and women in parlors or in the park holding parasols. And on the very stoop of this house there was a group of four, standing and sitting and posing happily with a pack of family dogs.

  I took a closer look and could see it was indeed the young Annabelle and Ada with two young men, probably taken around 1900. One of the men leaning against the balustrade was tall and lanky and dark. Madame’s Late Mr. Olenska? Who would know? I wanted to take the book so that I could peruse it at my leisure, but knew it would be missed. It was, after all, a life history of Caroline’s benefactress, and she would probably be drawn to browsing through it in her grief. But I pinched the one group photograph taken on the front stoop, closed the album cover, and left it on the table.

  Wandering around, taking in the assemblage of exotic paraphernalia, my wild imaginings of their usefulness leaning toward the depraved, I suddenly noticed that Madame’s vanity dressing table didn’t look quite right. Bottles and brushes were arranged atop the ghostly residue of talc, surrounding a clean rectangular impression. A sizable object had been recently removed, I surmised. Jewelry box, perhaps?

  The room had been picked over, it was evident, as several drawers had been left slightly open and out of kilter, giving the impression of a hurried search. Several drawers were empty; a scrap of paper, a drawer liner askew, a random button and bobby pin left behind. And yet, the clothing hanging in the wardrobe, the closet, and several bureau drawers appeared undisturbed. Whatever someone was searching for must have been found in one of the ransacked dressers, or the search itself had been disturbed by the unexpected arrival of a housemaid or Caroline. My imagination was leading me to flights of fancy. Maybe the disturbance had been the work of Madame, herself, before she was murdered! Would the police have made such a mess in their search for clues upon finding her dead corpse? Or had Madame’s murderer been responsible to the disorder?

  At the desk, it was evident by the display of pens and stamps, sealing wax and personalized stationery that it was here that Madame conducted her correspondence; yet it was odd that no letters, notes, appointment book, or banking books were present, nor bundled and stored away in the various nooks and drawers. On the bookcase, dust lines belying the recent presence of books on the shelves, there were now gaping holes like missing teeth, and there was no clue as to the particular volume that had rested on an elaborately carved pedestal bookstand. I thought perhaps it had held a Bible, although family Bibles are more likely to be displayed in parlors.

  Mr. Benchley was peeking behind paintings and wall hangings and carvings decorated with intricate Indian designs, in search of a hidden safe. He pressed the molding along the fireplace and around the paneling, but he didn’t find any secret panel behind which valuables might be hidden. After twenty minutes, finding nothing that would give a clue about Madame’s murder, and resisting further temptations to peruse, with fascination, the many books on the occult that remained on the shelves or were scattered about the room, we decided to venture upstairs to the third floor. That was where Caroline told us was her bedroom.

  But first Mr. Benchley dialed the telephone beside Madame’s panel-draped canopied bed.

  “Joe?” asked Mr. Benchley, “It’s Aleck’s friend Bob, Bob Benchley.”

  He was speaking to Joe Woollcott, Aleck’s “normal” cousin and desk sergeant at the precinct.

  “No, nothing wrong with Aleck that we don’t already know about. No, we haven’t come across another dead body. Joe, can you tell me about the Madame Olenska murder—”

  Although Joe suggested Mr. Benchley talk to Detective Morgan with any questions about the case, my friend convinced Joe that he simply wanted to know whether a large envelope with a lot of cash had been discovered at the scene.

  After a minute of holding the line while he checked, Joe came back to say that the only thing removed from the scene of the crime had been Madame’s body, correspondence, address book, and appointment journal. As a suspect, Benny Booth, was already identified on Caroline Mead’s testimony, there had been no need to search the house. The murder weapon was a gun, and the murderer had taken that away with him.

  “Hey, Joe,” I said into the transmitter after wrestling it out of Mr. Benchley’s grasp, “in Madame’s address book, is there a listing for a person or place called ‘Pendragon’?”

  I waited while he checked, a good five minutes!

  “Nahh, no such name in the book. But, ain’t Pendragon’s that theatre down in the Bowery where they have the bur-les-kew?”

  And there was no news yet about the person named “Lee Pigeon” with a list of offenses. “It might take a couple days before a wire comes in from a police force who know this guy,” he said, before adding that he’d been unable to get through by telephone to the Finders Detective Agency and so he’d sent a man to the offices on 23rd Street to ask the building manager where the mail had been forwarded to.

  But, for now, it was time to move on in our search.

  “Looks like somebody ransacked these rooms.”

  “Caroline, probably. Took Madame’s jewelry,” I said, pointing to the empty spot on the vanity where a jewelry box would have been.

  “Or the Old Coot we met in the park really did see the Devil when he paid a middle-of-the-night visit. Perhaps he is Madame’s murderer.”

  “Let’s check Caroline’s room, see what’s there.”

  We walked up the stairs to the third floor. What had at one time been a large nursery with private quarters for nanny or governess and smaller servants’ quarters was now a sweeping suite of rooms that made up the apartment of Caroline Mead.

  Dusk was falling over the city. Through the windows facing the park the sun was setting with a brilliant red light, as if to show up the startling, colorful effect of fiery autumn leaves. The days were getting shorter and within half an hour it would be dark. We really had to search quickly if we wanted to get out of the house before Caroline returned.

  The sitting area was composed of a plush chair and floor lamp, beside which a table stood piled with romantic novels, fashion sales notices cut from newspapers, and stacks of motion picture magazines. Cigarette butts filled the ashtray, and recordings of popular songs lay scattered on a stand beside the Victrola. Articles of clothing were tossed on the bed and shoes spilled out of the wardrobe. I opened the closet door and looked at ordinary street clothes and several short and filmy party dresses in the new flapper style that was the rage with the young and trendy. Saucy hats lay on a shelf, a black wig and hair ornaments tossed on the vanity alongside hairbrushes and combs that desperately needed cleaning. I always say that the state of a woman’s hairbrush says a lot about her state of mind. All in all, it was a room that any young woman might live in: somewhat messy, with dreamy ideas floating about.

  From within a hope chest, Mr. Benchley was lifting out a black-satin robe, and after laying it out on the bed for closer inspection, we saw that it was a hooded pilgrim’s robe bearing the appliqués of a half moon and five-pointed star.

  “There was a robe like this in Miss Ada’s hall closet.”

  “Witchcraft kind of thing, wouldn’tcha say?” said Mr. Benchley.

  “Or a fashion mistake,” I said, riffling through the chest, pushing aside several articles of clothing and pulling out a 1917 yearbook from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. I opened the cover and read several autographs and devotions to “Tweety.” Whomever this yearbook belonged to, why did Caroline have it, I wondered? She had grown up in Maine . . . .

  I put the yearbook into a carpetbag I’d brought for the purpose of my thievery, and just then an idea popped into my head. “You know, we should check out the bathroom. If Caroline found the cash, she might have hidden it in a place no thief would ever think to look.”

  “The bathroom?”

  “I don’t know, but let’s give a try. Maybe sh
e taped it behind the toilet tank.”

  “Ah, the way gangsters hide their guns and blood money!”

  “Don’t get dramatic, ya damn fool!”

  “But why would she have hidden the cash in the first place? Only Madame and Benny knew about the arrangement.”

  “That’s no loose change fell out of Benny’s pants and under a chair cushion! If Caroline found the payoff money Madame retrieved from under the chair and then had hidden in her rooms, mightn’t Caroline have taken it and hidden it somewhere safe from the police? After all, Caroline didn’t know anything about the blackmail. For all she knew, Madame simply stashed a hell of a lot of cash in the house. I’d be nervous keeping that much cash around, especially with the company I keep.”

  “Now, now, Mrs. Parker, that cuts to the quick, but now I know where you keep your gun.”

  We were headed toward the bathroom when we heard footsteps on the stairs. Mr. Benchley looked at me and dashed the lights. The door opened slowly. The waning light of the sunset illuminated the figure of a man. Mr. Benchley switched on the table lamp.

  Before us stood Siegfried Franken, alias Chaim Katzenelenbogen, or was it the other way around? He was toting a huge gun in his hand, wide-eyed and as terrified to see us as we were him. We all stood frozen with fear for a long moment.

  “Mr. Franken,” I said, “or should I say, Mr. Katzenelenbogen!”

  I took a breath.

  “Pleeeaase, do not make me more nervous than I am already,” he said, with a childish, disgruntled sort of whine, as if we’d told him to eat his vegetables. I expected him to stamp his foot.

  The gun looked too big in his small hand, and I could see the effort it took for him to balance the thing as he aimed it unsteadily in our general direction. “Please, go away. I don’t want to hurt you.”