A Friendly Game of Murder

by J. J. Murphy

“Yes. But the question is, who took it from his shoe?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s not the question on my mind right now,” Benchley said quickly. “I’ll have to call you back later. You can let me know what you find out about Ted Besh. ’Bye!”

  “No, Mr. Bench—!”

  But Benchley yanked the cord out of the socket. The cord snapped back into place. The line went dead.

  I must find Mrs. Parker. He was about to pull off the headset and go looking for her, but then he stared at the switchboard’s array of lights and plugs. Each darkened light and each plug represented a telephone in each room in the hotel. Each had a tiny number—its room number—printed beneath it. In which room is Mrs. Parker right now? He realized that instead of running around the hotel, he could simply place a call or two to find her—

  Grrrzzzz!

  Benchley jumped in his seat as a loud mechanical buzz sounded in his ears. One of the little bulbs lit up. The light was bright red, and the buzz was insistent. He felt flustered. Who was calling? Then again, perhaps it was Mrs. Parker trying to reach him?

  Benchley flipped the corresponding switch, once again pinching his finger. “Hello. Operator speaking!” he said, a phrase he’d heard a thousand times before.

  There was no response. Then the buzz sounded, and the light flashed again.

  Oh, right. Connect the cord! Benchley grabbed the metal tip of the cord nearest to him and rammed it home into the socket beneath the red light. The light went out. The line was connected. “Operator speaking!” Benchley said merrily.

  It wasn’t Dorothy’s voice that answered. It was a man’s voice. A gruff voice. “Give me Klondike-5, 5482.”

  “J-just one moment,” Benchley stammered. He was so surprised that it wasn’t Dorothy on the line and so flustered by the gravelly voice that he flipped the switch again and promptly disconnected the call.

  Chapter 25

  “So glad you could finally join us, Dorothy,” said Jane Grant. Dorothy’s other friend, Ruth Hale, sat next to Jane and looked equally pleased. What are these two young, intelligent women doing in this old hag’s den? Dorothy wondered again.

  About ten other women, one of whom was Lydia Trumbull, were also crowded into Mrs. Volney’s living room. The actress wouldn’t meet Dorothy’s eyes.

  Woollcott had apparently forgotten all about Lydia. He continued to help himself to the plate of cookies and was now happily accepting a cup of tea from Mrs. Volney, who still looked surprised at his appearance.

  The women were gathered in a close circle. Some were squeezed into the little armchairs and the small, uncomfortable couch. Mrs. Volney had evidently brought out a few rickety folding chairs, and the rest of the women sat precariously on these. Her cats had disappeared somewhere.

  “Dorothy, come sit here,” Jane said, sliding aside on the couch. Ruth slid the other way to make room and beckoned her over. Dorothy saw that if she sat there, she would be directly facing Lydia Trumbull. She hurried over and squeezed in between Jane and Ruth.

  She realized this was actually a pleasant little treat to be among only women—not counting Woollcott. She was often the only woman among a group of men. Most days, she was the only woman seated at the Algonquin Round Table. She was also the only woman in the editor’s bullpen at the New Yorker. And she was one of the few women invited to the men’s Saturday night poker game, though she never played.

  She loved the company of men. She was proud to hold her own against them. Many of them had degrees from Ivy League colleges. But there she was among them, not even a high school graduate and hardly more than five feet tall—yet she could cut them to ribbons or leave them in stitches. Or sometimes both.

  So being among a big group of women for the first time in a long time was like visiting a foreign country. She hadn’t quite decided whether she found it comforting or distressing. How did they speak here? What were their customs like? Dorothy had nearly forgotten.

  “So,” she asked, “what are you gals chatting about so late in the night—or so early in the morning, as the case may be?”

  “Still talking about Bibi, of course,” Jane said.

  “Jane was in the middle of telling us more about that article she wrote in the Times last fall,” Ruth offered.

  “Ah.” Dorothy remembered, turning to Jane. “The one that put Bibi on the map. You had mentioned it earlier. . . .”

  “We were just speculating about the identity of Bibi’s rich benefactor,” Jane said. “Bibi wouldn’t tell me when I interviewed her.”

  “And? Any ideas of this mysterious patron?”

  Jane shrugged. “Some Wall Street sugar daddy, most likely. Probably has a wife, so that’s why Bibi had to keep his name a secret.”

  Ruth raised an eyebrow. “What about that Dr. Hurst? He seems like he might be the sugar daddy type.”

  Dorothy thought of the spindly old man lying in his bed and perhaps paralyzed. And she felt sorry for him. “Then again, maybe Bibi had no rich benefactor,” she said. “Maybe it was just a lie. Maybe she simply wanted to fool everyone into thinking someone actually cared about her.”

  Lydia finally spoke up. “It was no lie,” she said spitefully. “Someone paid Bibi’s way. It’s impossible for a girl like that to come from nowhere. Someone paid for her to have the best dance lessons. The best voice lessons. The latest clothes. Memberships in nightclubs. Introductions to Broadway agents, publicists and producers. Trust me, a penniless girl doesn’t hop off the bus one day and become the toast of Broadway the next day. She needs help.”

  Dorothy looked at Lydia, a prominent stage actress whose star would likely soon be fading. Lydia knew it. Everyone in the room knew it.

  “So who helped her?” Dorothy asked.

  Lydia’s face soured and she looked away. “Who knows? Does it even matter?”

  Dorothy wondered. Did it matter?

  She turned to Jane. “Someone will have to contact her family. You said she had family in New York?”

  “A brother, I think? Or was it a cousin?” she said. “She didn’t talk about a mother or a father, that’s for sure.”

  “Embarrassing thing to have to explain,” Dorothy said, putting her hand to her ear like a telephone. “‘Your sister died naked in a bathtub on New Year’s Eve, apparently murdered.’ No family member wants to hear that, no matter how estranged.”

  “Well, it won’t come as too much of a surprise to them,” Lydia said bitterly. “You can’t walk naked through a party in a famous actor’s penthouse and expect to wake up without a scratch the next morning.”

  “What are you saying?” Dorothy asked her. “Bibi was asking for it?”

  “Yes,” Lydia said. “She most certainly was.”

  Ruth shook her head. “No woman deserves that.”

  “Certainly not,” Dorothy agreed.

  “But I don’t condone what she did,” Ruth quickly added. “That kind of behavior sets back women’s equality by years. Will prancing around naked make men think we’re their equals? Is that why we fought for the right to vote—so a cheap dumb blonde could act like a sexpot and make everyone forget that most women are smarter than that?”

  Equals? The right to vote? Dorothy wondered. What does that have to do with anything?

  “It’s not all about smarts, Ruth,” Jane argued. “And it’s not about sex, either.”

  “Finally,” Dorothy said, “someone in this room is making sense.”

  Jane nodded. “It’s about power. Sex was probably the last thing on Bibi’s mind, except to use it to her own ends. Let’s be honest. With her clothes on, she could beguile men. But with them off, she could positively rule them.”

  “What . . . ?” Dorothy asked, bewildered.

  “She wasn’t just showing off her skin,” Jane explained. “She was demonstrating her power
. And someone—someone who either envied that power or was afraid of that power—killed her for it.”

  All the other women in the room—even Mrs. Volney and also Woollcott—nodded at the sense in this.

  All except Dorothy. She stood up. “Are all of you nuts?”

  Openmouthed, they looked at her.

  * * *

  Grrrzzzz! The noise buzzed again through the headphones. Even though Benchley had been expecting it, the sound still made him jump in Mavis’ chair. Now the red light flashed again as though annoyed at him. It was like an eye—an ogre’s angry eye—blinking at him.

  Grrrzzzz!

  Benchley plugged a cord into the socket below the angry red light. Blessedly, the light went out.

  “Operator . . .” he said meekly.

  “Why’d you hang up on me?” the man’s gruff voice said, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Just get me Klondike-5, 5482.”

  “Certainly, sir,” Benchley said. But he had no idea how to connect to Klondike-5 something something some – thing. . . .

  Below the socket and darkened light—below every socket and light—was that three-digit number. Must be the hotel room number, Benchley figured. He’d better find out for sure.

  “Sir,” he said politely, “you’re in room five-twenty?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  Benchley was surprised how easily he came up with the half truth, half lie. “It may take awhile to connect the call. The snowstorm is playing havoc with the lines. Can I try to place your call and then ring your room when it’s connected?”

  The man exhaled impatiently. “It ain’t long-distance. It’s only Brooklyn.”

  “The snowstorm, sir . . .”

  “Fine. Just don’t take all night.”

  “Certainly not, sir.”

  The man hung up. The line went dead. Benchley unplugged the cord and sighed with relief. He’d bought himself a few minutes, but that was all. . . .

  Wait a second! he realized. I don’t have to sit here and connect telephone calls in the middle of the night. This is not my job. Of course it wasn’t! He could get up and leave at any time. Oh, what a goose I am!

  But first he should try to reach Dorothy. Let her know that Dr. Hurst was wanted by the authorities—and tell her of his newfound suspicion of Jordan.

  “Let’s see. . . .” He could try calling her room. He might be able to do that without pinching his finger again. He plugged the main cord into the socket above number 213—Dorothy’s room number. He flipped the switch and rang her room. Not one pinch!

  The phone buzzed once . . . twice . . . three times. . . . He could imagine Woodrow Wilson lying on the hairy couch and not even looking up at the sound of the telephone.

  “Oh well, she must not be in her room.” He disconnected the line.

  Then he rang the penthouse, with only one pinch. Douglas Fairbanks answered—Benchley felt he was getting the hang of being a switchboard operator—but told him Dorothy wasn’t there.

  Now what? Where could she be? Lydia Trumbull’s room, perhaps? But Benchley couldn’t remember the actress’ room number. It was just down the hall from Dorothy’s room, though, so it must be two hundred something. . . .

  Grrrzzzz!

  Oh no! The ogre’s angry red eye was back, and with its evil buzzing in his ear. It was the man in room 520!

  Do something! Benchley told himself. He ripped the headset off his head. But the red eye still flashed, even angrier somehow now that it flashed silently.

  He couldn’t take it. He wanted to turn and run, but the red flashing held him transfixed. He grabbed the cord and plugged it into the socket below the light. Reluctantly he picked up the headset.

  “Operator,” he said wearily, beaten. The switchboard had dished out its worst and had won.

  “Buddy, where’s my phone call? It’s important!”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Perhaps I took down the wrong number. Could you give it to me again?” Benchley picked up a notepad and pencil by the side of the switchboard.

  “Yeah, fine. Klondike-5, 5482.” The gruff man rattled off the numbers even more quickly than before. But one thing Benchley could do was write quickly.

  “Got it, sir. One moment, please.”

  Benchley saw a number of sockets neatly labeled with the names of different boroughs. One label said BROOKL. EXCH.

  Brooklyn Exchange! Benchley plugged the cord into that socket and flipped the switch below it. Its light glowed, and it buzzed the operator.

  “Your number?” the woman’s voice answered in a tough Brooklyn accent: Yah numbah?

  Benchley quickly repeated the phone number the man had given to him.

  “Hold,” the Brooklyn operator said.

  Benchley held on for dear life. He gripped the edges of the switchboard with both hands. He knew he shouldn’t care. He should have gotten right up from this seat. But he couldn’t help himself. When someone asked for his help or told him to do something, he felt compelled to comply. And that angry red light and the gruff man’s voice were plenty compelling.

  “Your call,” the operator said. “Go ahead.”

  There was a click and a man’s voice said. “Yeah, who is it?”

  It took Benchley half a second to answer. Not only were the telephone lines apparently working again, but he had done it! He had actually completed a call!

  “It—it’s the Algonquin Hotel,” Benchley stammered, half-amazed and half-triumphant. “A party in room five-twenty has been trying to reach you.”

  “Yeah? Well, put him through, why don’tcha,” the man’s voice said.

  Don’t blow it now, Bob, old boy, he told himself. Don’t disconnect it!

  He crossed the plugs and flipped one switch, then the other. He held his breath. “Go ahead, caller.”

  The gruff man’s voice said, “Mr. Caesar, you there?”

  “Yeah, you nitwit,” the other man said. He had a quiet, commanding voice. “No names.”

  Benchley nearly bit his tongue. He wanted to scream in exultation. I did it! I did it! He had taken on the switchboard and had won!

  “Forget it,” the gruff man said. “The operator’s an idiot. Took me five minutes to get through.”

  An idiot? Benchley’s joy turned to disappointment. Five minutes? Certainly not!

  “Shut your trap,” the authoritative man said, his quiet voice rising. “Operator, you still there? Operator!”

  Benchley didn’t speak.

  “Forget it,” the gruff man said. “He’s off the line.”

  “What took you so long to call?” said the quiet man. “Do you have the piece?”

  “Phone lines were down. And, yeah, we got it. Like taking candy from a baby.”

  The quiet man’s voice dropped lower. “I ain’t talking candy. I’m talking priceless artifacts.”

  “We got your priceless artifact,” said the gruff man. “We got your tête-bêche.”

  Your tête-bêche? Now Benchley actually did bite his tongue. . . .

  Ted Besh?

  Chapter 26

  Dorothy felt a change in the atmosphere, a coldness creeping into the room. The women had gathered in a warm, collegial circle, both literally and in agreement of mind. But Dorothy was about to break that circle. She couldn’t help herself. She had to speak.

  “Bibi wasn’t murdered because she showed her power,” she said sarcastically to Jane. Then she turned to Ruth. “And she wasn’t killed because she was a threat to men.”

  They all looked at her skeptically, even angrily. Just a few moments ago, they had all been chatting happily, a group of women bonding through conversation. No longer. Dorothy had wrecked it simply by disagreeing with them.

  She continued, “I don’t know why she was murdered, but I know i
t wasn’t for any of those reasons. It wasn’t because she was a woman or because she was a sex symbol—or any kind of symbol. She was murdered because she was Bibi, pure and simple. She was murdered because of something she did or something she didn’t do.”

  Jane folded her arms. “What makes you so sure?”

  Dorothy threw up her hands. “Women’s intuition.”

  She said it as an offhanded joke. But they didn’t take it as a joke. They thought she was making fun of them; she could tell. They thought she was being superior to them.

  But she wasn’t! She didn’t feel superior at all. As a matter of fact she felt lousy. She didn’t want to alienate these women. She liked their warm camaraderie. She liked being one of them for once, a part of them—but not at the expense of agreeing like a sheep.

  Perhaps if she could help them see it her way . . .

  “Look,” she said, “if a man walked naked through the room and was later found murdered, would we all be asking ourselves if he was murdered because he wanted to demonstrate his . . . power?” She smiled, and some of the women smiled. “Would we wonder if he was killed because of something he represented? Of course not. We’d think, jeez, he must have made an enemy of someone. Or, gosh, what kind of trouble was he in? Who did he owe money to? Whose wife did he sleep with? So if we would think that of a man, why should we think any differently of a woman?”

  “Because,” Lydia snapped, “Bibi was a woman. That makes all the difference.”

  They nodded in agreement with Lydia, even the ones who had just chuckled a moment before. They looked at Dorothy as though challenging her to prove them all wrong.

  Well, of course she was a woman, Dorothy thought. But what does that have to do with it?

  As though reading her mind, Lydia responded, spitting out her words like poison. “Bibi wasn’t just a dumb blond vamp. She did represent things. She was sex. She was power. She was fame. She was success. You look me in the eye, Dorothy, and you just try to tell me different.”

  Dorothy looked Lydia in the eye—and she found she couldn’t disagree.

  * * *

  Benchley sat stupefied. So Ted Besh isn’t a person? He’s a stolen priceless artifact.