The fight was winding down, but Hem was swiveling around, searching the room for more contestants to meet his fist. The men who had initially pounced on the Major were subdued, prone on the carpet, except for the hefty accuser, who was still standing, dazed and trying unsuccessfully to put one foot in front of the other in an attempt to quit the room. Hem, watching him with a hungry, joyful glint in his eyes, like a lion’s for a gazelle, pounced on the man from behind; the two landed sprawling on the littered carpet, Planter’s Peanuts raining down on them from the only remaining untoppled bowl of nuts.
Captain Fried appeared at the entrance door, and I could swear I saw a flash of amusement pass over his face as he noticed the overturned tables and the debris strewn all over the place. He assessed the scene of the crime, the disheveled figures that were responsible for the room’s condition, and ignored their protests. He ordered the stewards, who had been attending the players before making a timely escape, to straighten things up, and sent a message with his purser to fetch the ship’s physician to attend to any injuries. He nodded with a “boys-will-be-boys” look of approval before resuming a stern countenance, and then turned on his heel to attend to the business of sailing his ship.
Richard was being ministered to by an attentive Soledad, who’d opened a bottle of White Rock club soda to moisten her handkerchief and wipe away the blood and cigar ash that dirtied his face.
“Look at this,” said Mr. Benchley, who had suffered a strike to his midsection and winced with pain when he bent to pick up his mangled tennis racket. “Look at what they did to my tennis racket.” He held up the splintered remains of the handle, the woven catgut dangling off its face.
“It was Hem that done it,” said Mathew, who had received the least pummeling; he massaged his shoulder, which he had used to block a box to his ear. When Hem looked over at him, he ceased the massage. I supposed he thought tending to his sore shoulder might be viewed as wimpish in the light of Hem’s bloody face. “Hem has a powerful serve,” he finished with obsequious ardor.
“Looks like I owe you a racket, Bob,” said Hem with a hearty chuckle. He sighed, took a deep breath, forced it out with a loud huff!, and wiped his sweaty face with his shirtsleeve, looking all the worse for the gesture: blood was smeared down his cheek.
Hemingway was certainly in his element, his exhilaration evident, and he didn’t seem to notice the bloody bruise on his forehead. The way he looked around the room at the damage and at the other men picking themselves up to stagger out of the room, I thought that he would have liked nothing better than for the wrangling to start all over again.
I don’t understand men.
“This calls for a drink,” said Hem, like the victor in celebration. “Who’s got some booze around here?”
“I do,” I said, “but do go wash yourselves up. I don’t want Woodrow seeing you like this.”
“What are we celebrating?” asked Soledad.
“Who needs a reason?” I replied.
“Life is good, Soledad,” said Hem. “It is good.”
Mr. Benchley’s cabin steward, Rodney, now appeared and climbed over the wreckage carrying a briefcase, apparently oblivious to the state of the room: “Sir, we’ve found your briefcase. I was going to put it in your cabin, but there is a Do Not Disturb sign on the door.”
“Why, yes, Rodney, just go in and leave it there. I’d left a friend sleeping late this morning, and he probably forgot to take the sign off the door when he left.”
“Would you care for a cold compress, sir?”
“That might not be a bad idea, thank you, Rodney; I’ll be in momentarily.”
Mr. Benchley watched the steward leave the room, spritely gerrymandering around the broken chairs and mashed cocktail sandwiches.
“I wish I could take Rodney home with me. It would be nice to have a fellow like him: affable, considerate, not critical of the state of the living room,” he said with a sweeping hand to indicate the ruination, “generally at my beck and call.”
“You have a wife, don’t you?” I scolded.
“Yes, of course, but a gentleman’s gentleman rarely reproaches his employer. If Gertrude were here, of course, she would get me a cold compress, but the cold shoulder I’d have to endure for engaging in a good-natured free-for-all would prove much more painful. Do you think my rib is broken?” he asked me, lifting his shirt.
I jabbed the exposed flesh. He winced.
“Hey, where is our Major Arbuthnot?” asked Richard.
“I haven’t seen him since the fight broke out,” said Soledad.
“Wily little man.” I said. “And I didn’t see that fellow, looks like Durante, take any punches.”
We picked our way out of the room.
As we walked toward our cabins, passengers unaware of the fracas backed away to let us pass, and I realized we must have looked like survivors of a train crash. That’s when I noticed the collar of my navy-blue sailor blouse covered with an unidentifiable substance, probably clotted cream and strawberry jam—yes, clotted cream and strawberry jam it was, upon the tasting—and my skirt stained with some liquid that resembled chocolate milk. How Soledad had escaped unscathed was proof of her superior abilities, I mused. Or the fact that when the food was flying, she had taken cover behind me.
We parted ways, each to our own rooms, Mr. Benchley and I continuing on toward our cabins, when we spied Rodney backing out of the door that was still wearing the Do Not Disturb sign. He turned to look down the corridor, spotted us, and rushed up to Mr. Benchley’s side.
“The gentleman is still sleeping, sir.”
“My goodness,” replied Mr. Benchley, “I suppose he needs the rest, after last night.” He took the briefcase from Rodney and we continued on toward our rooms. “I’ll be over for that drink, soon as I’ve changed,” he said.
Before I turned to continue toward my room, I saw the now-familiar face of the little redheaded man, Claude Dubois, as he entered his cabin.
I had not yet unlocked my door when my friend beckoned me. As I approached I saw his distress, and when he let me pass into the room, there was Saul, still asleep under the bedcovers.
“So,” I said, “let him sleep. He’ll need the rest if he insists on chasing after Lady Daffy tonight.”
“He’s not going to be chasing anyone.”
“Good. She’s no good for him. He’s seen the light.”
“Yeah, right before St. Peter let him through the pearly gates.”
“What! Are you trying to tell me—”
“Dead.”
“Are you sure?” I said, rushing over to the bed and throwing off the covers.
“Quite.”
Ronnie
A younger Duchess Sofia Louise
Chapter Six
“I got him into the bed at about two o’clock in the morning. He was so miserable, you see, and I hadn’t the heart to send him off to his room. Frankly, I worried he might try to take his own life,” said Mr. Benchley to me before the ship’s physician and Captain Fried arrived at his cabin. Richard Hartley and Soledad, the last people to see Saul alive, other than ourselves, were called in to relate the events of the previous night.
“Drinks here after a late dinner—”
“We listened to the music piped in—”
“My steward, Rodney, brought in a tray of éclairs—we hadn’t eaten much at dinner—and a pot of coffee. Saul didn’t want to eat, and had had no proper dinner. He drank three or four scotches.”
“We played a game of charades, but Saul wasn’t concentrating—”
“He juggled oranges from the fruit basket, and tried to teach Soledad—”
“And we gossiped—you know—about celebrities and this and that and the other—”
None of us made reference to Saul’s state of mind, and we weren’t asked. From what the doctor could see, Saul Gold had succumbed to a heart attack.
His body was removed and Mr. Benchley assured that the room would be put in order. Evidence of Saul’s
last evening was strewn about the room: empty club soda bottles, a water-filled ice bucket, scum-ringed coffee cups, and chocolate-smeared flatware on doily-covered dessert plates. For want of something to do, Mr. Benchley picked up off the floor a rotting pear that had been bitten into and discarded, and the three oranges from last night’s juggling entertainment. He tossed the pear into the wastebasket and the oranges into the fruit basket.
“Unless you wish other accommodations?” asked the purser, seeing my friend’s dark mood and sympathizing.
“Are there any other rooms?”
“No. Not until we come into Ireland, where several passengers will disembark.”
“Mr. Gold’s room?”
“We can arrange that.”
“No, never mind. I’ll stay in here.”
I fetched Woodrow for a walk, and Mr. Benchley followed me out on the deck, which was wet from the afternoon’s storm. Now, after the fury had passed, there was a gentle, balmy wind enveloping the ship and the ocean lost its foreboding cast. At any moment things could change, I realized, sadly.
Alive one moment; dead the next.
We were both so stunned by Saul’s death that we didn’t speak as we strolled around the ship. The westering sun threw long shadows of the ship’s funnel across the bow. The beauty surrounding us, the loneliness of the great expanse, suddenly made me feel small and frightfully vulnerable to its ineffable power. I wasn’t so much in awe as I felt in jeopardy.
“There, there, my dear Dottie,” said Mr. Benchley, putting an arm around me. He let me bawl against his shoulder, and the hand stroking my hair was meant to comfort, but only served to unloose whatever restraints remained on my emotions. Woodrow’s whining distress pulled me out of my hole of despair, and Mr. Benchley’s appeal brought me home: “My dear, we’ve survived storms, skirted icebergs; if you keep this up you’ll flood the ship, and then where will we be?”
His handkerchief was again deployed to wipe my face and blow my nose. The honk made us both laugh and Woodrow leap up and down as if on a springboard.
The Major was standing near the rail, looking out to sea and smoking his pipe. I suppose he saw us pass by, so he walked over to us with his teetering gate. The contrast between his infirmity and his aristocratic good looks was striking.
“I’m terribly sorry to have caused such a ruckus, Mr. Benchley,” he began. “I see you’ve been hurt, sir. Oh, dear, I didn’t want that—Mrs. Parker, I hope you suffered no injury? Oh, dear, oh dear . . . .”
“Does it happen often?” asked Mr. Benchley.
The Major looked at him for a long moment before saying, “Pardon me?”
“You managed to escape unscathed this time, but I’ll bet that sometimes you don’t.”
Another pause while he scrutinized Mr. Benchley, who kept a pleasant, if all-knowing smile on his face. He appeared to be weighing some risk.
“On occasion I have suffered the black eye or bruised rib,” he said with a wry smile. “But I’ve learned to gamble at the more posh establishments, where any dispute is considered an embarrassment to the accuser.”
He chuckled, and then, “I must be losing my touch, you know, for you to suspect anything from across the room.”
Mr. Benchley, in the spirit of good-fellowship, said, “For years I’ve played cards with Alexander Woollcott and other members of the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club. All I can say is, never play pinochle with Chico Marx.”
“You won’t—”
“Certainly not!” said Mr. Benchley, deducing what the Major was asking him not to do. “The boys had a grand time, and I was losing badly, so the interruption was well received!”
“Mrs. Parker is upset, though.”
“Major,” I said, “Mr. Saul Gold has died.”
“Was he—?”
“Oh, no! He did not take part in the brawl. No; he was the gentleman who came to our dinner table last evening.
“Not the nasty—sorry—the man escorting that pretty Lady Twinton, I forget his name.”
“No, but the fellow who asked her to dance.”
“Oh, yes! Oh, my, oh, my!” he replied. “Scar across his head? Yes, yes! The man you were so kind to. We talked with you about him this morning! Oh, no . . . they were not nice to him; not at all nice to him. Of course, he was the Jew . . . . Such a row. Dead, you say? I’m so sorry. He was a friend of yours?”
“We just met him, here on the ship,” said Mr. Benchley.
“One makes fast friends on crossings . . . . He seemed a decent sort.”
“Yes,” I said. “He was a writer of some note.”
“How did he—”
“Heart attack,” said Mr. Benchley.
Major Arbuthnot let out a sigh. “I see. Natural causes, then . . . . I suppose that is best,” he said, leaning down as best he could to pet Woodrow. “I mean that it wasn’t from any violence.”
“No,” I said
“Sad, still.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Benchley. “Very sad.”
“Makes you think how one never really knows when, as you Americans say, one’s number is up.”
We returned indoors, Mr. Benchley accompanying me to my cabin, where he would have a drink and wait for Rodney to come and tell him when he might return to his room. We were passing by Lady Twinton’s room when we could not help overhearing her voice, shrill and strained.
“And why shouldn’t it mean something to me, why shouldn’t it?”
“Why should it matter? I don’t see why—” responded a male voice—no doubt Ronnie’s for the lazy drawl.
“Everything’s gone to hell!”
“Why do you persist?”
“I’ll tell you why—”
“Pray, do, you rotten hussy!”
“What’s the use! You haven’t a soul! No soul! Not you! You’re just a shell of a man—”
“But you like that in a chap, don’t tell me you don’t! It makes it easy for you if the chap has no soul to corrupt!”
And then his voice dropped an octave, and he hissed: “You like it when you can call the shots and poke your nasty fingers in a man’s head and twist and mangle his brains; don’t tell me you don’t.”
“Shut up! It’s not like that!”
“Oh, I think it is like that!”
“Shut up! You disgust me! I hate the sight of you!”
“You hate the sight of me?”
“You drunken—”
“Look at yourself!”
“Let go of me!”
“Look at your face there!”
“I hate you, you cripple!”
There was a long silence, and Mr. Benchley and I looked at each other. It was so quiet that what was happening behind the door was either (a) they were so aroused by their fight that they were locked in a passionate embrace, or (b) one had stabbed the other with a paring knife. Then, again, maybe they were just refilling their drinks. Then:
“Don’t touch me!” said Ronnie, his voice low and ominous.
“Ronnie—”
“Get yourself elsewhere, then, and see how it is!”
“Perhaps I will—”
“You’ll not be away for long before you show your face—”
“Not this time.”
“Until now, I’ve let you go off with this bloke or that bloody—”
“Well, why the hell not?” Daphne yelled with guttural wrath.
“You always slither back—”
An object crashed against the door, causing us to jump back and Woodrow to let out a yelp. We hurried on down the hall as another crash sounded.
“If they carry on like that now, what’ll it be like after the wedding?” I asked.
“I don’t really want to sit down to dine with them tonight, my dear. One could get impaled by flying steak knives. That’s not good for one’s digestion, you know. Dinner brought in would be a good idea.”
“Ah! But the excitement of it all! What melodrama! Wouldn’t miss it for the world!” I replied, as Mr. Benchle
y unlocked the door of my room.
I was being facetious, of course, but not entirely. I wanted distraction. I realized how hard I sounded, but I was angry and I couldn’t pin the anger on anyone. Saul Gold was dead, and I felt like his death might have been prevented. I reasoned that that was crazy; he had died of a heart attack. But I wondered if it was not brought on by too much booze and a broken heart.
“Don’t get me wrong, Fred: I’m devastated about poor Saul.”
“I know you are.”
“I just want to kick somebody, you know?”
“S’long as it’s not me—or Woodrow.”
Woodrow leaped onto the bed, yawned, circled three times, and settled in for a nap.
“Put down that briefcase, would you? You’ve been carrying that thing around for an hour. You might have left it in your room. You look like an accountant going off to the counting house or something. Pour me a tall one, would’ya? And forget the soda,” I said, kicking off my shoes and throwing myself down on the bed next to Woodrow. “I need to dance a little, get smashed—or I think I shall die after all this!”
Woodrow, sensing my distress, tried his best to calm me with sloppy, wet kisses. Not as good as a cold compress, but I appreciated his efforts, nonetheless.
I sat up to take my drink, and said, “Am I horrible? Am I hateful?”
There was a knock at the door, and when Mr. Benchley opened it, in walked Hemingway and Mathew.
“What’s going on in your room, Bob?” asked Hem. “They were carrying out your mattress.”
The frown on Mr. Benchley’s face, and the delay of the expected retort, prompted Hem to ask, “You wet the bed or something?”
“Not since Calvin Coolidge made a decision.”
“What’s going on? Why the long faces?”
“Saul’s dead.”
“Gold?” His hands leaped into his jacket pockets, and he just stood there, waiting for more, and when there wasn’t any more, he said: “What about that drink you owe me, Dorothy?”
[Dorothy Parker 05] - A Moveable Feast of Murder Page 8