[Dorothy Parker 05] - A Moveable Feast of Murder

by Agata Stanford

  “I was only accompanying you on this crossing so you wouldn’t be afraid for your life. And now, look! You’re not scared of drowning any more, you’re worried about little-old-me. Poor dear. I am touched.”

  “You certainly are!”

  The way he had put it was like a backhanded compliment. It raised my ire: “Whaddaya mean, you only made the trip so I wouldn’t be scared, you big oaf! You wanted to come for the fun of it!”

  “Well, well, Mrs. Parker, you are out of sorts!”

  “Meeeee?”

  “You bray when you get cranky.”

  “I don’t braaaayy!”

  “Oh, no you don’t! I know that game,” he laughed diabolically. “You’re worried about me, and getting angry at me is more comfortable than being worried about me.”

  I looked at him with crumbling daggers. “What’s the use?” I said. “Whatever your real motive for coming along on this trip, I’m glad you’re here, you big boob.”

  “Thank you for that, except for the ‘big boob’ part. Now, can we go back and dine? I’m starving.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “You know I couldn’t stand it if you starved to death.”

  Back at the dinner table, the cutlery was exceptionally violent: The Duchess wore a look of suspicion, pushing food around her dinner plate as if panning for gold; Ronnie kept his head down, solemnly folding and unfolding his dinner napkin, lighting one cigarette after the other, and more interested in his spiked ginger ale than in any conversation.

  After a long silence caused by brooding about Daphne, Hemingway rallied to answer a question posed by Mathew, and he began to play the role of “Papa” (a nickname dubbed by himself and adopted by his expatriate friends, Sara and Gerald Murphy, after the birth of his son, Bumby), suggesting ways for Mathew to get published in the German periodicals, after having been rejected by the English, French, and American journals. Talking about writing always lifted his spirits.

  Soledad reminisced with Richard about childhood events and people they knew back when, and then gossiped about the time she lunched with Agatha Christie, the successful new British mystery writer, and how she helped to un-knot a plot dilemma in Christie’s novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring Christie’s new Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot. “She has a treasure-trove of poisons in her satchel of diabolical weapons!” she said with a laugh.

  That statement instantly brought the Duchess to attention. The Major reacted with an abrupt clatter of his knife, which fell out of his hand and onto his plate.

  Hemingway, puffed up with youthful arrogance after mentoring the young Mathew, turned to Soledad and said, “You know, I would find it difficult to write a mystery story. I can only write about what I know.”

  “Well, all good writing springs from an author’s keen understanding and depiction of human nature, Ernest, and yes, it is best to write what you know. Of course, life is happening all around us and everybody has a story to tell, some more passionate and fiery than others, if you are willing to listen, so why be limited to one’s own little boxed-up existence? After all, Dante didn’t have to visit Hell to write The Inferno, now did he? All he needed to do was imagine it, along with the knowledge of, and insight into, man’s propensity to commit sin. Murder and intrigue are all around us; even if we don’t see it in our own lives, it exists. I may not have committed murder, etcetera, etcetera, if you know what I mean . . . .”

  “There is murder and intrigue all around us,” said the Duchess with a slow deliberate nod. “Evil exists; even if you don’t see it, or want to see it, it does exist.”

  With profound seriousness Hemingway acknowledged her point before saying, “I am experimenting with a new approach in novel writing: the telling of the story in simple terms, as it occurred, stripping away the narrator’s psychology and presenting the distilled essence. In this way, what is not said says more than what is said. A work of fiction must be judged by the excellence of the material that the author eliminates.”

  A frown flashed over Soledad’s smile. “Gertrude Stein?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “American woman, looks like a man, lives in Paris?”

  “She has lovely eyes.”

  “Yes, I’m sure she does. I’m not being deliberately coarse; just didn’t know how else to describe her and I didn’t want to use the word lesbian. There, I’ve said it. But Paris has been liberated on that front. She has a salon, am I right? She’s a writer, too, I believe. I’d love to meet her.”

  I glanced at Richard, who was trying to suppress his laughter at Soledad’s futile attempt to repair the damage from her initial description of Gertrude Stein. I, too, was curious to meet the lady who had championed the likes of Picasso, Cézanne, Braque, Rousseau, Derain, and Matisse, and whom James Thurber, a friend of New Yorker editor E.B. White, calls “one of the eminent idiots” of the new automatic writing style. “It is a marvelous and painstaking achievement,” Thurber wrote, “in setting down approximately eighty thousand words which mean nothing at all.”

  To distract us from his discomfiture at having been caught quoting his own mentor’s philosophy right after playing mentor to Mathew, Hem said, “We can call on her. Mathew, Dorothy, Bob, would you like to meet Miss Stein, too? I will arrange it.”

  After an “improved” club soda in the lounge after dinner, Soledad, Richard, Mr. Benchley, and I retired to our rooms to pack our things for the early-morning arrival in Cherbourg. I took Woodrow for a final stroll on the deck. The waves were kicking up, rocking the ship. No one was about; it was late, after midnight, and the party over.

  The moon was one hundred percent full this evening, according to Mr. Benchley’s almanac forecast, and its light shimmered across the water. I walked toward the bow of the ship and narrowed my eyes against the wind to look out over the horizon, faintly visible now by the lunar light. Soon the continent would appear. France! Tomorrow, I thought, I will begin a journey on a new adventure. I will adopt a new way of living, of working. Although it frightened me a little to be alone in a foreign land, I felt a heady exhilaration. Ahead lay the opportunity to live a different kind of life from my old one in New York City. So many discoveries awaited me, and the excitement trumped any fear I had been harboring about the move. My regret was that Mr. Benchley would be returning home in a couple of weeks, and I would so sorely miss his easy companionship.

  After a few minutes, my face and hands buffeted by the cold wind, I turned to head back indoors. It was the sound of voices that stopped me. They were coming from the other side of a lifeboat, which obscured my view of the speakers. The waves were loudly crashing at the hull of the ship, and maritime hardware, pulleys, ropelines, lifeboats creaked, and the hum of the engines muffled the conversation. I tried to maintain my balance as the ship rolled.

  “They found him . . . floating in the East River, shot . . . head, execution style. I got the wire an hour ago. It’s Latham; it’s confirmed. They left nothing to chance, did they? They were going to get Latham before or after he boarded ship. These people don’t take chances. Had their men on board ship known Latham was killed, there might not have been this mess to complicate matters. It’s Yezhov in the trunk. Yezhov was working for the other side.”

  A wave crashed against the hull and I couldn’t make out the other man’s response.

  “I see it this way: Latham discovers Yezhov is at cross-purposes, kills him, hides him in the trunk—temporarily. But Yezhov’s cohorts seized Latham before he was to sail. If they couldn’t grab him before he sailed, they had a backup plan: the poison, and whatever other dandy methods they could scheme up. It was a case of mistaken identity with that fellow, Benchley, who took his stateroom. He looks a little like Latham, too, from what I’ve heard of Latham’s description. So, Latham never had a chance to dispose of the body. And Yezhov’s confederates don’t yet know their man is dead. They pick up Latham on the street, the way they often do, and the luggage sits in his apartment. But before they get a chance to search Latham’s p
lace, the trunks are gone, taken from his apartment to the pier; probably Latham had arranged the transport days before. But now a more serious question arises: Did they find what they were looking for? Either they found it on his person, or they tortured him into handing it over, or their man on board, who didn’t yet know that Latham never made the ship, found it hidden in Latham’s luggage. Knowing Latham, there’s another possibility: There was no longer anything he could pass on to me, because he had memorized it and it went into the East River with him. I must change the plan.”

  Frozen against a wall, I waited, listening for more, praying that Woodrow would not give us away. After a long silence, and waiting for what seemed forever out in the cold, we continued on around toward the doors leading inside. I was frightened of being seen coming in from the deck on the chance that one of the men would think I had overheard their conversation. These men sounded ruthless, and I wished I hadn’t been privy to their schemes. Once indoors I walked briskly down the corridor and knocked on Mr. Benchley’s door. When he didn’t answer, I knocked again, and he opened the door, dressed in pajamas under a silk dressing robe.

  I barged into the room and shut the door, leaning my back against it. He looked at me as if I were mad. Before he could make a snide remark I pressed an index finger to my lips, and turned the lock.

  In a whisper, I said, “He was found in the East River, but he didn’t have it on him. Of course he may have memorized it and now it’s gone—in the East River, that is. A person named Yahoo or something double-crossed him, and so they picked Latham up on the street before he could dump the body, and then they killed him, and the man on the ship doesn’t know that yet, at least he didn’t right away, maybe he does now, though, but the trunks were already gone to the pier . . . and now they have to make a new plan.”

  “Would you repeat that?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  I didn’t think I could repeat anything I had said. I had just been parroting what I had heard, unable to figure out what all the words meant because everything was out of context. Who was Yahoo? A doltish person in Gulliver’s Travels? What dolt would name a kid Yahoo?

  “Who’s a Yahoo?”

  “Maybe it was Yatzee.”

  “Hah?”

  “The guy working for the other side.”

  “Other side of what?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know?” I hissed. “But he’s the one who had Latham picked up on the street, the way they do. Only Latham didn’t give it to them. At least they don’t think . . .”

  “Give them what? And who is them?”

  “It. Whatever it is. And them is the other side!”

  “Not to sound argumentative: the other side of what?”

  “It is something he memorized.”

  “Who?”

  “Latham. And it is what the other side wanted. Unless it was discovered, so then they wouldn’t want it anymore, because they would already have it. Thing is, he didn’t dump the body.”

  “Whose body?”

  “His body.”

  “Makes perfect sense.”

  “It does?” I asked, a little amazed I had gotten through to him.

  “It’s my turn to say are you kidding?”

  Mr. Benchley poured himself a measure of Irish whiskey, and when I asked for one, he refused. “Sit right down here, my dear, and write down what it is you want to say, in the order it must be said. If I can make heads or tails out of your essay, I will present you with a gold star and I will pour you a drink. Right now, I need you sober, or I’ll go out of my mind!”

  I did as he asked, recounting the conversation I had heard, and found that in the writing, I communicated the main points:

  Latham, the man who had originally reserved this stateroom, had discovered that an associate, with a name that sounded like Yatzee or Yahoo, was really working for The Other Side. (This sounds like espionage!)

  So, Latham kills Yahoo, in his apartment, I gather, hides him in a trunk, temporarily, and goes out (who knows why? Ran out of smokes?), where he is abducted from off the street, and probably tortured to hand over It (something he might have memorized?), and then he’s shot in the head—by The Other Side—and dumped in the river.

  Meanwhile, The Other Side doesn’t know that Latham killed Yahoo, and that Yahoo’s body is in a trunk in Latham’s apartment. And before The Other Side can conduct a search for It at Latham’s place, the luggage and The Trunk containing Yahoo’s body (which Latham never had a chance to dispose of because he got picked up on the street), is taken, by prearrangement, to the ship.

  Now, there must have been a plan to ensure Latham was killed. If they didn’t get him before he sailed, their confederate would kill him aboard ship—hence, the poisoned fruit—and then search for It, hidden among Latham’s things. But, the person working for The Other Side who was travelling aboard ship didn’t know that Yahoo and Latham were killed. Problem is, everything went wrong: The on-board confederate apparently wasn’t informed of Latham’s murder, or assumed Mr. Benchley was either Latham or Latham’s replacement.

  To sum up, Latham’s dead; Yahoo was the man in the trunk; there are bad guys and good guys on board ship; I have no idea what It is, or whether It has been found or went swimming with the fishes.

  —Dorothy Parker

  P.S. They said they need a new plan.

  I handed my affidavit to Mr. Benchley, who sat down to read it. After a minute, he looked up at me and then back down at the paper. After he had reread it, with a sigh and a very serious voice, he said: “I think we’ve gotten ourselves into a heck of a mess, Mrs. Parker. A dangerous one, at that.” And then he asked, “The voices you heard, did you recognize them?”

  “Yes,” I said. “One of the men.”

  I didn’t want to say it, because it might be true. I argued with myself that I could be wrong. But Mr. Benchley kept looking at me, like he knew I was struggling with a decision. I turned away and just said it: “One man’s voice was Richard Hartley’s.”

  Annie and her two brothers

  St. Coleman's Cathedral

  Chapter Nine

  The next few hours were a waiting game. I couldn’t sleep. Sometime around dawn I fell into a fitful slumber, the tragic face of Saul Gold and a laughing, diabolical Richard Hartley plaguing my dreams. After a nightmare where Richard had flung me over the rail and into the sea after making love to me under the full moon and stars atop the deck of a listing Titanic, I awoke in a sweat.

  Quickly, I washed and dressed, packed away my things into my valises and steamer trunk, and went on deck to walk Woodrow. As I looked out toward the bow of the ship I could see land, and knew that very soon we would be docking in Cherbourg. Several passengers were out and about watching our advance toward the continent, so I felt a sort of safety in numbers, although I couldn’t wait to get off the ship and onto the train to Paris so that Mr. Benchley and I could finally free ourselves from this death-cruise to Murder and Mayhem.

  When Woodrow was ready we walked to the dining room, where I downed a cup of coffee and grabbed a cinnamon roll and a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs and several breakfast sausages from the buffet and retreated to my room. On my way I had to pass by Mr. Benchley’s stateroom, and the door was open as porters were carting off his trunk and sports paraphernalia from his room. I said hello, and we agreed to meet near the ramp as soon as the disembarking was underway, and Woodrow and I walked on to our room.

  I didn’t want to see Richard. I knew there was little I could do to avoid him, if just to say good-bye. And then I remembered that he would be travelling to Paris on the same train we were, and my heart sank. Perhaps Mr. Benchley and I could somehow forget the boat train and hire a car?

  “Shit,” I said, distracted for a moment from my plan, as I bent down to place the breakfast plate of eggs and meat for Woodrow’s breakfast. “Fred left his briefcase here.” He was carrying it around the afternoon we found Saul dead, just after his steward, Rodney, had tried to, but coul
dn’t, deliver it to his room. I ran out of the door and looked down the hall, but it appeared that my friend and his luggage were long gone. I figured there was nothing else to do but carry it off myself, but a few minutes later, when the porters arrived to remove my trunk, I decided to let them take it. To prevent any confusion, I crossed out Mr. Benchley’s room number and wrote in my own, so that all the pieces from my room would be set together for retrieval.

  Now, how to get the hell off this tub without bumping into Richard?

  It didn’t matter how often I tried to hide behind this pole or that, slithered around one wall or another, ducked down, turned around, and generally looked like there were ants in my pants, I couldn’t avoid the man. As Mr. Benchley and I were walking down the gangplank, after thanking Captain Fried for “our pleasant journey,” Richard and Soledad called out to us from the foot of the ramp, so there was no way to pretend we didn’t see them. Now we could all board the train together after producing our passports for the local French authorities. Hemingway and Mathew had retrieved their baggage and walked off to a café for a drink with Ronnie and Lady Daphne.

  When I looked back for a possible retreat I saw that the Duchess Sofia and Major Arbuthnot were behind us, the redheaded Claude Dubois following them. I caught a glimpse of “Jimmy Durante,” a plaster across his forehead covering his fight injury, waiting his turn to walk down the ramp.

  What was very peculiar was that there were no police awaiting us for questioning. Even stranger, no one approached us at all, neither at the dock nor as we went through customs. I held my breath when we were asked to produce our passports for the funny little man in uniform, who looked me up and down a few times, too often for good taste, and wriggled up his nose with the universal expression of distaste at the sight of Woodrow, who wriggled his snout right back at him. Mr. Benchley and I were told to move on.