[Dorothy Parker 05] - A Moveable Feast of Murder

by Agata Stanford

  Woodrow appeared completely recovered from last night’s bender with Zelda. Not I, however. But I would try to ignore my lingering headache. As I backed away from the window to wash and dress, my spirit was ready to take on the town even if my body wasn’t.

  Mr. Benchley knocked on the door as I was fetching my coat. He was cleanly shaved and looked refreshed after just a couple of hours’ sleep. He was sporting a navy-blue wool beret.

  “Bonjour, Madame Park-aire!”

  “Oh, jeez!” I replied when I saw the dark glasses, the slanted beret, and the red-silk neckerchief. “Ya tryin’ to look like a tourist, or something?”

  “Don’t you like it? I think it works,” he said, checking his image in the little mirror above the vanity. “The beret was a gift from Gerald last time I was here.”

  “What the hell is that? You carrying a purse, now?”

  “Oh, this,” he said, holding up the brown-leather bag that looked like a satchel and whose long strap was draped over one shoulder and worn across his chest like a sash. “This is my Noah bag. Gerald designed it for me, you know, and his people at Mark Cross stitched it up.”

  “I haven’t seen you carry it before.”

  “Can’t in New York; people would think I’m the mailman.”

  “Looks like a feed bag.”

  “Exactly! My, you are smart, Madame Park-aire!”

  “Now you have a place to store your wild oats when not sowing them,” I said. “But, why do you call it a Noah bag?”

  “It’s so big I can put two—”

  “—of everything in it.”

  “Ex-ac-te-ment!” he said. “Woodrow and I are starving, and if we want a pail of warm goat’s milk, we will have to shake a leg—or pull a teat.”

  “Just a second,” I said, pulling on my hat.

  “You have my briefcase!”

  “Yes. Since the afternoon Saul died, remember? You were walking around with it and when you came to my cabin for a drink, I told you to put the damn thing down.”

  “That’s right; you said I looked like your accountant—which I certainly do not. He is bald and half-a-foot shorter than I.”

  “You both have hair growing out of your ears.”

  “Yes, but I have mine Marcelled.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked when he removed his key ring and picked out the small key. “I thought you were starving? I know we are, aren’t we, Woodrow, aren’t we, now, sweetie pie?”

  “Better not call me sweetie pie; Mrs. Benchley wouldn’t like it.”

  “I call you a shit and she doesn’t bat an eye.”

  “That’s different,” he said, mindlessly, because he was struggling with the key and briefcase lock. “For goodness sake, what’s with this? It won’t open. Don’t tell me I brought the wrong key!”

  “I won’t, but do you have to do that now?” I asked, standing there with Woodrow on his leash, and huffing my impatience as my friend examined the briefcase.

  “This isn’t mine. Yet, it looks exactly like mine—”

  “Ex-act-e-ment!”

  “Mark Cross, same color, the handle a bit worn, but no initials, so certainly not mine!”

  “Now that we’ve got that straightened out, let’s go.”

  “Just a moment,” he said, pulling out his Swiss Army knife and finding the toothpick. “I have to return this case to whomever it belongs to; whoever the fellow is, he now has a briefcase with my initials stamped in gold on it. Perhaps there’s something inside to tell us who he is.”

  “What would we do without that Boy Scout gadget of yours? I’ve grown rather fond of it. We could break into the federal mint with it if you weren’t so chicken. Why else have I toted you along with me all these years?”

  “Yes, a multipurpose little tool.”

  “My words to describe you exactly!”

  “I’ll get you one for your birthday. Voila!”

  Mr. Benchley flipped the lock strap and pulled open the case. He began to remove a couple of books—one entitled Succulent Plants, the other Winning at Chess: A Strategy for Living.

  “Why carry a briefcase for a couple of old books?” he said. “Why, there’s nothing in here to tell whom this belongs to.”

  “All right, so you wire the steamship company and have them pick it up. Can we go? I want my goat’s milk.”

  We walked down the narrow, curving flights of stairs and out through the courtyard, empty now of goats and milkers. Woodrow picked up their peculiar scent, and when we walked out onto the street he spotted the gang up ahead and just had to investigate. I humored him and we caught up to the goatherd, a Pied-Piper leading the way. Women who were filling their milk pails stopped what they were doing at the sight of my Boston terrier, who insisted on sniffing each goat in the flock, and nearly got kicked by one and gored by another while I tried to pull him away. He was becoming a nuisance, so Mr. Benchley scooped him up in his arms. The goatherd was a kindly soul, and asked, “Comment s’appelle le petit chien?”

  I replied, “Woodrow Wilson.”

  He laughed and said the dog resembled more “Win-stone Church-ille.” The women were anxious to know our discussion, so the goatherd announced the presence of the great President of the United States who had negotiated the peace with the even-greater French statesman, Georges Clemenceau, for the Treaty of Versailles.

  One of the ladies said, “Il faut offrir le président à boire; c’est tout juste.”

  And so he took the tin cup dangling from his belt, dipped it into her pail, and offered Woodrow the milk.

  Woodrow sated, we continued along the narrow street flanked by buildings adorned with the elaborate architectural embellishments of centuries past and on toward the source of fragrant baking. In the soft morning light of this false spring day I saw the Parisian streets through a painter’s eyes, a canvas composed of a blending of monochromatic whites and creams with bronze finishes, where for all my life I had walked through the gray-and-lavender canyons of my beloved New York landscape.

  We passed a flock of Catholic-school girls, walking two by two in their blue wool capes and wide-brimmed hats behind a pair of scrubbed-faced black-habited nuns. We skirted the splash of water from a bucket emptied by a shopkeeper about to wash and sweep clean the front pavement of his establishment. The neighborhood echoed like a bugle aimed at the sky with the voices of progress—of chores and of morning routines, of the rhythm of the goings and comings of commerce, of the clatter of wheels and horses’ hooves on the increasingly trafficked cobbles—and close by a church bell struck the hour with a hearty “Bonjour!”

  My mouth was watering when we arrived at the patisserie and stared at the various delights in the window. Cakes stuffed with creams and overflowing with chocolate and berries and currants and almonds and puffed and sugared and layered and floridly decorated. A little café was situated through a side door, and there we gorged ourselves on buttery, flakey croissants and pain au chocolat washed down with cups of café au lait until we were drunk and full and happy.

  Our trunks had been delivered, but, as promised, Zelda sent a bus from the Ritz to pick them up, and as we settled our bill of fifteen francs each for the night we’d spent I felt a little sad. We were moving to more luxurious accommodations—heck, the Paris sewers would seem more luxurious—but for some reason I felt a growing nostalgia. I doubted any view from the Ritz would thrill me as much as my first glimpse of Paris at dawn from the terrace of this lodging a few streets off the Boulevard St.-Germain.

  Aleck, who was staying at the Crillon, tracked us down at the Ritz and had his itinerary ready for us to follow, with himself as our tour guide, during the afternoon. There was no arguing when it came to his plans, for he would see a suggested alteration as an inconsiderate and ungrateful challenge of his authority. He might not hold a grudge against you for long, but while he did you’d have rather been shot by a firing squad to end your misery.

  So, having “wasted” his morning and our chance for a tour of the Eiffel Tower
by our tardy arrival, we were duly reprimanded. It was bad enough that Harpo was “off chasing some little tart from last evening” and had yet to return to his room! He officiously instructed Mr. Benchley and me to be ready at twelve-thirty for a one o’clock luncheon at Pruniers. His nose was suitably put out of joint when we had to wait ten minutes for Scott and Zelda to come down the elevator from their suite. He was partially placated when Soledad arrived and glamorously made her entrance into the grand lobby dressed and furred in a cream-colored wool ensemble, only because she paid proper homage to the famous critic by walking directly to him with open arms and planting kisses on both his cheeks à la française before acknowledging the rest of us. It was when Hemingway appeared and told us he wanted to take us for a special meal at Bas Meudon, a short ride down along the river, and that he had arranged for us to later pay a call on his friend Gertrude Stein, that I was sure Aleck was about to bust a gut. Then a telegram was handed him by a bellboy. The Murphys would not be joining us this afternoon, but hoped we would stop in for cocktails before they took us all to dinner at Maxim’s. I was watching to see whether that had pushed Aleck over the edge, but suddenly his truculence blew away with a great huff of resignation, and he pointedly announced, “Follow!” and led us all out into the street to fetch cabs.

  “It’s a place out of a Maupassant story, isn’t it Aleck?” said Hem, looking out over the view from La Pêche Miraculeuse, an open-air restaurant hung over the river at Bas Meudon. Aleck dove into his third plateful of deliciously crispy fritures, a delicately plump fried fish that the French called goujon. “And the view is like a painting by Sisley. In fact, he did many paintings of the Seine from along this stretch.”

  “I’m sure he did. Pour me some more of the Muscadet,” directed Aleck.

  He was content, now; good food always leveled his mood, and he was charmed by Hem, whom he addressed as “Ernest.” He smiled as he lifted his gaze from the fish on his plate to the scene before him. “C’est bien un poisson delicieux, I must admit,” he said, and nodded and lifted the glass of white wine to his lips.

  The river shined crystalline in the vibrant sunshine of the afternoon, and the quaint village buildings were picturesquely standing guard along its banks. Occasionally, a barge would pass on its journey to or from the city. Elms leaned toward the water’s edge, bearing tight buds in clusters like little yellow fists. In a few days, if the weather held, or a few weeks, if not, they would loosen their tender grasp like the fingers of newborns to canopy the gentle slopes.

  Remarkably, Scott and Zelda made no improper comments, although Zelda avoided any exchange of conversation with Hem and chattered on about their plans for the summer, the renting of a house in Juan-les-Pins where Scott could work and she and their daughter, Scottie, could sun and swim.

  Mr. Benchley was unusually subdued during the meal. At one point, he passed me a slip of paper where he’d listed “words you will have little use for: vernisser—to varnish, egriser—to grind diamonds, dromer—to make one’s neck stiff from working at a sewing machine, ganache—the lower jaw of a horse, and pardon—I beg your pardon,” and then fell into a quiet funk.

  As we were leaving the luncheon, he turned to me and said, “That briefcase . . . I’ll bet it belonged to the deceased Charles Latham. The baggage had my ship’s cabin number on it, before you changed it to yours, and my briefcase hasn’t turned up. Oh, I’m not so concerned with finding mine—there was nothing of great value in it, just an address book and a notebook with a few scribbles in it. But, for Latham to carry such a briefcase containing just a couple of mundane manuals . . . it makes me think there might be a clue in the books. I think we should look things over again with a more critical eye.”

  “Well, you left it in my room this morning, remember? So when our luggage was sent over to the Ritz, it was probably put in my room.”

  “I think it’s important to do it now.”

  We begged off the visit to Gertrude Stein’s salon, but expressed our desire to do it another day. Hem looked disappointed, and when Soledad announced she had an appointment and Aleck said he was meeting Cole Porter at the Crillon bar, the party disbanded. Scott and Zelda were not invited to Gertrude’s anyway—not after what Zelda had once said about the Picasso portrait of Stein hanging in the latter’s parlor: “Looks like an old Roman Emperor.”

  Once back in my lovely, clean room—without a view—Mr. Benchley took up the briefcase, removed the books, and flipped through their pages. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed in the bindings, nor had the front or back cover papers been unglued to hide any kind of letter or document. But when he was about to return the books into the briefcase, his expression reflected the dawning of an idea. He opened his trusty Swiss Army knife and used it to pry apart the leather-lined bottom interior lining of the case.

  “It seems like there is something here—see, here,” he said, and I walked over to the bed on which he was sitting and watched as he pulled away the pigskin-covered panel on the bottom of the case with a gentle tug.

  “Voila! A secret compartment!” he said, taking out a legal-size white envelope and slitting the top fold with his knife. I sat next to him and looked over his shoulder as he unfolded the enclosed sheet of paper.

  “It’s a list of names,” he said, staring at the dozen or so names scribbled by hand on the sheet.

  “Was this what they were after?” I asked. “Was this what they hoped to get from Charles Latham? A list of names worth killing for?”

  “Why else hide such a thing as this if it didn’t have some value?”

  “These are mostly French names.”

  “We need to give this to Richard Hartley,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “Wait,” I said, as he reached for the telephone on the nightstand. “What if he’s one of them?”

  “Them?”

  “Whoever them is . . . . What if he’s on the other side?”

  “Am I to gather that when you refer to them and the other side you mean the Soviets?”

  “I don’t know who them or the other side really is.”

  “Well, that clears things up. Shall we do an algebraic equation? If them is X and the other side is Y, how many miles to Cairo?”

  “Well, I’m glad one of us knows what I’m talking about, even if I don’t.”

  “I won’t try to figure out what you just said. I’m having enough trouble getting along in French; I cannot allow your ubiquitous obliquity to confuse me. It’s obvious to me, though, that you don’t trust Richard.”

  “I’m not sure about Richard,” I said. “I am just not sure if he is all that innocent, by the story he gave us on the train. What if he wanted to get the Duchess here to Paris and into his own clutches? What if he killed Latham? What if he set up the plan to kidnap the Duchess Sofia? What if he’s one of the bad guys?”

  “That’s a lot of what-ifs.”

  “Well, I know he didn’t tell us the whole truth about what was going on.”

  “So, you don’t want him to have this?” said Mr. Benchley. “But, what if he’s not one of the bad guys? What if he’s a good guy? What if—”

  “Now you’re on a roll of what-ifs!” I laughed. And then I agonized: “Oh, I’ve been wrong about men so often that I don’t know the difference anymore between a man I can trust and one who’s a cad!”

  “I’m giving this list of names to Richard,” stated Mr. Benchley. “Decision made.”

  “Shouldn’t we flip a coin, or play rock, paper, scissors, or something?”

  “Or, we could shoot craps and the winner takes all,” he said sarcastically, picking up the receiver.

  There was no answer at the Murphys’, and then I remembered that they had offered their Villa America to Richard as a safe haven for the Duchess, and the plan was to move her and Major Arbuthnot there this morning.

  “We need to call him there,” said my friend, and then, reconsidering: “But I doubt the telephone’s hooked up; they close up the place for the winter.”

&n
bsp; “But Gerald and Sara will be back at their apartment soon for six-o’clock cocktails. They’re expecting us. Maybe we can wire him at their villa.”

  “Claude Dubois’ name is on this list, Mrs. Parker.”

  “I saw that.”

  “They left before dawn, Dorothy,” said Gerald, handing me a drink. “Richard and his friend, Dubois. Hired a car, and off they went with our blessings to the Villa America.”

  “Was Richard planning to return to Paris once he delivered them there safely? Did he say?” asked Mr. Benchley.

  “I don’t know, Bobby. But let’s send a wire. They should be there by now.”

  The sparsely furnished apartment was decorated with an eclectic arrangement of modern fixtures in black and white and red; the walls were stark white, the floors painted with a glossy black lacquer, and on them were scattered white Mexican rugs. Upon the rugs were set black-upholstered chairs and sofa and mirror-topped tables. Sara, dressed in lovely flowing silk and with the long strand of pearls she always wrapped twice around her neck, possessed a timeless elegance as she sipped her sherry, standing beside the ebony grand piano that dominated the room. Atop it, like a piece of modern sculpture, was set a huge industrial ball-bearing. Through the tall, red-draped French doors leading out onto a narrow balcony one could see the Seine across the quai and, beyond, the Île de la Cité.

  The Murphys’ beautiful fair-haired children ran into the living room with their nanny close behind, and I was introduced to Honoria, Baoth, and Patrick, three little blond darlings who had come in to kiss their parents good night. They made quite a fuss over Woodrow, and begged me to leave him with them when we went out for dinner. Woodrow positioned himself among the children, who rolled around with him on the carpet. He was certainly in his element; all dogs love play, a belly rub, and a chance to be affectionately tussled about. More begging to leave Woodrow, and a stubborn, spread-legged stance and glaring stare on his part—he wasn’t going anywhere—and I relented, but I was a little hurt that he never turned back to look at me when the children were led away to their rooms. Traitor!