[Dorothy Parker 05] - A Moveable Feast of Murder

by Agata Stanford

  Sara and Gerald. They have it all, I thought. Such love and devotion for each other and for their children. A talent for living well. This is what it means when they say certain people are blessed.

  Aleck arrived and the five of us went off to a spectacular dinner at Maxim’s; later, Gerald asked where I wanted to go. “Is there any particular entertainment you fancy, Dorothy?”

  Call me bourgeois, but this lady knew exactly where she wanted to go. I may be a cynical and exacting critic of the Broadway theatre, but right now I wanted no part of judgment or good taste or intellectual stimulation. I wanted nothing more than a mindless party. I wanted the kick of band music, the fun of a colorful feast for the eyes, and a gay atmosphere complete with champagne and my friends. And so, we took a taxi to Montmartre and entered the big room under the distinctive red windmill of the Moulin Rouge.

  So this is the gloriously flowered field of La Belle Epoch, a sweet plot of rich soil in the heart of Montmartre, teeming with color and style and life, which inspired great art! So this is the magical place where Lautrec sketched La Goulue and the beautiful Jane Avril, and drank with Gauguin and Bonnard and Oscar Wilde, who later came to Paris to die. Here it still stood, in 1926, now catering mostly to tourists who wanted to relive the glory of the fin de siècle. At which table did Lautrec sit as he watched and sketched the show?

  Tonight the entertainment starred the famous Mistinguett performing in her new Ça c’est Paris revue, and she sang the title song with the charm and command that had made her famous fifteen years before as a headliner. She was assisted by handsome male dancers and accompanied by a full string orchestra. Most of the audience was composed of tourists, American and British. Drunk or sober, all were in a celebratory mood. We talked about nothing of any consequence and just absorbed the festive feeling of the place.

  I won’t admit it to anyone, but I didn’t yearn to come to Paris to see the Louvre, or the Luxembourg Gardens, or the grandeur of Versailles. What I really wanted to see and experience was the spectacle of the cancan danced to its flamboyant music that lifted the spirits as high as the ladies could kick up their skirts.

  “It is a myth,” said Sara, “that the cancan is, or ever was, danced sans bloomers.”

  “Of course, never in a public hall,” added Gerald.

  When the house went dark and the stage lights brightened and the orchestra played the introduction I stiffened with excitement. On the upbeat the conductor signaled his musicians and from the stage wings flew out the feathery-head-dressed, petty-coated, colorfully skirted women. In unison with each other and with the throbbing beat of the music, the line of dancers kicked their black-and-red-and-blue stockinged legs to brazenly show off their snowy-white bloomers to the crowd. It was all color and light and a whirlwind carousel of movement—a rambunctious dance performed to the equally rambunctious and unbridled “Galop” from Offenbach’s Orphée aux Enfers. It was all enough to make a grown woman squeal like a kid, and a grown man—well, Mr. Benchley grabbed my hand and led me through the labyrinth of tables, abandoning the Murphys and Aleck to get a close-up look at the stage. If I was bouncing around like a five-year-old, unable to stand still, clapping my hands and hooting and cheering and whistling with the hundreds of others watching, he stood transfixed by the fluttering of ruffled fabrics and the long, bouncing kicks. When the line of girls circled and then turned their backs to the crowd and flipped their skirts up in the air over their heads to show their ruffle-covered derrières, I thought his jaw would hit the floor. Of course, he was putting on his own show for me, my man-of-the-world, Fred, covering his eyes and peeking through parted fingers. And it made me laugh even more when, one after another, each lovely lady in turn leaped up and then hit the floor in a split, and my friend crossed his legs and repeated “Ouch!” with every landing.

  I found it curious that Mr. Benchley had not checked his silk topper at the cloakroom, but carried it to the stage. There formed a line of men, in dinner wear and similarly toppered, queuing up below the footlights. Then the gentlemen in procession walked up the steps and onto the stage, as the line of dancers swished their way over to meet them. One after the other they knocked the toppers off each head with a high kick to the rhythm of the metallic crash of cymbals, affording the tramps a close-up peek at the world-famous ruffled drawers. Mr. Benchley, his hat knocked off and retrieved, bent for a flamboyantly sweeping theatrical bow before leaving the stage. What fun!

  When it was all over and the audience kept on cheering, the conductor raised his baton and tapped it once again, and out returned the ladies for an encore. The crowd let out a unanimous cheer of delight, and so the foot-stomping thunder and eye-pleasing wonder of it all began again.

  By the time we left the club I was giddy from excitement and, having quenched my thirst on too much champagne, was ready to perform my own cancan, an impossibility as I was attired in a simple sheath dress. As Gerald fetched a cab, I belted out my own a rat-a-tat version of the “Gallop,” which I continued to hum until Sara and Aleck pressed Gerald to tell the cabbie to bring us to a new location in the Latin Quarter.

  “There’s more?” I asked, and as Aleck and Sara put their heads together in conspiracy, Gerald offered his alternative—to go back to their apartment so that he could play for us a few of his American Negro folk records. He was gently pooh-poohed for the suggestion as a too-quiet ending to this particular night on the town, and, ever gracious, he relented, directing the cab driver to take us to the Club Tango.

  It was a dark little cellar, down a flight of stone steps, one of dozens of cavernous holes created through centuries of stone quarrying around the city. Paris was a city on the verge of imminent collapse; its streets and structures had been shorn-up below its cobbles and were examined by city inspectors on a regular rotation. Gerald said it was estimated that there were a hundred and seventy miles of tunnels under the city; some could be reached through grates in cellars, some via courtyards, others in the sides of hills, still others near the river, and one entrance he knew about was next to the Trocadéro. Even the police didn’t know all the locations.

  But here, in this windowless, smoke-fogged stone room, a little pocket of heaven and hell converged. It was a tight little space where the tables were set to accommodate a dance floor and a corner for the musicians pumping out a tango for customers who chose to dance. And the clientele were of a different class, by the looks of them—a mix of local toughs and their women and shabby artist-types huddled together at tables over their whiskeys and absinthes. Top-hatted and begowned, I suppose we appeared the high-bouncing rich Americans to the other patrons, just slumming, but we were treated respectfully, and everyone was so into their cups that I don’t think they cared about or even noticed us. The exotic smoke of dope mingled with the ever-present fumes of Gitanes seems to have permeated the essence of Parisian establishments, all reminiscent of the lowliest of American speakeasies but for the openness of their service.

  We had just gotten settled and had ordered drinks when the accordion music ended with a flourish and a drum-roll brought all to attention. Toward a table, where sat a man and a woman, strutted a tall, thin fellow wearing a billed cap, a red scarf, and a Breton-striped polo shirt tucked into tight-fitting sailor trousers. He lit a cigarette, took a long drag off it, and then stamped it out on the ground. The music accentuated his every dramatic gesture. He looked fierce.

  He grabbed the woman at the table by her hair, and pulled her head back for a kiss, and the tango music, rife with staccato breaks, began to play.

  The man sitting at the table leaped up to challenge the interloper, and there ensued a stylized fight—a right to the chin and a left to the gut—and the man-at-the-table rolled onto the dance floor and somersaulted to his feet. This choreographed acrobatic show of force was comically and gracefully repeated, until the man who’d been sitting with the woman dashed away.

  The Breton-striped fellow then grabbed the elbow of the woman and lifted her to her feet, and with a swi
ft turn of his hand brought her into a tight hold against his chest. She broke free and he caught her hand and whirled her back to him, and the dance began in earnest. They moved across the floor in long slides as if their bodies were glued together. They moved as one, with dips and twirls. Then she slapped his face, and he struck hers. The woman’s head was whipped to the side at the strike of his hand. He flung her to the floor and she slid smoothly across it, only to be retrieved by her lover. He again hurled her aside until she first pawed at, and then crawled up, his trouser leg. As she rose to her feet, he gripped her by hand and by foot and flung her through the air in an arched circle until she landed on her belly to spin on the floor like a top. As if that were not enough, he pulled her up tightly against himself for another long tango stride, only to toss her away again like a ragdoll. He finally carried her offstage, upside down, over his shoulder. Now, I am a modern woman who abhors the brutish tendencies of men who might ever think it all right to strike a woman, but I had to laugh to myself at the absurd and violent drama of it all!

  When it was over, and we were in the cab on the way to the Murphys’ for a nightcap, Aleck told me the history of the dance, which had gained popularity with the street gangs known as The Gunmen of Paris in the Caveau des Innocents (the underworld clubs).

  “La Danse Apache got its name from the Montmartre club where, outside its doors one night, two men and a woman, members of a gang, had a knockdown-drag-out fight. They fought with the ferocity of Apaches, it was said, and so the name of the club and the passion of the battle stuck, and the fight has been repeatedly recreated with individual variations ever since.”

  Aleck is a fount of knowledge, and this was a story that didn’t bore, so I didn’t mind his pontification on the subject.

  Mr. Benchley decided that we should perfect an Apache dance of our own.

  “I will gladly slap your face and stomp your feet whenever you like, Mr. Benchley.”

  Our taxi slowed as we approached the Murphys’ apartment. There was a crush of automobile lights ahead on quai des Grands-Augustins, and stark light washing up from below the street level, from under the steps leading to the promenade walk along the river. The gendarme walked up to the cab and told our driver that the road was closed and to take the detour. When Gerald asked what the matter was, the gendarme said there had been an accident.

  “Suicide?”

  “Non.”

  We got out of the taxi since it was a short walk to the door of the apartment, only one street ahead.

  Woodrow, wedged between Baoth and Patrick like a cuddly stuffed bear, opened one wary eye when Sara and I entered the bedroom. Honoria was asleep at the foot of the little bed they had all piled into for the privilege of his company. We smiled at each other and left the door slightly ajar, in case Woodrow decided to come home with me. We reentered the drawing room and Aleck poured the cognac while I walked over to Gerald and Mr. Benchley, who were at the French doors handing back and forth a pair of binoculars. Their silence was telling. I put out my hand and Mr. Benchley handed them over.

  From the height of the window above the street one could see a section of the walkway along the Seine, and there, because of the illumination and the power of the binoculars, I was afforded a Nickelodeon-like view of the activities. Policemen were cordoning off the area and stretchers were being carried down the steps leading to the promenade. The prone bodies of two men were the focus of attention. A camera flash chronicling the morbid discovery brought a flash of discovery to me, when the face of one of the men lying lifeless on the stone walk struck instant recognition. I must have gasped, because Gerald asked, “What is it?” I didn’t reply, but instead moved my attention toward the other victim a few paces away. The man who’d been lying face down was turned over, and when the camera flash washed over his face I saw that his features were not those I had dreaded to identify. By his size, compared to the other victim, I knew who he couldn’t be. I handed the binoculars back to Gerald.

  “Look at the man lying on the left.”

  “There are people in the way . . . oh! Oh, my . . . it looks like . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “Want to let me in on it?” said Mr. Benchley as Sara and Aleck crowded into the small space.

  Gerald handed Mr. Benchley the binoculars and turned toward me. We looked at each other with regret and alarm and sadness all rolled into one unspoken communication.

  “Why, that fellow . . . looks like . . .” stuttered Mr. Benchley.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Bob!” said Aleck pushing him aside and grabbing the binoculars. He had trouble peering through the lenses because of his own thick spectacles. When he finally focused in he said, “So, who the hell is it?”

  It was Sara’s turn to look through the field glasses and say, “It looks like him! I think so . . .”

  “Well?” demanded Aleck.

  “Someone you never saw before Aleck; you don’t know him,” said Mr. Benchley.

  Knowledge of all that had transpired on the crossing, the accidental dangers to Mr. Benchley and Saul Gold’s death, had been kept from Aleck, even the arrangement Mr. Benchley had made with the Murphys to provide a safe house for the Duchess Sofia and Major Arbuthnot. He knew nothing about the attempted kidnapping of the couple on the boat train from Cherbourg. That is to say, he knew nothing about any of it, not Latham or Russian spies, nothing. And because we all knew the identity of the dead man and he did not, it was now time for him to hear the gory details. I dreaded it, because Aleck not only would take the delayed report as a personal affront, a sort of betrayal, evidence of our lack of trust in him, but he would get all crazy with dread at the remote possibility of being snared in a net of fabulous conspiracy. Believe me when I say we’d been through these kinds of tangles before, Mr. Benchley and I, and we knew what to expect from Aleck. But, don’t get me wrong, in our experience, after all the sturm und drang, Aleck would always pull himself together to help save the day. So, we all sat down to give him the scoop, about the Duchess, that is. As Mr. Benchley and I had promised Richard that we would not discuss the Latham spy-ring incidents, we left that information out.

  “So, you’re saying,” he began after the telling, with his “back up” as predicted, “that we’re dealing with Soviet kidnapping and now murder and intrigue and you didn’t say a word to me? Did you ever stop to think that I might be in danger?”

  “Come off it, Aleck; nobody here is in any danger,” said Mr. Benchley. “As it stands now, the spies are doing a very good job of killing each other off. By the time it gets to be your turn to die, there’ll be nobody left to do the job.”

  “All right, all right!” barked Aleck. “So, now what’ll we do?”

  I knew the switch was coming—the man of action winning over the sissy—but this was a little too fast. I figured we’d have to wait a week or so before he settled down.

  “There is nothing to do,” I said. “The way it stands, the way Richard Hartley arranged things, we are not, nor do we appear to be, in anyway involved in this affair. So forget doing anything.”

  “But, one of the men involved in protecting the Duchess Sofia has just now been discovered dead a few yards from the Murphys’ front door!”

  “But no one could have known the Duchess was here, or that Richard Hartley has taken them to the Villa America,” said Sara with the steady voice of reason.

  “They were probably followed here, and you have innocent children asleep in their beds—”

  Gerald raised a hand to stop Aleck’s tirade. “I’m sure that the Duchess and the Major have enjoyed, over the years, innumerable weekend parties on country estates. I doubt, through mere association, their hosts have all been done in, Aleck. Not to worry, old sport.”

  Sara added, “Richard arranged for a bit of misinformation: Anyone would think the couple was on their way to Venice.”

  “But the dead man out on the quai!”

  I looked at Aleck. “His name is—was—Claude Dubois.”

  Hemi
ngway’s bull

  Zelda and Scott

  The Fitzgeralds and their daughter, Scottie

  Gerald and Sara bookend Linda and Cole Porter

  Sara and the children

  Mistinguett

  Passionate Apache dancers

  A couple of fun lovin’ kids

  Artists at a good cafe

  Chapter Eleven

  I woke up the next morning to a knock on the door and practically leaped out of bed, expecting a telegram from Richard, or Mr. Benchley with news from him, although I knew it unlikely that we would ever hear from him again. Woodrow jumped off the foot of the bed and beat me to the door.

  When I opened it I was greeted by a bellboy delivering a huge package tied up with pink ribbons. The size of the box was ungainly, so I asked the young man to place it on my bed as I fetched a five-franc note from my purse as a tip.

  I looked at Woodrow; he looked at me. “What are you waiting for?” he was saying in dog language.

  I tore off the ribbon, expecting to find some magical treasure inside, perhaps a gift from Seward Collins, the man I’d been seeing a lot of back in New York, and who was to join me in Paris in April. The card must be inside. But before I could lift the lid off the gift box, there was another knock at the door.

  I opened the door into the eighteenth century, for there he stood, a sad, defeated Mr. Benchley, dressed in the garb of King Louis XVI, all ruffled lace, with royal-blue velvet waistcoat, white hose and buckled shoes, and a black curly wig with tresses flowing down below his shoulders. He indeed looked like one of the Gish sisters. The homely one.