[Dorothy Parker 05] - A Moveable Feast of Murder

by Agata Stanford

  And then a voice whispered in my ear, a familiar voice with an edge of warning in it. When he was gone, I stood rooted where I was for a long moment, until I saw through a gap in the crowd the flash of white-and-purple brocade that was Mr. Benchley. I stepped into the space to see Woodrow, my little Pavlova, upstaging the jugglers, prancing up and down on his hind legs, tutu bobbing up and down, and begging crackers from Mr. Benchley to the tune of “Alouette”!

  I let the little dance go on another minute while I composed myself and until Woodrow had had his fill of crackers and sufficient approval from the audience that had assembled around him. Mr. Benchley scooped him up in his arms, answered the applause with a bow, and stepped to my side.

  “Don’t trip on your dress,” I said, as we turned to move on along the parade route, “but Richard is here and is waiting for us in a courtyard half a street down on the rue Saint-Jacques.”

  I was nervous about meeting him there. His whispered plea had been full of urgency. With Claude Dubois dead, I was worried about trusting Richard. There appeared to be intrigue at every turn. Why couldn’t Richard talk to us openly in the relative obscurity of the crowd, I wondered? Unless there was someone else sneaking around behind us whom he didn’t want to hear what he had to say. That thought made me more uncomfortable about the whole affair. And now we’d lost sight of the others since Woodrow’s sideshow exhibition; there had been safety in numbers, and the number had dwindled down to just the two of us and a dog in a pink tutu. Not very promising in light of a possible ambush.

  The procession turned left onto rue Saint-Jacques and, as Richard had intimated, the first building that led into a courtyard on our right came into view. We dodged the onwardly moving stream and passed through the line of police and spectators to slip around the archway leading to the cobblestone court, which was set back from the street. I spied a flash of reflected light and recognized the long blade of a sword and the white plume that betrayed Richard’s presence in a darkened doorway off the court. I grabbed at Mr. Benchley’s elbow at the sight of the weapon.

  “Here!” Richard called sotto voce, and Mr. Benchley moved under cover of the stone entryway. I followed anxiously, like Bo Peep’s lamb.

  “We don’t have much time,” said Richard. “I may need your help, as a distraction, that is. I don’t want to put you in any danger.”

  “It’s a little late for that now,” I said.

  “They’ve taken Duchess Sofia.”

  “And they’ve killed your friend, Claude Dubois,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “I know he’s dead. I killed him.”

  Richard killed Claude. He murdered the man who had been protecting the Duchess. His sword was still drawn, and he kept a steady eye on the arched entrance into the courtyard. Was this a maneuver to get us away from the crowd and kill us as well, out of sight of any help?

  Did he need to kill us because we knew too much, because we were too involved and could name him as an associate of Claude’s, thereby linking him to the murder on the quai? But, why confess the deed to us? He must have seen my skeptical expression, or sensed my shrinking from him, for he grabbed my arm with his free hand to pull me in closer, out of any light that would give us away.

  “It was me or him,” he said. “But I couldn’t fight them off alone. They took her.”

  Mr. Benchley had no qualms about the man’s integrity, because he pulled out the sheet of paper that he had carried around in his pocket for the past two days and handed it over to Richard, saying, “It’s a long story, Richard, but I think this is what your Mr. Latham wanted you to have.”

  As he unfolded the paper he told me to keep an eye on anyone entering through the archway. Mr. Benchley struck a match and in the weak illumination Richard read the names on the list. “Claude Dubois,” he said quietly, and I turned to look at his face before the match burned out.

  Above the noise of the procession came footfalls on cobbles and a gruff, masculine voice. A man and a woman had entered the courtyard, singing loudly. They stopped to kiss, and the girl did a little spinning dance, and then they kissed once more. From my place, now pressed against the wall of the wide stone opening, Woodrow panting in my arms, I could hear the French banter escalating into a definite drunken argument. I peeked into the yard and as the fight continued I glimpsed the sudden arrival of a dark figure in the shadowy archway. A lamp went on somewhere in a window above us, casting enough light for me to see the interloper was cloaked and hooded in a monk’s cowl. Arms crossed and hands hidden within the wide bell sleeves of the robe, he stealthily approached the man and woman in the throes of their argument, said something I could not hear that got their attention, and, when they turned to face him, he turned away and quickly made for the street.

  “That man was following us—and you,” I stated.

  “Yes, and now he thinks we got away from him, so we’re safe for a short time.”

  “Good,” I said. “He thought that couple out there were a tart and a vicar.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Never mind. Want to tell us what’s really been going on?”

  “Well, this list explains a lot to me, but we’ve no time for explanations right now. I’ve got to get the Duchess away from the people who are holding her hostage.”

  “Answer just one thing, Rich,” insisted my friend. “When anyone is held hostage, it’s because they are worth something to the kidnappers—or they know something they shouldn’t know.”

  “We don’t buy the story you gave about their wanting to take her back to Russia because she has gained sympathy and money and they want her silenced, or any of that stuff. What is really going on?”

  He seemed to weigh the value of disclosing some of the truth that we sought against the ramifications of our possessing that truth. It took a few moments for him to reply and, when he did, we were no better enlightened than before.

  “She knows too much.”

  Automobile parts

  Catherine the Great Woollcott

  Chapter Twelve

  Richard turned in the shadowed entryway and opened the door. We followed him into a hall lit by a single gas jet, and then into a small, windowless sitting room. He lit a lamp and told us to sit. And then he spoke: “We are fighting a war. A different kind of world war. A covert, subversive war. You don’t see the victims, not yet, anyway, but the fighting is going on, underground.

  “What I’m about to tell you is a tale of espionage: Charles Latham, U.S. Intelligence, was murdered in Manhattan, as you know. There is a communist network in England, and there is what’s been going on here in France.

  “Back in ’nineteen, the Soviet Union created Communism International, or Comintern, as they call it. One of its functions outside of the Soviet Union is to expand their government worldwide by financially supporting efforts by communist groups around the world in the systematic destruction of democratic governments.

  “Now, the Communist Party of Great Britain has been causing tremendous concern in the country, and MI5 believes CPGB members are actively engaging in military espionage. As a matter of fact, evidence ties CPGB members to the Soviet Embassy in London, and there are current investigations into the suspected involvement of collaborators in Scotland Yard. These investigations are partially the result of an accidental discovery made by the Duchess Sofia. I’ll get to that later.

  “About this list, now. On the other side of the pond, in the United States, Charles Latham, working for U.S. Intelligence, infiltrated secret communist networks of spies based in New York and Washington, D.C. While he was busy undermining the flow of information acquired by this network, he stumbled upon information about a communist spy ring active in France. All he was able to find out was that these people were based in Paris, and that there was an Inspecteur Principal involved in it. This list you gave me contains the names of the leaders of several spy rings here in France. This is a real coup. Latham must have obtained these names very shortly before we were to meet on the Roosevelt. It�
�s what he wanted to pass on to me. With this list of names and through U.S. contacts here, along with French military intelligence, the exposure and disbanding of these Soviet spy rings would result in many arrests.

  “Where before I had one, I see now that I have two missions: Secure Duchess Sofia in a safe home and get this list to French Intelligence. But first I must find her.”

  “What about Dubois?” I asked. “Did he give Latham away?”

  “Unlikely, but that is of no importance at the moment.”

  “His name is on that list.”

  “Yes, he is—was—working on the Paris front for the Soviets, that’s for certain, now; I discovered that too late. But, the way things happened, I don’t think he ever knew who Latham was. You see, Dubois and I were aboard ship when Latham failed to show up before departure. Dubois was never privy to information concerning Latham’s activities. I, too, knew nothing about Latham or any New York spy ring until my superior contacted me and set up the assignation. My only mission had to do with the Duchess Sofia. And I suspect that’s all that Dubois was involved with. His plan was to see to her capture. He probably would have retained his cover had the clock tower bell not struck five, moments before one of his cohorts asked the time.”

  “The clock tower bell?” I asked. “What about a bell?”

  Mr. Benchley interrupted. “So, what you are saying is that none of the Soviet spies here in France have any idea that they’ve been exposed?”

  “There are two dead men on the quai. Soviet agents know their men are dead, even if the police don’t know who they were and why they were killed. They have the Duchess, and unless I can stop them it won’t be long before they dismantle their headquarters and scatter like roaches to set up at another location.”

  “Oh, my God!” I said, and clutched Woodrow tightly against my chest.

  “All right, so they have the Duchess. But there is more, isn’t there? She knows something, doesn’t she?”

  “No. Although they think she’s a spy—that’s why they want her. But all she ever was privy to were details she accidently overheard about Soviet spy activity in England.

  “You see, Duchess Sofia had acquired information by chance, in a country home outside London, by accidently overhearing a clandestine midnight conversation between two men who were unaware of her presence in the library. She’d fallen asleep in a fireside chair, out of sight of these men, who had come in there to talk. Their voices woke her; she stayed hidden and she listened. They didn’t discover her while they made their plans and named names. But, it is possible that she may have been seen leaving the library, or that something else tipped them off. She sought the advice of Major Arbuthnot, an old friend who’d been in love with her for many years and had been supporting her since the Russian Revolution. He plays a good game of cards, as you know, and, other than his small army pension, that has been their source of income. He insisted they go to MI5 with the information she’d overheard. Not long after that, things started to move against the British communist spy network. She came to the States to get away from possible retaliation, but she was not safe there, either. There were orders to capture her. They think that she has always been a spy and that her brilliant cover of ‘harmless little old lady’ is false. They want to send her back to the Soviet Union, to tell them what they think she knows about the European networks and find out about our government’s espionage activities. She is, after all, a Tsarist, an escaped member of the royal family. So, these suspicions about her involvement in espionage appear to them to be confirmed.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Go back to the ship. It they killed Latham in Manhattan, why did the spy ring there try to kill him aboard ship with the poisoned fruit and the poisoned orange juice?”

  “You forgot my swimming with the fishes, my dear Mrs. Parker.”

  “All right—that, too.”

  “I surmise that Latham’s cover was blown a short time ago. The poison may have been a backup plan in case they were unsuccessful in grabbing him before he sailed. Of course, as I told you, he had no intention of remaining on board that ship. Trunk-loads of rocks, remember? It was all a ruse.

  “They must have sent an agent on board who’d never seen Latham and was going by the room number and general description of the man. Six feet tall, dark hair, middle-aged, and rather nondescript—”

  “Mr. Benchley!”

  “I don’t know if I appreciate the nondescript part.”

  “—and possibly travelling under an assumed name.”

  “Benchley?”

  “What about Dubois?”

  “I killed him. I killed him when he tried to kill me and the Major and take the Duchess hostage. I had arranged a car, through our contact here in Paris, to take us to the Murphys’ villa on the coast. But I never intended to take the Duchess there. Instead, we would drive to a little village where I had arranged for her safe residence at a convent. Dubois knew nothing of that alteration in my plan. I had always told him only what I thought he needed to know. I’d begun to suspect his real affiliations on the boat train. He was slow to foil the kidnappers’ getaway, and when he fired his gun I thought he deliberately missed his mark.

  “So, before dawn yesterday, when the car drove up in front of the Murphys’ and we got the Duchess settled into the backseat, a man appeared from the steps of the river’s walkway and approached us, asking Claude the time. But the clock tower bell had just moments before struck five o’clock. I knew for certain, from the way the man approached us from out of nowhere, that these were not my people; a bloody smear on the door handle of the car confirmed the switch had been violent. It was all very fast, and the Major’s cane proved useful in preventing the driver from shooting me. With it he knocked the gun out of his hand, and that gave me enough time to save myself from Claude’s switchblade. But that didn’t save Claude from my bullets. The Major picked up the gun and shot the driver dead, and then the man who had approached us to ask the time wrenched the gun away from the Major and, knocking him down, got behind the wheel and took off before I could stop him. I wasn’t able to get the Duchess out in time.”

  “So they have her.”

  “They have her.”

  “I stripped the bodies of identification, pulled them down to the walkway and put them in a motorboat docked alongside and covered it with a tarp. I suspect that’s how the man who had asked the time had arrived on the quai, by the motorboat.”

  “Where would they have taken her?”

  “I found a telephone number in Claude’s pockets, which I was able to trace to an address off quai de Montebello—just a few streets from here.”

  “What’s happened to the Major?”

  “I have him tucked safely away. He was very heroic trying to save the Duchess, but he can’t be part of this rescue. They know what he looks like.”

  “The people in this spy ring don’t know us, do they?” I asked. “Oh, I’m not scared or anything; I just wondered if we could be useful.”

  Richard smiled, but Mr. Benchley had my safety in mind, and, I’m sure, his own, when he said, “Have you called the police?”

  “I couldn’t chance it. Remember what I said about the French Inspecteur Principal? Good thing I didn’t call; his name’s on this list. I can rely on only one other trusted agent. There is some risk to you as bystanders, but I was hoping that you could help as well.”

  “Tell us what you want us to do,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “You’re going to knock on the door?” I said in disbelief.

  “What would you have me do, storm the place?” said Richard with a smile. “Actually, I need you to knock on the door. I’ll be coming in through the window.”

  I looked over his swashbuckling costume—the wide-brimmed hat with the luscious white plume, the sheathed sword hanging from his belt, the britches tucked in the high boots—and said, “What? You gonna do a Cyrano act?”

  “I suspect it’ll be more like Douglas Fairbanks,” said Mr. Benchley. “But will a
sword serve you well against a gun?”

  “I have my trusty musket,” said Richard, showing us his holstered forty-five under the mantel. “Don’t worry about me; I probably won’t need the gun. Not all of these people are murderers.”

  “We’re worried about us,” said Mr. Benchley. “But it’s a good plan, and I suppose there isn’t any other way.”

  “We can’t wait to get the Duchess when they decide to move her. That would be too risky. This way we have them contained.”

  Richard told us that during the afternoon, after he was able to find the hiding place, he had sent his one trusted agent to check out the place, and after hours of surveillance it appeared there were only two people guarding the Duchess.

  Mr. Benchley and I were among the stragglers bringing up the rear of the procession, and we continued along the rue Saint-Jacques and then veered off onto the rue des Grands Degrès and into the courtyard of the building where the Duchess was being held hostage. We had started our staged argument while still with the procession, and carried it into the courtyard with us.

  Soledad suddenly appeared and joined the staged fray, brandishing a gun. I begged for my life, and she threatened loudly to kill me if I did not come home with her. I screamed with blood-curdling effect, and Mr. Benchley shielded me from the mad Oscar Wilde. Soledad shot the gun twice, and Monsignor Benchley performed a death scene worthy of any Puccini opera. Just as two gendarmes out along the parade route came running into the courtyard, a number of costumed paraders on their heels, he fell down dead.