[Dorothy Parker 05] - A Moveable Feast of Murder

by Agata Stanford

  I ran into the building, up one flight of stairs, with Soledad in pursuit, screaming like a banshee for my life to be spared, that “the priest meant nothing to me!,” and banging on the doors leading to the apartment we needed to enter.

  Coming up the stairs behind us were the gendarmes, just as we reached the door. I banged and begged to be let in, and when the door was opened, in flew Richard from the balcony, brandishing his sword.

  Soledad stormed in waving her gun and a man who was hiding behind the door knocked it out of her hand. Woodrow ran in like a surprise and leaped up to bite the man on his ass, and when I yelled, “Fetch a cab, Woodrow!” he performed his little figure-eight maneuver around the man’s feet, just the way Mr. Benchley and Aleck had taught him years ago on the streets of Manhattan. Just as the man regained his balance and aimed his gun at Woodrow, Richard unsheathed his sword, knocked the weapon out of his hand, and, with a flourish of the blade, stuck the man to the wall by his coat tails. A gendarme entered and took in the scene, Mr. Benchley bringing up the rear as the other hostage-taker made his escape over the balcony.

  The Duchess was nowhere in sight.

  Richard followed the escape route, while Soledad remained behind to explain as best she could to the police that a woman was being held hostage. She was showing her identification to the police when I said, “Take care of Woodrow!” Mr. Benchley and I ran back down the flight of stairs and out into the courtyard where a crowd had gathered. A gendarme called out after us to stop. We didn’t.

  On the street we blended in with the stragglers continuing along the parade route and I saw the familiar white plume that showed Richard’s location on the rue Saint-Jacques. We followed in pursuit, keeping sight of the plume, which rose at the incline to the Petit Pont leading over the Seine to Île de la Cité.

  Here, on the bridge, the crowd had thickened as the procession culminated and filed into the great square before which rose the foreboding Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris.

  I lost sight of the white plume. Being small in stature, I couldn’t see more than the backs of the people in front of me. Mr. Benchley grabbed my hand and pulled me in tow.

  It would be easy for a criminal to get lost in this crowd, I thought. What chance was there of catching him? But, if we didn’t catch him, how would we ever find where they had taken the Duchess?

  I felt like I was caught in the boxwood maze of an English garden for all I could see to get my bearings. Bodies were pressed tight at first, and then Mr. Benchley led us into a small clearing in the forest of brightly colored costumes. Vendors were hawking their goods, drunks were behaving lewdly, and it was a pickpocket’s paradise.

  Towering above us stood the eight-hundred-year-old Roman-Gothic cathedral; its statuary of Judean Kings, luridly lit for ominous effect, glowered over the crowd that was packing the square. Gargoyles bared fangs; grotesques leered. The festive music of an orchestra set up on a stage on one side of the square sharply contrasted with the imposing architecture of the church. The crowd was cheering at something that was happening beyond my field of vision. Mr. Benchley pulled me in close to him and we moved with the pressing masses toward the sound of amplified voices when the music came to an abrupt halt.

  “But, where is Richard?” I asked my friend as we searched around us. A couple of times I thought I had spotted him, only to find the white plume was attached, once to the hat of a brigadier general, and another time to the headdress of a cancan dancer. And when Mr. Benchley laughed, and I asked what was so funny, he pointed to the stage. All I could see was the top of a familiar head of wild strawberry-blond curls. Mr. Benchley lifted me from my waist so that I could better see what was going on. Harpo was up there, on the makeshift stage, and a pair of hands was placing a big, gaudy crown on his head while the crowd broke out in thunderous cheers and applause. King of Fools, I thought; how appropriate. And from my higher vantage point I saw Richard Hartley giving chase to the escaped kidnapper before his bobbing plume disappeared around the south façade of the cathedral.

  “Oh, brother,” said Mr. Benchley with a chuckle, referring to Harpo.

  “There!” I yelled, and he put me down on my feet. “There’s Richard!”

  He followed my pointing hand but saw nothing.

  “They just went around the church, that-a-way.”

  He bolted away from me, pushing through in pursuit, almost losing his miter along the way, and in a moment the crush of bodies had cut off sight of him. I tried to move in the direction he had gone, but I was grabbed by a rambunctious young man dressed as a Roman senator, who twirled me in circles for an impromptu dance. Several other couples dressed like nymphs and fairies joined in as a costumed Pied Piper began playing his flute for a medieval dance, which turned into a quadrille. Every time my hand was released and I tried to get away I was handed from one to another in a frolicking tug-of-war.

  And then rough wool fabric rubbed against my cheek and I felt smothered. When my eyes refocused I was staring into a field of brown. That was the last thing I remembered until I awoke to the terrifying sight of long black curls dangling before my eyes and the dizzying impression of a deep abyss between wooden slats in a dark and perilous place.

  I must have gasped for fear of tumbling down into a dark oblivion I could not understand, and my hands shot out to break my fall. But all I could find for a stronghold was the scratchy wool. I was dangling head-over-heels, being carried up a dark stairway over a man’s shoulder. The sounds of ten thousand collective voices rose up from below at a distance. I stiffened with vertigo; I wanted to fight for my freedom, but reason told me if I broke free from the man’s grip, I would only fall to my death down the long and perilous spiral stairs. When I was thrown to the floor in a heap at the top of the landing, my head hit hard on the old and petrified wooden boards and I passed out again.

  I came to; I didn’t know for how long I had lain there unconscious. The man, the hooded “monk,” was gone, and I looked around to get my bearings. Arched and wood-slatted windows allowed in the illumination of the cathedral’s exterior lighting. I couldn’t miss the bell: It was frighteningly huge and hung above me like a thirteen-ton threat. I scurried along the floor of the loft toward one of the arched openings and, when the sharp pain in my head subsided, peered out through the bottommost louver.

  I yelled, “Help!” But the force of my breath shot painfully through my head and I fell back in agony. Waiting until the pain subsided so I might try again, I attempted to reason my way out of panic.

  The monk had left me there. Why? I realized that he wasn’t coming back for me. Why bring me up to this bell tower, just to leave me here, concussed? The blow to my head must have knocked some insight into me. That’s when I figured it out.

  I was the decoy, the distraction. I knew that my friends, coming to my rescue, would allow the culprits get away, to take the Duchess to another location, safe from police capture. I heard a sudden rustling and my heart leaped in my chest. Could there be bats in the belfry?

  No, I realized, there were rats in the belfry!

  A flash of light through the louvered arches revealed the dark specter of a huge rat scurrying across the floor. When the light wavered and then dimmed, I saw the critter was much smaller than its inflated shadow, and I waited in frozen anxiety for it to scamper down the suspended stairs.

  I began to rise to my feet, but didn’t make it all the way up for the wave of nausea that pulled me back down and the ache throbbing in my head. I would have to wait until I regained some stability before I tried to descend the circular stairs.

  The loft was flooded with light—suddenly—before the shadows returned once again. The phenomenon of intense light repeated; I managed to get to my feet and peer out through the louvers, shielding my eyes from the direct glare until the searchlight moved on to throw me into darkness once more.

  Down below, in the square, faces were looking up at the tower. I needed to signal for help, somehow. I took off the red scarf from around my neck a
nd waved it out between the louvers, hoping it would be seen when the searchlight passed. I heard calls from below and saw raised arms pointing. There was movement just outside the opening, and when my double vision cleared I thought I was hallucinating because Harpo Marx was only a little way below me, scaling the Grand Gallery between the towers.

  “I’ll be there in a minute, Dottie,” he called to me.

  “Oh, crap!” I replied, relieved and yet scared to death he would fall. And then I couldn’t see him anymore, and was wondering whether my fears had become reality when I heard the collective hush cut through the noise of the crowd.

  Footsteps pounded on the stairs, louder with every successive tread, and there appeared Harpo on the landing, followed by Monsignor Benchley, miter still secure on his head. He was out of breath and wheezing.

  “Four-hundred . . . and . . . twenty-two . . . steps,” Mr. Benchley huffed.

  “Forty-seven crawls, my way,” said Harpo.

  “You could have come in through the front door, Harpo,” said Mr. Benchley, “like I did.”

  “You take the low road and I’ll take the high road.”

  “Help me out of here,” I ordered. “I don’t think I can take the stairs alone.”

  “I’ll carry you down,” said Harpo.

  “Not on your life, you crazy fool!” I said, as Mr. Benchley gave me a swig from his flask and then took me in his arms to guide me down the stairs. We had made it to the first landing when the clapper of the ancient bell, Emmanuel, struck its mark. I thought my head would explode. Startled, we looked up to see Harpo, dangling in recoil from the bell cord, lifted into the air. We braced ourselves and covered our ears when the clapper struck alarm once again.

  Down into the sanctuary we went, without any interest in the magnificent vaulted ceilings, the rose windows, the impressive altar, and exited through a side door.

  “Did Richard catch the man?” I asked, leaning into Mr. Benchley as he led me away from the cathedral and toward the street.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just as I feared.”

  “All I knew was when the crowd started pointing up to the South Tower, and I saw your kerchief—well, my priority was fetching you back safely. I got you across the Atlantic, warding off icebergs in our path, and I wasn’t going to let you die in France.”

  “Yeah, thanks. If Oscar Wilde wanted to come here to die, fine with me. I’ll take Manhattan. Speaking of Oscar Wilde, Soledad has been working with Richard all along.”

  “So it appears.”

  “She has Woodrow.”

  “Yes, I know. Let’s hope the police didn’t arrest them. After all, Woodrow did take a chunk out of that fellow’s behind.”

  “He does me proud!” I said, and when I laughed the pain in my head struck hard like the bell clapper hitting its mark. Another thought made me ask, “How could they know? How could they know I was there, unless someone—”

  “There was this fellow dressed like a monk who went up on the stage and said you were up there.” Mr. Benchley repeated, “Monk! He was the man we saw earlier, wasn’t he?”

  “He clobbered me and carried me up there.”

  “Oh, my dear!”

  “No thanks to you! Where were you when he knocked the daylights out of me?”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Just stop patting me on the head, you damn fool.” I said truculently. “I was used for diversionary tactics so that those kidnappers could get away, and nobody would be any wiser ’cause while they were sneaking off, everybody’s heads were in the air.”

  “Harpo climbed the walls, you know—”

  “He’s always climbing the walls.”

  “—and I pushed past the guards outside the church to save you. They only let me in when I threatened Papal action if they didn’t. This outfit does get one into the best places.”

  “Phooey!” I said.

  “Well, that’s a nice thank-you-sir!”

  “Now what’ll we do?”

  “Go back to the hotel, I suppose. Aleck is probably waiting for us. It’s almost midnight, so the coach should be coming to meet us down that-a-way.”

  “Fred,” I said. “Why go to the bother of setting up a diversion for a getaway, when it was so easy to get lost in the crowd and just disappear? Do you think the kidnappers have the Duchess close by and they were about to move her while I was being rescued?”

  “I see your point.”

  “Well, it appears that they’ve arrested Harpo. Look. He’s got an escort of five gendarmes.”

  “It’s tradition in these European countries to send their royals to a dungeon or a tower now and again, so King Harpo is just one in a long line of fools.”

  “And this crowd has gotten out of hand,” I said. “There’s an ambulance, and they’re taking someone away on a stretcher. Looks like the poor soul is dead. He’s all covered up.”

  We spotted Aleck—but then, how could we not? His Renault-tank of a skirt forced people to give him a wide berth to avoid being knocked over. He stood alone on the street across from the North Door of the cathedral. Sara and Gerald stood partially obscured behind him. Aleck spotted us and waved. We began to cross to meet our friends when seemingly from nowhere appeared Richard, hatless, staggering and clutching his arm. Mr. Benchley went to his aid, holding him up to keep him from falling.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “They had her here, down in one of the underground vaults. But they’ve taken her elsewhere—”

  “The doctor needs a doctor!” I shouted, and my head throbbed mercilessly.

  I ran toward the ambulance in search of a medic. But as I approached the driver glared at me and yelled something in French, and the two medics who’d loaded in the stretcher looked over at me and then quickly slammed the back doors in my face.

  Why a knock on the head should lend me such clarity, I don’t know. But I just knew that these were not ordinary ambulance men. I ran back to where Mr. Benchley was holding up a wounded Richard Hartley; Gerald, seeing the distress, had come over to them.

  “I’m really all right now,” insisted Richard. “It’s just a surface gash, but they knocked me cold and took my gun.”

  “They have her in that ambulance,” I said, “and they’re getting away!”

  The street had been cleared of automobile traffic for the festival, and except for police on horseback and one or two police vehicles, only pedestrians took to the streets. The cathedral clock struck the hour of twelve. Aleck’s hired coach-and-four had arrived and the coachman was awkwardly trying to assist Aleck up onto the back bench, before resuming his place at the reins.

  Richard’s attention returned to his mission as he watched the ambulance pull out from the curb. When he saw the coach pulling to the opposite side of the street, he yelled, “Let’s go!”

  Adrenalin renewing his spent energy, he hobbled over and instructed the coachman to get down from his perch. To everyone’s surprise, the coachman did as he was told.

  Aleck was outraged, and yelled, “What the hell do you think you are doing!”

  “Commandeering this vehicle!” replied Richard. “In the name of the United States of America!”

  Flummoxed, jaw dropped, Aleck got his back up, quite literally, and the movement nearly sent him tumbling backward off his precarious perch. Mr. Benchley, Gerald, Sara, and I got into the carriage. Richard cracked the whip and reins and we were on our way after the siren-blasting ambulance.

  Because of the siren, pedestrians cleared the way for the ambulance, and we were so close on its trail that the crowd cheered us drunkenly as our coach-and-four barreled after it. Very quickly we bore to the left. Before us was the Pont au Double, leading off the island and onto quai de Montebello. The streets were now open for automobile traffic to our left, if not to the right, which had been the parade route, so the ambulance turned sharply left, knocking down a wooden traffic barrier that had yet to be removed. We followed closely, and I saw policemen’s startled expressions as they made h
aste to their vehicle to bring up the rear of the chase.

  Onward, then, along the quai, past other bridges linking the Île de la Cité and the Île Saint-Louis to the Left Bank, while skirting motorcars and buses. The police car added its singsong siren to the whining warning. We moved at a fast clip, but the ambulance was maneuvering on four tires, not sixteen legs and wooden-spoked wheels. When the truck ahead turned right on quai Saint-Bernard, it slammed on its breaks to avoid a horse-drawn farm truck entering from the rue Culvier. Our front horses reared in startled fear at the near collision, as the ambulance scooted around the wagon and down a side street, cutting its siren to stealthily escape its pursuers. The wagon driver cursed at Richard in French words we were not taught in school, as half-a-dozen crates of live chickens on the flatbed tumbled out onto the cobbles, blocking our way. Mr. Benchley leaped from the carriage and moved a couple of the squawking caged birds in an effort to clear our path.

  There were words shouted back and forth between Aleck and the wagon driver in guttural, angry French. The driver called Aleck “Madame de Pompadour” and Aleck tossed back a few obscenities, but was silenced when Mr. Benchley hopped back into the carriage and Richard took off down the street.

  I turned to see the fist-shaking poultry farmer cursing future generations of our offspring as Richard reined the horses to turn onto a narrow cobbled residential street, quiet now at that late hour except for a gang of young men and women loitering outside a rough-looking bar. Sirens signaled the imminent arrival of the police cars that were closing in. Slowing down, Richard asked if an ambulance had passed, and when one of the young men pointed ahead we proceeded slowly down the street. When we came to an intersection where we had to go right or left, I saw a glimpse of the red cross against the white field just as the ambulance disappeared into another side street. I shouted for Richard to bear left, and when we arrived where we thought would be another cross-street, we found ourselves dead-ended and facing the iron gates of a garage that had once been a horse stable. There was only a courtyard to our right, but we didn’t see the ambulance.