[Dorothy Parker 04] - Death Rides the Midnight Owl

by Agata Stanford

  “And, what, Mrs. Parker, do you know about it?” asked the corpulent detective.

  “If I knew where Woodrow had done the dastardly deed—”

  “I don’t think Woodrow’s behavior is in question, Dottie,” said Roger.

  “Well, why the third degree?”

  “Was there a robbery?” asked Ruth.

  “When someone is murdered—” said the detective.

  “Murdered!” we all choked out sotto voce, as if uttering the word loudly might prove the heinous deed a reality.

  Our neighbor, the elegant lady who had been wearing the coveted hat, lay dead behind the closed door, explained Detective Gum.

  “But, she was alive—” I started to say.

  “And now she’s dead,” corrected Gum, giving me the hairy eyeball of scrutiny. There are many types of hairy eyeballs, from the romantic to the accusatory. This one was most unpleasant.

  The breeze created from the open window of my room and drawn into the hallway sent a shiver through me, although I was hot under the collar—that is, I would have been if I’d been wearing a collar.

  “But, she was alive when I saw her—”

  “No one is disputing that fact, my dear,” consoled Mr. Benchley.

  “But she’s the one who has—had—The Hat,” I said.

  “And of course,” acknowledged Mr. Benchley, “that should make perfect sense to the detective, should the question ever arise.”

  “What is the question?” asked a confused-looking Detective Gum.

  “I suppose that query will eventually present itself in the New England Journal of Medicine or the Podunk Chamber of Commerce monthly newsletter, or from the lips of Gertrude Stein,” said my friend.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “If it’s any comfort, sir,” said Mr. Benchley, “few people do.”

  The obtuse dialogue was making my head swim. “Will you both please shut up! You’re getting me confused!”

  Everybody looked at everybody else with incredulity.

  “Dottie, remember why you got sent to jail in Boston, now,” said Heywood, like a stuffy old father. “You really can’t go around telling policemen to shut up, you know!”

  “That’s not why I went to jail, and you know it! I went to jail because I started the demonstration and because the feds told the police that Ruth and I—I mean—”

  The detective’s eyes took on a bovine expression of revelation. “Now, I recognize the name! You were the one—with that other dame—”

  “Who are you calling a dame!” burst out Ruth, pushing through to stand in front of her brawny husband and assuming a defiant pose before the policeman.

  “You two were the terrorists from New York sent to bomb the courthouse square,” said Gum.

  “That’s what they thought, but not why I was hauled into jail!”

  “But your scheme to bomb—”

  “This is getting out of hand,” interrupted Heywood, sweeping his little wife back behind him with a gentle gesture of his arm. “Dottie, the detective, here, is not interested in your terrorist activities or your rap sheet.”

  “I’ll decide that,” said Gum. “I’ll have to take you aside for questioning, ma’am.”

  “But that was just a rumor, that we were bombers, probably started by one of those celebrities who wanted to get me and Ruth out of the way so they could hog the limelight! Now that I think of it, it was a rat that started the talk. I wouldn’t put it past that nasty Edna Millay—”

  “Vincent hasn’t the imagination to think up anything so diabolical, Dottie,” said Ruth.

  “That’s what you think. That dame—”

  “But, I wouldn’t put it past Aleck to have made the call just for a joke on us—”

  Heywood jumped in: “Detective, why do you think the ladies had anything to do with a murder?”

  “There’s been a wire received that terrorists intend to bomb this train.”

  “Ohhh!” screeched Ruth, and there followed additional yelps from the elderly woman with the cane I’d seen boarding earlier, and who had appeared from the room next to the Hat Lady’s and across from Mr. Benchley’s.

  “Oh, my God, what did I start?” said Heywood. And then he and Mr. Benchley tried to explain to Gum that the women had not planned to bomb the train, and that we were just overwrought from the events of the past several weeks.

  “What the hell do you mean, overwrought?” objected Ruth. “We’re furious over what’s transpired!”

  “Enough to kill, I’ll bet?” asked Gum.

  “You betcha!” said Ruth. And then realizing what she’d admitted to, added, “figuratively speaking, of course!” And then she turned to me, “Wait ’til I get my hands around Aleck Woollcott’s throat!”

  “He’s too fat for anyone to get their hands around his throat, Ruth! A gun will do the trick, though; remind me to get a gun, ” I said, before addressing the detective. “We are nonviolent protesters! We don’t need bombs,” I assured the detective, who didn’t appear assured of anything I might have to say.

  Roger jumped in with a logical thought, asking, “Why would anyone, especially a trainload of anarchists, want to bomb the train they were riding on?”

  “But I’m not an anarchist!” I objected. “But, even if I were, which I’m not, Mr. Mellon is right. I wouldn’t put a bomb on a train I was riding on.”

  This point struck home for a brief moment, and the resulting silence gave Roger an opportunity to throw around the weight of his name and position as well as a short biographical summary supporting his importance in the world of our nation’s defense. He had been one of the biggest arms manufacturers during the War, when he’d made his fortune by holding several government weapons contracts at the time. This fact did not appear to hold any weight with Detective Gum, however. The War was nearly ten years in the past, and Mellon’s companies today were simply manufacturing steel bolts for bridges. To be fair, he did vouch for my patriotism and good character, laying it on a little bit too thick, I’d say, to be convincing.

  “Well,” said Gum, “we’ve got a bomb on this train and a woman who’s been bludgeoned to death.”

  “Ouch!” screeched Ruth as she clutched her mouth. A pathetic little mewing sounded from the old lady, who nearly slipped off her cane upon hearing the word bludgeoned. Then again, the idea of a bomb could have sunk the old girl, too. Mr. Benchley reached for her elbow to steady her.

  “Excuse me, everyone,” said Roger. “I need to check on my wife; she has not been well and she gets excitable—”

  “Yes, all right, but if it would not be too upsetting and she can answer a few questions—”

  “I will see if she is awake, Detective.” And with that Roger reentered his drawing-room. He almost immediately stuck his head around the curve in the hall to say, “She’s just getting dressed,” before he rejoined us.

  The famous socialist had joined our little pajama party, having overheard our discussion; he looked very serious and stated that the train must be searched.

  “A search is being conducted,” assured Gum, and with that there appeared a policeman from the bedroom of the deceased woman.

  “I’ve found a package, addressed to the courthouse on Center Street, sir,” he said nervously to the detective, pointing into the room from whence he came. “I hear clicking noises.”

  And from whence I stood I could peer around the figures of the policemen and the doctor and into the room, where I glimpsed sticking out from under a bloodied sheet the foot of the dead woman, and an outstretched arm whose hand uncannily appeared to be pointing to a brown-paper-wrapped package the size of a shoebox protruding from under the bed.

  “We’ll have to evacuate the train immediately,” ordered Gum to a conductor standing a little distance away.

  “Wait, Detective!” said Roger with a nervous smile. “There may not be a lot of time. If you do that—well, you’ll alarm the other passengers and there may be panic, you understand?” />
  “We can’t very well throw the damn thing out a window!”

  “No! Let me open it, see if I can defuse the bomb.”

  “That’s too risky.”

  “I’m experienced with this sort of thing—at least let me try!”

  “Where?”

  Roger looked around. “It’s too dark outside—men’s lavatory, I should think—”

  “What if you can’t—”

  “If I can’t stop it, I’ll be able to get it off the train fast, away from the tracks. The car ends right next to the bathroom. Have the conductor open the gate—on the wooded side of the tracks, far away from any houses, please, just in case. I need a penknife—anyone?”

  Mr. Benchley offered his own handy tool, the Swiss army knife that has got us in and out of lots of jams, while Detective Gum ordered his man to follow and assist Roger in his mission. The conductor prepared the exit from the car.

  The silence was unnerving. The policeman carefully carried the parcel from the room and handed it to Roger. No one spoke as he made his way slowly along the corridor to the lavatory and the conductor set about his duties. Those of us who’d gathered in the hall began walking to get off the train at the other end of the car. Detective Gum was about to awaken the Harvard boys, his fist ready for a knock on their door, when the officer reappeared with a big grin and his youth restored to say the bomb had been defused.

  Roger came out of the lavatory, wiping his brow with one handkerchiefed hand while cradling the opened parcel in the other, the brown paper still clinging to the box, the interior wiring and components like the disemboweled guts of a strange machine. Applause greeted him, and the women discovered a new hero. “This package would never have exploded. It was not a real bomb, no explosives in it.”

  “But it was ticking,” I said, a little numb from the idea that death could be just a door away, across a narrow hall. And I had planned my suicide for today. Someone almost beat me to it!

  After a moment to contemplate that averted tragedy, there came accolades and back slapping from the men and adoring glances from the ladies.

  Just think, I said solemnly to myself: It might have all been over for me. No longer would I have had to decide between the razor blade or the sleeping pills, the window ledge or the shotgun. I was angry, not for the missed chance to end my miserable life, but for the reason that I didn’t want someone else deciding for me when I would leave this life! Anyway, I wasn’t certain I wanted to leave. But it was an alternative. I was always a little curious about what I’d miss the day after my suicide.

  I broke the spell. “Who was the dead woman in Bedroom Two?”

  “We cannot give you that information,” said Detective Gum. “The woman’s family must be notified before that can be revealed.”

  “But, who could have killed her?” I said.

  “Need I remind you that you, yourself, said you would kill for that hat—”

  “Ruth!” shouted Heywood, and his wife bit her lip.

  There followed a series of questions for the gang milling about in the hallway: Where was I, where was he, where was anybody at any time during the evening? Who saw whom? Who heard what? Who said that, and to whom? You were where? What time was that? You left your room? Stayed in all night? Who saw you there? Were you alone?

  And then I had to explain about The Hat. The detective lifted his eyes toward Heaven as I briefly relayed a few details of the shopping trip with Jane, and how I loved the hat that had floated dreamily by on the head of a faceless woman, the veil draping her, a few hours earlier.

  “If there was a hat, as you describe, it’s not in the room,” said Gum.

  “No hat! Then perhaps it’s a different woman I saw. But I could swear she entered this room. Yes; I am certain it was She of The Hat. The porter saw her in; he might remember the hat.”

  “Maybe the killer took it.”

  “It was a lovely thing . . . ” I mused. “A coincidence that the bomb you were warned about was a fake and found in the dead woman’s room,” I said. “That ticking sound probably woke her up. I’m not making a joke—it just struck me. Who discovered her?”

  “The porter found her.”

  “She probably caught the fellow trying to plant the real bomb and he killed her,” suggested Ruth.

  “But, why was it planted in her room?” asked Mr. Benchley, mostly to himself. “Perhaps she had something to do with it?”

  “Maybe she made the real bomb, or was going to plant the bomb, or maybe even she found the bomb! And then the bomber tried to get it back and he had to kill her!” said Ruth. She was on a roll: “And then, maybe someone came by, and he feared discovery, and never got to—I just lost my train of thought!”

  “Could it have been—” I said, and then caught my tongue. All eyes turned questioningly toward me. “Well, you see, Woodrow was out in the corridor.”

  “Who? Woodrow?” said Gum, scanning the manifest. “There’s no one on the train by that name.”

  “But of course there is—”

  “Don’t be an Airedale!” came a familiar, if annoying phrase, before appeared the glamorous Hermione, leaning into the crowded hall, supported by her husband. “Woodrow Wilson.”

  “But, he’s—”

  “Yes, dead,” chimed in Mr. Benchley. “But not that one—this one,” he said, patting Woodrow’s head.

  Gum rolled his eyes and shook his head. “The dog?”

  “Yes,” I said, “my dog.”

  “What does your dog have to do with anything?”

  “Woodrow may have actually frightened off the killer. When I followed him—”

  “You were following the—”

  “Woodrow, yes. I mean, no! Woodrow was doing the following.”

  “And who was—”

  “Woodrow—”

  “—following?”

  “Yes, who was the dog—”

  “I don’t know who he was.”

  “You don’t know who who was?

  “The fellow whom Woodrow was following.”

  “I don’t get the joke,” said Gum.

  “There was nothing funny about it, Detective. After we heard the knocking the second time—” I said.

  “You mean there was a first time?”

  “Well, for there to be a second time, there would have to be a first time, of course,” said Hermione.

  “That’s true,” said Mr. Benchley. “There was knocking both the first and the second time.”

  “And you heard it, too?” asked the detective.

  “Why, yes,” said Mr. Benchley, “and I came to see what all the knocking was about, but Mrs. Parker yelled at me, so I went back to sleep.”

  “I heard the knocking, too,” said the elderly woman, whose name we were to learn was Miss Meriwether, a longtime-retired teacher on her way to New York to visit her niece.

  “All right, now let me get this straight: You heard knocking—”

  “Twice,” I nodded, as did Miss Meriwether.

  “I was asleep,” said Mr. Benchley. “I sleep soundly, you see, so I didn’t—”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” said the famous socialist.

  “And you investigated the cause of the knocking, is that right?” the detective asked me.

  “Yes, and the second time, Woodrow didn’t follow me back into my room. Instead, he scratched on the door.”

  “And?”

  “Well, when I got out of bed for the twentieth time to let him in, he was running down the hall, following the man.”

  “Ah! Now we’re getting somewhere. And this man?”

  “He looked frightened, I thought, as if Woodrow was going to bite him.”

  “Did he?”

  “What? Bite him? Hell, no. Woodrow only bites on command, or when we are playing ‘Hail me a cab, Woodrow!’”

  “I see,” said the detective, shaking his head as if to clear it, “but not really. Back up a bit and give me the details, please.”

  “Well, ‘Hail me a cab, W
oodrow!’ is often the only way I can get a cab in the city. I give the command and Woodrow sets to motion—Mr. Benchley and Aleck Woollcott trained him to do it, isn’t that right, Fred?—”

  “Who’s Fred?”

  “Oh, that’s Mr. Benchley. Sometimes I call him ‘Fred.’ ”

  “All right, never mind the names you call each other.”

  “Fred’s not so bad; you should hear some of the other names people call me,” said Fred.

  “Please answer the question,” said Gum in a huff.

  Mr. Benchley smiled, puffed up proudly, chuckled, and said, “It’s a matter of distraction, you see: Woodrow does a little figure-eight run around the victim—I mean around the man trying to grab a taxi—nipping at one trouser cuff and then at the other.” He made a swimming figure-eight with his hand in demonstration. “This allows Mrs. Parker to grab the taxi door and hop in before the victim—I mean, the mark—I mean the fellow—realizes that the cab is occupied.”

  “Oh, wha-da clevva wittle doggie Wood-wow is!” said Guess Who?

  “It takes hours of training to achieve a precision performance,” added Mr. Benchley, proud tutor to his star pupil.

  “Would you like to see how he does it, Detective? If you’ll stand right where you are, and Mr. Benchley will stand there, I’ll give the command: Woodrow! Fetch me a cab!”

  “No!” shouted an irritable Gum as Woodrow began corralling the men’s feet and nipping at their trouser cuffs.

  “There’s a natural herding instinct in that pup,” said Heywood, as the others moved back to make room for the maneuvering. “Unusual for his breed, don’t you think, Detective Gum?”

  “I meant continue telling me the details of what you saw this evening, Mrs. Parker, not the details of the education of your Airedale.”

  “Don’t be an Airedale, Detective, he’s a Boston terrier,” corrected the maddening Hermione, who hooted encouragement: “What other tricks have you taught him, Dot?”

  I could see that the detective was not amused, so I picked up my little devil and decided to be more helpful, although I really had nothing more to tell that might prove useful.