[Dorothy Parker 04] - Death Rides the Midnight Owl

by Agata Stanford

  “It might be.”

  Woodrow was getting bored and began pulling toward the curb, lured by the delightful smells lurking there, and Mr. Benchley was getting testy—I could almost hear him thinking, What’s the matter with kids today? I wanted to cross to the shady side of the street, so we moved as the fading contest of “wits” continued their game. “Loaded! . . . Snockered! . . . Soused! . . . Stewed! . . . Stiff!”

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes! I’ll have to send my sons to Princeton!”

  “He murdered the woman.”

  “That ‘Beanie’ fellow?”

  “No! Our socialist friend!”

  “Well, he must have had a very good reason.”

  “What, he didn’t like her hat?”

  “For going to her room.”

  “At two o’clock in the morning?”

  “I’ve shown up at your door at two o’clock in the morning and haven’t murdered you yet.”

  “I’ve always suspected someday you would strike me down!”

  “Someday, perhaps, but you shouldn’t jump to conclusions, it’s a long way down, my dear.”

  “But that boy saw him at her bedroom door. He knew the woman!”

  “So, what if he did?”

  “Ah, I see where you’re going. They met earlier, when I wasn’t looking, and had arranged a late-night assignation.”

  “It has been known to happen . . . .”

  “Then why didn’t he say—”

  “—anything to Detective Gum? Put yourself in his shoes: socialist, labor leader, ACLU lawyer, industry watchdog, activist, reformer, consumer protection advocate, a man about to write a scathing review in his next book about the judicial system, backroom politics, voting fraud, shady business practices in the banking industry, and police corruption.”

  “Yes, I see your point.”

  I was quietly pensive as we approached Fifth Avenue. “What you said a minute ago—that he must have had a good reason—”

  “I didn’t mean it how it sounded!”

  “But, listen to this: Suppose he discovered she was plotting a terrorist bombing, and they struggled and—”

  “Bludgeoned, she was bludgeoned, not pushed aside, not slapped silly.”

  “A crime of passion,” I said.

  “Why else bludgeon a woman, if not out of passion?”

  “Ah, l’amore!”

  “When love turned to hate, when you despise . . . .”

  “A crime of passion! It could not have been anything less! Do you think they had been lovers, and then she plotted a bomb, wanting to implicate him, and he found out—and then Fanshaw found out about the plot, so our socialist friend had to get rid of him, too?” I concluded.

  “No. I think somebody else killed her.”

  “The only way to know for sure is to ask him what he was doing at her door that night.”

  “Not a good idea, Mrs. Parker. Just in case you are wildly on the mark. You see, he was the only person other than you and I who knew we had rescued Giusto from the scrutiny of the police. He was the only person other than you and I who knew Giusto was going to his brother’s apartment downtown.”

  “So, there may be a connection,” I said.

  My head was swimming with possibilities and no real answers. It needed clearing. All I knew was that, in just a few minutes’ talk with the boys from Harvard, we’d added yet another suspect to the list.

  It was too hot to drag Woodrow around town. I had a couple of errands to run, and a humorous piece to drop off at the New Yorker offices up the street, so we turned around and retraced our steps for home to leave Woodrow back at my apartment.

  “Didn’t he say he was heading off for Des Moines or East Podunk or someplace?” I asked.

  “Our socialist friend?”

  I nodded.

  “I think he mentioned something about a labor rally out West, but he took a room at the Royalton the day we came back to town from Boston, and he may still be there.”

  “What! Why that makes me even more suspicious of him. I thought he was a thousand miles away. If he’s been here, it means he could have stabbed Giusto, and he might have murdered Fanshaw, too!”

  “All right, you may be onto something, although I doubt it.”

  “You think he is above reproach?”

  “Yes, perhaps I do.”

  “Well?” I said, “What are we going to do about it?”

  “We are doing nothing for the moment. First, we have to find out if he had alibis for the times when Fanshaw was murdered and when Giusto was stabbed.”

  “All right, that’s only fair, I suppose.”

  We had crossed back to the north side of the street where stood the Algonquin, and lingered under the hotel’s canopy. Mr. Benchley checked his watch, and I could see his afternoon schedule flashing through his mind, before he turned to say, “You don’t like the fellow much, do you?”

  “Why do you say that? We agree on a lot of the same issues, and I have to admire the fact that he acts on his convictions.”

  “Nevertheless, you don’t like the fellow.”

  I tried to find the words, because there was a measure of truth in what Mr. Benchley had observed about my feelings. “He just takes himself so seriously,” I said. “Not that he shouldn’t; the issues at stake are serious ones,” I countered myself, unable to find balance. “Anyway, whether I like or dislike him isn’t of any importance.”

  Mr. Benchley looked at me and I could see surprise in his eyes that he could not completely mask. When you are close to someone, you can read the flicker of an eye, the subtle nuance of a smile, the little leap of an eyebrow others might dismiss. I had failed to toss off the required bon mot, the one-line putdown, the succinct phrase required to define the fellow’s faults.

  Did I find him too passionate? Too earthy? Too rough? Perhaps, too brilliant? Did I feel he was looking down his nose at me, seeing me as simply a foolish and flighty sort, who, in her loneliness, had grabbed onto a cause célèbre like the Sacco and Vanzetti trials to justify her existence?

  Was I just a fast-talking quipster who was fine to have around for a laugh or two at a speak or a party, but who at the end of the day neither lent real meaning to anyone’s life nor affected anything for the better?

  That thought stayed with me throughout the afternoon as I went about my business: Did he make me feel inferior? Was I inferior? Why did I feel self-conscious around him? I hadn’t gotten the formal education most of my friends had received, and because I hadn’t, or because I just had a thirst to absorb all I could about the world around me, I had become a sad autodidact, squirreling away in the back of my brain ideas and theories and facts and knowledge about everything and anything and everybody. In many ways, I was probably better educated than many of my contemporaries; but self-taught, I would never be as respected as the formally educated.

  Before Mr. Benchley could continue his scrutiny of my thoughts and feelings, I was rescued by Jane and Ross, coming out of the Gonk. Ross had to get back to the New Yorker offices. Jane and I would follow, as I had copy to drop off and a check to pick up, and then we girls would do a little shopping.

  I needed a cool drink by the time we had completed our rounds and found ourselves on Madison Avenue, the Bond Street of America. I looked around and remembered a little luncheonette tucked in between a luggage store and a fashionable jewelry shop on the east side of the avenue, and suggested to Jane that we stop for a drink and a rest.

  An egg cream. I want a chocolate egg cream, I thought, as we crossed the street, the hot pavement bleeding through the soles of my pumps, the exhaust fumes of passing motorcars and the pungent smell of burning rubber tires adding to my resolve to quench my thirst. A stiff wind flew up a side street, carrying along the usual sandy debris of grit and soot that pricked at my legs. My eyes were shielded by sunglasses and my hat strained at its hatpin to stay on.

  “A chocolate egg cream,” I said to the soda-je
rk as I took a stool at the counter, Jane opting for a Coca Cola over plenty of ice. I watched as the man in the white uniform and paper boat hat pumped a stream of chocolate syrup into a tall glass and then added in a splash of milk. With a long soda spoon he mixed up the chocolate milk, and then, setting the glass on the soda fountain, he pulled down a lever and shot a blast of soda water into the mix while stirring it all into a rich froth.

  The luncheonette was enjoying a healthy business as weary shoppers were looking for refreshments before moving on to the next specialty store on the avenue. We didn’t want to bother with a table, just wanted the cold drinks, so we sat at the counter. Jane and I wanted to get home to strip off our stockings. I refused to gird my loins in such weather; the rubber would sweat and stick to my skin, leaving awful dents and creases and button indentations, but the stockings were a cruel necessity. In half an hour, I would be soaking in a cool tub of water with salts, the fan blowing noisily in the darkened bathroom . . . .

  Refreshed from my foamy beverage, we gathered our packages and made for the door. I stood for a long moment in front of the big fan. As I moved out of the breeze to light a cigarette, I looked out from the storefront window, my eyes taking in the rear grounds of St. Patrick’s Cathedral across the street. To my left stood the Ritz-Carlton, the luxury hotel where vichyssoise was first invented. There was one more stop I wanted to make before retreating into my fan-cooled lair.

  We started down the avenue at a brisk pace, and then slowed as the heat took its toll. We arrived at Madame Charlotte’s Chapelier, where a window dresser was adjusting a new display of the most delightful chapeaux of the coming autumn season. That meant “Summer Sale,” we said in unison, suddenly revived as we eagerly entered the shop.

  Madame Charlotte is a very clever young man of about thirty years who designs all the lovely angled affairs that grace the little shop. If my use of hyperbole gets out of hand when I describe these confections, remember that years ago I wrote copy for lingerie ads in Vogue. It is because of the gentleman’s use of the fabrics and accoutrements that decorate these marvels, along with his attention to detail, the meticulous stitching, and the carefully measured and flattering proportions, which are beyond heavenly, that I so speak. This talented magician transforms the ordinary into the spectacular, and when you have donned one of these brilliant pieces of art you are assured of attention. After all, the Hat Lady from the train might have been one of the ugliest creatures on God’s sweet earth for all I knew, but that hat gave her the grace, stature, and beauty of a queen.

  That Madame Charlotte is a man was not generally known until about a year ago, when a patron overheard a conversation alluding to the fact and proceeded to spread the revelation along Park Avenue. Neither his manner nor his acquired breeding betrayed him, for he was content to play the role of manager at the shop. His shop-girls were convinced he was nothing but a gentleman—who, perhaps, favored other gentlemen more than the opposite sex, if that was his only fault. They assumed he was taking orders from the real power behind the scenes, a mature woman milliner. There was a brief denial, with the gentleman insisting that Charlotte was his great-aunt living in Paris, who sent her designs for production of the hats to the States. But a society columnist’s investigation uncovered that lie when she found out that Madame Charlotte was in fact one Harvey Fish, a first-generation German Jew, born and raised in an Upper-East-Side tenement. The youngest of seven children, Fish had shown promise at an early age as a costumier, learning his craft from his Aunt Sadie, who sewed up flashy fare for chorus gals in Vaudeville shows.

  As Jane looked over the selection of sale items, I answered the smiling saleswoman’s query, “May I be of assistance, Madame?” with a “Yes, I wish to see Madame himself, please.”

  “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?” asked Jane as we left the shop, a hatbox dangling from her wrist. “You weren’t at all interested in any of the hats!”

  “I’d need a mortgage to buy one,” I said with a laugh.

  “But the white one—it suited you perfectly, Dottie, and it was only seven-fifty! So, what’s up?”

  I really wanted to keep Jane out of it, and didn’t feel right about telling her too many of the details of the murders, besides what she’d heard at lunch. She’d been involved with me and Mr. Benchley in dangerous situations over the past few years while investigating crimes and it would have been rude not to keep her up to date on this one. I had a nagging feeling that if she knew too much, the knowledge might put her in jeopardy. But because so many people already knew what was going on—the news of the murders had hit the papers—it might be best to tell her a few of the facts that seemed benignly unimportant.

  “The murdered woman—the woman on the Midnight Owl—I noticed her when she was walking toward her bedroom compartment because she was wearing a hat.” Jane stopped dead in the stream of pedestrian traffic as we turned down 46th Street toward Fifth, and looked at me blankly. I elaborated: “She was wearing that gorgeous number with black veiling, the most wonderful expanse of organza unfolding from angled pleats at the crown, narrow at the forehead—with the stretched silk wings that widened at the sides?”

  Still the blank stare.

  “White egret feathers that swooped up from the band and then draped downward, forming an S as it brushed along the shoulder?”

  “I didn’t see it in there.”

  “The goddamn hat you said made me look like a shrunken chicken?”

  “Oh, that hat! A thing of beauty,” she said with a smile in recollection. “But not for you.”

  “Obviously not for me!”

  “Oh! That’s the hat your dead woman was wearing?”

  “But it wasn’t found in her room when they discovered her body, or anywhere on the train.”

  “So you think some crazed female killed her for the hat?” yelped Jane. “Why that’s crazy!”

  “Of course it is, and that’s not a reason to kill,” I said, and then, “although Ruth Hale thought I might’ve . . . .”

  “Of course you wouldn’t, the idea!” And then she looked at me long and hard.

  “Oh, stop it, idiot child!” I said. “But you should have seen the brooch she had pinned over the veil. That would be something to kill for. It must have cost a mint!”

  “Veiling? I don’t remember—”

  “Come to think of it, there was no veiling on the hat when it was in the shop. I think she wore a veil to disguise herself.”

  “What did you find out from ‘La Madame Charlotte’?”

  “Well, he told me that his creations are one of a kind, although he may produce one in black or navy and beige and white, if the colors suit the contours. Sometimes, it’s only one. The black hat had been sold to a woman last June, around the time we were in there last, and he described her as rather tall with light-brown hair. The thing he noticed that made him remember her was that she wore sunglasses all the time she was in the shop trying on hats.”

  “She didn’t want to be recognized, that’s why.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right—not there and not on the train.”

  “Incognito!” said Jane with a thrill in her voice, and I could tell she wanted to know all she could, and was hoping to play a part in another adventure in the world of crime. How could I deny her the pleasure?

  “She paid cash for the hat, and when the salesgirl asked if she wanted the hat delivered and could she have her name and address, the woman declined, saying she wanted to take the hat with her.”

  “Ah-ha!” said Jane, the weariness from the afternoon of shopping replaced by the renewed excitement of the game. “She didn’t want to let anyone know who she was!”

  “I think you’re right. But Madame Charlotte was in the shop at the time, and as the mysterious woman had an armload of packages, he opened the door for her on the way out, hailed her a cab, and saw her settled in. And as he stepped from the curb he heard her tell the cabbie the address of her destination, an address that he recognized
as the prestigious new residence known as the Sherry-Netherland.”

  “Isn’t that—?”

  “Yes! Where Mr. Feather-whatever-you-call-’im—Fanshaw—had rooms.”

  “I will never understand the British,” said Jane, shaking her head. “Why they can’t just change the spelling—”

  “Yes, yes; that is not the point.”

  “So what do we do about it?”

  “Nothing, Jane,” I replied. “We are probably dealing with anarchists, the kind who make bombs—”

  “Sounds like your average Broadway producer,” said Jane with a giggle.

  “—or thieves murdering a member of their burglary ring to increase their share of the cut. These people don’t care whom they hurt.”

  “So who do you think killed those two anarchists?” said Jane, about to throw out a half-dozen barbs. “A socialist?”

  “You may be onto something,” I said, not telling her about my latest murder suspect.

  And wouldn’t you know, he was sitting at the bar, our socialist friend; I saw him there as I entered my hotel, but I didn’t want him to see me. I knew he was following me or waiting for me. Probably wanting to pick my brains about what I knew about the murders so far, and to commiserate about the death of poor Giusto!

  The barkeep looked up and I shook my head. He read my silent message from across the room and stifled any words that might have been on his lips to tell the fellow of my arrival. I ducked into the waiting elevator and moved to the inside-corner blind spot so I wouldn’t be seen, as the operator closed the gate and door. I told myself, as the car rose to my floor, that I was not being a coward, only cautious.

  A cool bath, and then I spent the next few hours stretched out on my bed with the fan blowing over me, thinking. I do that on occasion: I just think. It is not usually the best thing I can do; often I think too much and I arrive at a place that is not so pleasant and can be difficult to get out of. But, lying there in the artificial breeze, in the darkened room after the cool bath, Woodrow on his back, allowing the breeze to cool his hot belly, I thought.

  I thought about all the crazy events of the past several weeks—the frustration of my trips to Boston, especially during the previous two weeks, when working for a reversal of Sacco’s and Vanzetti’s sentence of death seemed like throwing shit against the tide, when even a stay of execution would have brought a smile to my face, and to all the others who believed in the injustice of the whole affair.