[Dorothy Parker 04] - Death Rides the Midnight Owl

by Agata Stanford

  The horseman of my near-apocalypse slowed the horse to a canter and unceremoniously told me to reposition my weight, spread-legged over the animal’s rump, and ordered in no uncertain terms: “Hang onto my waist!”

  Harpo and his “Maggie” maneuvered carefully along the narrow path bordering the big lake. The full moon reflected on the still waters, and to the east and west, beyond the meadows and woods of my beloved park, stood the window-lit buildings of the exclusive apartment houses.

  Then came the roar of a motorcar engine, close, where a car was not meant to travel. The headlights bounced wildly as the automobile hit the small mounds and rocks along the grassy spaces as it made a beeline toward us. Before I knew it, Harpo had taken us off the walking path and onto the bridal path at full gallop. Within just a few seconds it seemed our road was being brightened by the glaring headlights coming up fast behind us.

  “Hold on, Dottie! Just close your eyes and hang onto me.”

  The next thing I knew, my behind was off my perch, in the air, and my heart fell into my stomach, for we were flying forward at a great speed and I had to struggle for a stronghold as Harpo was escaping my grasp. I felt weightless for a time. I imagined that now was to come the moment of my death, and I didn’t want it to end this way.

  My bottom smacked down hard again, landing on solid horseflesh, and Harpo returned like a welcomed slap against my chest. I hadn’t closed my eyes as I was told, and now I felt lightheaded and faint, having watched from my vantage point the great leap we—Harpo, me, and Maggie—had just taken off the bridal path over a wall of boulders and down into a grassy ramble.

  “Did we make it?” asked my friend.

  “You can open your eyes now, Harpo,” I said.

  “Thanks!”

  “But I wouldn’t slow down.”

  “Well, there’s a bridge up ahead, I think, off the bridal path we were on, and I see lights. She may be heading there to get an open shot at us as we ride under the arch.”

  “Go where you must, Harpo; we’ll cross that bitch when we get to her.”

  “Must you joke?”

  “It’s expected of me.”

  She was out of the car and waiting for us on the bridge, aiming the gun with both hands. It looked like she’d been hurt sometime during the chase, because she was having trouble getting a firm grip on the weapon.

  There was nowhere for us to go—walls bordered the road, so Harpo kicked Maggie into a run, and just as we entered the momentary shelter of the bridge, the gunshot echoed wildly within the archway.

  She hadn’t time to maneuver around to get off a shot as we exited the archway and rode off into the night. But soon the sound of the engine roared at our back and we knew she was on the move again, unrelenting in her mission to see us dead.

  Belvedere Castle sits like a queen on the second-highest point in Central Park. Joan would have a hard time getting her motorcar to the castle, which is at the southern foot of the reservoir. She’d have to abandon the auto and circumvent the woods and marshy glades on foot, or walk over the footpaths leading to the building, where she might herself be ambushed. I didn’t doubt she would try to get to the castle.

  Harpo guided Maggie more slowly now that we were a safe distance from Joan’s pursuit on foot, and in just a few hundred feet he brought the horse to climb the rock where it leveled out for us. We—Maggie, that is—rested a minute while we took in the view below. To our north and east was the great reservoir, sparkling in the dark and mirroring the cumulous clouds, white and low against the black sky. The castle was lit with floodlights on the outside, but the windows were dark squares, indicating no one was there. We thought it best to make our way toward Central Park West. She must have stopped and killed the headlights. She would now be on foot, coming toward us on a walking path around the lake. We agreed, too, that our best course of action was to make it to the busy thoroughfare to our west. First we would go south, off the walking path, through another ramble. We wasted not another minute as Harpo guided Maggie back down off the rock ledge and onto the soft turf toward the exit from the park at 77th Street.

  But as we arrived at the footpath out of the park, headlights, close by and on the meadow, flashed on, and we could see her walking toward us in silhouette, her dress rendered a sheer, gauzy film about her figure by the backlighting, as she once again lifted her arm to aim the weapon at us.

  A shot was fired and suddenly she disappeared, our vision obscured by the hazy lights shining in our eyes. We watched as a figure, a man, walked toward where she had stood before falling down next to the lump that was Joan Trombley on the ground.

  Harpo brought Maggie out of the direct glare of the light, and now we were able to see Freddie Trombley, rocking and moaning over the body of his wife. From out of the distance, down the dimly lit walking path, came a horse and buggy, clip-clopping along. I heard the familiar bark of a dog—my precious pup!—and in a moment I was plucked from my perch on Maggie by the sturdy arms of Mr. Benchley, and set down firmly and held in his comforting embrace. When I broke away, Woodrow Wilson leaped into my arms and licked away the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  Belvedere Castle

  The Final Chapter

  We had gathered at a long table on the canopy-covered garden patio of Bernardo Castelli’s Italian Restaurant in Little Italy. The strings of lanterns shone warmly and the night was refreshingly cool for the beginning of September. The wine was red and ever flowing and the conversation as varied and interesting as the dinner fare.

  The Italian restaurateur, Bernardo Castelli, the man who had helped Lamberto Maggiorani make his start by opening the bakery for him next-door to the restaurant, had heard about how Mr. Benchley and I and our socialist friend and the Marx Brothers had helped protect young Giusto’s life, and he insisted on hosting a party for us. The Maggioranis were there, Lamberto, Lianella, their little boy, Enzo, Papa Corelli, and Giusto, along with me, Mr. Benchley, our socialist friend, Heywood, Ruth, Tallulah, Harpo Marx, and Aleck, who insisted on coming “to review the food for the Times.” This he did do, to the glory of Bernardo Castelli, who consequently had to expand the restaurant into the adjoining building’s storefront to accommodate the crowds who flocked in to try the saltimbocca, the tender calamari, the octopus salad, the exquisite Bolognese sauce, the mouthwatering pasta con la sarde with wild fennel, and the stuffed leg of lamb, not to mention the numerous vegetable dishes prepared by the divine hand of Signor Castelli himself! We had feasted for two hours, and the food kept on coming. The espresso was being poured, and aperitif glasses filled with anisette. And now, we were to experience the delectable little masterpieces of Italian pastry prepared by the Maggiorani Bakery next door.

  I bit into a cannoli, and moaned. Aleck was happy, I could tell, because he was sipping his demitasse with his pinky-finger extended. Mr. Benchley was well into a napoleon, and the others paid rapt attention to the little lecture given by our socialist friend (whose Italian is fluent, and used only to clarify a point for Giusto’s benefit).

  “Nobody wants the anarchist, because the anarchist believes in no interconnections,” he said. “He refuses to answer to the bosses, to the labor leaders, to any governing power at all, so he isn’t under anyone’s control, you see. He refuses to take a political stand—won’t pledge allegiance to any nation, and so he won’t go to war and fight for whatever it is that the nationalistic powers want him to fight for. The politicians ask, how can you win anything—the land, the power, the oil, the coal, if these unpatriotic crazies refuse to fight for us? The Reds hate them. The socialist and labor leaders see anarchists as crackpots, loose cannons who only undermine the work their organizers are doing. The anarchist does not see the big picture, which is that you can’t just demand from the bosses better pay and working conditions and expect that you’ll get much without the threatening weight of a union behind you.”

  “True,” said Heywood. “You have to form an army of sorts, a union of men, or the special interests will run yo
ur life.”

  “But that is like war, like fight in war and to play the game with the capitalists!” said Giusto.

  “But, Giusto,” asked our socialist friend, “think about this: If Vanzetti had allowed any of his fellow anarchists to organize a real movement to free them, do you really think they’d have ever been executed, or even jailed?”

  Giusto nodded, but I doubted he was convinced. He said: “They die for the princ-apple.”

  They died to keep their principles, the principles of their cause, and fighting would have been a betrayal of all they believed in.

  I looked at young Giusto and thought about how, when one is young, one’s political philosophies might often change, perhaps shifting from right to left; these philosophies were the reflection of one’s conscience and experience. How would he feel about things in ten or twenty years from now?

  Aleck ignored the political talk and instead turned to ask Bernardo Castelli if he could take home an order of the scampi, and to make him a reservation for eight the following Sunday evening.

  The conversation had turned to the events of the past few days when Ruth asked, “Why didn’t Roger just divorce Hermione? Why kill her?”

  “Money. In a divorce he would have gotten nothing, and it was she who had the great fortune,” I said.

  Ruth asked, “What was it about the portrait in Hermione’s room at Last Call that made you suspect she wasn’t the real Hermione?”

  “Well, I didn’t put it together at first,” I said, “But then I remembered that Hermione told me her sister died, and Johnny, the kid at the party, said it was a twin who had died, ‘when she was just a little kid.’ The two girls in the painting were in their early teens. Heywood made inquiries and found out the child had drowned around her eighth birthday. So the painting wasn’t quite right, you see. And then I remembered Tallulah saying that Hermione had had her black roots bleached—remember that day we went to have our hair done, Lulla, at Loretta’s salon?”

  “That’s right; Loretta said she had to bleach Hermione’s black roots—but what does that—”

  “The real Hermione was prematurely gray-haired, and I remembered that boy, Johnny, at the Mellons’ party, saying he was surprised she wasn’t an old lady, and that with her pretty blonde hair she looked like a movie star.”

  Mr. Benchley added, “It was the old-lady remark, and the fact that Freddie Trombley said the dead woman in Bedroom Two was gray-haired, whereas his missing wife was a brunette.”

  “Also, the odd statement you made, Tallulah, that she had been to Henri’s beauty salon and found it pretentious, as you mentioned she had said to Loretta; that seemed strange, considering she’d never been to the States before and had been in town only one day before going to Loretta’s to get her hair done.”

  “So, you think she had been here in New York before,” said Tallulah.

  “Well, the brooch,” said Mr. Benchley. “It was a one-of-a-kind creation, no others made. If it had been purchased by Roger Mellon last June, as we discovered when we looked at the sales registry at Tiffany’s, thanks to the help of Harpo and his brothers, why, then, was it on the veil of a hat worn by ‘The Dead Woman in Bedroom Two’?”

  “Look, Mr. Benchley, darling friend: I am not going to write about this whole fiasco under the title, The Dead Woman in Bedroom Two, as you would have me do. I won the coin-toss, remember? I have another title in mind for the day I am ready to sit down and write about it,” I said, picking off the edge of an anginette cookie and feeding the morsel to Woodrow, who was lying beside my chair.

  Mr. Benchley ignored me and continued on: “Roger met Joan Trombley when he was living in Paris, while she was taking a shopping vacation away from Freddie, it seems. Hermione was in a sanatorium in Switzerland, giving her husband, who’d obviously married her for her inheritance, a chance to fool around in ‘Gay Paree’! He couldn’t divorce the real Hermione; her fortune would be gone with her if he did, so what better than to kill her on the train? It would be easy for Joan to assume the role of Hermione, as no one, other than a few people in Kenya, had ever seen the real wife.”

  “And the bomb was just a handy diversion, the only clever part of the scheme to send us off on a wild-goose-chase looking for anarchist bombers,” said Heywood.

  “Yes,” I replied, “getting poor Giusto involved in the madness, using to their advantage the prejudice that follows the newly arrived immigrant once he gets off the boat.”

  “That fake bomb on the train, the one that was found in the dead woman’s room? Well, it was part of Roger’s and Joan’s plan to make the murder appear to be the work of anarchist conspirators,” added Mr. Benchley. “He ran a munitions factory during the war, remember. Typical Sherlockian ploy: Distract Holmes with a fake crime, while Moriarty commits the real one.”

  “I see,” said Ruth, “Fake bombers, real bludgeoners!”

  “Charles Fanshaw came to the States on the same ship Roger and the real Hermione had sailed on from England. He was on the trail of his cousin, Joan Trombley, after he discovered that it was Roger she had been having an affair with before she ran off. He thought Roger would possibly lead him to her, but to his surprise he spotted Joan on the Midnight Owl. Later he must have figured out the scheme, and he confronted the killers at Last Call, where they knocked him off, too.”

  “By the way, Tallulah, you were right, you know,” I said. “You did see a couple embracing on the bench when you slithered back to the bungalow at dawn, night of the party.”

  “I object to the term, slithered!”

  Mr. Benchley nodded: “You interrupted Joan and Roger while attempting to retrieve the dead body of her cousin in the shed, and which they intended stuffing in the roomy, oversized trunk of the Mercedes! They posed him on the bench when they heard your callywogging—”

  “What the hell is callywogging?”

  “Your singing, my dear girl. What looked like a lover’s embrace was simply Joan trying to keep Fanshaw propped up and from keeling over to the ground!”

  “But,” asked Lamberto, “why drag Giusto into the crime?”

  Mr. Benchley said, “I suppose Joan and Roger wanted a fall guy for the murder, one carrying a note and cash. They would throw suspicion off themselves by making it appear the dead woman was in cahoots with the bomb-throwing anarchists.”

  “They were clever,” I said. “They wanted Giusto to be spotted by me or Mr. Benchley. Why, it was probably Roger knocked on my door to wake me up, so I would look out and see Giusto in Bedroom Two at the appointed time as directed in the note.”

  “So, both Hermione and Joan are dead,” said Ruth, “and I hear the chauffeur survived being shot in the ass. Now, what happens to Roger?”

  “He confessed to me the whole scheme when I knocked the gun out of his hand,” said our socialist friend. “He’ll go to jail, the jury will find him guilty, and he’ll be executed.”

  I smiled at him in gratitude for what he had done to save Mr. Benchley while I was galloping through Central Park with Harpo. “When Roger discovered Joan gone from the apartment and he saw the hatbox from Madame Charlotte’s Chapelier tossed on the floor of the dressing room, his fears were realized, especially when Mr. Benchley, who was looking for me, asked if he had seen me anywhere. Woodrow, dragging his leash and wandering around the sidewalk outside the building, brought Harpo to the apartment door. Harpo knew something was wrong when he saw me in a big car turning into Central Park’s East Drive, and Woodrow barking after the car.

  “Harpo and Mr. Benchley ran out of the apartment without telling Aleck, Tallulah, or our socialist friend what was going on. But our socialist friend saw them leave and the expression on Roger’s face as he stood at the top of the stairs leading to the bedrooms prompted our friend to follow him into the den, where he saw Roger take out a gun from his desk drawer. He followed Roger out of the apartment, and somewhere between the elevator and the lobby, wrestled the gun away from him.”

  “You thought I was the killer, didn’
t you, Dorothy?” said our socialist friend.

  I blushed, but then I decided to answer his question with directness: ‘Yes, for a while I did. I saw you in discussion with Fanshaw, in the corridor of the train. Fanshaw was following me, or so I thought, and when he wound up dead—”

  “And then you were seen by one of the Harvard boys knocking on the dead woman’s door not long before the body was discovered, and—”

  “There was a good reason for that—”

  “Let me finish!” I said. “And you were the only person who knew where Giusto and his family lived in Little Italy. After Giusto was shot, I realized that you were the only person, other than myself and Mr. Benchley, here, who knew where to find the young man. It was a perfectly understandable conclusion. Anyway, I’d still like to know what you were doing visiting the woman’s room middle of the night?”

  “Actually, I had come to see you. When I saw you in the hall earlier in the evening, you appeared to have just come out of that room, Bedroom Two. I thought it was your room. I was mistaken.”

  “But,” I stammered, “what did you want to see me about?”

  “To apologize.”

  “What for?”

  “Being a bit of a bore. No! Don’t pretend I wasn’t; all my stuff about rubbing elbows with capitalists—”

  “I don’t remember that, and I wasn’t going to object to what you said about your being a bit of a bore. I thought you were, actually. I suppose it had been a harrowing sort of a day, as we all know and will never forget.”

  He chuckled good-naturedly.

  And I thought that now I could answer Mr. Benchley’s query as to why I didn’t like the man, when we had stood outside the Gonk after luncheon:

  He could effect change for the better in this crazy world of ours. Through his insightful books he could effect change when I could only make fun, make jokes and write sad little poems about the inequities of life. For once, I’d been attracted to a man who was too good for me, a man I didn’t feel worthy of, and that made me afraid. So I turned away.