Murder Your Darlings (3 page)

She turned to Faulkner. “Come on, Billy. I live here at the Algonquin. I have a suite upstairs. You can hide out there.”

“Hide?” Faulkner said. “But I haven’t done anything.”

“That didn’t stop them from arresting Sacco and Vanzetti,” she said.

“Those two are accused of being anarchists and common criminals,” Woollcott said, eyeing Faulkner. “Is Mr. Dachshund an anarchist or a common criminal?”

Faulkner stepped forward with an eager smile. “I’m a writer as well as a tremendous fan of yours, Mr. Woollcoat.”

Woollcott’s mouth puckered. “
What
did you just call me?”

Faulkner’s smile faltered. “Mr. Wool”—he glanced at Benchley—“
coat
?”

“It’s Wooll
cott
, you cotton-mouthed country bumpkin.” His furious nasal voice made it sound almost like
wool-cut
. “Where’s the constable? He should clamp you in leg irons.”

Faulkner shrank back.

“It’s my fault, Aleck,” Benchley said, giving Faulkner an apologetic smile. “I was playing a little joke. Now, see here, Billy, this fine fellow’s name may be spelled
W-o-o-l-l-c-o-t-t
, but his name’s pronounced
Windsock
.”

Woollcott huffed, his face turning red.

“You boys stop fooling around,” Dorothy said. “Everyone knows it’s not
Windsock
. It’s
Windbag
.”

Benchley slapped his forehead. “Oh, how right you are, Mrs. Parker. He’s a Windbag, all right. One of the prominent New York family of Windbags. They’re right up there on the social register with the Blowhards, the Braggarts and the Balderdashes. Now, I’ve met quite a few Windbags in my day, and Aleck here tops them all—”

“Enough! ”Woollcott roared. His face was nearly purple.

“Oh, never mind, Aleck,” Benchley said. “It’s no fun teasing you if you’re going to get so sore about it.”

“Sure it is,” Dorothy said. “That’s the fun of it.”

Woollcott eyed her squarely. “Crawl back into your web.”

“That’s the spirit,” Benchley said. “Now we’re old pals again, right?”

“Wrong,” Woollcott said. “I shall shake the dust of this group off my feet.” He turned abruptly and glided away.

Dorothy again grabbed Faulkner’s sleeve. “As for us, I’m going to drag Billy here off to my web.”

“I’d tag along, but I may play mortician,” Benchley said.

“Mortician?” Faulkner said.

Sherwood leaned down conspiratorially to Faulkner.

“Mr. Benchley subscribes to morticianry journals. He and Mrs. Parker cut out embalming pictures and hang them above their desks at work. Just for laughs.”

“For laughs?” Faulkner said. “I don’t get the joke.”

“Neither does the publisher,” Dorothy said. “Just another reason why our days at
Vanity Fair
are numbered. Now, come on.”

She grabbed Faulkner’s elbow and pulled him toward the elevator.

 

“Excuse me, Officer,” Benchley said to the uniformed policeman who stood at the entrance to the Rose Room, the Algonquin’s main dining room. “Perhaps I could be of assistance.”

“Buzz off,” the officer said. “No nosybodies.”

“I’m a licensed mortician—Ah! Detective Orangutan,” Benchley said as the detective emerged from the makeshift curtains. “I was just telling your boy in blue here—”

“I heard you,” the detective snapped. “What’s your name?”

“Robert Benchley.”

“Mine’s O’Rannigan. Get it right, see?”

“Of course. Now, as I was saying, Detective Orang—O’Rannigan, I’m a licensed mortician. Perhaps I could be of help if you allowed me to look at the deceased.”

“The deceased can wait for the coroner,” O’Rannigan sneered. “And so can you, if you’re looking for funeral business.”

“Ha-ha. Nothing could be further—Now, see here, Detective Orang—Orienteering,” Benchley said. “The time of death—A warm body cools at a certain rate, you understand. That is, a dead body, not a warm body. But that, you understand, is what a mortician is. No, just a minute. A mortician can determine that a warm body cools to a dead body. I mean, the time, of course—”

Frank Case appeared at Benchley’s side.

“Detective O’Rannigan,” Case said, “Mr. Benchley moves more widely in literary and dramatic circles than I do. Perhaps
he
could identify the body.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” O’Rannigan said. He reached out a meaty hand, grabbed Benchley’s arm and pulled him through the curtain. “Go take a look. Tell us who the stiff is.”

He shoved Benchley into the wide, brightly lit dining room.

Square-paneled, dark wood wainscoting reached ten feet up the walls. Above this, the plaster was painted a dusky pink, which gave the Rose Room its name. The famous Round Table, with place settings for ten, sat squarely in the middle of the room. Had the dining room been a stage, then the great Round Table was at center stage.

Benchley moved toward it, reluctantly now. He was remembering what they say about curiosity and the cat. He stopped when he reached the Round Table. He noticed a small black notepad on the table. Then he looked down and saw the pair of motionless legs splayed on the floor, protruding from beneath the immaculate white tablecloth.

 

The elevator lurched to a stop. The elevator operator—a spidery elderly gentleman with greasy gray hair, a shabby uniform and an unreliable memory—feebly grabbed the inside accordion gate and methodically dragged it open. Then the man reached out a skeletal arm and clutched at the outside elevator door, which screeched as he slowly opened it.

“Thank you, Maurice,” Dorothy said to him. She hurried Faulkner out of the elevator and whisked him down the silent, shadowy hallway toward her suite.

“Mrs. Parker,” Faulkner stammered, “there’s something I neglected to—”

But he slowed as they reached the door.

“Well, come on,” she said.

“Is there—,” Faulkner said, cautiously polite. “Is
Mr.
Parker at home?”

She flung open her apartment door. “Forget him. Just get inside quick.”

Faulkner smelled the stale odor of cigarettes that barely masked the gamey stink of wet dog.

“So,” he began again, “Mr. Parker is
not
at home?”

“Don’t waste a precious thought about him,” she said, shoving Faulkner inside. “I certainly don’t. I stuffed him in a broom closet a few years ago and haven’t seen him since. Now, just keep quiet. I’ll see you later.”

Faulkner, just inside the doorway of the darkened apartment, opened his mouth to protest. “There’s something—”

She yanked the door closed and scurried back down the hall to the elevator.

 

Benchley, despite his subscriptions to morticianry journals, had never been alone in a room with a dead man before. He decided that today was not the day to change all that. Let someone else identify the body. Yes, that would be best. He turned around to leave, only to find himself face-to-face with O’Rannigan.

“Go ahead,” the burly policeman said. “Take a gander.”

“Actually, I agree with you. This is a case for the coroner.”

“What, you afraid?”

“In a word,” Benchley said, “yes.”

O’Rannigan shoved him aside, squatted down and whipped back the tablecloth. Benchley flinched and looked away.

Then his curiosity got to him, even before O’Rannigan did.

“Take a gander,” the detective said.

But Benchley was already looking. He stepped forward and bent down to take a better look.

The dead man’s face was pale gray, and so was the man’s hair. He wore gold-framed pince-nez on the bridge of his long, bony nose, and his short beard was trimmed neatly in a pointed Vandyke on his chin. He wore an old-fashioned, high, stiff collar and a silk cravat with a silver stud. A pink rosebud sprouted from his boutonniere. Benchley could almost smell it. A nearly perfect circle—almost black—stained the man’s charcoal satin waistcoat around the fountain pen, which dug deep into the man’s heart.

Benchley stared at it. Then someone was shaking him. Benchley heard a man’s voice, as if from a distance.

“You listening to me, buster?” O’Rannigan was saying. “You okay or what?”

“Yes, yes,” Benchley said, as though waking from a doze.

“So you know him or not?”

“That’s Leland Mayflower.” Benchley stood up. “He was the drama critic for the
Knickerbocker News
.”

Chapter 3

In the lobby, Alexander Woollcott stood in the midst of the other ten or so members of the Vicious Circle, as they called themselves. Dorothy had just returned.

“What an insult,” he said. “How dare Mayflower invite himself to our lunch and then show up late?”

“Oh, he’s late all right,” Benchley said, staggering into the lobby. “But he was likely early. Now he’s late.”

“You look ghastly pale,” Dorothy said. She gently laid a hand on Benchley’s arm.

“I’m not the only one.”

“What nonsense are you prattling about, Benchley?” Woollcott said.

“Leland Mayflower is late because he is now the late Leland Mayflower. To become the late Leland Mayflower, he must have arrived here early.”

Robert Sherwood seemed about to topple from his great height. “You mean that Mayflower is the man who was stabbed?”

Benchley merely nodded.

Woollcott’s already sallow face turned gray. “The man had one foot in the grave. Who would want to kill him?”

“That’s what I aim to find out,” said Detective O’Rannigan, looming up behind Dorothy. “Now, who do we have here? I want everyone’s name.”

“Just a second,” she said, turning back to Benchley. “You said Mayflower was early, which in turn made him the late Leland Mayflower. Are you implying that if he had arrived on time, he wouldn’t be dead?”

“Well,” Benchley said, “if any one of us had been there, we would have either seen the murder or discouraged the murderer from carrying it out.”

“Or been stabbed ourselves,” she said.

“Exactly,” Woollcott said, his nasal voice rising. “The only question is, why Mayflower?”

O’Rannigan said, “Maybe one of you had a grudge against old Mayflower. Maybe someone here took a fountain pen and wrote old Mayflower off. You know what I mean?”

The group reacted angrily. Sherwood was the first to respond. “You can’t think any one of us had anything to do with this atrocity.” He leaned over, trying to intimidate O’Rannigan with his height.

The detective responded only with a skeptical look.

“Preposterous,” Woollcott huffed. “If anything, this wicked pen-wielding murderer meant to attack someone in our group. Undoubtedly, the murderer mistook Mayflower for a member and killed him instead of one of us.”

“That’s a nice theory,” O’Rannigan said. “But wasn’t this Mayflower a drama critic? And I’m guessing you’re also a drama critic. And doesn’t that make him your direct competition?”

“Well, I—” Woollcott became flustered, then recovered haughtily. “I have no competition.”

“Not anymore you don’t,” O’Rannigan said, pulling a notepad from his jacket pocket. “Now, let’s hear your names and any connection you might have had with the deceased. Let’s start with you, chubby.”

Dorothy mumbled, “That’s the potbelly calling the kettledrum fat.”

“My name is Alexander Woollcott,” he said grandly, ignoring her remark. “I am the drama critic for the
New York Times
. I am not a murderer. But I knew the deceased, as you call him, as a friendly rival.”

“A competitor,” O’Rannigan said.

“Truly, he’s not my competition,” Woollcott sneered. “The
Knickerbocker News
is not in the same class as the
Times
.”

“But you had plans to meet Mayflower here?”

“He planned it. Mayflower left me a message to that effect. He knows I lunch here every day. The Vicious Circle is an informal yet admittedly exclusive group, and he was not a member. Mayflower indicated he had some petty triumph that he wanted to brag about. Probably wanted to make himself appear superior to me in front of my friends.”

“Good thing none of them showed up,” Dorothy said.

“Just wait your turn, little lady. I’ll get to you,” O’Rannigan said. Then he looked up at Sherwood. “How about you, beanstalk?”

Sherwood spoke slowly and told the detective his name. “I’m an editor for
Vanity Fair
magazine. I didn’t know Mr. Mayflower personally—”

“But he knew you,” O’Rannigan said.

Sherwood shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “I suppose so.”

The detective tapped his pen to his notebook. “Let me guess. You’re not only an editor. You’re an aspiring playwright. Am I right so far?”

Sherwood nodded slowly.

“And Mayflower was a drama critic. You wrote a play and Mayflower panned it. Not just panned it—he crapped all over it. Still on the right track?”

Sherwood nodded again. “But that doesn’t make me a killer.”

“Doesn’t make you an innocent schoolgirl either, does it?” O’Rannigan said. He turned to Benchley. “Now, Mr. Mortician, what’s your real name and occupation?”

Benchley told him his name. “As for occupation, I’m a writer.”

“Gee, what a refreshing change of pace. What do you write?”

“I just published a book last year,” Benchley said proudly. “
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
.”

O’Rannigan was astonished. “You wrote that? You’re pulling my leg. I loved that book. Captain Nemo and the
Nautilus
and all. That was you?”

“Guilty as charged,” Benchley said, his smile never faltering.

“Well, I’ll be.” Then O’Rannigan was back to business. “Now, you identified the stiff—the deceased—so that means you knew him.”

“Only casually, as one knows others around town,” Benchley said. “Saw him at most first nights, but I don’t think I ever actually spoke with him.”