Murder Your Darlings (7 page)

She opened up the
Playbill
and flipped through it. Something caught her eye. Staring up at her was the gaunt but smiling—almost leering—face of dapper old Leland Mayflower. His black-and-white picture stopped just below his chest, which gave the appearance that he sat at a high writing desk. In his hand, he prominently held a Saber fountain pen. At the top of the advertisement was the familiar Saber slogan. At the bottom of the ad was Mayflower’s roller-coaster signature, with its high, narrow peaks, its wide, arcing loops, and its sharp, plunging depths.

Her eyes were drawn again to Mayflower’s photo. She couldn’t stop staring at his taut, unwavering, imperturbable grin.

“Oh, dear,” Benchley said.

“Yes, dear?” she said.

“Look here.” Benchley leaned over and spread the tabloid newspaper for her to see. “It’s all about the murder of Mayflower at the Algonquin.”

Benchley read the headline and the deck line. “KNICK CRITIC KILLED! MAYFLOWER MURDERED AT ALGONQUIN ROUND TABLE.”

She suddenly produced, as if by prestidigitation, a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. She slid them on and scanned the headlines, the photographs and the tiny ten-point type. “It’s not just about Mayflower,” she said. “It’s about each one of us. The Vicious Circle.”

Dorothy and Benchley pored over the newspaper. It was a flimsy tabloid, only twenty-four pages, with more advertisements and pictures than text. And that text was largely taken up by screaming headlines. (She once offhandedly referred to the
Knickerbocker
as “nothing but ads and adverbs.”) In this edition, the main body copy recounted the details of the murder, but several accompanying side articles reported the backgrounds of many of the Round Table members, even speculating about their animosities and disagreements with Mayflower.

Benchley scanned through the main article about the details of the murder—how, when and where Mayflower’s body was found. Then he skipped past a few glowing biographical paragraphs about the deceased critic. The next few paragraphs caught Benchley’s eye.

“Listen to this,” he said, and read it aloud.

“Who wrote this?” she said. She sought the byline.
“Bud Battersby?
That son of a bitch.”

Benchley continued reading.

“How do you like that?” Benchley said, sinking in his velvet upholstered seat. “Someone stabs Mayflower in the chest. Then Battersby shows up and stabs the rest of us in the back. But you have to admit it. Battersby has a way with words, wouldn’t you say?”

“A way up his ass, that’s what I’d say.” She considered a moment. “But there was no mention of Billy Faulkner and that suspicious man he described. Did you say something to Battersby? Tell him not to put the light on Billy?”

“No. Did you?”

“No. But it’s a good thing Battersby avoided it. No sense getting Billy any further mixed up in this.”

“The answer is simple,” Benchley said after a pause. “Billy Faulkner is a nobody. The man Billy described is a phantom. Nobodies and phantoms don’t make for juicy headlines. They
interfere
with juicy headlines.”

“Are you defending that skunk Battersby?” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you like having your name in the paper, not so subtly accused of murder?”

“Well, it’s not that. Battersby is a publisher—although now he seems to be the editor, the reporter and the newspaper boy, too, for all we know. Since Mayflower can no longer spin those sordid tales, it falls into Battersby’s lap. What else can he do, with no obvious suspects, but point the finger at the people closest at hand—us?”

“You’re just happy Battersby wrote that you were splitting everyone’s sides.”

Benchley conceded a smile. “Guilty as charged.”

“At least Battersby seemed to let the both of us off easy,” she said, pointing to the open pages. “Woollcott gets the worst of it. There’s half a page devoted to him and his rivalry with Mayflower.”

A murmur rippled through the audience. Benchley and Dorothy turned to look up the aisle. Floating toward them, in his usual broad-brimmed hat and opera cape, was Woollcott.

“Reading the newspaper in the theater, Robert? Tut-tut,” Woollcott snorted, settling into his seat across the aisle from Benchley and Dorothy. “What is that, the
Knickknack News
? I’d call it rubbish, but that would be an insult to rubbish.”

Dorothy looked again at the tabloid, scanning for a mention of the name Dachshund. She worried that Battersby had described the man Faulkner said he saw in the lobby. If the police read about that, Faulkner would be in even deeper trouble for not reporting it to them. But she could find no mention of it.

“And Benchley!” Woollcott suddenly bellowed. “How could you take a job from that yellow rag and that scheming silver-spooned Battersby? How can you sit in the seat so recently occupied by my nemesis? What a callous, cold heart you have, Robert.”

Benchley wasn’t bothered by Woollcott’s tirade. He was agitated for other reasons. “I’m not happy about the job either, Aleck. When Battersby asked me at the Automat to substitute for Mayflower tonight, I thought I was doing the
Knickerbocker
a good turn. I didn’t know Battersby would do me a bad turn by vilifying our group.”

“When you sit down with the dog, you get up with the fleas,” Woollcott said with a knowing look to Benchley and Dorothy. “That’s something
each
of you should remember.”

The house lights dimmed, the conductor stood and the theater and the audience were engulfed in darkness as the orchestra thundered into the overture.

As the stage lights brightened, Dorothy barely paid attention. For one, she preferred serious drama to this song-and-dance revue. For another, her mind wandered to the strange young Southern man once again hiding out in her apartment.

Despite the bright lights and gaudiness onstage, and despite the blaring orchestra and the dancers’ tapping feet—a clamor like a team of old horses crossing a rickety wooden bridge—she drifted into a fitful doze.

 

Dorothy awoke to an urgent whisper.
“Mrs. Parker.”

She was still in her velvet-upholstered seat next to Benchley. The conflagration onstage and the cacophony in the orchestra pit were still in full swing. She felt a tug at her sleeve, and again someone whispered her name.

William Faulkner crouched by her side in the aisle. Rain had drenched his battered old hat, his thin scraggly beard and his oversized threadbare trench coat.

“Billy! What are you doing here? I told you to stay hidden at my apartment.”

“I wish I had, Mrs. Parker. I wish I had.”

Across the aisle, Woollcott peered at them. “By Jupiter!” he grumbled. “Put the pooch back in his kennel and let the rest of us watch the show.”

She grabbed Faulkner’s hand, and with an apologetic look to Benchley, who now saw what was going on, she led Faulkner up the darkened aisle and through the double doors into the brightly lit, ornate theater lobby.

She was prepared to give the young man a piece of her mind and set him straight. But when she got a better look at his bedraggled appearance and the hapless, even frightened, look in his eyes, she softened.

“What happened? Why did you come here?”

He sighed. “I came to New York because—”

“No, I didn’t ask why you came to New York. I asked why you came to the theater when I told you to stay put—”

“I’m getting to that. I came to New York to experience life, not to hide myself away. So I was sitting in your apartment at the Algonquin, and I was thinking, even if it is a bit dangerous, even if the police are looking for me, I should take the chance and go out. Why not? There are good experiences and bad experiences, but in any case, I need to have
some
experiences. Otherwise, why did I bother to leave Mississippi?”

“Experience?” She frowned. “You know what I think? Writers are like fry cooks in a greasy spoon. No experience necessary. You know what else I think? You ought to listen to me.”

“Well, I wish I had, because that’s only part of it.”

“What’s the rest?”

He looked over his shoulder, then stepped closer. “On my way here, I was followed.”

“Followed? By whom? The police?”

He shook his head. “The man I saw at the Algonquin this morning. The one who probably killed Mayflower.”

At that, the music within the theater swelled and came to a noisy end. The audience applauded mildly, very mildly. In a moment, the double doors opened and the theater patrons swarmed into the lobby.

“Intermission,” she said, and pulled Faulkner by the elbow and drew him toward the far wall, out of the way of the emerging flow of well-heeled theatergoers. Many in the burgeoning crowd lit up cigarettes and cigars and sipped surreptitiously from hip flasks.

Dorothy, a full foot shorter than most of the crowd, looked anxiously for Benchley, but instead she picked out another Algonquin member from the throng.

“Heywood!” she called. “Heywood Broun. Come here.”

A bear of a man approached them. Despite his rumpled tuxedo, or perhaps because of it, he looked like a big pile of unwashed laundry.

“Heywood, you remember Mr. Dachshund from this afternoon, of course?”

“Of course!” said the man. His big paw shook Faulkner’s delicate hand. “Heywood Broun. Sportswriter for the
New York Tribune
.”

She said, “I wonder if you could do us a favor or two, Heywood.”

“Of course!”

“Wonderful. First, do you have your flask?”

“As always.” He winked and reached in his jacket for a well-worn silver army flask, which he handed to her. She unscrewed the flask’s cap.

“Second, do you think you could escort us back to the Algonquin?”

She tipped the flask to her lips. Then she frowned. She held the flask upside down and shook it. Not a drop came out.

“Sorry about that,” Broun said, reclaiming the flask. “I needed a little help to enjoy the show. Not bad so far, don’t you think?”

“I’ve seen better productions in a chamber pot,” she said. “Now, can you walk with us back to the Algonquin?”

Broun shook his head. “Sorry about that, too. I told my wife I’d meet her at the Cotton Club up in Harlem right after the show.”

“Oh, never mind, then. Thanks just the same.”

“It was nothing,” he said, and disappeared into the crowd.

She watched him go. “You can say that again.”

“Mrs. Parker! Mr. Dachshund!” Benchley fought his way through the crowd. “There you are. What’s all the fuss about?”

“Mr. Benchley, where have you been?” she said. “Billy thinks he was followed by the man he saw at the Algonquin this morning.”

“Really?” Benchley said. “Did you get a good look at him?”

“I think so,” Faulkner said. “It looked like him.”

“Dear me,” Benchley said, and fumbled in his pocket for his pipe and pouch of tobacco.

She snatched something out of his hand. “What’s this?”

“Oh, just a notepad,” Benchley said, artificially casual, dumping much of his tobacco onto the floor instead of into the bowl of his pipe.

She looked at the notebook closely. It was small, the size of a deck of cards, and bound in black leather. Its pale blue pages were trimmed in gold. On the cover were monogrammed initials, also in gold.

“L.M.,” she said. “
Leland Mayflower!
Fred, where did you get this?”

“Not so loud.” Benchley coughed as he lit his pipe. “I found it on the table when Detective Orangutan took me to identify the body.”

She flipped through it. The first page had been torn out. The next few pages were filled with Benchley’s handwriting in pencil.

He said, “You know how I’m always losing the darned things and I never have one when I need one. So I picked it up. Came in handy, too. I took notes of the show for my review, see?”

She read aloud: “‘I am not overwhelmed. I am not underwhelmed. I am merely whelmed.’” She handed it back to him. “Well, I agree with you there, but I disagree with your actions. I never pictured you for a grave robber, Mr. Benchley.”

“It was a thoughtless whim, not grave robbing,” he said. “What’s the opposite of grave robbing?
Comical
robbing?
Trivial
theft?”

Faulkner leaned into their huddle. “Petty larceny?”

“Yes,” Benchley said. “That’s all it was. I’ll return it to Mayflower’s widow, if it makes you feel better.”

“He wasn’t married,” she said.