[Dorothy Parker 05] - A Moveable Feast of Murder Read online

  “What about the mermaid you romanced off the coast of—”

  “I asked you never to mention her name again!”

  There was a knock at the door. I bade enter, and in walked Hemingway.

  “You’re just in time for a basket of fruit,” I said. “Please take one away with you, Hem; they’re cluttering up the cabin. And while you’re at it, take Mr. Benchley away, too, please.”

  “I see he’s cluttering up the cabin, too,” said Hem, laughing at my friend, who had sprawled out on the bed. “I know there’s no place else on the ship to put him, sadly. I’d take him in, but I’ve been told he snores and kicks in his sleep.”

  “Who told you such lies?” said Mr. Benchley, leaning up on his elbows.

  “I’d rather not say.”

  I poured Hem a scotch. We were all a little drunk. We’d been partying all day with friends and my sister and her husband who’d come to see me off. An additional stop on the way to the pier to get a case of champagne had led to a roadside speakeasy where we’d had a very liquid dinner.

  “I want to hit the sack. Just stopped in to say goodnight. We’re all a little pie-eyed,” said Hem.

  “What do you mean a little?” objected my friend.

  “Mr. Benchley always does things in a big way.”

  “That is so,” nodded Mr. Benchley, swiveling his legs down from off the bed. “Very well, I’m off to see the purser,” he said as he rose with a false dignity, throwing his coat over his arm and putting the soggy hat on his head. “Off to dreamland I shall go, if I can recall under which pillow I stashed my pajamas.” He turned to look at me with scrutiny as he made for the door. “Will you be all right now, my dear?” The indignant drunk act was replaced by sudden sobriety. “If you like, I can ask the steward for a deckchair outside your door—”

  I touched his arm and kissed his cheek. Endearing is my best friend and champion. His warm and genuine concern made me suddenly courageous. “I’m just fine, now,” I said. “Woodrow Wilson will alert me if the ship takes on water. Good night, boys,” I said, sending them out the door.

  I awoke with a start at ten o’clock; Woodrow, the scoundrel, laid sloppy kisses on my face. He flew off the bed when I shot bolt upright, and stood scratching at the cabin door. There was activity outside in the corridor and he wanted to investigate. The ship was rocking, but I’d heard no impact against the hull. I had fallen off to sleep from exhaustion a little before dawn, every creak and deep list of the ship wracking my nerves. I saw icebergs everywhere, phantom ships on the brink of collision.

  A few minutes later, bundled up in my coat and scarf, we walked onto the deck, and as far as the eye could see there were the treacherous waters, great waves rolling toward us from a gray and undefined horizon. The storm had retreated, but visibility was low, and staring out into the filmy void I tried to shake off my fear, to embrace the mysteries of the great expanse, to conjure up visions of pirate adventures and Melville tales in an effort to calm my nerves. I must look toward the future; I was heading for a new life in Paris, and it excited me. There was hope for me, a fresh start, and I was suddenly high with expectations. Or, was it the salty air that made me feel heady? My face was damp from mist, which was not unpleasant. I returned indoors, energized, to find the dining room, for I was suddenly ravenously hungry for breakfast, a meal I rarely ate. Yes, I thought, I am changing my ways.

  “Saltpeter?” said Hemingway, offering a small vial containing the stuff to Mr. Benchley.

  “Are you making gunpowder for the troops?” I asked, sprinkling what was undoubtedly Morton’s on my scrambled eggs.

  “Got to keep the ‘troops’ from raising the flag, ’f you know what I mean,” said Hem, with all seriousness, his voice rumbling in his throat as he mixed the stuff into his oatmeal. “A sprinkle, Bob?”

  “I can feel my sperm dying just looking at the stuff,” replied Mr. Benchley, stirring a draft of gin from his hip flask into his orange juice. He popped two aspirins into his mouth and washed them down.

  I stifled a giggle at Hem’s assertion that he needed to keep his “troops” under siege—under wraps—out of the direct line of fire, or whatever double entendre suited the visual that flashed across my mind.

  “I thought a ration of rum keeps the ‘seamen’ from raising a mutiny,” I said. “What ever happened to self-control?”

  Mr. Benchley said, “We are a generation that doesn’t have self-control, didn’t you know? It’s gone out of style with high-button shoes and corsets. The term was banned from use to make room for the phrase, “No accommodations for you, sir!”

  “Oh, my dear Fred, is that so?” I said, talking through the toast I’d ripped into. “Where did you sleep last night?”

  “I laid my head on a sack of oats in a cubby in the stores.”

  “No!”

  “Ya-voll!”

  “A character-building experience, I should say,” said Hem.

  “That’s what I told the harbor rat who stowed aboard and tried to wrestle me for a burlap blanket. I stood my ground, though, and now we are great friends. And I am on good terms with the rest of his clan.”

  “Cards after lunch?” I said, feeding a sausage link to Woodrow, who sat daintily on the chair next to mine.

  “Need a fourth for bridge,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “We can play three-handed.”

  I returned to my cabin to unpack what I was too tired to get to last night, only to discover that my case of scotch had been stolen!

  What fresh hell?

  Nothing else had been touched. The remaining half-dozen bottles of champagne were right where I’d left them, next to a big gaping space where the case of scotch had been. How was I to get through the voyage on just a few bottles of champagne? I stormed down the deck to the purser’s office, where I got little sympathy, a lot of head nodding, and a lecture after lodging my complaint. Why I bothered, I don’t know. “The S.S. Roosevelt is an American ship of the United States Line, and abides by the U.S. prohibition laws, etcetera, etcetera.”

  Far from chastened, and dramatically chuffed, I marched back to my room, where Woodrow lay huddled atop the mess of clothing spilled out of my open steamer trunk. A glare from me did nothing to shift his position from off my lamé evening dress. He just snuggled down deeper, let out a sigh, and closed his eyes for a late-morning nap. My gay mood of just an hour ago had turned morbid.

  Although I was still rabid and determined to ferret out the rat who stole my hooch, by lunchtime, with the news that there was an adequate store of gin and whiskey, the genuine articles of Napoleon cognac and Bordeaux, available through enterprising passengers for the purpose of providing such, my spirits were raised. Our destination was France, after all, and what was brought on board upon departure from New York was of no interest to American agents. Of course, it did race through my mind that it was probably one of these convenient on-board “bootleggers” who had stolen my supply in the first place and would sell it back to me at a premium, but what could I really do about it? There was still plenty of reason for a good time.

  We played bridge with a man we picked up in the card salon. Although he was young, he possessed a rather forlorn, hangdog expression about him. I thought he was just lonely at first, but then, in spite of our joviality as we played our hands, I noted a protective reticence, as if he had buttoned close around him an old familiar sweater. Mr. Benchley had a way about him, with little said and no obvious effort, of drawing out even the most taciturn of characters until they were telling him their life stories and perhaps a few secrets. Mr. Benchley’s interest would leave the storyteller, who may have previously thought his life ordinary and dull, with the newfound belief that he was really a most fascinating individual. And so, during a break, the young man told us that he had been wounded, nearly fatally, in Italy during the War. Hemingway was a Red Cross ambulance driver wounded in Italy. And to instantly bond the two old soldiers, they discovered that they had both been wounded at Fossalta di Piave and sen
t for treatment at the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan. As Hem always said, there were those who had fought in the War and were wounded and those who had not. You only trusted those who had.

  And so, Mathew Hettinger, age twenty-eight, a native of Philadelphia, became a fast friend. That he was the son of wealthy parents, the third generation of a fortune made during the Civil War, did not cancel out Hem’s respect. For Ernest Hemingway had been growing suspicious of the rich, even though so many of his fabulously wealthy friends had championed his work and helped to support him and his wife, Hadley, during the lean years in Paris. Mathew, traveling through Italy when war broke out, defied his father's order to return home to the States and enlisted in the Italian army, rather than go home and off to university. He told Hem about the beautiful Italian girl he’d been in love with, whom he’d married while on leave, and how he had been in hospital recovering from wounds, never knowing for many months that she had succumbed during childbirth along with his daughter. To Hem, these recollections made him even more romantic and attractive. And the revelation that Mathew Hettinger was a journalist, sent to Paris as a foreign correspondent for the Detroit Register, as well as an aspiring novelist sealed the deal.

  A steward arrived in the card room with an invitation from the captain of the ship for our party to join him at his table for dinner this evening. I invited the men to come to my cabin for drinks, where we popped open a bottle of champagne to wash down a plate of hors d’oeuvres ordered from room service. Hemingway was excited at the chance to speak with our captain, being especially impressed by the heroic rescue of the Antinoe several weeks before. Two bottles emptied, the men went off to their cabins, except for Mr. Benchley, who didn’t have a cabin as yet and went down to the purser’s office to see if there was any news about where he would sleep tonight. He needed a permanent place to keep his steamer trunk during the trip, and certainly a room where he could dress in his evening clothes for dinner.

  There was plenty of time for me to dress, so I took Woodrow Wilson for little stroll around the deck to do his business and to enjoy the salty smells of the ocean. The seas were calmer, and through a break in the overcast sky I could see the red strains of sunset streaking across the western sky. The vast expanse was awe inspiring; one certainly doesn’t see the horizon while walking the streets of Manhattan. Our ship was a lonesome tub floating on an infinite pool. There was nothing to see any which way I looked, and as evening fell, the dark-blue waters grew black and foreboding, and the harder I looked into the great inky depths, the more mesmerized I was by the unfathomable mystery that surrounded me. It frightened me.

  While my attention was arrested by the undulating waves, Woodrow was pulling at his leash. I came out of my morbid reverie and turned my attention to my canine companion, who was being entertained by a gentleman out on deck.

  “Well, isn’t he a cute little fellah!” said the tall, wiry gentleman with a New York accent, as he leaned over his cane.

  He wore his leather visor cap and dark-brown corduroy suit with a scholarly air. It was a good suit, the cut very English, although it appeared to hang on him at the shoulders, as if he’d lost a lot of weight since its purchase. Why I should take notice of his clothes, I can’t say. But there was something compelling about his countenance. Perhaps the very large, clear, and open moss-colored eyes out of which he viewed the world with an empathetic compassion? How could I know this? How could I size up a stranger so easily? I recognized something in him that had not so much to do with his outer, physical shell, but rather with that which emanated from within. I thought him immediately sympathetic, and for a woman who has grown more and more cynical over the years, and has shielded herself from the “slings and arrows” of supposed friendships with her own brand of piercing humor, I was strangely curious to know this man. I felt there was much to know.

  The wind threatened his cap, and when he brought up a hand to secure it, I saw the long scar that streaked across his forehead.

  “Terrier, is he?”

  “Of the Boston variety,” I replied.

  “But of course he is,” said the gentleman.

  The wind was kicking up, and he grabbed his hat again to keep from losing it. He gave up the struggle and ran long aristocratic fingers through his hair, and I saw that the scar had scalped an inch-long line into his thick black hair. He tried to cover up the mean scar; it did no good; we both resembled victims of electric shock. Woodrow braced himself against the stiff gale. We made for the door leading into the ship, followed by Woodrow’s newfound friend. Before I could ask his name or invite him in for a drink, he bade us good evening and walked in the direction of the first-class cabins.

  Mr. Benchley appeared at my door, a bottle of scotch in one hand and two glasses in the other.

  “Lookee what I found.”

  “Why, that looks like one of the bottles from my stash.”

  “Prob’ly, my dear Mrs. Parker!”

  “So you are the scoundrel who absconded with my booze!”

  “On the contrary, I just purchased this from a fellow down the hall. He probably did the dastardly deed, for all we know.”

  Mr. Benchley followed me into my cabin, and before I knew it he was stretched out on my bed unwrapping the chocolate from the box sent by a friend as a bon-voyage gift. “Delicious,” he said, balling up the gold wrapper for a high toss into the wastebasket.

  “Oh, get a room,” I said, going to my steamer trunk to sort out the tangled mess of gowns. I chose a blue silk with Delmonte clips, and then went to sort through my jewelry drawer.

  “Would if I could,” said Mr. Benchley, taking off his shoes.

  “Making yourself at home, are you?” I said. “Can’t you bunk with Hemingway?”

  “Out of the question,” he said with a yawn. “He has the smelliest feet. But the purser promises he might find me a place with some Russian dancers from the Ballets Russes. Six high-steppers sharing a room in third class. I suppose that’s better than accommodations with the rodent family. Does someone have to die for me to get a room?”

  “What about the infirmary?” I asked.

  “Those beds are reserved for sick people. I suppose I could pretend to be ill—claim seasickness, or something.”

  “I could have you committed, if you like. Mr. Benchley,” I said, “you have the pathetic look of that proverbial lamb lost in the woods. I suspect a willing lady would take you in once she sees a few manufactured tears in your eyes.”

  I shuttled him out of the room, shoes in one hand, the scotch and drinking glass in the other. I told him I would meet him in the dining room at eight o’clock. He looked forlorn as I slammed the door in his face.

  The S.S. Roosevelt

  A view from the bridge

  “Writers are either twenty-nine or Thomas Hardy.”

  Chapter Two

  “Can’t a chap get a drink around here?”

  I turned at the sound of a sultry, British-accented voice, and was surprised to see a spritely young woman, pencil thin, in a shimmering little chemise of purple lamé. She had short, dark hair, slicked back, which was all the rage, and the boyish style made her look all the more feminine.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Lady Twinton,” said Captain Fried, as he stood up from his chair, as did the other men at the table at the newcomer’s arrival. “This ship is dry, I’m afraid.”

  Our captain was a man of some physical distinction. Of course, there is always something distinctive about a man in uniform. The high color of his long, rectangular face might be attributed not only to a seafarer’s life, but also to the invigorating effects of a glorious week of celebration. He was, after all, the hero of two continents. He had light, brownish hair that was graying at the temples, green eyes peering out from under heavy-winged brows. There was an air of amusement about his expression, if not of admiration, at the sight of Lady Twinton. And he was not alone, for the other men at the table, Mr. Benchley, Hem, and our new friend, Mathew, appeared to share the sentiment.


  “I’m sure there are resources,” said Mr. Benchley, looking at me as the source of Lady Twinton’s future satisfaction. I let out a snort at his ingratiating manner. Men do get silly around attractive women. I wanted to say, I have no intention of sharing my scotch with this pretty moocher! But I kept quiet and the smile on my face as the waiter pushed in her chair and Mr. Benchley arranged her wrap over the back of it.

  “Now, this would never happen in Paris, anywhere in France,” said Hemingway. “You don’t find nearly as many drunks in France as you do in the States; just goes to show you, make something illegal and it’s suddenly in high demand. Try to change a way of life, and you wreak havoc, chaos, tyranny, fascism, and the abolition of civil liberties.”

  “I agree with you, Hem,” I said. “But I’m so good at wreaking havoc, chaos, and tyranny, although I’ve yet to master fascism.”

  “Why the hell do you think I’m going to France?” said the Lady, who had obviously been sipping away for some time from some private stash. She leaned in, offering perky breasts for Mr. Benchley’s benefit.

  “It ain’t for the crêpes suzette!” said an attractive woman, hovering somewhere in her forties. In contrast to the slangy comment, the voice was cultured and mellow. She had dark, classic good looks, patrician features, high cheekbones, full lips, and arched brows. Her dark, Marcelled hair glistened brilliantly in the chandelier light, fashioned in finger-waves across her sleek head. She wore a simple sheath gown of aqua satin that brought out the extraordinary green color of her eyes. She took a seat offered by the waiter and, with a lilt in her voice and an all-inclusive smile around the table, announced, “I’m Soledad Soleil.”

  Ah! The mystery writer whose amateur sleuth was an unassuming little shop-girl by the name of Harriet Morgan. Harriet’s partner in crime solving was Jonas McGill, valet to the Duke of Twicksbury. Her books were funny, and I had already liked the author long before our meeting. She took a little flask from her purse and drained it into her water glass, having emptied the offending H2O into the table’s flower arrangement. Yes, I liked her very much.