A Friendly Game of Murder (18 page)

Chapter 30

L
uigi and Frank Case crossed the dining room and disappeared through the swinging doors into the darkened kitchen. Benchley followed slowly after them. But just as he reached the doors, he heard Case call out.

“Who’s there? What do you think you’re doing?”

Benchley quickly shoved open one of the doors. In the darkness he heard a grunt. Then something heavy and metallic was rolling toward them. There was a bang and then the clatter of things crashing to the floor and breaking. Luigi yelled, and Benchley heard him fall down.

“Frank!” Benchley shouted. “What is it? What’s happening?”

Case didn’t answer him. Instead the hotel manager yelled, “Stop right there, whoever you are. You cannot come into my hotel and wreck my kitchen—”

Something whooshed through the air and knocked into Case. He was thrown backward and collided with Benchley, who caught him in his arms.

Case wheezed, hardly able to speak. “Ow, I think that was our soup pot. Knocked me right in the chest.”

Benchley lowered Case to a sitting position on the floor. He called out to whoever was across the room. “All right, sir. No hurling crockery, please. I mean you no harm.”

From somewhere on the floor, Luigi groaned. “Hit me with my own tea cart, right in the
coglioni
.”

“That’s hitting below the belt,” Benchley said sympathetically. He realized he was the only one of the three still unharmed and standing, which made him quite nervous. Still he managed to gather his courage and call out. “Let’s declare a truce, shall we? The truce, the whole truce, and nothing but the tru—”

Something whizzed by Benchley’s ear, clanged against the door behind him, hit the floor with a metallic clunk and skidded to a stop at his feet. He crouched down and picked it up. It was a butcher’s cleaver.

“So you want to bury the hatchet, too?” he called out shakily. “Just not in my skull, if you please.”

Something else zipped overhead in the dark. It was another knife. Benchley could tell because he heard it dig into one of the swinging doors with a
thunk. Good thing he had hunkered down, or it probably would have plunged into his head.

Something grabbed on to his leg. Ready to strike, Benchley raised the cleaver. But then Frank Case spoke, his usually smooth voice still a wheeze. “We caught him trying to unlock the back door to the alley. But it’s bolted shut. Then he attacked us.”

Benchley raised his voice. “Do you hear that, whoever you are? The back door is locked. There’s no escape. We have you cornered.”

Case gasped, “Mr. Benchley, what are you doing?”

A sudden flurry of knives, platters, serving utensils and metal pots began flying toward them.
Oh dear, what
am
I doing?
Benchley thought. Then he remembered: the tea cart! He dropped the cleaver and reached out. Something hard hit his arm, and he yelped. But he didn’t stop. He found the tea cart and wheeled it toward him for protection.

“Frank! Luigi! Move over here!”

He grabbed Case’s arm and dragged him near, then reached out and pulled Luigi toward him. They huddled behind the cart as trays and plates crashed all around them.

“You saved us,” Case wheezed. “Very selfless of you.”

“Hardly,” Benchley said. “If something happened to you and Luigi, there’s no lunch. If there’s no lunch, there’s no Round Table. Then what would our little group do each day? Gather on the sidewalk around a hot dog cart?”

“Very sensible, Mr. Benchley,” Case said wearily. “But now what do we do?”

Benchley imagined the kitchen when lit—when he had been there earlier with Dorothy and Woollcott. The stove was ahead and to his right. The doorway to the cellar stairs was just beyond that. Somewhere between him and their attacker was the long, wide enamel prep table. (He had left his half-finished glass of scotch on it—probably a casualty of the fray by now, he thought morosely.) A few paces to his left was the big double sink and the drying rack next to it. And near that—

Benchley suddenly had an idea. He jumped to his feet. Just then something hit him in the head. But it wasn’t hard. He even managed to catch it. A cloth pot holder! That meant two things to Benchley. For one, the intruder was running out of things to hurl at them. For another, once the intruder ran out of objects to throw, he’d likely come charging across the room and start throwing his fists instead.

Benchley couldn’t hesitate a moment longer. He rushed in the direction of the sink. But he slipped on a tray or something on the floor and went down, and his head hit against the edge of the counter.

“Ow!” he yelled.

There was just a moment’s pause—a half second of silence—from the attacker across the room. Benchley sensed that the man was listening for him and lying in wait. The attacker was the well-armed hunter in the dark forest, and Benchley was the poor, defenseless deer.

“Oh dear,” Benchley mumbled as he stood on wobbly legs.

That was enough. The attacker grunted in grim satisfaction, and then he was on the move.

Benchley could hear the man’s quick footsteps—coming his way.

He reached out and felt the edge of the sink. Then he stretched to the right and searched for the large enamel tub next to the sink.

The attacker’s footsteps pounded closer—almost here.

With the pot holder in his hand to protect him from the acidic blue liquid, Benchley flung the drum to the ground. It landed with a deafening crash, spilling its contents of liquid cleanser, forks, knives, spoons and ball bearings all across the kitchen floor.

* * *

Doyle rocked back on his heels. “What balderdash are you saying, Mrs. Parker? You saw Mr. Jordan run? Impossible! The poor man is a cripple.”

Dorothy explained how Jordan had slippers on his feet when she and Benchley had found him unconscious on the floor. And when he hurried to look for the locket, he ran from Dr. Hurst’s room to his own, only to find that the necklace was missing from its hiding place in his shoe.

Doyle rubbed his chin. “So you think his clubfoot is a fake? That’s monstrously absurd.”

She paced the floor. “But what if it is? That brings Jordan in as a suspect. He seems to be an adventurous and athletic man—except for the clubfoot. Perhaps athletic and adventurous enough to crawl out the bathroom window, after killing Bibi, that is.”

“But why? Why would any grown man pretend to have such an infirmity?”

“Why does any grown man do anything?” she asked wearily. “Usually it has something to do with sex or money.”

“That’s a womanly point of view,” he said dismissively.

She stopped in her tracks. “Is it? Didn’t Antony start an entire war just to hop in bed with Cleopatra?”

“Not exactly. You’re trivializing history, I think.”

“Am I? That’s a manly point of view. It’s just like a man to take a triviality and start a war over it.”

He frowned at her. “Now who’s starting a trivial war, Mrs. Parker? Can we please get back to the question of Mr. Jordan’s foot?”

She hung her head. “I’m sorry, Artie. I was on the receiving end of a browbeating a little while ago, and I’m still sore from it. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

He smiled kindly. “And I’m sorry I said yours was a womanly point of view. So let’s forget it. Now are you sure you saw Mr. Jordan run? Perhaps he just hobbled quickly, and you mistook it?”

“Nope. Not a hobble. Not by a mile.”

“Then why didn’t you realize this before?”

She considered it. “I think Mr. Benchley and I were so taken aback when Jordan got all worked up over losing the necklace that it completely slipped by us.”

“Very well, then,” Doyle said. “Let’s take it as a given that Mr. Jordan really is able to walk normally. And for some unknown reason he’s wearing an orthopedic shoe and pretending to have a clubfoot. Where does that leave us?”

Dorothy pointed to the yellow square of paper in his hand. “Right back there.”

“Oh, quite right. The telegram!” He slipped on his reading glasses again. “Let’s see what it says. Hmm . . .” He scanned over the telegram and read bits aloud. “
Authorities in England
 . . .
Valuable item
 . . .
Bring to Chicago
 . . .
Lloyds hired Pinks . . .
‘Lloyds hired Pinks’? What does that mean?”

“Pink elephants, for all I know. What does
any
of it mean?”

He continued reading. “
Berley brothers on your trail . . . Lose them all . . . If you bring them to Chicago, deal is off. Keep item safe and in good condition
—”

“—or deal is off,” Dorothy said. “The deal is probably the sale of the locket to this guy in Chicago.”

He nodded. “Quentin did say he was leaving the medical conference early to take a trip to another city. He may have said Chicago, I don’t recall. But he told me he had to give a lecture. Another lie!”

Doyle practically spat the words at Dr. Hurst’s unconscious body, and Dorothy turned to look at the elderly doctor lying immobile on the bed. She had nearly forgotten he was there.

“I find it utterly impossible to comprehend,” Doyle said. “Quentin is not only a superb and innovative physician, he’s been a true humanitarian. He has devoted his life to his hospital back in England. He’s the lifeblood of it. You wouldn’t know it to look at him now, but the man is a saint.”

“The kind of saint who hits you over the head with his Bible?” she asked wryly.

“It’s true. He’s very rigid in his manner. The classic stiff-upper-lip British gentleman.”

“His upper lip is so stiff, it’s positively erect.”

Doyle didn’t take offense. “Yes, Mrs. Parker, I know his prickly personality only too well. And so do his residents and interns. They run like rabbits when they see him coming down the corridor. But believe me, under that thick rusty armor is a bleeding heart.”

“So, if he’s such a saint, what’s he doing selling a cheap little necklace to some hoodlum in Chicago?”

“Perhaps it’s not so cheap after all. If Mr. Jordan was in such a frenzied state when it was stolen from him, and if this man in Chicago is so concerned about obtaining it, perhaps the locket actually has rather significant value—as the telegram indicates.”

“And that’s why all these other fellows are after Dr. Hurst? Such as Lloyds or Pinks or the Berley brothers?”

He nodded. “If it is a valuable item stolen in England, then the name Lloyds is obvious. It’s Lloyd’s of London, the famous insurance firm. Surely you’ve heard of them?”

“Oh, sure. Lloyd’s of London. Big insurance firm. I insured my yacht with those boys,” she said. “So, of course, a big insurance firm like that hired some little guy named ‘Pinks’ to follow Dr. Hurst? That doesn’t make much sense.”

“Perhaps ‘Pinks’ is not a name of a person or persons. Perhaps it is shorthand for something else. At any rate, while I can’t explain ‘Pinks,’ I do feel confident—especially in regard to a valuable object—that ‘Lloyds’ does refer to Lloyd’s of London.”

She bit her lip.
I suppose that does make sense
. She had read something of Lloyd’s of London in a newspaper article or a book. She associated the firm with insuring fancy things—rare diamonds, masterpiece paintings and winning racehorses. “But what about the rest of the message?”

Doyle gazed over the telegram to look at Dr. Hurst. “This is when the power of the spirit world would be of great service. If only we could commune with Quentin’s spirit . . .”

Oh dear,
Dorothy thought.
He’s over the edge. Just like Jordan said he is.

She spoke hesitantly. “His spirit? You mean like a séance?”

“Well, yes, that’s one way to communicate with the spirit world. But not the only one.”

“Wouldn’t he have to be deceased for a séance? I mean, isn’t that for ‘communicating’ with only, you know, the dead?”

He chuckled good-naturedly. “That’s one of the misunderstandings of Spiritualism. The spirit world is not something that’s
out there
. It’s not up in the clouds or deep down in the earth. It’s right here, all around us. Whether alive or dead, we all exist in the spirit world, just as fish live in the ocean. Only we can’t see it or hear it—most of us can’t, anyhow.” His face grew melancholy; his eyes drooped lower. Then, just as quickly, he brightened again. “But if we could only lift the veil to the spirit world—oh, what joy that would be! Oh, what wisdom! Oh, what power!”

Oh, what baloney!
she thought.

Chapter 31

W
ith a splash and a crash, the enamel barrel of cutlery and cleansing liquid splattered to the ground. Then Benchley heard the hailstorm of innumerable pings as hundreds of ball bearings bounced and rolled on the hard kitchen floor.

The attacker yelled. Benchley could see only a tall, dark figure of a man suddenly disappear and crash to the floor. His landing sent knives, forks and ball bearings flying.

Benchley stood frozen, waiting. It took but a moment. The man began screaming. Shrieking. “
Ahhhhhh!
It’s burning.
Burning my legs!
”

The man floundered on the floor and scrambled to get to his feet, but he was slipping and rolling in the ball bearings and acidic cleanser.

Benchley didn’t recognize the man’s voice, but he still felt sorry for him. He wondered whether there was anything he could do. So he reached toward the sinks. In one of them was a deep pot—the pot in which Woollcott had made the coffee. It was full of water—dirty water, most likely, but Benchley didn’t think it mattered. He lifted the pot from the sink and upturned it where he thought the man might be.

“
Agghh!
What’s that?” the man sputtered.

“Just water,” Benchley said. “Maybe a teensy bit of cold coffee.”

There was a skittering sound, like a crab scurrying across a hard surface. The man was back on his feet.

Benchley realized that Case and Luigi were now also on their feet.

“Stop him, Mr. Benchley!” the waiter yelled. “Don’t let him outta here!”

With a miserable groan, the figure disappeared into the darkness.

“Where did he go?” Case asked. “Is he still here?”

Footsteps clattered down the stairway to the basement.

And good riddance,
Benchley thought.

“Come! We go!” Luigi said, tugging on his sleeve. “We go after him. Right now!”

Case’s voice was even-toned once again. “I think that’s quite enough mayhem for now, Luigi. Let’s not chase after the intruder in the basement—in the dark. We’ll find him after we replace the fuse in the fuse box.”

“I agree. Enough mayhem for now,” Benchley said.

“All we need is a flashlight or a candle,” Case said. “Shall we look for one, Luigi? Coming with us, Bob?”

“Count me out,” Benchley said, still feeling a slight pang of guilt about crisscrossing the switchboard’s wires and blowing the fuse. “Just lead me first to the service elevator. I need to find Mrs. Parker.”

* * *

Dorothy felt the hotel coming to life. People were starting to wake up and move about. It was not yet dawn, though. She guessed that the ringing of just about every telephone in the whole building had roused the guests and residents.

Doyle silently walked alongside her as they left Dr. Hurst’s room and strolled to the elevator. She wondered about him.
What would make such a smart man—the man who invented the logical Sherlock Holmes, no less—become so obsessed with the questionable, dubious concept of Spiritualism?
He actually believed in talking to the dead? Had the old man lost it, as Jordan seemed to think? Or was there some other, deeper reason Doyle had become such a firm believer?

“So,” she said to him gamely, “you say a person doesn’t have to be dead to be able to communicate through the spirit world? Are you talking mind reading?”

Doyle looked at her quizzically, perhaps skeptically, even. “Sometimes the living can communicate with one another mentally—a language between minds, so to speak. It’s called telepathy. It’s not truly mind reading. More of a sensation between two spirits, or souls.”

“Not mind reading?” she said, disappointed. She was thinking of Benchley. “There’s a mind or two I’d like to read.”

Doyle chuckled knowingly. “It would be fantastic, wouldn’t it? Perhaps scientists one day soon will invent such a machine to allow us to do just that.”

“Nah, forget it. I have a big stack of books by my bedside, and I don’t have time to read them. How would I find time to read a stack of minds as well? A lady has to know her limits.”

They came to the elevator door, and Dorothy pressed the call button. The door opened almost immediately. And there stood Alexander Woollcott.

Dorothy frowned. “Speaking of limits, I think I just reached mine.”

Woollcott stepped out of the elevator and was followed hesitantly by Lydia Trumbull. The actress’ eyes were red and full of tears.

“Hello to you, too, Mrs. Parker,” Woollcott said. “I’m an unwelcome sight to you, am I?”

“No more so than usual,” Dorothy muttered. “Forget I said anything.”

“Indeed I will,” he said, beaming. “Because I have something important to announce: I’ve solved it! I’ve solved the murder of Bibi Bibelot!”

“Have you, now?”

“Indeed I have. And Lydia Trumbull here has proven to be the linchpin in the case, so to speak.”

At this, Lydia released a sob and a fresh flood of tears.

“Don’t worry, Lydia,” Woollcott reassured her with an indifferent hand on her shoulder. “The courts have pity on women, especially pretty ones such as yourself. You won’t be hanged—most likely.”

Lydia wailed and cried more tears.

“Don’t listen to this blowhard,” Dorothy said to her. “You didn’t kill Bibi.”

Lydia shook her head and blew her nose into a handkerchief offered by Doyle. “Yes, I did. Oh, I’m afraid I did. I poisoned her—with chloroform.”

“No,” Dorothy said sternly. “You did not.”

“Yes!” insisted Woollcott. “Yes, she did!”

“No, she didn’t,” Dorothy said, and turned to Doyle. “Artie, please explain it to them.”

“Certainly,” Doyle said. “Simply put, you could not have killed Miss Bibelot, because you did not use enough chloroform to do so.”

Lydia’s eyes glimmered with a slight hope and yet a fear of hoping. “I-I didn’t?”

“Yes, you did!” Woollcott snapped. “Of course you did. You confessed it.”

“But . . . but maybe . . .” Lydia stammered, hope seemingly growing in her.

“No maybes about it—!” Woollcott said with a stamp of his foot.

“Not a chance, Lydia,” Dorothy said. “Artie’s a doctor. He just explained to me that you couldn’t have killed Bibi with less than an ounce of chloroform.”

Lydia brightened. “Oh, what a relief! I hoped I hadn’t—I found her passed out drunk. And I had only wanted to give her enough chloroform to make sure she would be sick. Truly, I did. You must believe me.”

“Never!” Woollcott howled.

“Certainly we believe you,” Doyle said with tender reassurance. Then he spoke evenly. “But you did give her enough to anesthetize her and render her unconscious. And that likely gave the real murderer a much easier opportunity to commit his villainous crime.”

“Or
her
villainous crime!” Dorothy interjected. “Let’s be fair.”

Woollcott sputtered but said nothing.

“But why did you do it, Lydia?” Dorothy asked. “What good would it serve you to knock out Bibi?”

Lydia sniffed. “They’re holding auditions for a new musical on January second.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my, that’s tomorrow already. Well, I’d be a shoo-in for the lead role—if only Bibi doesn’t show up, that is.”

“And thanks to you,” Woollcott said, “she most certainly won’t!”

Lydia cringed and burst out in more tears.

“Don’t listen to him, dear,” Dorothy said. “But tell us, where did you get the chloroform?”

She dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief. “From that mean old doctor. Well, from his case. He left it unattended at the Fairbanks’ party. I recognized it as a medical bag and guessed there would be something useful inside—it was completely a spur-of-the-moment decision! I had no preconceived plan to harm Bibi. You must believe me.”

Dorothy remembered the many sedatives and sleeping pills on Lydia’s bedside table. Had Lydia actually planned ahead to knock out Bibi, she could have found a way to use any one of them.

“Of course we believe you,” Dorothy said.

“
I
don’t!” Woollcott bellowed.

They ignored him.

“Tell me,” Dorothy asked, “after you gave Bibi the chloroform, did you lock the door behind you? Or somehow put a towel against it?”

Lydia looked confused. “No. I closed the door, but I didn’t lock it. And I had used a washcloth to administer the chloroform. But I just dropped that in the tub so no one would be able to smell it later. I didn’t put anything against the door.”

There
was
a washcloth left behind in the bathtub,
Dorothy thought. “Do you remember anything else unusual about the room? Did the champagne in the tub feel cold? Was the window open?”

Lydia shook her head. She was regaining her Broadway-star composure. “No, the champagne was . . . well, it was lukewarm, I suppose. And the window was closed. I would have noticed if it were open.”

“Were there any other objects in the room?” Doyle asked. “Think carefully. Imagine yourself back in that bathroom.”

Lydia appeared lost in thought. “I’m remembering now. . . . Bibi held a champagne glass in her hand. But I didn’t want to touch it. I-I didn’t want to get my fingerprints on it.”

Doyle nodded. “Anything else?”

Imagining the moment when she found Bibi dead, Dorothy also pictured the bathroom. “How about an ice bucket? Do you remember an ice bucket on the radiator?”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t remember any ice buck—”

Woollcott couldn’t hold his tongue any longer. “Ice buckets! Who gives a buckety-buck about an ice bucket? Doesn’t anyone care that this woman caused Bibi’s death—directly or indirectly?”

Doyle knit his bushy eyebrows. “Lydia did not kill—”

“Oh ho! Here he goes again.” Woollcott threw his hands in the air. “A doctor is speaking. Everyone pay attention! This old dodo went to medical school about a century ago, so he must be correct about absolutely everything.” He narrowed his beady eyes at Doyle. “Who do you think you are,
Doctor
?”

Dorothy couldn’t resist a sly smile.
How will Woollcott react when he finds out who he’s really talking to?

“Not only is he a doctor, Aleck,” she said, “but he’s also the best-selling author of detective fiction ever. All night you’ve been playing detective right under the nose of the creator of the most famous detective of all time, and you didn’t even know it. Allow me to properly introduce you to him. This is Sir Arthur Conan—”

Woollcott spoke dismissively. “Arthur Conan Doyle. Yes, yes, I know exactly who he is, Mrs. Parker. What do you take me for? I was being sarcastic just now when I asked who he thinks he is. I know who he is, all right, and I’m not impressed in the least.”

She glanced at Doyle, who looked troubled and hurt.

Woollcott added, “This man’s just a loony old has-been, that’s who he is!”