A Friendly Game of Murder (25 page)

Historical Note

It may seem unlikely that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the world’s foremost deductive detective, would become a convert to the illogical and downright odd Spiritualist movement. But that’s history for you—it’s sometimes more difficult to swallow than fiction.

Here I’ll try to distinguish between history and fiction, at least in regard to this story.

The Game of Murder

The members of the Algonquin Round Table loved their games. (Robert Benchley was the exception—he didn’t enjoy the ferocious competition involved.) In addition to the sparkling wordplay at their daily lunches, they played cribbage, croquet, poker and many other games—all with almost maniacal fervor.

One of their games was Murder, and it was played as described in this story (although they referred to the detective role as the “District Attorney”). Harpo Marx, in his book
Harpo Speaks!
, describes one particularly memorable game of Murder. In this game Harpo played the murderer, and Alexander Woollcott was the District Attorney. Harpo used an ingenious method to commit his crime—he sneaked into the bathroom, wrote the fatal message in lipstick on the roll of toilet paper and then rolled it back up.

Alice Duer Miller, an occasional member of the Vicious Circle, was the unfortunate recipient of the message. As required by the rules of the game, she remained at the scene of the crime—for five hours!—while the other players searched and sleuthed.

Harpo writes:

Aleck put the finger on me without having to ask a single question. I had outsmarted myself. I had tipped my hand without knowing it. What I had written in lipstick on the roll of toilet paper was: YOU
ARE
DED
.
Little Acky had a terrible tantrum and went to bed without his supper. He refused to play with anybody who didn’t obey the rules. The Murderer had to confront the Victim face-to-face or else there was no crime committed. . . . Alice herself, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more delighted. A stroke of genius, she called my plot. Too bad it had to be an illiterate stroke of genius, she added.

Dorothy Parker

In the first chapter of this book, Dorothy acknowledges that she never went to college and didn’t even finish high school. This is true. She left school at age fourteen to take odd jobs and to take care of her ailing father.

Also, Dorothy was instructed by the Sisters of Charity at a Roman Catholic elementary school—and she apparently gave the sisters a lot to pray about. Her Catholic school education reveals itself in this story, as she realizes that the Berley brothers (who are fictional) are certainly not nuns. While nuns may be mannish and a few may even have facial hair, Dorothy would have known full well that sisters of the early twentieth century would never pull up their skirts (even to their ankles) and run through a hotel lobby.

It also bears repeating that Dorothy and Benchley, although extremely close, were never known to have a romantic relationship.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

As a point of fact, and as all Sherlockians know, Sherlock Holmes never did say “Elementary, my dear Watson.” (And while we’re clearing up misconceptions, Doyle received his knighthood for writing a book on the battles of the Boer War, not for inventing the world’s most famous detective.)

Doyle did tour through America with his wife and family in the midtwenties. He had become extremely devoted to Spiritualism and was out to convert the world. He attended and hosted séances, gave lectures, donated and raised money for Spiritualist causes, and wrote books about it. (While he was visiting New York, his lecture and slide show nearly filled Carnegie Hall.) He affirmed that he had communicated with his dead son, Kingsley, but on both occasions it was through a medium. Many people at the time thought that he had lost his senses.

In this story Woollcott describes Doyle as a has-been. Not true. Doyle published another slew of Sherlock Holmes stories,
The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
, in 1927.

In real life, as in this story, Doyle acted as a sort of consulting detective in a few cases. For one, he came to the defense of a neighborhood collie named Roy, who had been accused of killing sheep, and proved Roy could not have committed the crime. More importantly, Doyle acted as a detective in the case of George Edalji, a young lawyer convicted of a series of cattle mutilations. One of the ways that Doyle helped to show Edalji’s innocence (in the court of public opinion at least) was by demonstrating that the young man’s poor eyesight would have made him incapable of such a crime. Last but not least, Doyle even stepped in to assist when mystery writer Agatha Christie went mysteriously missing for nearly a dozen days. (For his efforts, Christie repaid him by mocking Sherlock Holmes, through the words of Hercule Poirot, in one of her stories.)

Doyle’s friend in this story, Dr. Quentin Hurst, is fictional. His stamp-collecting book is based on and uses excerpts from a 1902 book
, Stamp Collecting as a Pastime
, by Edward J. Nankivell, an avid British stamp collector.

There is no such thing as the British “bearded lady” invert tête-bêche
stamp.

Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford

While Doyle was on his tour of the United States in 1923, he did indeed meet Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford while in Hollywood. (Doyle described Mary as “intensely psychic . . . with many gifts of the spirit,” while Fairbanks “had a robust open mind which only asked for definite experience.”)

It’s difficult to adequately describe what a huge celebrity Douglas Fairbanks was and what a long-lasting impact he had on moviemaking. Furthermore his star status multiplied when he married his equally famous wife, Mary Pickford. He was just about the biggest star on Broadway, and together they were the biggest superstars in Hollywood. On one occasion during World War I, Fairbanks went out to promote war bonds—when he showed up at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets in New York, some twenty to thirty thousand people had gathered to see him.

Fairbanks was a friend to Frank Case, owner of the Algonquin, long before Fairbanks became such a celebrity. When the Fairbankses came East, they stayed at the Algonquin. (Fairbanks was a teetotaler, though, so if he had thrown such a New Year’s Eve party, he would not have served alcohol. But that would take a lot of the fun out of this story.)

However, there was (and is) no fancy penthouse at the top of the Algonquin Hotel.

The Algonquin Hotel

Although there is no penthouse, there is something of a “hidden” thirteenth floor, as briefly described in this book. It’s set back from the facade, so it’s not visible from the street, and it’s used mostly for housekeeping.

Also, it’s entirely possible that Dorothy might have taken Woodrow Wilson up to the roof. Frank Case tells the story of how an Arctic explorer once came to stay at the hotel—along with his four big Alaskan malamute sled dogs. Case, unflappable as usual, simply ordered the dogs to be housed on the roof.

Over the many years since it opened in 1902, the venerable literary landmark has gone through many, many updates, changes and renovations. (As of 2012, the Algonquin Hotel has undergone yet another redo—and it’s now more beautiful and appealing than ever.)

While this story takes some literary license with the hotel (such as the addition of the penthouse), every effort was made to provide an accurate description of the approximate state of the hotel as it stood in the 1920s. At that time and for a number of years afterward, it was in part a residence hotel, and Dorothy Parker did live in a small suite on the second floor.

Jane Grant and Ruth Hale

There was no Mrs. Volney. (The Volney, now a co-op apartment house, was a residence hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side—it was the last place Dorothy Parker lived. She died there in 1967.)

But Jane Grant and Ruth Hale were real. As described in this story, Jane Grant was a writer for the
New York Times
, and she helped to found the
New Yorker
magazine with Harold Ross, her husband and a member of the Round Table.

Ruth Hale was a freelance writer whose stories appeared in the
New York Times
,
Vogue
and
Vanity Fair
. She was an outspoken (even fanatical) crusader for women’s rights and was the first president of the Lucy Stone League. (Jane Grant was also a member.) This organization lobbied for a woman’s legal right to keep her maiden name after marriage, which was not permitted at the time.

The Properties of Dry Ice

There was no Bibi Bibelot, no Blake Bibelot and no Benedict Jordan. (The Pinkerton Detective Agency was very real, though. Pinkerton still exists today, though it mostly provides security services, as opposed to “private eye” work.)

In any case, it is certainly possible for someone to be killed by dry ice. Or, to be more specific, it’s possible for someone to be suffocated and killed by carbon dioxide gas that’s formed after dry ice “melts.” (Again, to be specific, dry ice doesn’t actually melt—it sublimates, turning directly from a solid to a gas with no liquid state in between.)

As a matter of fact, New York’s chief medical examiner in the 1920s, Dr. Charles Norris, investigated the case of five longshoremen who were found dead in the cargo hold of a steamship. The men were bunking in a storage room containing fruit, which was chilled with dry ice. The dead men’s blood was found to be saturated with CO2, and they had “obviously died of asphyxia.”

So in this story, when Dorothy entered the bathroom and found Bibi dead in the tub, it wasn’t Dorothy’s nerves that failed her and caused her to feel faint—it was the lack of oxygen.

Truth be told, it would have been extremely unlikely for someone to be killed this way in the 1920s—dry ice was less common than it is now, because it was much more difficult and expensive to manufacture back then.

Acknowledgments

I owe considerable thanks and recognition to:

Dorothy Parker, who is still an inspiration (and also something of a cautionary tale) for writers, aspiring authors, poets and hopeful storytellers all around the world.

Robert Benchley, one of the great humorists of the twentieth century, who is all but forgotten.

Frank Case, for his dryly witty history of his days (and nights) as owner and manager of the Algonquin Hotel in
Tales of a Wayward Inn
.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, for thoughtfully chronicling his 1920s tours of the United States in
Our American Adventure
and
Our Second American Adventure
.

Daniel Stashower, for his informative and evenhanded biography,
Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle
.

Deborah Blum, for her book that provided the impetus for “death by dry ice,”
The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
.

Ken Ackerman, the “Dry Ice Man” at dryiceInfo.com, for explaining the properties of dry ice—and its requirements for being used as a murder weapon.

Joseph Ditta, reference librarian at the New-York Historical Society, for assistance with blueprints and clips in the Algonquin Hotel file in the George B. Corsa Collection.

Alice de Almeida at the Algonquin Hotel, for the exhaustive tour of the entire building—from subbasement to roof. Also, the Algonquin’s Barbara McGurn, for her memories of the glory days of the hotel. And, of course, Matilda the Cat, for her understated encouragement.

Mrs. Mary Pierce, for her behind-the-scenes insights into hotel service (albeit at the Waldorf Astoria) of yesteryear.

Michael Gibbons, as well as Kathleen Barrett and the other members of the Between Books Critique Group (a division of the Delaware Valley Sisters in Crime), for their editorial advice with the first draft.

Vince McIndoe (www.vincemcindoe.net), for his wonderful, evocative cover paintings for this series. My apologies for not acknowledging him until this book.

Sandy “Hard as Nails” Harding, editor extraordinaire, for her patience and kind encouragement.

Karin, as always, for her enduring support and cheer.

Of course, any factual errors are mine, not theirs.

About the Author

J. J. Murphy
, an award-winning health care writer in Pennsylvania, is a lifelong Dorothy Parker fan. J. J. started writing the Algonquin Round Table Mysteries after the birth of twin daughters, as an escape from toddler television. Please visit J. J. on any of the social media platforms below.