A Friendly Game of Murder (11 page)

Chapter 16

D
orothy, Benchley and Woollcott crowded together at the tiny window.

Benchley was right. Dorothy hadn’t noticed it before: On the outside windowsill, the snow had been pushed aside. She leaned forward. Now with her head slightly out the window, she could see that there was a portion of flat roof—like a very wide ledge or balcony—a few feet below the window. A trail of footprints, now obscured slightly with fresh snow, led away from beneath the window, went off to the right along the roof and turned the corner at the edge of the building.

“Someone came in or went out this window!” Woollcott cried.

“Went out, undoubtedly,” Dorothy said. “There’d be snow or at least water on the floor if he had come in.”

“Aha! So our killer somehow murdered Bibi, locked the door from the inside, put a towel at the bottom of the door for some reason, climbed out the window and made his escape across the roof.”

“Or her escape,” she said. “But to where?”

“Is there another way back into the hotel? A roof hatch or some such thing?”

They both looked at Dorothy.

“How should I know?” She narrowed her eyes at Woollcott. “You’re the one who makes it his business to know all about the hotel.”

He ignored this. “Someone needs to go through this window and follow those tracks.”

“You do it, Sherlock,” Benchley said to him. “Maybe you’ll find Professor Moriarty out there.”

“Heh heh,” he chuckled, and patted his prodigious paunch. “I’m afraid that window is not my size. Perhaps you’d like to give it a go, Mr. Benchley?”

“I’m allergic to footprints. And snow. Sorry.”

“Mrs. Parker?”

“I’m like the cleaning staff here. I don’t do windows.”

“Tut tut, you want to clear Fairbanks’ name, do you not?”

She didn’t answer.

Woollcott continued. “Who else could have performed such an acrobatic feat? Not only did he climb out the window, he also must have reached back in and replaced the champagne glass and ice bucket on the radiator, and then closed the sash from the outside. Then he scampered pitter-pat across the rooftop like a cat. Doesn’t this answer to the acrobatic derring-do of Douglas Fairbanks, the man who does a backflip or walks on his hands at the drop of a hat?”

“Then let’s get Fairbanks in here, and he can give it a try. Not me. I backflip for no man.”

“Then how about a woman, as you keep insisting?”

“A woman?”

“Mary Pickford. The lady of the house.”

“Mary wouldn’t climb out her own bathroom window. Not when she had a key. For that matter, why would Fairbanks do it if the key was in his own kitchen drawer?”

“To throw off suspicion? To be mysterious?” Woollcott said. “Of course Fairbanks would not have expected you to open the window in the first place. By the time daylight arrived, the additional snow would have obscured his footprints altogether, and they wouldn’t even be noticeable from the window. But you just helped us out with that clue, did you not? So, thank you for helping to incriminate him.”

“How do you figure?” she asked.

“If you hadn’t opened the window just now, we could never have seen Fairbanks’ footprints,” he said.

“But they’re not—” She gritted her teeth. “How do you know they’re Fairbanks’ footprints?”

“Why don’t you just go out the window and follow them, to find out for sure?”

Woollcott—and her own misplaced sense of guilt—eventually wore her down. Soon she again had Benchley’s tuxedo jacket on, and he and Woollcott helped her climb up the hot radiator and scrabble out onto the window ledge.

She paused with her knees on the snowy stone sill. She felt awkward with her rear end to them, but her dress was long enough to cover her small rear end and most of her legs. But her dress and Benchley’s jacket weren’t thick enough to shield her from the winter chill.

She looked down at the small strip of flat roof, which was only about four feet wide. Even though the cornice of the building was high enough to keep her from slipping off the roof’s edge, it was low enough that she could easily look over it. This was the back of the hotel, so she looked down into darkness—whether it was a dark alley or courtyard or what, she didn’t know.

“Well, go on,” Woollcott said impatiently. “Out you go.”

She took a deep breath of frigid air and carefully slithered one knee out from under her. She pivoted on the narrow sill and lowered her leg. She pivoted again and lowered her other leg, and now she could sit on the sill. She felt the cold, wet snow on her backside. The roof was only two feet below her two feet. With a cautious little push, she hopped off the sill. She slipped when she landed, and skidded toward the cornice. She couldn’t stop. She was heading toward the edge. Her knees slipped out from under her, and she collapsed hard against the concrete cornice. The wind was knocked out of her—and the stuffing was scared out of her—as she found herself peering down into the inky darkness of the alley twelve stories below.

“Dottie, dear, are you all right?” Benchley shouted, halfway out the window. “I should never have let you go out there on your own.”

His voice sounded so panicked that it did her heart good to hear it. She calmed down right away.

“Never fear, Mr. Benchley. This isn’t the first time I’ve been out on a ledge.” She looked again into the dimness below. “Metaphorically speaking, that is.”

Chapter 17

D
orothy got to her feet, brushed the snow from her legs and then followed the half-hidden footprints. She noticed that the shoes that had made them were larger than her shoes—but almost anyone’s shoes were larger than hers. She also realized that whoever made them had a longer stride than she did. When the footprints turned at the corner of the building, so did she.

Now she faced a large expanse of flat roof. (In the summertime it would be big enough to allow a rooftop garden. She’d have to make that suggestion to Frank Case.) But the cold wind was more severe on this side of the building. It hit her like a slap in the face. She hugged Benchley’s coat around her and shivered. She searched the snow for the footprints and could only just discern them. They were merely shallow depressions in the deepening, windblown snow.

She followed them to a brick wall, where they stopped. As she approached the wall, she realized there was an iron ladder built into it. Whoever had made the footprints had obviously climbed the ladder. She didn’t want to climb the ladder, but she didn’t want to stay out on this freezing roof any longer either. She used the sleeves of Benchley’s jacket as mittens and started climbing.

She was just as cold now as she had been in the basement freezer, only Benchley wasn’t here to keep her company. So she vowed that Woollcott would have to make her another one of those hot coffee drinks just as soon as she got back inside the hotel—no matter how she got back inside the hotel.

At the top of the ladder, a gust of wind blew an icy chill up her dress. It was so cold that she could barely catch her breath. Oh, Woollcott would owe her a lifetime of coffee drinks for persuading her to do this! She stepped off the ladder onto this upper roof and saw that the shallow footprints ended a few paces away at a square hatchway. She hurried over to the closed lid, which was covered in thick snow. She clutched her frozen fingers underneath the edge of it and tried to heave it open, but it barely budged.

Oh damn! Is it locked?
She tried again and was able to lift it an inch or two. But the hatch itself, combined with the snow on top, made it simply too heavy for her thin arms to lift.

She used the sleeves of Benchley’s jacket to brush off the snow. The hatch was wide—about four feet square—so it took her awhile to get all the snow off. By the time she had removed it all, she was dead tired and absolutely freezing cold.
Curse that Woollcott! And curse that Fairbanks and Pickford, too! They’re innocent, of course, so why would I brave the elements to try to prove it to that ninny Woollcott? Curse me, while I’m at it.

She tried to lift the hatch again. Although it was lighter now, she was too exhausted to raise it more than a few inches. She saw a sliver of light shine out, but then she had to drop the lid. Oh, to come so close and to fail. . . . To come out on this roof on a silly whim only to freeze to death. . . . It was poetic in its banality. The story of her life.

Don’t be your usual pessimistic, self-defeating self, Dorothy,
she thought.
Give it the old college try
. Despite her inclination to give up, she dug her icicle-cold fingers under the lid and tried to lift it once again—or it would be never again. To her surprise it lifted easily this time and locked open at a ninety-degree angle. She sat back on her haunches but leaned her head over the opening and warmed herself on the rush of room-temperature air that flowed up at her.

The glow of the light illuminated the figure of a person next to her.

“Mr. Benchley!” she cried in surprise. “So you helped me open that lid.”

“At your service, Mrs. Parker.”

“I didn’t even see you there. Where did you come from all of a sudden?”

“Once you disappeared around the corner, I couldn’t bear to think of you out here in the cold. I followed after you. But let’s talk inside. Here, give me your hands. I’ll lower you down.” He grabbed her hands. “My gracious, they’re cold as ice. Come on, there’s no time to lose.”

He wasn’t a particularly strong man—far from it. But she was petite. So he didn’t have too much difficulty in lifting her off her feet and lowering her into the small room below. As before, she breathed in the warm air deeply. In a moment Benchley had dropped down next to her; flakes of snow fell along with him.

They were in a small room stocked with linens on wooden shelves—a linen closet. Against the wall was a chain that led up to the roof hatch. Benchley pulled the chain, and the hatch dropped shut with a bang.

“Hmm,” she said. “We’ll have to get one of those chains installed on Woollcott. It’d be nice to shut his trap so easily.”

Benchley laughed and reached to hug her. His body was cold, Dorothy thought, but his embrace was—

Just then the door opened, and Douglas Fairbanks poked his head in. “What was that bang?” Then, suddenly realizing the situation, he asked, “What are you two doing in here?”

“Nothing,” they said quickly moving apart.

We have to stop being caught in these tight spots,
Dorothy thought. Then she said, “Just a minute, Douglas. What are
you
doing in here?”

“I was on my way back to my room when I heard a bang. I came to investigate.”

“There’s certainly no banging going on in here,” Benchley said with a chuckle, but he stopped when he realized what he had said.

“But I heard—”

Dorothy considered something. “Douglas, do you come to this room often?”

“Well, no. Not often. Hardly ever.”

“But you clearly have been here before.”

“Certainly. As I said, it’s just around the corner from my apart—”

“Have you been in here earlier tonight?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

She stepped toward him. “I mean, did you climb out your bathroom window like a cat, scurry along the roof and then drop down into this room? An athletic fellow such as yourself could do it easily.”

“Dottie, if you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting—”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

The door opened wider, and now Woollcott stood next to Fairbanks. “Aha, Mrs. Parker, you’ve converted to my point of view.”

“Aleck, for heaven’s sake, stop saying, ‘Aha!’—and while you’re at it, fetch me one of those hot coffee drinks. And make it snappy!”

Woollcott looked wounded. “Snappy?” he muttered sheepishly. “You’re the one being snappy.”

* * *

Back in Fairbanks’ penthouse, they sat in the living room and waited for Woollcott to come up with the coffee. Several times Fairbanks—now joined by his wife, Mary—tried to ask Dorothy what she was thinking, but Dorothy shushed him and told him to wait for “Detective Woollcott” to return.

Finally Woollcott came back. He was followed by Luigi the waiter, who pushed a room service cart laden with a silver coffee pot on a silver tray, as well as a glass carafe of cream and a silver sugar bowl.

“Café Alexander is served,” Woollcott pronounced pompously, and sat down with the expectation of being waited upon, as though he were some royal dignitary. Luigi silently poured the coffee, added a splash of brandy and cream to each, grated some nutmeg on top and handed out the cups. Woollcott took a sip, nodded his approval and sat the cup on the saucer in his lap. This being done, he gazed steadily at Mary Pickford. “Now, Mary, tell us why you decided to kill Bibi in your own bathtub during your own party?”

Mary nearly dropped the cup in her hands. “Kill Bibi?”

“That is what I said.”

“I did no such thing. You must be joking, Aleck.”

“Aleck, really!” Fairbanks said angrily, standing up. “You don’t talk to my wife that way in our own home.”

“Very well. I’ll talk to you that way,” Woollcott said. “Why did you cover it up for her?”

“C-cover what up?” Fairbanks sputtered, his glossy veneer of Hollywood sophistication temporarily disappearing.

“Come clean, Douglas. Your wife had it in for Bibi. She suspected you of having an affair with the girl. Not to mention Mary was annoyed with Bibi for stealing the limelight at her party and making a spectacle of herself. So when everyone went downstairs for the countdown to midnight, Mary somehow murdered Bibi.”

“Stop it, Aleck—” Fairbanks said.

But Woollcott didn’t stop. “Then you, the loyal husband, tried to cover your wife’s tracks by mysteriously locking the door from the inside and clambering like a monkey out the window, only to climb back in through the roof hatch in the linen closet down the hall. Ah, but you didn’t count on Mrs. Parker opening the bathroom window, allowing us to take notice of the tracks you left behind in the snow. Isn’t that right?”

“No, not a lick of it—”

“Oh please, Douglas! Who else has the dexterity to get out of that window and back in the trapdoor so easily? And who else had such a motive to kill Bibi—?”

“Only almost everyone,” Fairbanks protested, more calmly now, reclaiming some of his movie star savoir faire.

Mary said, “I did not like Bibi Bibelot, that’s no secret. But neither Douglas nor I had anything to do with her death. It’s horrifying to me that she died in our apartment.”

“But weren’t you the last one to see her alive?” Dorothy asked quietly.

Mary’s mouth hung open; she didn’t dare to answer.

“And”—Woollcott turned to Fairbanks—“didn’t you try to cover for your wife by saying
you
were the last one to see Bibi alive?”

“Well, that—that was before . . .” Fairbanks trailed off.

“Before what?” Dorothy asked.

Fairbanks sat back down and clasped his wife’s hand. “That was before Mary and I had a good, honest talk. That’s what we were doing just now, before I found you two in the linen closet. We took a stroll around the hotel and talked.”

“Talked?” Woollcott sputtered, as though it was the most absurd idea he’d ever heard. “What did you have to talk about?”

Fairbanks took a deep breath. “You’re right that when I said that I was the last one to see Bibi alive, I was trying to cover for Mary—”

“Aha!” Woollcott said.

Dorothy kicked his shin.

“Ow!”

“Go on, Douglas,” Dorothy said.

“I was trying to cover for Mary because I didn’t know for sure what had happened. I knew she would never do such a thing, but . . . but . . .”

“But I was guilty of something,” Mary said. “Douglas knew it.”

“Ah—!” Woollcott began, but stopped himself after a quick warning glance from Dorothy.

“It’s like this,” Mary said. “I didn’t know why Bibi would be wearing that locket that I had seen on my dresser. I certainly didn’t like to see a beautiful young woman parade naked through my apartment. I’m no killjoy, but that’s more than I can stand. So I somehow put two and two together, and figured—quite wrongly, I now know—” And she squeezed Fairbanks’ hand and looked kindly into his beautiful eyes. “I foolishly jumped to the conclusion that Douglas was having an affair with her. So, while everyone was downstairs in the lobby, I took the locket from Bibi’s neck, out of sheer jealousy.”

Dorothy stood up. “You did what?”

Mary looked anxious and guilt stricken. “I know. It was silly. But I took the locket.”

Dorothy had a million questions, but the only thing that came out was, “I nearly froze my ass off to prove you two are innocent, and this is how you repay me? Give me that damn lousy locket. I want it.”

Mary looked even more anxious now. “But I can’t,” she said helplessly. “It’s gone missing.”