Murder Your Darlings Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  MURDER WAS NOT ON THE MENU....

  “Oh, it’s nothing much,” Case said, rocking back on his heels. “A little matter of a dead man in the dining room. Your waiter, Luigi, found him under your celebrated Round Table.”

  Benchley, as if reading Dorothy’s mind, said, “You think it was something he ate, Frank?”

  Case frowned at him.

  “Not a chance,” O’Rannigan said in all seriousness. “It was murder. He was stabbed.”

  “Stabbed?” Woollcott said. “In the middle of the Algonquin dining room?”

  “Stabbed through the heart,” the detective said.

  “Just a minute,” Sherwood said. “Was this someone from our circle?”

  Frank Case shook his head.

  “That ain’t the half of it. He was stabbed,” O’Rannigan grumbled emphatically, “with a fountain pen.”

  Benchley looked to Dorothy. “Mightier than the sword, indeed.”

  She replied, “He took his writing a little too close to heart.”

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  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Copyright © John Murphy, 2011

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47679-6

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  To my own little vicious circle—

  Karin, Betsy and Mary Jane

  Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—wholeheartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

  —Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

  Kill your darlings.

  —attributed to William Faulkner

  In all reverence I say Heaven bless the Whodunit, the soothing balm on the wound, the cooling hand on the brow, the opiate of the people.

  —Dorothy Parker

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although real people walk through the pages of this book, it is a work of fiction. I do believe that Dorothy Parker and the other members of the Algonquin Round Table would have encouraged the embellishment of fact to tell a good story—and I hope you will as well.

  FOREWORD

  In the 1920s, there were no Internet, no wireless phones, no satellite TV—no TV at all. Even radio wasn’t commonplace until the later twenties. Instead of text messages and e-mail, people sent telegrams or employed messenger boys. For music at home, they listened to a Victrola or sang around a piano.

  For entertainment, New Yorkers had dozens of theaters in which to see plays and a number of movie palaces where they could see silent films. (“Talkies” didn’t arrive until the later twenties, too.)

  For information, New Yorkers lacked twenty-four-hour cable news networks. But they did have a dozen daily newspapers to choose from. Presses ran day and night, printing morning editions, afternoon editions and special editions (“Extra! Extra! Read all about it!”).

  At this time, the people who wrote the news also became the news. A new class of writers, editors and critics emerged. A loose-knit group of ten—and their assorted friends—gathered around a large table for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel. They went to the Algonquin because it welcomed artists and writers—and because it was convenient and inexpensive. Their daily lunch gatherings were known more for wisecracks and witticisms than for the food they ate. But they buoyed one another with merriment and camaraderie. They thought the fun would never end.

  Chapter 1

  Dorothy Parker stared at the pair of motionless legs protruding from beneath the Algonquin Round Table.

  This, she thought, is what you get for showing up early.

  She was never early for anything. Often, she was the last one to arrive. Today, despite her best intentions, someone else had arrived before her.

  “Under the table before lunchtime?” she said to the pair of legs. “Even I wait until after noon to wind up there.”

  The legs didn’t move.

  Nob
ody else was in the darkened dining room. The room had no windows, and the lights were dimmed. It was unusually silent. She could hear only the muted clatter coming from the kitchen as the chef and his staff busily prepared lunch. But no waiters emerged through the swinging door.

  Her dark, soulful eyes clouded over. Those demure eyes belied her sharp mind. They peered out from the shadows of a very pretty, but now troubled, face.

  She gently nudged the toe of her little scuffed shoe against one of the legs. “You should stand up when a lady enters,” she said. “Hurry up. One might come in at any moment.”

  Still, the legs did not stir. She knew something was dreadfully wrong, of course. But joking about it was more appealing than shrieking.

  The legs belonged to a short, slender man. Even in the dimness, she could see that his black shoes were expensive, narrow and highly polished. Dove gray spats covered the tops of his shoes and his ankles. Above the spats, the man’s trousers were charcoal gray and pin-striped. Above the trousers, the immaculate white tablecloth draped down like a shroud.

  Dorothy prodded the legs again, harder this time. Again, no response.

  She glanced once more at the door to the kitchen. Still closed. She turned to look toward the entrance to the dining room. People milled about in the lobby, just a few paces away.

  She should go. She should get someone.

  She didn’t. Curiosity got the better of her. She leaned forward and lifted the tablecloth. She saw the man’s vest. It didn’t move—it didn’t rise and fall with his breath. Then she saw something thin and metallic sticking out of his chest, surrounded by a dark crimson stain.

  That was enough. She dropped the tablecloth. She hurried toward the kitchen door and flung it open. The kitchen was bright and busy. The waiters, the kitchen staff and the chef fell silent and turned to look at her.

  Before she could say anything, Jacques, the chef, stopped her with an impatient stare. He halted his mallet in midair over a flattened fillet of veal.

  “We know,” he said, exasperated. “There is a dead man in the dining room. We told Mr. Case, and he called the police. Now, unless you know what killed him, don’t bother us.”

  Dorothy quickly recovered her composure. “Perhaps it was something he ate.”

  She turned on her heel and let the door swing closed. Behind the door, she could hear the chef cursing at her in French. Without a glance toward the body under the Round Table, she strolled calmly through the dark toward the threshold to the well-lit hotel lobby.

  Across the lobby, she spotted her longtime friend and coworker at Vanity Fair magazine, Robert Benchley. He stood in the light of one of the large, sunny windows at the front of the hotel. He was busy fiddling with his pipe and spilling tobacco on his sleeve.

  Seeing him, as she did every day, she felt a subtle thrill. She wasn’t nervous or anxious. Just the opposite. Robert Benchley was perhaps the only person with whom she felt completely at ease. When she was alone, she often felt distracted, isolated, on edge. When she was with him, she felt like herself.

  She couldn’t wait to tell him about the body—in her most casual, offhanded way. He would be horror-struck, appalled and thoroughly amused. He would—

  Suddenly, a hand touched her sleeve.

  “Excuse me? Miss Parker?”

  She turned to face a short, skinny, droopy-eyed young man in a baggy houndstooth suit. His whisper-thin mustache and scraggly beard, which barely covered a narrow chin, made the young man look like a suffering artist or a homeless vagrant—Dorothy couldn’t decide which.

  “It’s Mrs. Parker,” she corrected him. “May I help you?”

  “I’m a writer, from Mississippi.” He nervously shifted from foot to foot. “That is, I want to be.”

  “You want to be from Mississippi or you want to be a writer?”

  He wasn’t offended. In fact, he smiled. It was a tender smile, she thought.

  “I want to be a writer.” He clutched a handful of dog-eared pages. “I was hoping you might take a look at what I’ve written and give me your honest thoughts.”

  She looked at him squarely. Her voice, as always, was just above a whisper. “My honest thoughts would curl the wallpaper, sweetie.” But she accepted the papers he handed to her. “What’s your name?”

  “Billy—William Faulkner.”

  “Billy Faulkner, you came all the way up from Mississippi to hand this to me?”

  “Well, not exactly.” He continued to shift from foot to foot. “You see, I’ve been working in New York a few weeks. I’m a great admirer of your poetry, and I read about you in the newspapers—”

  She interrupted. “When in doubt, tell a lie, my boy. Save the truth for your writing.”

  “Well, then, yes.” He smiled halfheartedly, still fidgeting. “I came up from Mississippi just to show this to you.”

  “That’s better.” She sensed instinctively that he was a kindred spirit. And she usually followed her instincts—much to her despair. “Now, why are you quaking like a snake before Saint Patrick? Are you nervous to speak to me, or do you just have to go to the lavatory?”

  “Both, ma’am. I’ve been waiting here for quite some time—”

  “The men’s room is down that way. Come back and join us for lunch, won’t you? The conversation is lively—though the company today quite literally pales in comparison,” she said, thinking of the lifeless body under the table.

  “I’d be honored. Thank you.” He gently shook her hand and headed to the men’s room.

  She continued across the lobby to her old friend, who was now preoccupied with a pack of matches.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Benchley,” she said.

  Robert Benchley looked up and smiled as he lit his pipe, the corners of his merry eyes creasing.

  “Mrs. Parker. How are you today?”

  “Just dreadful,” she said cheerfully. “And you?”

  “Couldn’t be worse, Mrs. Parker,” he said brightly. “Ready for lunch?”

  “Not quite.” She’d tell him about the dead man—at just the right moment to make his jaw drop. Instead, she said, “I found another stray dog.”

  “Oh, Dottie, not again.”

  “The poor thing was lingering right by the door,” she said. “He tiptoed up to me as if he knew me. I saw immediately that he needed someone to protect him, to shelter him from the storm.”

  “Storm?” he cried. “It’s a lovely spring day. The birds are shining. The sun is chirping.”

  She sighed. “The forlorn in New York face a storm every day, Fred.”

  “Let’s save the drama for the theater. And stop calling me Fred.” He exhaled a puff of smoke. “Is the poor thing even housebroken? You never clean up after these wretched mongrels.”

  “Is he housebroken? Why, he’s in the men’s room right now.”

  Benchley tilted back his hat and scratched his head. He had an expressive oval face that usually framed a wide smile. But now his mouth and brow were knotted as tightly as his bow tie.

  “Ah,” she said. “Here he comes now.”

  Benchley turned to see not a mangy stray dog, as he had expected, but a skinny, bearded young man in a baggy suit.

  “That’s your stray dog?” Benchley said.

  “Mr. Robert Benchley, meet Mr. Billy Faulkner. He’s a writer, too.”

  The young man lowered his chin in modesty. But there was an eager glint in his drooping eyes.

  “That’s my hope.” He held out a slim hand. “That’s why I came to New York, to meet famous writers like yourself and Mrs. Parker. Very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Someone misdirected you,” Benchley said, shaking Faulkner’s hand obligingly. “Most writers in New York don’t do much writing. They spend their time talking and drinking bootleg liquor. That’s what we do, at any rate.”

  Faulkner hesitated. “I presume you’re pulling my leg.”

  “I never joke about such serious things as writing or—”

  “Or liquor?” F
aulkner said.

  Benchley grimaced. “You’ll find yourself in jail for stealing a man’s punch line like that.”

  A rising clamor on the other side of the room caught their attention.

  “What’s the hullabaloo?” Benchley said, peering at a small throng that had now gathered at the partition dividing the dining room from the lobby. A bellhop was busy attaching a makeshift curtain—apparently a bedsheet—between the partition and the wall, closing off the view to the dining room.

  “Nothing much,” Dorothy said. “Just a dead man under the Round Table. Perhaps he passed out, and then he passed on.”

  “Passed—what?” Benchley was more perplexed than aghast.

  “A dead man,” she repeated, “under the Round Table.”

  “Dead? You mean dead drunk or—”

  “Just dead. Stabbed, apparently.”

  Benchley considered this. “What a peculiar way to check out of a hotel,” he said. “Did you see the body?”

  She nodded.

  “So whose body is it—or rather whose was it?” he asked.

  She bit her lip. After seeing the dead man, she had quickly turned tail and run away. She hadn’t even looked at his face.

  Across the lobby, two men at the edge of the gathering noticed Dorothy and Benchley and made their way over. The two men couldn’t have been more different.

  Alexander Woollcott was short, plump and imperious, with a round, pale face like a snowman’s. Behind owllike glasses were hard, glinting eyes like little lumps of coal. Despite his girth, Woollcott had the quick, nervous movements of a bumblebee.

  The other man, Robert Sherwood, was startlingly tall—more than six and a half feet—and uncommonly thin. His straw boater sat askew on his narrow head as if it hung carelessly on a hat rack. Just above his upper lip perched a fuzzy black caterpillar of a mustache. Sherwood moved like a giraffe, with a methodical, stiff, cantilevered grace, as he crossed the lobby. The pompous, pudgy Woollcott reluctantly followed.

  Benchley said into Faulkner’s ear, “Do you recognize those gentlemen?”

  Faulkner’s nod was like a genuflection.

  Benchley smiled warmly and put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “The walking telegraph pole is Robert Sherwood. He works with Mrs. Parker and me at Vanity Fair magazine. Why, I’ve known Mr. Sherwood since he was just this tall.” Benchley raised his hand as high as he could reach. “The overstuffed sausage next to him is—”