Murder Your Darlings by J.J. Murphy Page A

had fallen from their minds as quickly as the slightest of troubles!
    Certainly, if one of their number should prove to be the murderer—and the New York Police Force, with its aggressive interrogation of the members of the Vicious Circle, seems to indicate that this is so—then that soul shall not sleep easy tonight, especially if Conscience (that old-fashioned thing!) has anything to say about it.
    “How do you like that?” Benchley said, sinking in his velvet upholstered seat. “Someone stabs Mayflower in the chest. Then Battersby shows up and stabs the rest of us in the back. But you have to admit it. Battersby has a way with words, wouldn’t you say?”
    “A way up his ass, that’s what I’d say.” She considered a moment. “But there was no mention of Billy Faulkner and that suspicious man he described. Did you say something to Battersby? Tell him not to put the light on Billy?”
    “No. Did you?”
    “No. But it’s a good thing Battersby avoided it. No sense getting Billy any further mixed up in this.”
    “The answer is simple,” Benchley said after a pause. “Billy Faulkner is a nobody. The man Billy described is a phantom. Nobodies and phantoms don’t make for juicy headlines. They interfere with juicy headlines.”
    “Are you defending that skunk Battersby?” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you like having your name in the paper, not so subtly accused of murder?”
    “Well, it’s not that. Battersby is a publisher—although now he seems to be the editor, the reporter and the newspaper boy, too, for all we know. Since Mayflower can no longer spin those sordid tales, it falls into Battersby’s lap. What else can he do, with no obvious suspects, but point the finger at the people closest at hand—us?”
    “You’re just happy Battersby wrote that you were splitting everyone’s sides.”
    Benchley conceded a smile. “Guilty as charged.”
    “At least Battersby seemed to let the both of us off easy,” she said, pointing to the open pages. “Woollcott gets the worst of it. There’s half a page devoted to him and his rivalry with Mayflower.”
    A murmur rippled through the audience. Benchley and Dorothy turned to look up the aisle. Floating toward them, in his usual broad-brimmed hat and opera cape, was Woollcott.
    “Reading the newspaper in the theater, Robert? Tut-tut,” Woollcott snorted, settling into his seat across the aisle from Benchley and Dorothy. “What is that, the Knickknack News ? I’d call it rubbish, but that would be an insult to rubbish.”
    Dorothy looked again at the tabloid, scanning for a mention of the name Dachshund. She worried that Battersby had described the man Faulkner said he saw in the lobby. If the police read about that, Faulkner would be in even deeper trouble for not reporting it to them. But she could find no mention of it.
    “And Benchley!” Woollcott suddenly bellowed. “How could you take a job from that yellow rag and that scheming silver-spooned Battersby? How can you sit in the seat so recently occupied by my nemesis? What a callous, cold heart you have, Robert.”
    Benchley wasn’t bothered by Woollcott’s tirade. He was agitated for other reasons. “I’m not happy about the job either, Aleck. When Battersby asked me at the Automat to substitute for Mayflower tonight, I thought I was doing the Knickerbocker a good turn. I didn’t know Battersby would do me a bad turn by vilifying our group.”
    “When you sit down with the dog, you get up with the fleas,” Woollcott said with a knowing look to Benchley and Dorothy. “That’s something each of you should remember.”
    The house lights dimmed, the conductor stood and the theater and the audience were engulfed in darkness as the orchestra thundered into the overture.
    As the stage lights brightened, Dorothy barely paid attention. For one, she preferred serious drama to this song-and-dance revue. For another, her mind wandered to the strange young Southern man once again hiding out in her