“Good morning,” Thelma replied, giving Margarita a smile she didn’t return. Margarita bore a slight resemblance to Gloria in her coloring, but where Gloria was slight Margarita was sturdy. Thelma couldn’t blame her for her brusqueness: Friedel’s determination to clear Gloria’s name seemed to go beyond friendly devotion.
Thelma was grateful to Friedel, but she wasn’t blind to the fact that he was as much on trial as Gloria. If Gloria’s conduct was considered improper, Friedel’s actions could be seen as nothing short of nefarious: preying on a vulnerable young widow, seeking to lay his hands on an American fortune. Mamma had done her best to paint a sordid picture, and if Thelma had learned anything from Burkan, it wasn’t intent that mattered: it was what people saw in the newspapers, and in the flesh. Friedel had to be here—as much for his own reputation as for Gloria’s.
The courtroom doors swung open and Gertrude Payne Whitney, accompanied by Mamma and Nurse Kieslich, strode into the room.
Gertrude walked past the viewing gallery and sat, passing her overcoat to Kieslich without sparing Gloria and Burkan a glance. Throughout the trial, Thelma had been taken aback by the woman’s unfeeling actions: Couldn’t she see the effect she was having on Gloria and Little Gloria both? She recalled Gertrude’s words, spoken in Newport so many years ago: Reggie’s choices had brought them here. Thelma hadn’t heard the steel in her voice at the time, but now she could see it was that same unflinching conviction that propelled her forward now. It was Gertrude’s choices, today, that kept them in the courtroom. She had little choice but to continue, now that the trial had taken on a life of its own.
Thelma turned her attention to Mamma. She sat in the viewing gallery, as close to Gertrude and the lawyers as she could without being at the bench herself, and leaned forward to listen to Gertrude’s whispered conversation with Smyth. She shook her head vehemently at something Smyth said; he twisted in his seat to respond, and Thelma smiled at the identical expressions of irritation on all of their faces. Mamma, no doubt, had been elbowing her way into closed-door discussions for weeks, offering unsolicited opinions on how to run the court case.
A bailiff walked into the room. “All rise for Justice John F. Carew,” he said, and Thelma stood with everyone else as the judge entered from a door behind the witness’s box.
Justice Carew was a tall, broad man who looked more suited to working a farm than presiding over a courtroom. He strode to the judge’s box, his robe sweeping behind him, a leather portfolio tucked beneath his arm. He looked to be in his sixties or thereabouts, with iron-gray hair, a trim goatee and steel-rimmed pince-nez.
“Take that—that covering off the window,” he said as he sat down. “But be sure to tell the reporters,” he continued, raising his voice as a court attendant removed the blotting paper from the courtroom door, “that I won’t have anyone taking photographs or disrupting my courtroom, do you hear me? This is a court of law, not Carnegie Hall.”
He waited until the attendant was finished, then looked at the assembly over the top of his pince-nez. Thelma wondered what the judge thought of the room: Mamma and Kieslich, lonely matrons on Gertrude’s side of the room; Thelma, Harry, Consuelo and Edith—family, siblings, rationality—on the other.
Carew leaned back. “I believe we are still calling witnesses for the prosecution. Mr. Smyth, please proceed.”
Smyth got to his feet, adjusting his glasses. “I’d like to call Mrs. Laura Kilpatrick Morgan to the stand.”
Mamma approached the witness’s box. Like Gertrude, she was dressed entirely in black, but for an immense silver crucifix on a chain around her neck. Was it for the judge’s benefit, that blatant expression of false piety, or had she worn it as armor against the judgmental stares of her children?
Smyth smiled. “Mrs. Morgan, you testified that your granddaughter was subjected to continued neglect from her mother, yet Gloria Vanderbilt hired a professional nursemaid to care for her. Is that the action of a neglectful parent?”
Mamma raised her chin. “I selected Nurse Kieslich,” she said. “My daughter did not show any desire or interest in choosing the nurse.”
From his perch above the witness’s box, Carew spoke without looking up from his desk. “And the mother? What contribution did she make toward the care of the child?”
Mamma clutched the crucifix. “It’s not my daughter’s fault,” she said. “She wasn’t born with a maternal instinct...”
“Objection,” called Burkan.
“Denied,” said Carew, almost lazily.
Smyth tucked a hand in the pocket of his waistcoat; from within the folds of his jacket, Thelma could see the yellow flash of a watch-chain. “You lived with Gloria Vanderbilt and her daughter at 14 Rue Alfred Roll in Paris, is that correct?”
“No,” said Mamma. “My daughter chose that house because it didn’t have room for me. It was entirely uninhabitable for a child.”
“How so, Mrs. Morgan?”
“Gloria would remove her daughter to the attic when she had friends over, to the attic where the servants—men and women!—slept, so she could make room for her friends.”
“And you were excluded from this household?”
“Because of my objection to Gloria’s choices,” said Mamma. “I had to resort to meeting my granddaughter in secret, in the night, after Gloria and her friend—after my daughter had gone out. I used to come to the house. She was utterly alone in that house, and I was afraid for her.”
Thelma straightened. Mamma had pulled back, on the brink of mentioning one of Gloria’s relationships. Did she mean Nada, when she referred to Gloria’s friend? Or Friedel?
Smyth stilled. “Afraid of what, Mrs. Morgan?” he asked softly, but Burkan leaped to his feet.
“Objection!” he shouted, and Mamma looked up in surprise.
Carew looked from Smyth to Burkan. “I’m afraid I’ll have to sustain the objection,” he said. “Have you any further questions for the witness?”
Smyth looked imminently satisfied. “No, Your Honor.”
Carew cleared his throat. “Before we move on to cross-examination, I’ve got a question for the witness,” he said. “Mr. Smyth, please read aloud Nurse Kieslich’s testimony about Mrs. Vanderbilt and Prince Hohenlohe. According to the nurse, the two were seen in bed together. I’d like to hear Mrs. Morgan’s testimony on that, please.”
Smyth stood. Beside him, Gertrude looked up: Thelma could see her face in profile, her expression inscrutable beneath the brim of her hat.
“Mrs. Morgan, will you please tell us about when you first said anything to your daughter about the life she was living? Did you ever complain to your daughter about her friendships?”
Rather than answering Smyth, Mamma turned to the judge directly. This question, more than any other, seemed to discomfit her. She spoke quickly, color rising in her cheeks. “During the last six years, I’ve been telling her she ought to settle down and love her own country—to live here, in America, and drop her European entanglements, and European titles and desires for a life of pleasure—”
“Your daughter’s relationship with Prince Hohenlohe, Mrs. Morgan,” Carew interrupted. “That is the subject at hand. Do you wish to tell me anything about that incident or not?”
Mamma looked out at the viewing gallery, then back at the judge. “Your Honor,” she said in an undertone, “Since she is my daughter, may I tell you in private chambers—?”
“Objection!” roared Burkan. Thelma could picture the journalists in the hallway, their ears pressed to the door. “You look your daughter squarely in the eye when you tell the judge what you saw!”
“We’ll hear your testimony here and now, please, Mrs. Morgan,” said Carew.
Mamma closed her eyes. “Very well,” she said. “It was between two and three in the morning when I heard the prince’s voice, raised very high, and my daughter sobbing.” She shook her head. “I did
n’t know what to do so I woke Nurse Kieslich—we went to the door and it was open just a crack so we—we looked in...” She trailed off, as though the recollection was too much to bear. “We saw them in bed,” she whispered, and her voice began to catch. “This is dreadful,” she said. “I love my daughter, and it’s for the baby’s sake that I tell you this, Your Honor. This is the sacrifice of my life.”
Carew reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out a handkerchief. “All right,” he said. “What happened next, Mrs. Morgan?”
“Gloria was sobbing. They were lying down in bed and he was talking—vociferating—with my daughter. He was trying to—trying to persuade her to marry him!”
“Let me understand you,” said Burkan, walking toward the witness’s box. “You were standing outside the door and your daughter was crying. Did you walk into the room and say, ‘Are you sick, my child? What is the matter?’”
Mamma shook her head; Burkan pressed on.
“Why did you spy on your daughter, Mrs. Morgan? Why wouldn’t you have gone in the room?”
Mamma put down the handkerchief. Her face was red, but Thelma knew it was a sign of anger, now, rather than distress. “My daughter loved this man,” she said, “but I knew perfectly well that he was a danger to my granddaughter’s future, and he didn’t have a penny—a penny!—to support her. They would have lived off Little Gloria’s money—money that’s meant for her, not for German castles! But if I had said anything to her, she would have shown me the door right there and then. I was there to protect the baby, Mr. Burkan. Did you think I was listening at that door for pleasure? A woman my age? I’m an old woman, Mr. Burkan...”
“Protect her from what, Mrs. Morgan?”
“He wanted to adopt Little Gloria, to carry her off to Germany! Gloria was completely infatuated, she would have let him do anything he liked to Little Gloria—”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Have her whipped, if he wanted, handle her money—he called her the daughter of a plebeian!”
“And this is why you prevented the marriage between Gloria and Prince Hohenlohe?”
“Wouldn’t you have done it, if he was trying to get all your granddaughter’s money? What German has money these days? You don’t think I saw what he was after?”
“Objection,” called Smyth.
“Sustained,” said Carew.
Thelma listened. Mamma spoke as if a dam had burst, words spilling out over months and years of resentment.
“If it weren’t for me, my granddaughter would be German—or she would be dead! Gloria was so in love she would have done anything for him, spent my granddaughter’s inheritance like water, keeping Little Gloria from the people who loved her most—”
“Calm yourself, please, Mrs. Morgan,” said Smyth.
Mamma took a breath, twisting the handkerchief in her hands. “My daughter and I were very happy together up until the time she fell in love with the German. If she had committed murder I would have taken it upon my shoulders—except for the baby!” She put her head in her hands, elbows heavy on the witness’s box. “Except for the baby,” she repeated softly. “How has it come to this?”
Carew leaned back in his chair. Whether he believed Mamma or not, Thelma wasn’t sure.
“Thank you, Mrs. Morgan,” he said.
Forty
February 1932
London
Thelma gripped the telephone, striving to quell her unease before a shuffling noise indicated that someone had resumed the call.
“Lady Averill? I’m afraid she’s gone out.” Webb’s voice sounded thin and apologetic; Thelma could picture him threading his fingers through the telephone’s wires, kneading them into collusion. “Something to do with the horses, I believe, before she departs with His Lordship to Africa...”
“Thank you, Webb,” she said. “Would you let her know I’ve been trying to reach her?”
“Of course.”
She rang off, smoothing the four half-moons her fingernails had bitten into the flesh of her palm. It was snowing outside, drifts falling from the eaves in gleeful eddies, whirling toward the white shroud blanketing Grosvenor Square.
Averill was avoiding her: that much was clear, in Webb’s tactful dismissal and in Thelma’s unanswered letters, her declined invitations to meet for lunch. It was a silence, which, four days before Averill and Duke were to leave on safari, made Thelma deeply uneasy, but she had kept her promise not to tell Duke about Averill’s ill-conceived plan to elope with Andrew Rattray.
Snow buffeted noiselessly against the window. This silence was hardly the conduct of someone who was truly committed to her actions. Since Averill had first told Thelma about Rattray, Thelma’s misgivings had only grown. Rattray was old, and unlike Duke he had little to offer his prospective bride in the way of comfort or security. While Averill considered herself a hunter in the manicured hedges of the countryside surrounding Burrough Court and the uncomplicated wilderness of Scotland, she couldn’t—simply couldn’t—live in Africa. There, Averill’s inexperience would be a liability, regardless of how much she thought she loved Rattray. Averill had fallen for an idea, more than a man: an idea very much tied to a place where her money, her family, meant nothing.
Thelma stood, willing Averill to appear at the door. Perhaps she’d reconsidered. Thelma pictured Averill slipping a note to Rattray on her arrival in Nairobi, avoiding his hurt expression as she retreated across the gulf separating peer’s daughter from servant. Her silence might be down to embarrassment: simple and clean, a cauterized wound.
But Thelma couldn’t take that chance.
* * *
She arrived at Burrough Court two hours later, the drive lengthened by the snow collecting in mounds on the side of the road. She glanced at her watch—half past noon. If things with Averill went well, she would be traveling back to London by teatime.
The motorcar pulled up the drive and Thelma stared up at the familiar facade. Thick tendrils of ivy vines gripped, finger-like, to the brick. Would Averill refuse her entry? She pictured Webb barring her way and smiled as the ancient butler, heavily favoring the bannister, came down to greet her.
“I thought I’d come to wish Averill well on her trip in person,” said Thelma, her voice ringing with false cheer. “Is she back from her trip to town? Or was it the stables?”
“She’s—the stables, my lady,” said Webb, ducking his head in a brief bow. What reason had Averill given him for avoiding her?
The stables were a short walk past the main house, a white collection of slate-roofed buildings set on three sides of a pea-gravel courtyard. Thelma slipped through a side door, blinking in the whitewashed darkness.
The stalls were along one wall, the paint chipped and worn but clean, the horses whickering softly as Thelma passed. She paused to greet the gentle roan that Tony liked to ride and passed the stalls that had once held Duke’s zebras. It had all been in good fun when they’d finally harnessed them to the coach, but Duke had sold them to a zoo after they sickened in their second English winter. Such was the risk, thought Thelma, brushing aside a mess of hay with her boot, when one took a creature out of its natural habitat.
Averill was in one of the farther stalls, with the dappled mare that she’d shown at Leicester Fair. Dressed in worn trousers and a white blouse, her jacket folded over the stall door, Averill was bent over the mare’s front leg, cleaning out its hoof with an iron pick. Her fringe, pinned back with a tortoiseshell clip, fell loose. She pushed it back as she continued to work the hoof with single-minded focus.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” said Thelma. Averill looked up, resting the mare’s hoof on her knee. She examined the hoof a moment more, scraping the frog with a half-hearted motion before tossing the pick in the corner of the stall.
“Gordon never takes the time to clean their hooves properly,” she said, rubbing her hands clean on
her breeches. “Thought I’d come and take the time before...”
“Before you leave,” said Thelma. Averill dropped the towel and picked up a brush; she turned back to the mare, brushing her gray flank with a smooth, rhythmic motion. “On safari? Or for good?”
Averill didn’t reply. Thelma opened the stall door and stepped inside, approaching the horse with her hand outstretched. She touched the bridge of its nose with her palm, and it nuzzled hopefully—Thelma wished she’d thought to bring an apple. “Have you given any thought to our conversation?” she said.
Averill ran her brush down the horse’s haunch. “I have,” she said. “Andy and I—we’ve been writing to each other. My feelings haven’t changed.”
Thelma met the mare’s soft, sad eyes. “I didn’t ask you about your feelings.”
Averill set the brush down. “He loves me,” she said flatly, and Thelma wondered how many times Averill had rehearsed this conversation in her head, during quiet moments with the horses, or brooding over cups of tea. “Would you give that up? In all honesty, would you?”
Thelma ran her hands along the mare’s nose, breathing in the earthy aroma of horses that made her think of Reggie and Gloria back when they were whole.
“You know, Averill, that I was married before I met your father,” she said. “I don’t think I ever told you about it—not properly. It didn’t seem pertinent, but now...” Thelma exhaled, dust particles dancing around her feet.
“I married too young,” she said. “Far too young. He was handsome, charming... When he asked me to marry him, I didn’t stop to think. We loved each other—what more did we need?”
Thelma glanced at Averill, her brush moving with slow concentration.
“We eloped. I was too young to marry without my parents’ permission, and we both knew they wouldn’t grant it. That ought to have been my first warning—Gloria’s reaction ought to have been the second. She didn’t like him, not in the slightest, but she came to the wedding just the same. I’d only known Junior two months.”
The Woman Before Wallis Page 29