“I guess.”
“Then why did you sign it?”
“I wanted him to know I wasn’t marrying him for his money.”
“You got your wish.”
“I trusted him.”
“Why?”
“He promised he’d take care of me.”
She looked at me in wonderment. “You’re not a little girl, Mrs. Slater.”
“Nate said it was standard practice.”
“Ah, yes,” she nodded, “Nate the Enforcer. We’ve done battle on many occasions . . . The fact is clauses like this one are written to protect the estate in case a man dies two weeks after marrying some bimbo. It’s supposed to discourage murder.”
“Or provoke it.”
McCluskey laughed. “Be that as it may. You were represented by competent counsel. There was full disclosure of his assets. You knew your husband was very, very rich when you married him. You signed the agreement voluntarily. And I think a court would hold, under these circumstances, that an agreement is an agreement. A prenup is valid and binding, assuming there’s full disclosure and representation by counsel if it’s conscionable when the agreement is made and when it’s sought to be enforced. Of course, you could make the argument that it’s unconscionable now when it’s being enforced. But you’re still entitled to a million dollars, and most judges won’t view that as a clothes allowance, I assure you. People have been left with far less . . . You have no children, right?”
“No. I wanted them but, well, I won’t go into it. Lucius has a son from a previous marriage. They didn’t get along. He got less than half the estate.”
“Bottom line? As I just said, you can contest the prenup, Mrs. Slater, but in my opinion you won’t win. Nate Nathaniel dots his I’s twice. You’ll get a million dollars but you could easily eat up most of that in legal fees. You don’t know how a court will come out on any issue and you can certainly take a chance. But the law here is pretty settled and she’s got a lot more money to fight you with. If I were you, I’d take the million dollars and move on with your life.”
“The other problem is, I’ve already pledged a million dollars to the Municipal Museum. I have to pay it.”
“Why?”
“It’s a debt of honor.”
She shrugged. “Honor seems fairly flexible these days.”
“Not to me, Ms. McCluskey.”
She gave a little nod of approval. “I applaud your integrity, but I’m afraid the courts don’t take pledges into account.”
I consulted three other lawyers whose opinions were basically the same as McCluskey’s—all except one, a known publicity hound with high-profile clients who told me he could definitely help me for a retainer fee of fifty thousand dollars. Under closer scrutiny, however, he refused to guarantee anything and, as I was leaving his office, asked me if he could issue a press release about our meeting. I said I would sue him if he dared.
My last hope was Little Lucius. I just couldn’t bear to see Monique wind up with everything. Lucius’s only child was the logical choice to lead a suit against Monique. First, however, I had to find out where he stood.
Early one morning, I went to visit him in the Seward, a genteel, run-down hotel on upper Madison Avenue where he and Rebecca always stayed when they came to New York because it was comparatively cheap. Although I had invited him to stay with me, he refused. He never stayed with us in New York, even when his father was alive.
The hotel room, on a low floor overlooking Madison Avenue, was noisy and utterly without charm. White walls, graying with age, were a forlorn backdrop for the flimsy, faded chintz curtains framing two square windows with old-fashioned panes. The constant hum of street traffic was occasionally pierced by banshee sirens. Little Lucius was still in his bathrobe, lingering over coffee and the morning paper, when I arrived. He opened the door and informed me that Rebecca was out jogging in Central Park. He was uneasy and awkward from the start, offering me some coffee out of Rebecca’s used cup.
I talked to him for a long time about the situation, begging him to take action against Monique. He was most unreceptive, stealing glances at the newspaper while I was making key points. I ignored his apathy and pressed on. It was inconceivable to me that Little Lucius was willing to let more than half his father’s fortune pass into the hands of a scheming, gold-digging murderess.
“She planned the whole thing,” I said in no uncertain terms. “She got your father to change his will, then she purposely aroused him knowing how weak his heart was. Even if you don’t care about the money, don’t you care about your father?”
Little Lucius, visibly ill at ease, broke the crust off a piece of toast on the plate in front of him. “I guess,” he replied.
He popped the twig of crust into his mouth and washed it down with cold coffee, speaking as he chewed. “Frankly, though, Dad and I parted company long before he died. I mean, if he left her a lot of stuff, yunno, I guess that’s how he wanted it.”
“Don’t you understand? She knew he was going to die.”
Little Lucius cocked his head to one side, looking at me quizzically. “Yeah, well, sure . . . He had a weak heart.”
“And she knew that.”
My imploring gaze was met with blank indifference.
Finally, this poor, disheveled man rose to his feet, fumbling with his bathrobe. He walked to the door—an unsubtle hint. His familiar stutter, miraculously absent since his father’s death, suddenly returned.
“Well, anyway, B-B-Becky and I have to get back to F-F-Florida. K-k-keep me p-p-po . . . Call me.” He opened the door onto a dim mushroom-colored corridor.
I knew by the way he looked at me he wanted nothing more to do with the situation. The son’s revenge on the tyrannical father who had been so tough on him all his life was simply not to give a damn whether he’d been killed or not. Lucius was dead. That was that. Too bad.
I came to the wrenching decision that it would be fruitless and prohibitively costly for me to challenge the will. I now had ample time to reflect on the enormity of what had transpired. Had Lucius artfully hidden his real self from me under the rich fabric of our social life? Or was I somehow at fault? Had I simply ignored the signs of his discontent, thus paving the way for Monique to successfully seduce him?
I remembered my mother’s words: “What they’ll do to one, they’ll do to another.”
Lucius was capable of erotic obsession. I knew that only too well because I had once been a grand passion of his. The truth was that I had interrupted his marriage to Ruth in much the same way Monique had interrupted his marriage to me. Ruth, of course, had conveniently died, paving the way for me to marry him. Monique knew I would not be quite so obliging.
But why Monique? How had this little French hustler made him so gaga about her in two short months that he left her half his fortune?
Lucius was no fool. He was a canny, rich skinflint who shared his wealth only when it benefited him directly. Though he liked to be amused, he had a keen nose for sycophancy. Cautious and skeptical, he was contemptuous of those who tried to cash in on the perks of his position. This was the man who often told me: “A lot of people think money is catching—like a cold . . . I got news for them: I ain’t contagious.”
He was rarely generous unless he was sure his bounty would be rewarded in kind, but I simply refused to believe that the Countess’s charms were worth more than two hundred million dollars.
So why her?
Chapter 10
I went to pack up the Southampton house after the New Year. Driving out to the country with Mrs. Mathilde at my side, I felt terrible pangs of nostalgia, but the fact that it was mid-January took the edge off having to say good-bye to the property. When I pulled into the driveway I was almost relieved to find that the house, bathed in cold gray light, had a stark, unwelcoming appearance. The garden was barren except for the evergreens. Scattered over the dead, faded grass were patches of icy snow left over from a heavy storm the previous week. Even the charm of my preciou
s guest cottage had withered under the spell of a harsh winter. Difficult as it was, I knew it would have been far more of an ordeal for me to quit the place during a season where the flowers were in bloom.
Aside from being a good organizer, Mrs. Mathilde was a sympathetic presence, the one person in the world I could trust. Her kindness and cheerful attitude made the packing up a great deal easier. Most of the things I took with me had little more than sentimental value. According to Nate, I was not supposed to remove anything from the house other than my clothes and personal effects. But I defied him or anyone else to deny me the flower drawings that hung in the library or my favorite Sèvres dessert plates, which had belonged to the Empress Eugénie. Together, Mrs. Mathilde and I wandered through years of memories, recalling the events that had taken place in that house as we sifted through what I now jokingly dubbed the “glorious rubble” of my past life. We even shared a few good laughs remembering some of the people I’d entertained and the funny things that had gone on. I thought, well, at least I’d had a wonderful time.
Everything had gone along smoothly under the circumstances until it came time for me to actually go into the guest cottage. Standing in front of that quaint little replica of “Le Hameau,” its perfect proportions even more visible now that the wisteria and honeysuckle vines covering the façade were bare, my resolve suddenly failed. I couldn’t bring myself to go in, particularly when I thought about who had lived there and what she had done to me and how she would soon be the mistress of all my domains. Mrs. Mathilde put her arm around me while I stood out in the icy cold and wept, the tears freezing on my face. Later on that evening, the old housekeeper brought me the two Sèvres milk pails from the cottage. I thanked her but told her to put them back. I didn’t want them anymore.
Before I left for good, I walked down to the pool house and opened the door to the Rois changing room. I couldn’t help myself. I needed to see it one last time. I opened the door and stared down at the cold blue tiles, recalling the events of that terrible afternoon.
Mrs. Mathilde was waiting for me in the car. We drove off towards the city. Neither of us said a word the whole way home.
Southampton was history. On to New York. June and Betty dropped in to lend me their support during that ghastly week in March, when I had to vacate my Fifth Avenue apartment so that Countess de Passy, the new owner, could take possession.
I took a break in the middle of packing. Just for the hell of it, I’d put on the Marie Antoinette necklace over my turtleneck sweater as a statement of defiance. My jewelry was pretty much the only thing of substantial value I had left. I regretted not accumulating more of it during my marriage like so many wives of other rich men did as an insurance policy against just the sort of thing that was now happening to me.
I was in a fuck-it-all mood as I opened a bottle of champagne in the living room. The cork popped out and a spurt of white foam trickled onto the Aubusson rug. I didn’t even attempt to clean it up. It wasn’t going to be mine for much longer. June had brought me a box of my favorite chocolate covered caramels from Fouquet’s in Paris. We all sat around eating chocolate and drinking champagne.
The glaring March sunshine was cosmetically unforgiving on my friends. June’s taut cheeks were studded with pale brown spots unconcealed by her makeup. Betty’s neck resembled wrinkled linen. The sight of them sitting there on my yellow silk couch, in their tailored little suits with their matching shoes and bags, really depressed me—not just because Betty had ruined her outfit with a hideous gold bug pin perched on her right lapel, but because through them, I understood for the first time how much I, myself, had aged. They were undoubtedly thinking the same thing about me—how old I looked, how tired. I couldn’t help thinking what a ghastly time it was for me to be starting life all over again, virtually from scratch.
Betty’s and June’s combined attempt to be upbeat didn’t last long. There was no denying the horror of the situation. As I refilled our glasses, I said to them: “Can you believe he didn’t see through her? Even assuming she was the greatest lay on earth, how could he have not seen through her? I mean, she obviously planned the whole thing . . . Well, of course, I didn’t see through her so—” I stopped when I saw them exchanging surreptitious glances with each other. “Okay, what’s up, you two?”
“Nothing,” June replied much too quickly.
“Don’t screw around with me, girls. If you know something—”
“I’m not telling you anything ever again,” June said priggishly. “Remember what happened the last time.”
“I’ll tell her if you won’t,” Betty said.
“What? Tell me what?” I was in no mood to be trifled with.
“She didn’t plan it. He did,” Betty blurted out.
“Who?”
“Lucius.”
My eyes narrowed with intense interest. “What are you saying?”
Betty cleared away the frog in her throat. “They say that Lucius was having an affair with Monique long before you so obligingly befriended her. Long before she ever even came to Southampton.”
They—the human jungle drums who spread gossip throughout the social tribes of New York—were legendary for their accuracy in hindsight.
“I don’t believe it.”
June chimed in: “You didn’t believe it when I told you they were having an affair, either. And look how that turned out.”
“Apparently, she met him in Paris a couple of years ago when you were on that Marie Antoinette trip to Austria,” Betty said.
“We warned you not to leave him alone so much,” June said.
It was Betty who delivered the coup de grâce. “And did you know she was living in New York?” she said.
“No, she wasn’t. She was visiting New York. I know that to be a fact because we were trying to figure out a way for her to stay here. That was when I started fixing her up, hoping someone would marry her. I fixed her up with Nate.”
Betty shook her head. “Uh-uh, sweetie. She was living here almost a year. Ever since her husband died.”
“No,” I said, refusing to believe it. “That simply can’t be.”
June’s head was bobbing up and down like a marionette’s in agreement with Betty.
“And guess where she was living?” Betty went on. “Actually, it’s where she’s still living until you clear out of this apartment.”
“Where?”
“You’ll love this,” June said.
“In your old apartment building,” Betty said. “How’s that for a fucking coincidence?”
A firecracker hit the top of my skull. Suddenly everything made sense.
My mind raced to grasp the breadth of the concept—no, the familiarity of the concept! It was the same damn thing he’d done with me years ago—artfully hiding our true relationship from the world by creating a lie within a lie to hide the truth. Betty and June had no idea that I, too, had known Lucius for months before we supposedly met. They had no idea that he was the one who put me up in that very apartment building, a nice rental on East Sixty-fourth Street. But I knew it. I knew his whole M.O. because I’d lived it.
“So you see,” Betty went on, “Lucius is the real culprit. Gil and I were just beards, although we didn’t know it. Lucius planned the whole thing.”
She also didn’t know that they were the beards the last time, too—for me.
“How do you know all this?” I demanded.
“I found out where she was living because she sent me an invitation to a party, if you can believe it. How’s that for nerve?” Betty said.
“And Isabelle Catrousse told Trish Bromire that everyone in Paris knew Lucius was having an affair with her ages ago,” June said.
Isabelle Catrousse, an elegant Frenchwoman, was the well-connected mistress of a famous French financier. She traveled widely and was a font of international gossip, usually reliable.
My mouth was dry. I could barely speak. “What exactly did Isabelle say?”
June straightened herself up i
n her chair and spoke with the self-important confidentiality demanded in such circumstances.
“Well,” she began in a breathy voice, “Isabelle told Trish that people had seen them together in Paris a year ago. No one thought too much of it at the time—you know how the French are about things like that, and Isabelle’s no one to throw stones, let’s face it.”
“Go on!” I ordered her.
“But when he left her all the money it was le scandale, n’est-ce pas?”
I stalked around the room with my head in my hands, muttering, “I can’t believe it, I just can’t believe it,” over and over again like a madwoman. Betty and June continued to fill me in on the details, but their voices faded to distant echoes in my ears. Gradually, I ran out of steam and sank down onto a chair. I had fallen into that void of panic always yawning just beneath the surface of my psyche. I stared into space.
“Yo, Jo!” Betty cried. “Snap out of it.”
“Why did you let her stay with you?” I whispered hoarsely, trying to contain an incredulity fast bubbling into blind rage.
Betty grew defensive. “What did I know, for Chrissakes? Gil and Michel were old friends. Monique pulled all that helpless widow crap. Men fall for that shit, what can I tell you? Gil felt sorry for her. So did I, in the beginning. So did you.”
“Piranhas in distress,” June said, neatly flicking a stray thread off her skirt.
“Look, Jo, I hate her, too,” Betty said. “Hell, she made a pass at Gil.”
“You knew that and you let her come to me?” I said.
“Excuse me, but let’s be frank here. Who’d’ve thought she’d be interested in a sick old man?” Betty said defensively.
June sighed. “Let’s face it, girls, no rich man is safe until he’s dead.”
“Not even then,” I said.
After Betty and June left I hit the hard stuff. I poured myself a tumbler of scotch and wandered around the apartment thinking. Could this really be true? Had Lucius planned the whole thing or was this just one more rumor courtesy of New York’s gossip loom, so famous for weaving gorgeous lies out of puny, colorless threads?
Social Crimes Page 9