“Monique, I did the stupidest thing. I was in a hurry this morning and I left them at home.”
She paused with the fork in midair. “Again?”
“I’m sorry . . . But you know, now that I’m here, I would really like to talk to you about something that’s been on my mind for a long time.”
“You know, Jo, you really didn’t have to invent a pair of earrings for me to see you. I’m always happy to see you. You know that.”
I wasn’t surprised she’d seen through my ruse.
“Okay, well, you’ve won now. You have everything you want. You seem to know everything about me and the way I work. So I wonder if you’d do me the courtesy of telling me the truth.”
“About what?” she said innocently.
“About you . . . Who you really are? How you and Nate got together? Did he contact you, or did you contact him? Who dreamed up the whole scheme?”
She looked at me with a defiant sort of hauteur. “What scheme are you talking about, Jo?”
She dropped her fork to the plate in mild exasperation. She picked up her coffee cup and took two small sips. I was watching a woman poison herself. I heard myself say, “I went to see Anne-Marie de Passy when I was in Paris . . . I know about Michel and I know about your second husband, who died just like Lucius.”
Not even a flicker of concern crossed her face as she picked up her fork once again and stabbed a strawberry. She ate it, then put the fork down and picked up the coffee cup again, taking another sip. She put the cup down and looked at me.
“To quote one of my countrymen: ‘The secret of being a bore is to tell everything,’ ” she said.
I opened my purse and took out the vial of Rotinal. I handed it to her. She examined it with some amusement.
“That crafty old bitch . . . This proves nothing,” Monique said, putting the vial on her night table. “She was in love with her brother. That’s the real reason she hated me.”
She took another sip of coffee. There was a faraway look on her face as she played absently with one of the pink satin ribbons on her peignoir. I can’t say exactly what it was that made me feel quite desolate all of a sudden—whether it was her pensive expression, or the drift of her fingers as they intertwined with the ribbon, or whether it was just the sight of her sitting in the bed, propped up against a little mountain of pillows, looking rather fragile and, well, very human, really. But whatever triggered it, the wave of remorse, horror, terror, guilt—you name it—that swept over me in that instant was dizzying.
I shot up from the chair.
“Excuse me,” I said, running over to her and reaching across her for the coffeepot before she could stop me.
“Jo, what are you doing?”
I picked the pot up and knocked over both the little milk pitcher and her cup of coffee. Monique screamed as the liquids exploded over the tray and onto the sheets.
“Tu es folle, toi. My sheets. My beautiful sheets.”
As I set the coffeepot down on the night table, muttering my excuses, Monique reached up and slapped me hard across the face.
I was stunned for a second. I looked down at her. Her features were all twisted. She started screaming at me in French: “Mes draps, mes draps, mes beaux draps . . .” she cried over and over.
She pushed me aside and leapt up from the bed, running into the bathroom. Moments later, she returned with a towel soaked in cold water. She leaned over the bed, rubbing furiously at the muddy stain. She was in a real frenzy. The light brown spot faded quickly into the white sheet.
“It’s coming out,” I said.
Finally, when the stain was nearly all gone, she calmed down. She stood staring at it, still holding the towel dripping wet in her hand. When she finally turned around, her face was swollen with anger and neurosis. She looked ugly.
“You did that on purpose,” she said. “I saw you.” She glared at me across the room.
I had opened the French doors and was standing out on the balcony, facing her.
“What are you doing? It’s cold,” she said.
“You wore my necklace last night. I have so many happy memories of that necklace. It’s like an old friend. I wore it at a dinner I gave for the president of France years ago. When I told him who it had once belonged to, he said: ‘I trust you will escape her fate, Madame.’ Looks like I didn’t,” I said.
Monique instinctively glanced over at the dressing table. The necklace, of course, was gone.
“Give me back my necklace, Jo.”
I ignored her. I had the necklace in my hand and I pulled it out from behind my back. I stuck my arm out over the balustrade and dangled it in the air high above the alley.
Monique let out a horrified gasp.
“Que fais-tu? What are you doing?”
“You can have my life, Monique, but . . . you can’t have my necklace.”
“I bought it. It’s mine. Give it to me, Jo. Give it to me this instant.”
I arced my arm back, getting set to throw my beautiful talisman, my trademark, my link with my own past and with French history over the balustrade. The next thing I knew Monique was hurtling at me with fire in her eyes, her arms flailing like a madwoman.
“No. No. No!” she screamed, lunging for the necklace.
Too late.
Just as she reached the balcony, I threw it high into the air. This was my real revenge. The baby out with the bathwater. I loved seeing her face contorted with the agony of greed.
She was still running, though—chasing it into the wind—and the next thing I knew, her waist had doubled over the railing as she attempted to catch it as it fell. I grabbed her peignoir to keep her from falling, but it was too late. She issued a startled cry as she tumbled over the edge.
I couldn’t believe it. I watched her fall with her arms flapping as if she were trying to fly. Then she hit the ground. All I could see of her was what looked like a scrap of pink ribbon lying in the alley below.
I stood there, frozen with disbelief. Finally, I walked back into the bedroom. I was breathing very hard. It had all happened faster than a dream.
In my mind I replayed the event in slow motion.
I was out on the balcony with the necklace, dangling it in the air, taunting her, about to pitch it down fifteen stories. She ran out, thinking she could grab it. Just as she got there, I threw it up into the air. She followed it with her eyes as it arced and fell, reaching out for it with an anguished cry. She lost her balance. I saw her teetering against the thick stone railing that came to just below her waist. Her legs were pressed up against the bulbous columns supporting the balustrade. I saw what was about to happen so I grabbed hold of her peignoir. The fabric bunched in my hand. She was still teetering. I grabbed her waist with both hands thinking I would steady her . . . But instead, I pushed her, propelling her over the edge.
I had no time to contemplate what I had done. I was in a state of pure panic. Objects in the room looked grainy and indistinct, like I was viewing them through a sandstorm. I didn’t know where to put myself in the wake of this terrible act. I couldn’t believe it had happened.
“Calm down, Jo, calm down,” I said to myself out loud over and over, willing the incantation to bring me back to myself, as it were. I had to force myself to think straight.
Mercifully, my instinct for survival kicked in. Just like that, I stopped pacing, shaking, and fretting. I was possessed by a miraculous calm. I glanced at my watch. Nine-forty. Trevor, the English butler, was due to arrive at ten. I had to get out of there fast, but I couldn’t leave in a hurry.
I looked around the room, surveying the situation with a cooler eye. The Rotinal tablets were on the night table. Should I leave them there? Yes, why not? They would find the drug in her system and her fingerprints on the vial.
One fact I’d learned from watching so many crime shows on television is that very often people see and hear what they expect to see and hear, rather than what is actually occurring. If I could make the young maid think that she had
heard Monique and me talking just as I was leaving, no one would be able to accuse me of murder. I also gambled on the possibility she might be self-conscious since she didn’t speak much English.
I stood outside the bedroom door and said in a loud voice, “Goodbye, Monique . . . I love you. Don’t worry about anything . . .”
I closed the door and waited for a moment. I started to walk down the corridor when I saw the young maid coming toward me. I smiled at her. She smiled at me. She was about to escort me to the door when I let out a little gasp.
“Oh. I forgot something,” I said, running back to the bedroom.
I knocked on the door and entered.
“I forgot my glasses,” I said loudly.
“Here they are, Jo,” I said in a French accent, pretending to be Monique. “Thank you again for coming over. Close the door, please.”
I left the bedroom. The maid was standing near enough for her to have overheard everything. I poked my head back inside the door one last time, and said: “Take care of yourself, Monique. I love you.”
I closed the door and looked sadly at the maid, shaking my head with a rueful smile, hoping to convey that I was worried about Monique. The shy young woman nodded as if she understood and escorted me to the front door. She waited with me until the elevator arrived.
“Muchas gracias,” I said in a fractured Spanish accent as I got into the car.
“Señora,” she said with a slight nod.
On the way down in the elevator all I could hear was the sound of my own heart. I stayed in control by counting slowly as if I were doing an exercise. On my way out the front door, I said a glum good-bye to the doorman.
I left the building feeling numb. Part of me wanted to go around the side to the back alley to see if I could see Monique lying there, maybe even to retrieve my necklace. But I kept walking, one foot in front of the other in a steady stride, down Fifth Avenue, just like any other passerby.
Chapter 35
“DOWN FOR THE COUNTESS” was the banner headline in the next morning’s New York Post. The New York Times featured the story on the front page of the metro section: “SOCIALITE IN FATAL FALL.” “SOCIAL SUICIDE?” asked the Daily News, reporting:
The broken and battered body of the notorious French socialite, Countess Monique de Passy, 40, clad only in a pink nightgown, was found by a deliveryman in a back alley adjacent to her Fifth Avenue apartment earlier today.
It is believed that the Countess either jumped or fell from a small, sheltered balcony off her master bedroom that overlooks the alley fifteen floors below. Also recovered in the alley was the valuable necklace once belonging to Marie Antoinette, which was recently sold at auction for nearly one million dollars . . .
All the news stories rehashed the old scandal about Lucius’s death and the will, then chronicled Monique’s rise in New York Society, starting with her windfall inheritance. Every account said that Monique was engaged to “prominent New York attorney Nathaniel P. Nathaniel,” and that police were “continuing to investigate the accident.”
It was bad enough being hounded by the media once more without fearing I was going to be arrested for murder. Having all the events of the past few years regurgitated in front of the public was humiliating, not to mention nerve-racking. One minute I was up, thinking I was in the clear. The next minute I was serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole at the Women’s Correctional Facility in Bedford. There was no in between.
Everyone was calling: June, Betty, Ethan, Trish, all my pals—all the amis mondains. I couldn’t speak to any of them before I had my story absolutely straight in my head.
I expected a visit from the police. They would quickly learn that I was the last person to have seen Monique alive. And sure enough, three days later, in came Detective Ted Shreve to the showroom. At first glance this mild-mannered cop looked to me about as threatening as beige. I led him to the carpet section where we could talk. We sat across from each other on separate stacks of fake Persian rugs.
This weary-faced detective had pasty skin, brown hair, brown eyes, a brown suit, brown shoes, a brown notebook, and, to my way of thinking, an entirely brown manner—until we started talking. Unfortunately or fortunately for me—I could hardly tell which at this point—he was no drab, dull fellow with plodding sensibilities and the understandably grim view of the world I imagined was quite common to those in his profession. He was interested and lively. I knew I’d have to watch my step.
Flipping the cover back on his little notebook, he said: “First of all, Mrs. Slater, I want to say how great it is to meet you. My wife and I admire the Slater Gallery at the Municipal Museum very much.” He had sort of a Boston accent.
“Thank you, Detective. That’s so kind of you to say.”
“I assume you know why I’m here—heah.”
“About Countess de Passy,” I nodded.
“So I understand from the doorman on duty that day,” he said, referring to his notebook, “that you visited Countess de Passy the morning of her death?”
“Yes, that’s right,” I replied in a somber voice.
“Why?”
Show time. I was ready to give him the speech I had practiced for long hours while soaking in my tub, playing both myself and the detective. I sat up a little straighter on the pile of carpets, making a show of composing myself. I wanted to create the impression I was a thoughtful, coherent, but ultimately grief-stricken person with a deeper story to tell.
“Well, I was on my way out the door that morning when Monique rang me up. I told her I was due at work, but she pleaded with me to come over and see her right away. I really didn’t want to go. But she sounded upset.”
“What about?”
I looked down for a moment, taking a deep breath. I was nervous. I understood the impression I made on this man at this moment would count for a lot. I drew on my considerable social skills to point the conversation in the direction I wished to take it. I figured, I’ve gotten blood from stones at dinner parties, there’s no reason I can’t charm a member of the police force.
“She didn’t exactly say, but I had a feeling I knew what it was.”
“What was it?”
“Look, Detective, you must know my history with Monique. It’s not exactly a state secret that my husband died and left her all his money,” I said with a little laugh. He smiled. “Needless to say, we had this very difficult relationship for a while and both of us behaved in ways we ultimately came to regret. But we had lunch together a few days ago because she told me she wanted to buy this necklace that I own which belonged to Marie Antoinette and which she always loved. And, of course, that’s a long story because she tried to buy it at auction but a friend of mine wanted it for his wife and then his wife ultimately didn’t want it, so he sold it back to me . . . But I won’t go into that . . . The point is that we had lunch so I could give her the necklace.”
“And did you?”
“Yes. She gave me a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
He made a note.
“But at that lunch, she confided to me that she believed she was seriously ill.”
“With what?”
I sighed deeply. “She was vague, but I think it was probably cancer. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell a soul.”
“Had she been to a doctor?”
“No . . . She said she was afraid to go to the doctor’s. I told her she had to go. I even offered to take her. You know, I said to her, you just can’t afford to wait with something like this—particularly because there’s so much they can do nowadays if they catch it early . . . Anyway, that’s what I figured she wanted to see me about because she’d been so upset at lunch.”
“So you went over to her apartment?”
“Yes.”
“And was that the reason she wanted to see you?”
“Well, it was certainly part of the reason. But she definitely had something else she wanted to tell me.”
“What?”
&nb
sp; “It was sort of amazing. She begged my forgiveness. She told me she thought God was punishing her for what she had done to me and she swore she was going to make it up to me somehow. She seemed very distressed.”
“Walk me through the morning you went up to her apartment, will you?” Shreve said.
“Um, this young—I guess she’s Hispanic—maid let me in and showed me to Monique’s bedroom. Let’s see . . . Monique was at her dressing table. She hadn’t had her breakfast yet. She asked me if I wanted some coffee. I said yes. She told the maid. The second the maid left the room, Monique got up from the dressing table and put her arms around me and burst into tears. I was quite taken aback. She kept saying, ‘Forgive me, forgive me’ over and over.”
“Forgive her for what?”
“Obviously, I thought it was for what she’d done to me and to Lucius and everything. Sort of a replay of our lunch. I don’t know. Anyway, I remember I used the bathroom. And when I came out, the maid was putting the breakfast tray on the bed. I had some coffee. I asked Monique if she’d been to a doctor yet, and she said she hadn’t. I threatened to call Nate if she didn’t go soon. And then she said she had something very important she wanted to tell me . . . She seemed a little, sort of, out of it, you know?”
“Out of it, how?”
“I don’t know. Spacey, sort of. She showed me some medication she’d been taking. Then she spilled her coffee and got really upset about that, I remember. She was scrubbing out the stain with a wet towel like she was Lady Macbeth with the blood. ‘Out, out, damn coffee spot.’ ”
“What kind of medication was it? Do you remember?” Shreve asked.
“Not really. She handed me the vial and I just handed it back to her. She said it relaxed her and helped her sleep. Could have been Valium. I don’t recall.”
“So what was it she told you that was so important?”
“Oh, well . . . The most amazing things. She said that she’d been married three times before. Can you imagine? She told me that she’d lied flat out to my husband. She told him she was pregnant when, in fact, she couldn’t have any children. She had a botched abortion when she was young. She and Mr. Nathaniel started having an affair in Paris and concocted this whole scheme to get my husband’s money. Detective, I was absolutely shocked. I was.”
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