An Inconvenient Woman

by Dominick Dunne

  “It’s better this way,” Jules had said.

  “Why?” asked Pauline.

  “It is a shabby and distasteful death,” said Jules.

  “How so? Tell me.”

  Jules blushed. “His sexual inclinations were, perhaps, pederastic,” he said.

  “How arch, Jules,” said Pauline.

  “You knew, then?”

  “Of course I knew.”

  “And didn’t care?”

  “Oh, Jules, really. He was my friend.”

  “This sort of death, if the circumstances get out, will reflect badly on Hector, on his family, and on everyone concerned.”

  “His only family is Camilla, and she is only a niece, and his death is certainly not going to reflect badly on her.”

  “Well, his family that founded the city. It will reflect badly on the name Paradiso.”

  “And the ‘everyone concerned’ you speak about? Does that mean us, Jules?”

  “The fact that he was here in our house until a few hours before it happened, and the fact that you are known to be his great friend will certainly involve us, yes. It is the sort of publicity that will be bad at this moment, with the appointment to the economic conference in Brussels coming up for nomination. There is bound to be fallout, and it is best that this be the solution.”

  “That he committed suicide?”

  “Yes.”

  “But who would believe such a story, Jules? People are not such fools.”

  “That is a theory that I do not agree with at all.”

  “But I don’t believe that story, Jules,” said Pauline quietly.

  “Believe it,” he said.

  “Are you ordering me to believe something I don’t believe?”

  “Yes.” There was a harshness in his voice that she had never heard when he spoke to her. “Hector was ill, we will say, and Dr. James will confirm it. He was to have an operation, we will say. A bypass. I thought about saying he had AIDS, but this heart thing is better. More respectable. He was terrified of the operation, we will say, and terrified that he would be an invalid afterwards, and a burden to his friends. He had perhaps a few too many drinks, and he did this tragic thing.”

  “Jules, please. Dr. James was Hector’s friend. He wasn’t actually his doctor. Mickie Cox was his doctor.”

  “Only you know that, Pauline, and you’ve just forgotten it,” said Jules. He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

  “But, surely, Dr. James will deny such a story, about an operation and a heart problem.”

  “No, he won’t,” said Jules, quite emphatically, and Pauline understood that he meant that Dr. James would do as he said.

  The suicide story began to be spread at the church, both before and after the Mass. “No, no, no,” said Sims Lord, when he was asked if Hector’s death had been a murder. “No, no, no,” said Freddie Galavant to the same question. Both Sandy Pond and Ralph White replied in a similar manner, as did several other public figures of the city. Then the word suicide was mouthed. It was a disappointment to many that they were being deprived of the excitement of a murder, which some continued to believe was the case, although they would shortly cease to express that belief.

  Philip Quennell, sitting toward the back of the church, was surprised to see the girl who had introduced herself as Flo M. at the AA meeting walk up the aisle and take a seat two rows in front of him. Her expensive bag was suspended from her shoulder on a gold chain, and she lifted it as she genuflected in the Catholic manner. Once seated, she knelt, made the sign of the cross, and bowed her head in prayer. Unlike most of the people present, she did not look around to see who was there, but a man with long hair swept upward to cover his bald spot, sitting directly in front of Philip, nudged his two companions and indicated the young woman. They smiled at one another in recognition. The men, unknown to Philip and to most of the mourners present, were Manning Einsdorf, the owner of Miss Garbo’s, Joel Zircon, the agent, and Willard, Casper Stieglitz’s butler, all of whom had talked with Hector shortly before his death.

  During the Mass Pauline turned to Jules, who seemed deep in thought.

  “What are you thinking about?” she whispered.

  “I have a meeting with Myles Crocker from the State Department tomorrow,” he whispered back. “About Brussels.”

  “You’re thinking of that now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you never pray?”

  “No.”

  During the eulogy, the former ambassador spoke about Hector as a great friend to many people. “He cherished his friends,” said Freddie Galavant, looking at Pauline and Camilla and Rose as he spoke. “He was a man of such great taste and sensitivity that he chose to spare those friends from certain aspects of his life, which can only account for this great tragedy. Good night, sweet prince. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

  Several sobs could be heard in the church, as well as a single chortle from Cyril Rathbone, who whispered to those around him that he would have done better. Ahead of him, Philip noticed that Flo M. was crying. He saw her open her bag to get a handkerchief and realized from her searching in the bag that she had forgotten to bring one. When she wiped her tears away with her fingers, Philip took his own handkerchief from his pocket. He leaned forward through Manning Einsdorf and Joel Zircon, tapped Flo’s arm, and handed it to her. Flo nodded her head in thanks, but she did not turn to look at the person who gave her the handkerchief. She knew it was Phil Q. She had seen him out of the corner of her eye when she passed his pew looking for a seat.

  During communion, the Catholics went to the altar, edging their way past the coffin to the rail where the monsignor, officiating at the Requiem Mass in the place of Archbishop Cooning, waited with lifted chalice. Among the communicants was Flo March.

  Outside, after the Mass, on the steps of the church, Rose Cliveden raised her dark glasses and surveyed the crowd while the casket was being placed into the hearse by the pallbearers. “I was in floods the whole Mass,” she said to Pauline, who was standing next to her. Her powdered cheeks were smeared with the tears she had shed during the eulogy, and she made no attempt to wipe them away. “Such a lot of strange people at this funeral,” she continued, but Pauline was not in a chatting mood as she watched the proceedings. The unwelcome wreaths that Rose had so hated were being placed in a follow-up hearse, to be placed eventually on the gravesite at Holy Cross Cemetery, where the Paradiso family had a mausoleum.

  Rose was undeterred by Pauline’s lack of response. “I thought I knew all of Hector’s friends. Who do you suppose these people are? Look at that amazing man with his gray hair swept up over his bald spot.” She was staring at Manning Einsdorf, who was standing with Joel Zircon and his friend Willard, watching the people emerge from the church. “Did you ever see so much hair spray? He looks like Ann Miller. I can tell you for a fact that our Hector would never know anyone like him, or his friends there. I think these people are just sightseers looking for celebrities, don’t you? Faye Converse, that’s who they’re looking for.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jules talking with an unfamiliar young woman in the crowd.

  The young woman spoke nervously when Jules Mendelson approached her. “Do you know what they call this church? Our Lady of the Cadillacs. The only poor people in this parish are the rich people’s maids.”

  “What in the world are you doing here?” Jules asked. “I almost fell out of the pew when I saw you at the communion railing.” He talked to her without looking at her, as if he were looking for someone else.

  “I knew Mr. Paradiso,” the young woman answered, defensively. “What do you think, I go to funerals of people I don’t know?”

  “Hector? You knew Hector?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wherever from?”

  “When I was a waitress at the Viceroy Coffee Shop, I used to serve him his coffee and croissant every morning,” Flo said. “He was a cheap tipper, all the girls said so, but he told me good stories. I coul
d tell you a couple of Hector Paradiso stories that would make your hair curl, about the kind of people he used to see after he left all the society parties. I don’t buy this suicide story at all. I’ll tell you what I think happened.”

  “I don’t want to hear,” Jules said brusquely, as if he were afraid she might start to tell him then and there. He signaled his chauffeur with a wave and indicated for him to bring the car around to the side street rather than wait behind the other limousines on Santa Monica Boulevard.

  “Well, excuse me,” she said, grandly.

  “I have to go. There’s my car.”

  “You’re ashamed to be seen talking to me, aren’t you, Jules?”

  “No,” he said quickly.

  “Yes, I can see it. I can feel it.”

  “I’ll be up later,” said Jules quickly, and then he moved on.

  Looking away, her eyes met the eyes of Philip Quennell, who was watching her. She nodded to him faintly and mouthed the words “Thanks for the handkerchief.” He nodded back and smiled, but she did not go toward him, nor did he move toward her to speak.

  “Look, Pauline, Jules is waving at you to go to the Bedford Drive side of the church,” said Rose. “Are you going to the cemetery?”

  “No, we’re not,” said Pauline.

  “But you’re coming to my lunch at the Club, aren’t you?”

  “Actually, we’re not, Rose. You do understand, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course, darling, but you’re very foolish to feel like that about the Los Angeles Country Club.”

  “Call me later.”

  “Isn’t it wonderful, Pauline, the way the Catholic church has relaxed its ban on burying suicides?”

  Flo’s Tape #6

  “I never knew how terrible it was to be poor until I had money. All that I ever wanted to do about my childhood was forget it, never to even think about it. It was terrible. My mother burned to death in a fire in a welfare hotel. I never knew who my father was. She used to say he walked out on us when I was one year old, but the older I got I came to believe that she didn’t actually know which one he was. It was like that.”

  7

  When, twenty-two years earlier, it was suggested a week before their marriage, during a meeting at the law firm that represented Jules Mendelson’s interests, that Pauline McAdoo sign a prenuptial agreement that would limit the amount of her settlement in the case of a divorce, Pauline read through the agreement without comment. When Marcus Stromm, Jules Mendelson’s lawyer of many years, handed her a pen from a penholder on his desk to sign the prenuptial agreement, Pauline tossed the folder back at him with such force that the pen fell out of Marcus’s hand and spattered black ink over the monogram on his custom-made white shirt. Then Pauline rose without looking at Jules, who had been seated at her side silently observing the scene, and left the office. No amount of protestations on Jules’s part at the bank of elevators could dissuade Pauline from entering the first car that arrived, without answering him or looking in his direction as the doors closed behind her. For Pauline, from a distinguished New York and Northeast Harbor family, the affront of being asked to sign such an agreement, as if she were a groupie marrying a rock star, only confirmed the deep reservations that her sisters had expressed from the beginning when she had told them she was considering marrying Jules Mendelson as soon as her divorce from Johnny Petworth was final. Her marriage to Johnny Petworth, which read well in the social columns, had been a disappointment almost from the beginning, and she could not envision a life with a man who had no more ambition than to be the very best in squash, backgammon, and bridge at the smartest clubs in the smartest resorts.

  “No, no, Pauline,” her sisters had said to her, both separately and together, “I don’t care how much money Mr. Mendelson has. He won’t do. He won’t do at all.”

  Her father, whom she revered, and who doted on her in return, said only this as a point of dissuasion to his daughter’s proposed marriage: “Jules is very nice, Pauline, and certainly very rich, but he’s not eligible for any of the clubs.” She knew what that meant. It was a phrase she had heard all her life to distinguish people like themselves, the McAdoos, from the others. For their kind of life, clubs were very important. An early McAdoo had founded a dynasty that produced fortunes in shipping, trade, iron, railroads, land, and textiles, but those fortunes had evaporated over the century, and the present McAdoo fortune was minimal by the current financial standards, although there was no lessening of McAdoo social standards.

  “That would not bother me, Poppy,” said Pauline.

  “It will, in time,” her father had answered.

  Such familial disapproval had only increased her determination to go ahead with the marriage to Jules. What she felt most was that he would be an ideal stepfather to Kippie, who was then only three years old, and, as described by everyone, adorable, but badly in need of male supervision.

  That night, following the incident with Marcus Stromm, Pauline left Los Angeles for New York. In her life there was still another man, whom she loved more than she loved Jules Mendelson, although his prospects were less, and it was to his side that she flew. Jules, fascinated by her independence and intimidated by her pedigree, followed, and placed on her finger a diamond ring larger by far than the diamond he would have placed on her finger a week earlier.

  “My word,” said Pauline, astonished by its size, wondering if it was perhaps too big, like the one owned by the actress Faye Converse. She knew that her sisters would scoff at it, but she also knew that they would say, finally, “Oh, Pauline, you’re so tall you can get away with it.”

  “It’s the de Lamballe,” Jules said, as proud as he was the day before, when he had purchased van Gogh’s White Roses, which was to be his wedding present to her.

  “My word,” said Pauline again, for she had heard of the de Lamballe diamond. He sketched its provenance: a French princess, a daughter of a German munitions maker, an American heiress, twenty years of oblivion before it resurfaced at an auction in Geneva. “It’s too lovely,” she said.

  The following week Pauline and Jules were married in Paris, with only Sims Lord, who had replaced Marcus Stromm as Jules’s lawyer, present. Although Jules could never stand to be away from the business of finance for more than a few days at a time, they went for their honeymoon to the Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech. One evening, sitting on the balcony of their suite at sunset, he said to her, “There’s something I must tell you.”

  “What is that?”

  “I got into a jam once when I was young. Please don’t ask me about it. It happened. I can’t undo it.”

  “Then why did you bring it up if you won’t tell me?” asked Pauline.

  “Please bear with me, Pauline.”

  “Do you have a police record?”

  “No. One of the advantages of having rich parents,” said Jules.

  He looked so pained at that moment that Pauline did not pursue the subject. She felt that he would tell her in time.

  “Oh, yes, I know all about that,” she said, to cheer him up. “I had an uncle Harry. Harry Curtis. My mother’s sister’s husband. He was found dead in a seedy hotel on the West Side, and not a single one of the New York papers reported that he was in women’s clothing. Poppy handled the whole thing.”

  “Harry Curtis? In women’s clothes? I’ve heard a lot of things about Harry Curtis, but I never heard that,” said Jules.

  “Poor Aunt Maud. She’s never been the same.”

  “Well, I wasn’t in women’s clothes,” said Jules. “You can be sure of that.”

  Pauline laughed. The subject, whatever the subject was, was never mentioned again.

  Jules would have lived anywhere Pauline wished. It was her idea to settle in Los Angeles and buy the old von Stern mansion on the top of a mountain and rebuild it into the famous estate that would become known as Clouds. The asking price was five million dollars, a sum considered outrageous and exorbitant at the time, but Jules Mendelson never quibbled over money whe
n he wanted something, and he knew that his new wife wanted that particular property. He and Pauline arrived at the house for a final look, and then he handed a check for the full amount to the dumbfounded Helmut von Stern.

  “I have been thinking, Mr. Mendelson,” said von Stern, staring greedily at the check in his hand.

  “Thinking what, Mr. von Stern?” asked Jules.

  “Second thoughts.”

  “On selling your house, you mean?”

  “On the price, actually. More like five point five million, I was thinking.”

  “I see,” said Jules. He reached out, removed the check from von Stern’s hand, and tore it in half. “Are you ready, darling?” he said to Pauline. “Good-bye, Mr. von Stern.”

  Jules took Pauline’s arm, and they headed for the front door and the dilapidated courtyard.

  Von Stern, aghast, saw the mistake he had made. The house had been on the market for three years and was in a deplorable state of repair. As the Mendelsons got into their car, von Stern called after them. “Come back, we must talk.” There was an element of panic in his voice as he envisioned five million dollars driving out of his courtyard.

  Jules, with Pauline behind him, followed von Stern back into the front hall of the house. “I have had second thoughts myself,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “The price. My top price is now four point five. Take it or leave it,” said Jules.

  Pauline, fascinated, watched her new husband in a business transaction. That afternoon the Mendelsons purchased von Stern’s estate and renamed it Clouds.

  The clubs, which mattered so much to people like them in Southampton and Palm Beach and Northeast Harbor and Newport, did not matter so much in Los Angeles, and the problem of Jules’s ineligibility to join them was less pressing. Both Rose Cliveden and Sims Lord had made an effort on Jules’s behalf, but Freddie Galavant, who later became a friend, said to the admissions committee, “Look at it this way. If he weren’t so rich, would you still want him to be a member?” No one answered, and the matter was never brought up again.