An Inconvenient Woman

by Dominick Dunne

  “If we are, I am unaware of it,” answered Pauline. “At least I have not noticed any change in attitude on the part of my friends.”

  “Does Jules want to leave you to marry her?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I feel just the opposite. I feel he doesn’t want to leave me, or want me to leave him. He wants both.”

  “Perhaps it’s that relentless social life you lead out there,” said Poppy. “Jules was never much for social life when you met him. Maybe this woman is just a respite from all those parties.”

  Pauline felt stung. “The wives of brilliant men should be socially ambitious,” she said defensively. “I have played an enormous part in Jules’s success, and Jules is aware of that too, but our success together is built around Jules, make no mistake about that. He is an extraordinary man. That is a thing I have never doubted, from the moment I first met him that night in Palm Beach at Laurance Van Degan’s dance.”

  “You sound like you love him still.”

  “I do,” she said. “Remember, I had someone to compare him to, the socially perfect and totally ineffectual Johnny Petworth.”

  “Oh, Johnny,” said Mr. McAdoo, shaking his head sadly. “I saw him at the Butterfield the last time I was in New York, in a perfect snit over a bid in a bridge game that Win Stebbins had called wrong.”

  “That’s what I mean by totally ineffectual,” said Pauline. “I knew that marriage was a mistake during the honeymoon, but if I hadn’t met Jules, I might have remarried someone just like Johnny Petworth.”

  “Then stick it out, Pauline. Whatever he’s having will pass. He’s not the first man to have an affair, you know, and it’s highly unlikely that you will be embarrassed by such a person, in the way you might have been if she was one of your own set.”

  Her father slowly raised his hand and pointed a bony finger out to Somes Sound.

  “What is it, Poppy?” asked Pauline.

  “Billy Twombley’s new sailboat,” answered her father.

  “Yes, yes, isn’t it lovely?” said Pauline. Her father, she knew, was finished with the subject of Jules Mendelson.

  Flo and Jules drove to the San Fernando Valley to a steak house on Ventura Boulevard in Universal City. Listening as she did to everything that was said, Flo already knew that people in the group that the Mendelsons and their friends moved in considered the San Fernando Valley to be as remote as a different state.

  “Do you have a reservation?” asked the maître d’.

  “I don’t,” said Jules.

  “I’m afraid there will be a wait of about twenty minutes,” said the maître d’, perusing his reservation list. “You may wait in the bar.”

  “I don’t want to wait for twenty minutes,” said Jules quietly.

  “Look, there’s a table over there in the corner,” said Flo.

  “I was about to seat a couple who have been waiting in the bar for that table,” said the maître d’, haughtily. He picked up two large menus to take to that couple when he fetched them.

  Jules reached into his pocket and took out his money, which he carried in a loose wad, unencumbered by a clip or wallet. He peeled off a bill and handed it to the maître d’.

  “Oh, no, sir. I’m afraid we don’t accept tips for seating patrons out of turn.” He looked down at the bill in his hand, and his expression changed. “Let me look to see if something has opened up in the John Wayne room.”

  “I don’t want to sit in the John Wayne room,” said Jules. “I want to sit at that table over there in that corner.”

  “Follow me,” said the maître d’.

  “How much did you tip him?” whispered Flo over her shoulder, as she followed the man to their table.

  “Fifty,” replied Jules.

  “Wow,” said Flo.

  Seated, Jules ordered a martini and Flo ordered a Diet Coke. Out in public, Jules felt strange with Flo. In her house they could talk together for hours, but in the restaurant, even though it was highly unlikely that he would encounter anyone he knew, he found it difficult to keep up the conversation. He picked up the menu, which had a leather cover and a tassel, and glanced down it. “Let’s see what they have,” he said.

  “Actually, Jules, I don’t eat steak,” said Flo.

  “Why didn’t you say that when I picked this place?”

  “I was afraid you’d change your mind.”

  He looked down at the menu again. “They have lobster tails. Frozen, I’m sure. Does that appeal to you?”

  “Oh, sure. I can’t believe we’re actually doing this, Jules.”

  She looked around her at the other tables. An expression of recognition came over her face.

  “Do you see someone you know?” asked Jules.

  “Trent Muldoon. The television actor who owns my house, that you keep telling me you’re going to buy for me but never do.”

  “Don’t say hello, for God’s sake.”

  “I don’t even know him to say hello to.”

  There was a moment of silence. “What did you do with yourself all day?” he asked finally.

  “Read. I’m a great reader, you know,” she answered.

  “I didn’t know, but I’m delighted to hear that. What sort of things do you read? Besides Cyril Rathbone, I mean.”

  “Biographies, mostly,” she said, aware of the importance of the word.

  “Biographies? Really? What sort?”

  “Marilyn Monroe, mostly,” she replied, quite unselfconsciously. “I think I’ve read everything that has ever been written on Marilyn Monroe.”

  Jules laughed.

  “Oh, sure, go ahead, laugh. Typical, Jules,” said Flo. She shook her head in dismissal of his attitude. “I happen to think that Marilyn was murdered. In fact, I know she was murdered. All the evidence points to it. She didn’t die in her house, you know, like everybody thinks. She died in the ambulance, and they took her back to the house, where she was discovered dead.”

  Jules shook his own head in turn, but for a different reason. He was madly in love with a woman whose position in life was inappropriate for his position in life. This was not the sort of conversation he would ever have had with Pauline. Pauline understood world and economic affairs well enough to converse intelligently, and she could hold his interest when she discussed the events and personalities of the social world to which she had been born. No cockeyed Marilyn Monroe theories for her. “That whole story has always been absurd,” said Jules.

  “She was an inconvenient woman, you know,” said Flo, ignoring him. She now nodded her head in a way to indicate to Jules that she wasn’t telling half of what she knew about the case. “I used to hear things.”

  “Hear things where?” he asked.

  “At the coffee shop. You’d be surprised at the things I used to hear there. And from Glyceria too. She knows things that Faye Converse told her. Faye was a friend of Marilyn’s.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “What do powerful people do with someone who’s become inconvenient?” asked Flo.

  “Tell me,” said Jules.

  “Don’t you see?”

  “No, I don’t. What’s to see?”

  “You get rid of the person, and they got rid of Marilyn.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Jules impatiently. “You people with all those wacky theories.”

  “And you people who are always saying there are no conspiracies.” There was a tone of harshness in her voice.

  For a moment they stared at each other. “Is this a fight we’re having?” asked Jules.

  Flo smiled. “I’ll back off,” she said. “I don’t want to blow my big night out on the town.”

  Pauline walked through a cluttered side hallway, past croquet mallets, tennis rackets, boots, and umbrellas, and entered a sitting room that had little to do with fashion but a great deal to do with taste. From the lower shelf of a table behind a sofa loosely covered in extremely worn chintz, she pulled out some photograph albums.

  “Here they are,” she s
aid, returning to the veranda. “I knew I’d seen them somewhere.”

  Her father smiled at her. He took out his round gold-rimmed spectacles and put them on. She pulled up a chair next to his wheelchair and set the albums on a table in front of them. Slowly he started to turn the pages, and in a few minutes they were laughing together as they were reminded of other times. When they came to the latest album, the pictures of his birthday party the year before, he said, “What’s happened to Justine Altemus?”

  “You haven’t heard? She married Herkie Saybrook.”

  Neville McAdoo nodded approvingly. It was the kind of match he believed in. “That must have pleased her mother,” said Poppy.

  “As much as Lil is ever pleased about anything, I suppose,” said Pauline.

  “Good croquet player, Herkie Saybrook. His grandfather and I were at Groton together.” He turned a few more pages and made a few more comments about people. “You haven’t told me everything that’s bothering you, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Well?”

  “I don’t know why I feel this, but I think he is being blackmailed by a gangster,” said Pauline.

  “Because he has a mistress?” asked Poppy. “Hardly likely these days, Pauline.”

  “That’s not why, Poppy. Once he told me, when we were first married, that there had been trouble in his life years ago. He asked me not to ask him about it. I only said at the time, ‘Were there consequences?’ or something like that. He said, and I remember it distinctly, ‘One of the advantages of having rich parents is that they keep you out of jams.’ Then, not wanting to embarrass him about it, I told him the story of Aunt Maud’s husband being found dead in a seedy West Side hotel in women’s clothing.”

  “You didn’t tell him that?”

  “I did.”

  “We all promised never to refer to it.”

  “I know. But Jules never gossips, and he would never do anything to embarrass me, ever, that much I know.”

  “Except have a mistress.”

  Pauline looked away. “We never referred to what happened to Jules again; but, whatever it is, I think the gangster, Mr. Zwillman he’s called—Arnie Zwillman—I think he knows whatever it is that’s in Jules’s past. I used to think that perhaps he had gotten a girl pregnant when he was young, but now I think it is something more serious. Jules looked old to me for the first time, almost defeated, the other night after he saw Mr. Zwillman. Whatever it is, I think if it came to light, Jules’s appointment to Brussels might be in jeopardy, and that appointment means everything to Jules.”

  Neville McAdoo closed the photograph album and removed his gold-rimmed spectacles before he spoke again. “All the more reason for you to stay with Jules, Pauline.”

  Jules took out his parking check and handed it to the parking boy.

  “What kind of car, sir?” asked the boy.

  “Bentley, dark blue,” replied Jules.

  Flo, who was always curious about other people, turned to look at a couple who were waiting for their car. “That’s Trent Muldoon again,” she said excitedly, tapping Jules on the arm to turn and look at the television star. “I think I’ll go over and introduce myself while you’re getting the car. I read in some column he’s going to make a picture in Yugoslavia.”

  “No, no, don’t,” said Jules.

  “Jules! Hello! Howareyou?”

  Flo, without turning, immediately recognized the voice as the voice of a society woman. She wondered how they all learned to talk like that, with that slightly strident sound that announced their class and privilege. Later, alone, she would say to herself over and over again, “Jules! Hello! Howareyou?” until she had the voice imitated perfectly.

  “Madge,” she heard Jules say. She did not turn around, but she knew they were kissing on first one cheek and then the other, in the manner of society people. She would have liked to see Jules participate in that ritual, but she knew not to turn. “Whatever are you doing all the way out here?” she heard the woman called Madge ask.

  “A little business dinner with Sims Lord,” she heard Jules answer. “And you? What are you doing out here?”

  “We’re on our way to the ranch for the weekend,” answered Madge. “Ralph adores the food here, don’t ask me why, all that awful red meat, so bad for you, every doctor says so. Where is Sims? I’d love to say hello. I haven’t seen him for ages.”

  “I think he stopped in the men’s room,” said Jules.

  “So did Ralph,” said Madge. “How’s Pauline’s father?”

  “Oh, fine,” answered Jules. “A little stroke can’t keep Neville McAdoo down.”

  “When is Pauline coming back?” asked Madge.

  Jules’s Bentley pulled up in front of the restaurant, and the parking boy hopped out. “Your car, sir,” he called out to Jules. He went around to the passenger side and opened that door for Flo to get in.

  Flo turned around and stood awkwardly in place, not sure what to do, and Madge White, whose daughter had become pregnant by Jules’s stepson, Kippie Petworth, when they were both fourteen years old, sensed immediately that the pretty girl with red hair wearing a Chanel suit was there with Jules.

  Jules, used to difficult moments in business, appeared unperturbed, as if he were in control during a complex moment in a negotiation. “Oh, may I introduce, uh, Miss, uh?—help me,” he said to Flo, as if he hardly knew her himself. “I’m terrible with names.”

  “March,” whispered Flo, embarrassed by Jules’s attitude.

  “Yes, yes, of course, Miss March, forgive me. I’m so terrible with names. This is Mrs. White. Miss March works with Sims.”

  “Hellohowareyou?” said Madge White, staring at the young woman.

  Flo, confused, nodded but did not speak. Flo could see by the haughty look on Madge White’s face that she understood the situation, and she shrank from the look.

  A car horn honked at the delay caused by the Bentley’s blocking the departure area. There were cars with impatient occupants backed up behind, waiting to be parked.

  “Your car, sir,” called out the parking boy again, but neither Jules nor Flo moved toward it.

  A taxi pulled up next to the Bentley. As an arriving couple got out of the cab, Flo called out, “I’ll take that cab,” and ran toward it.

  Jules, upset, called out after Flo, “I’ll be happy to drop you off, Miss March.” He wondered if Madge White noticed the concern in his voice.

  Flo, in the cab, looked back at Jules. There were tears in her eyes. “No, no, I’m sure you and Mr. Lord have important things to talk over, Mr. Mendelson,” she said. She turned to the driver. “Beat it. That Bentley is going to follow me, and I don’t want to be followed.”

  “Where to, lady?” asked the driver. He was aware that the young lady was highly agitated, but he did not want to become involved in her drama.

  “Please. Please. Move quickly,” she pleaded. She gave her address on Azelia Way in Beverly Hills.

  “Do you want to take Laurel Canyon or Coldwater Canyon?” asked the driver. He spoke with a heavy Middle Eastern accent.

  Flo looked out the rear window of the cab and saw that Jules was shaking hands with Madge White and getting into his car. She knew immediately that he would go to Azelia Way to find her, and she did not want to be found by him. “No, listen, driver, I changed my mind. Take me to the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Strip,” she said. “Take Laurel Canyon. You can go quicker on Laurel.”

  The Chateau Marmont was where Philip Quennell lived.

  Flo’s Tape #15

  “On the afternoon of the day that Pauline left for Northeast Harbor to visit her father, Jules was, as always, in my house at the regular time, about a quarter to four. He didn’t tell me she had gone away, by the way. I only knew that when I read it in Cyril Rathbone’s column. Anyway, we’d done it a couple of times, and he was lying on my bed talking on the telephone, just like he always did, conducting a little business before we did it again. For a guy his age, he could go more times t
han most guys half his age.

  “But that day he needed his little agenda book that he always carried with him, that told him where he had to be at what time, and listed the sixty or seventy telephone numbers that immediately affected his personal and business life. By the way, he had me in there under Red, as in red hair, in case Pauline or Miss Maple or someone was looking through it, I suppose. Anyway, that day he was talking to someone important, I forget who now, maybe Myles Crocker from the State Department, and he signaled to me without stopping his conversation to get him his agenda out of his suit jacket.

  “Well, I got the little book out and, naturally, being curious, I started flicking through it to see what fancy dinner parties he was going to that week. And that was when I saw that he had several appointments with Dr. Petrie. Dr. Petrie, in case you never heard of him, was one of the eminent heart specialists of Los Angeles. I happened to know that because Jules had attended a testimonial in his honor. Kind of a cold chill went through me. I wondered if he was okay, healthwise.

  “Later, I said to him, ‘You okay, Jules?’ He said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, ‘Your ticker?’ He said again, ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, ‘I saw in your agenda you had some appointments with Dr. Petrie.’ When Jules got mad, his face got red and he became very silent. That’s what happened then. He got mad. He said it was because I shouldn’t have pried into his book, that it was bad manners.

  “You see, I always thought the merry-go-round was never going to stop, but I should have begun to see the signs that day.”

  16

  On the afternoon of the evening that Jules and Flo dined together at a restaurant in the San Fernando Valley, another encounter took place on a street in Beverly Hills that also caused a disruption in a relationship. Camilla Ebury, the rich and pretty young widow who was having an affair with Philip Quennell, had begun to experience feelings for him that she had never felt for her late husband, and thoughts of marriage were beginning to form, although she knew almost nothing of her lover’s life before she met him at the Mendelsons’ party. She only knew that he was not a fortune hunter. On his part, Philip was enjoying an extremely pleasant relationship, but, for reasons of his own, he did not think of it in terms of permanence. He was merely a transient figure in the city where Camilla was entrenched. It was his intention, as it had always been, to return to his home in New York when he finished the screenplay for the documentary he was writing for Casper Stieglitz. By that time, he felt sure that the furor that had been caused by the book he had written about Reza Bulbenkian would have died down.