An Inconvenient Woman

by Dominick Dunne

  Pauline waited until the ambulance had departed before she came downstairs to meet with Captain Nelson and Officer Whitbeck of the Beverly Hills Police Department.

  In the library where they were waiting, the two policemen wandered around the magnificent room, silently looking at objects on tables and the pictures on the walls. Officer Whitbeck occasionally cleared his throat to get the attention of Captain Nelson, and then pointed to a treasure he thought the captain might have missed in his perusal of the room.

  “Do you think it’s okay to sit?” asked Officer Whitbeck, eyeing the green leather English chair that had been Jules Mendelson’s favorite, wanting to lounge in it.

  Captain Nelson shook his head. “We better stand,” he said.

  The library door opened and Pauline entered the room. Wafts of expensive perfume preceded and trailed her. “I hope you’ve been offered a drink, or something, Captain,” she said, going toward him and shaking his hand. “I’m Pauline Mendelson.”

  They had heard and read about the beautiful and very rich widow.

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Mendelson,” said Captain Nelson. “This is Officer Whitbeck.”

  Pauline smiled at Officer Whitbeck. “Please, for heaven’s sake. Don’t stand. Take a seat. Sit there, Officer Whitbeck. That was my husband’s favorite chair. You must forgive me for keeping you waiting. I stayed upstairs until the ambulance attendants had removed Mr. Rathbone’s body. It brought back such sad memories. My husband recently died.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” said Captain Nelson, unable to take his eyes off her.

  The sheer social power of her overwhelmed the room. Although neither policeman knew anything about fashion or style, each was aware that Pauline Mendelson was wonderfully dressed, in printed silk and quiet gold jewelry, as if she were on her way to a tea. She sat perfectly and with a gesture turned the meeting over to them, as if she were in their power; but they knew, as she did, that they were in hers.

  “I’m so sorry, ma’am,” said Officer Whitbeck. “But we have to ask you a few questions.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “About your guest, Mr. Rathbone,” continued Officer Whitbeck.

  “But I barely knew Mr. Rathbone, Officer Whitbeck. He wasn’t a guest, in the sense that he had been invited here by me. It was such a strange thing. He is a writer of some sort for Mulholland magazine. He had taken a great interest in a yellow phalaenopsis that my head gardener and I have developed, and asked that he be allowed to visit my greenhouse.”

  “A yellow what?” asked Officer Whitbeck, who was taking notes. “Can you spell that?”

  “It’s a breed of orchid,” said Pauline. “Usually white, but Jarvis, my gardener, and I were able to develop a yellow variety, which I’m proud to say has caused quite a stir in horticultural circles. My garden is my passion. The Los Angeles Garden Club has been here to see it, and it’s been photographed for several of the gardening magazines. Mr. Rathbone wanted to see my phalaenopsis, for something he was writing, I suppose. I was cutting roses in my garden when he arrived. There they are there.” She pointed to the basket of red and pink roses that she had left on the library table. “I must put them in water before they die. Do you mind? It’s terrible for them to just lie there in this heat. We can talk at the same time.”

  “No, no. Go right ahead, Mrs. Mendelson,” said Captain Nelson.

  “The next thing I knew he had started to cough and choke, and I asked Dudley, my butler, to send the men down to see if he was all right,” called out Pauline from the lavatory, as she ran water for the flowers.

  “Do you know his age, Mrs. Mendelson?”

  “You’ll have to call his magazine. I really didn’t know him. Was it a heart attack?” she asked, as she came back into the room with the roses in a vase. “I’ll arrange these later.”

  “He was stung in his mouth by a wasp,” said Captain Nelson.

  “Good heavens,” she said.

  When they were gone, she picked up the telephone and dialed. “This is Mrs. Jules Mendelson. I would like to speak to Mr. Pond.… I see.… Well, ask him anyway. I’m sure if you buzz in, he’ll take my call.… Sandy, darling, it’s Pauline,” she said when the publisher came on the telephone. “Such a strange thing has happened. I need your help. This awful man who keeps writing these terrible things about Jules and that woman. What?… Yes, yes. That’s his name.… Rathbone … I’ll tell you what-about-him. He just died in my house.”

  Much was made in the press of the bizarre death of Cyril Rathbone, the controversial columnist for Mulholland magazine, who had “choked to death after having been stung on the tongue by a wasp in the sculpture garden of the mountain-top estate of Mrs. Jules Mendelson.” The only other mention of Pauline Mendelson’s name in the account in the Los Angeles Tribunal, however, was to say that she had not been home at the time. Exactly what Cyril Rathbone was doing sitting alone in Pauline Mendelson’s sculpture garden, where his body was discovered by the butler, was a mystery that caused much speculation, as it was a known fact in social circles that the lady of the house despised him and had never invited him to her home.

  No one contributed more to the speculation than Hortense Madden, the literary critic of Mulholland, who had also, for quite different reasons, despised Cyril. She reveled in each grotesque detail of his demise, as reported to her by the ambulance attendant, Faustino, whom she managed to track down, as well as by the undertaker, who had both embalmed Cyril and laid him out in the closed coffin. Their descriptions of the size and the color of Cyril’s tongue fascinated her, and she made them repeat certain particulars, which she wrote in a notebook, like a reporter at the scene of a crime. She even begged to have the coffin opened for a final look at Cyril, but the undertaker refused her request, on professional grounds, as she was not a member of his family.

  “My dear, the tongue was swollen to four times its size, ready to burst, apparently. Bright red, turning black,” Hortense breathlessly reported to Lucia Borsodi. “Imagine what he must have been saying to Pauline at the time to have God pick that moment and that manner to take him.”

  God was not someone who regularly appeared in Hortense’s conversation or thoughts, and Lucia, for propriety’s sake, drew a halt to the conversation. “But Pauline Mendelson wasn’t even there, Hortense,” she said. “He went there to see her yellow phalaenopsis.”

  “I don’t believe that story for a single moment,” said Hortense with a dismissive gesture. “You mark my words, Pauline hotfooted it out of there as fast as she could, as soon as Cyril choked out his last breath.”

  “Well, I must write a eulogy,” said Lucia. “I haven’t a clue what to say.”

  “Say that in whatever corner of hell Cyril is residing, he is most certainly bragging to the other devils that he managed to die in Pauline, Mrs. Mendelson’s, sculpture garden,” said Hortense.

  On the advice of Sandy Pond, Pauline left Clouds as soon as she had finished speaking with him. “Reporters will be calling. It’s just as well not to be there,” he said. “You’ve had enough publicity since Jules’s death.”

  Fortunately, Jules’s Bentley was parked in the courtyard, with the keys in the ignition, and she hopped into it and drove down the mountain to Camilla Ebury’s house, without a word to Jim, her chauffeur, who was in the kitchen with Gertie, the cook, getting the grocery order, which had to be picked up at Jurgensen’s Market.

  When Camilla looked up from her serve and saw her unexpected guest coming toward the court, she halted her second serve and waved to Pauline. Camilla said something to Philip, and he turned to look at Pauline. Both knew that Pauline was not the sort of person to drop in on people, even on a friend as close as Camilla Ebury was, and Camilla suspected that there was something wrong.

  “Keep playing, keep playing,” said Pauline. “I don’t want to interrupt your game.”

  “Is everything all right?” asked Camilla.

  “Of course. I was just passing, and I thought I hadn’t seen you for a
bit and that I’d stop in for a glass of iced tea. But I don’t want to stop your game. Hello, Philip.”

  “Hello, Pauline,” he replied, in a polite but guarded fashion, remembering the unpleasant conclusion to their previous encounter.

  Pauline smiled at Philip in a friendly way. “I’ve never seen you in shorts, Philip. What marvelous legs you have. No wonder Camilla is so mad about you.”

  “Pauline!” said Camilla, blushing and laughing.

  Philip was surprised by Pauline, as her friendliness belied their last leave-taking, when it had seemed that they would never see each other again.

  “I’ll ring for some iced tea,” said Camilla.

  “No, no. Finish your set,” said Pauline. “I’ll watch.”

  Camilla could never picture Pauline spending a leisurely sort of afternoon, or even a leisurely hour, lying back on a chaise watching a tennis game. She was always so frenetically busy, in her garden, or with her correspondence, or her charities, or her guest lists, or her seating charts, or her flower arranging. But she sat back on Camilla’s chaise in a totally relaxed fashion and watched the completion of the set with total concentration, even occasionally making the appropriate remark on a good serve, or lob, or backhand.

  When the set was completed, they returned to the house and talked for over an hour on matters of no consequence, in the sort of conversation that Pauline was usually contemptuous of as a waste of valuable time.

  “Am I in the way?” asked Philip, thinking there was a point to the visit that his presence was delaying. “Would you two ladies like to talk alone?”

  “No, no,” cried Pauline. “Tell me, what is it you’re writing now? I hope you’re not still involved with Casper Stieglitz. Will you ever forget that night? Wasn’t it a nightmare?”

  “Philip’s moving back to New York,” said Camilla.

  “When?”

  “Next week.”

  “Next week? Philip, why?”

  “I’ve finished here. I came for a few months, and I’ve stayed almost a year. It’s time.”

  Pauline looked at Camilla, who appeared downcast at Philip’s decision.

  “And here I am interrupting one of your last days together,” said Pauline, getting up to leave.

  As they stood in the driveway and watched the Bentley pull out onto Copa de Oro Road, Camilla remarked to Philip, whose arm was around her waist, that she hadn’t seen Pauline in such good humor since before Jules’s death.

  When Philip read in the Tribunal the next morning that Mrs. Mendelson had not been at home at the time of Cyril Rathbone’s death, he understood.

  “There goes my Thursday-afternoon income,” said Lonny Edge, tossing the Tribunal aside.

  Flo March was too young even to think of reading the obituary pages of the newspaper, unless the death announced was of sufficient news value to rate headlines, like Rock Hudson’s, or Lucille Ball’s, and she did not know that Cyril Rathbone had died until her new housemate happened to mention it, over their morning coffee.

  “Cyril Rathbone is dead?” asked Flo, shocked. “How?”

  “Got stung on his tongue by a wasp.”

  Flo thought for a moment. “Not inappropriate,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “The guy had a tongue like a viper. Where did this happen?”

  “At Pauline Mendelson’s house.”

  “At Pauline Mendelson’s? You have to be kidding!”

  “That’s what the paper says,” said Lonny.

  “Let me see that,” said Flo. She took the paper and read the account. “I wonder what he was doing at Pauline’s.”

  Lonny shook his head.

  “He hated Pauline. And Pauline didn’t like him. Jules used to tell me that. I bet I know what he was doing up there at Clouds,” said Flo.

  “He was a regular of mine. Every Thursday afternoon at four. Rain or shine. Always brought doughnuts.”

  “You get fat eating doughnuts, Lonny. You were beginning to get a gut,” said Flo.

  “Hey, I didn’t think you ever noticed me, Flo.”

  “Don’t get any ideas.”

  Lonny laughed. “He was kind of a snazzy dresser. He always wore seersucker suits and a pink tie. Not my kind of taste. Kinda English. I’ll miss the guy.”

  “I won’t.”

  “No?”

  “He wanted me to jump out a fifteenth-story window.”

  Lonny stared at her. “You got any more cigarettes? I’m out.”

  Jo Jo had reported back to Arnie Zwillman that he had not been able to locate Cyril Rathbone, either at his office at Mulholland magazine or at his condominium in the Wilshire district.

  “Not like you to let me down, Jo Jo,” said Arnie, from the telephone in his steam room.

  When Arnie read about Cyril’s death in the Tribunal the next morning, he understood and called Jo Jo immediately. “This means that the dame is the only one who has the tapes, so they’re either in her safety deposit box or her house.”

  “That’s what I was thinkin’,” said Jo Jo.

  “I wonder what the fruitcake was doing up at Pauline’s house,” said Arnie.

  The funeral service, which was held in the tiny chapel of a mortuary near the Paramount Studio, was sparsely attended, as might be expected for the funeral service of a man who was unloved. According to Hortense Madden’s count, there were only fifty seats in the chapel, and not all of those were occupied. Most of those present were employees of the magazine, whom Lucia Borsodi had given orders to attend, even including the man who ran the photocopying machine. In the back, by a spray of pink gladiolus that would have offended Cyril’s eye, sat Lonny Edge, the pornography star. Hortense Madden, who had a fertile imagination, was quick to figure out the connection.

  Neither of the two ladies in whose lives Cyril had become intertwined at a literary level in the months before his death, Pauline Mendelson and Flo March, was present, although Pauline, to avoid criticism, as Cyril had died in her garden, sent flowers. The flowers she sent were not from her own garden or greenhouse, which was her usual habit, or from the fashionable florist Petra von Kant. Instead she dispatched her maid, Blondell, to send them, and Blondell, with no instructions from the mountaintop as to choice, chose the pink gladiolus, which Lucia Borsodi relegated to the back of the chapel.

  “You were my husband’s friend, Sims,” said Pauline.

  “Yes.”

  “You knew him better than anyone.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “There are tapes that Miss March has recorded. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Forty hours, so far. Apparently, there are revelations on those tapes, if I am to believe what that frightful Cyril Rathbone told me, that could prove embarrassing. Business revelations. Personal revelations.”

  “Did you believe him? Half of what he writes is bullshit. Everyone says so.”

  “I did believe him, yes.”

  “Did he say more?”

  “That was when the wasp flew into his mouth and stung his tongue.”

  There was a brief silence. Sims asked, “Are you crying?”

  “A bit. Yes. Something has to be done, Sims. These tapes, if they do exist, must be stolen.”

  “Easier said than done. I wouldn’t know how to go about such a thing.”

  “I have an idea,” said Pauline. “Did you ever hear of someone called Arnie Zwillman?”

  “The guy who burned down the Vegas Seraglio for the insurance money?”

  “Yes. Ghastly man. I met him once. He has that sort of extra-clean look that gangsters sometimes have. I think they bathe more often than other people.”

  “What about Arnie Zwillman? He tried to shake down Jules. He was responsible for Jules not getting the appointment to Brussels.”

  “He’s on the tapes too, apparently. All that business about Brussels and the laundered money.”

  “I’m missing a beat here, Pauline.”

  “It seems to me that Mr. Arnie Zw
illman would know a thing or two about breaking into Miss March’s house and stealing the tapes,” said Pauline. “I mean, isn’t that the sort of thing those people do?”

  Flo’s Tape #27

  “Last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I watched Laura on television. There was this character called Waldo Lydecker played by an old movie star, probably long dead now, named Clifton Webb. I kept thinking to myself, ‘Who does this guy remind me of?’ and then I realized it was Cyril Rathbone, and not just because the two of them were gossip columnists. They even dressed alike, and they talked alike.

  “I heard from the lady at the Wells Fargo Bank in Beverly Hills that Cyril had a fit when he found that I had taken the tapes out of the safety deposit vault. We both had keys. I bet the reason he was up at Clouds to see Pauline had something to do with these tapes. Knowing Cyril like I came to, he was probably trying to blackmail her with what was on the tapes.

  “I’m surprised he didn’t come up here and try to get them away from me.”

  28

  At first, after Jules’s death, when the money stopped coming, Flo March’s economies had been relatively painless. She stopped renewing her magazine subscriptions when they came due and purchased cheaper brands of bottled water. Then she gave up her daily excursions to the boutiques on Rodeo Drive and began marketing at Hughes in West Hollywood instead of at Jurgenson’s in Beverly Hills. The man who regularly cleaned her swimming pool stayed on as long as he could without getting paid, because he liked Flo and realized she was in trouble, but he eventually left. In his absence, the water in the pool developed a scumlike surface, and the drain became clogged by leaves. Then Flo let her gardener go, when Lonny Edge suggested that he could do just as good a job as “the little Jap” was doing, but Lonny soon tired of the chore and forgot to turn on the sprinklers, and kept postponing mowing the lawn or tending the garden, so the grass became long and brown, and the garden was choked by weeds, sights that would not please any landlord’s eye, and they were certainly displeasing to the eye of Trent Muldoon, the television star, when he returned to look at his home on Azelia Way after a long absence.