She walked to the door of her bedroom when she heard the sounds of his shower. The room was chilly, and her shoulders were cold in the diaphanous silk-and-lace nightgown she wore. At the foot of her bed Anna Gorman had laid out a matching bedjacket and slippers. She put on the bedjacket and noticed in the mirror, even in the calm of her resolution to act, that the jacket concealed the black brassiere that she always wore to sleep. She slipped her feet into the satin slippers and walked out into the narrow hallway that separated their two bedrooms. The door to Billy’s room was closed. Beyond it the sounds of the shower continued. She opened the door of the bedroom hallway that led into the front hall of the house.
Immediately to the left of where she was standing in the hall was a narrow curved stairway that went down to the basement area and the tennis court. At the top of the stairway she turned on a light and went down the stairs to another hall off which there were several closed doors. One led to a wine cellar. Another led to a fur vault. The third led to the gun room, where guns and ammunition were stored in glass-fronted gun cabinets. There were guns for skeet, and guns for duck and pheasant shooting, and guns for big-game hunting.
From a hidden drawer in one of the cabinets she took a ring of keys, then opened the gun cabinet. The third gun in on the rack was the expensive double-barreled weapon that Billy had purchased from Churchill’s in London as a gift for her.
She took it out of the case. From a drawer beneath she took out a box of ammunition and loaded both chambers. Shoot first and ask questions later. Those were Billy’s very own instructions about the prowler. She took several extra rounds of ammunition and stuffed them into her black brassiere. She turned off the lights and shut the door behind her and walked up the narrow stairs. At the top she turned off the light, reentered the hallway that separated her bedroom from Billy’s, listened at his door to the continuing shower sounds. She walked into her bedroom and placed the heavy gun on a slipper chair next to her bed. Her finger, ringed and manicured, brushed past the cold metal of the engraved inscription, “To Ann from Billy, with love,” as on a wedding band.
Billy walked into his bedroom from the shower, naked still. He intended to put on his pajamas and drop into bed and go to sleep. He was planning to take Third up in the new plane for the first time in the morning, and it was getting late.
From across the hall he heard Ann scream. “Help!” she shouted. “Don’t! Please! Please don’t!”
He remembered the feelings of being grabbed by a kidnapper when he was ten years old. He moved with speed but felt as if he were moving in slow motion and opened the door to his bedroom. In hazy darkness his eyes locked with the eyes of his wife holding her double-barreled shotgun aimed at him. Their throats tightened. The roofs of their mouths went dry. In their brains was a screaming silence. Never were they more as one. Only then did it occur to him that the message in his fortune cookie at the Chinese restaurant in Pittsburg, Kansas, had been blank. He turned away from her.
A massive reverberating roar filled the room, followed almost instantly by a second massive reverberating roar. Rockets’ red glare. Bombs bursting in air. The nude body was knocked backward and fell with a resounding thud onto the carpeted floor. Blood soaked the carpet.
Yet death was not instantaneous for William Grenville, Junior, merely painless, and, for the fifteen minutes left to him before expiration, thoughts of the dying variety passed through whatever thought process was left to him. He saw himself as a son, a brother, a lover, a husband, a father, and a man. With total clarity he recognized himself as a passive figure of fate whose death would catapult him into a notoriety he had, mercifully, never achieved in life.
On the other side of the indoor tennis court, Ralph Wiggins, the guard hired by the New York Philharmonic, was awakened by the double blast. He sat straight up in the narrow single bed in the bedroom of what had once been a caretaker’s apartment. He knew for a fact that he felt fear and did not want to get up and investigate. His thoughts were on the prowler. The Oyster Bay police had said to call at any time of day or night if there was any sign of him. He waited. He listened. There was only silence. He was nearing retirement age, and there was a pension to be considered. He decided to wait and do nothing until he was sure.
Upstairs, at the far end of the house, Anna Gorman, the new cook, heard the shots. First one, then another. There was no scream. There were no sounds after the shots. She did not know these people. She did not want to be involved with them. She knew only that on Monday morning she would be back at the Creedon Employment Agency on East Thirty-sixth Street. She wondered only about the little children across the hall. If she heard them get up from their beds, she would get up. Otherwise she would stay where she was. Whatever happened, it was not her responsibility.
“I’m scared,” said Third.
“Don’t talk,” whispered Diantha.
They listened. They heard nothing.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” said Third.
“You can’t.”
“Do you think the new cook heard it.?”
“If she did, she would have been in here.”
“Do you think it’s the prowler?”
“Stop talking, Third. Just listen.”
“Where’s the dog, Diantha?”
He wondered if his children would be scarred by growing up in the shadow of a disgrace and scandal in which he had been an active participant. He thought of his mother. He thought of the fortune-teller in Tacoma, who had known what she was talking about even if her dates were off by a few months. He thought of poor Esme Bland whose telephone call at Edith Bleeker’s party had set this evening in motion.
“Dear God,” he heard his wife say. “Dear God.” And then he heard her repeat it again. “Dear God.” He heard her shotgun fall to the floor. He heard her go to the telephone and ask, not for the police, not for an ambulance, not for a doctor, but for a lawyer called Sam Rosenthal.
* * *
She had put the telephone number in her address book under L for lawyer instead of under R for Rosenthal in case Billy should ever go through her book to look for a number and come upon it. She found his initials, S.R., between the Lafayette Cleaners and Lord and Taylor. She picked up the telephone by the side of her bed and gave the number in New York City to the operator in a voice of complete calm. He had told her it was his private number, and whoever answered would always know where to reach him day or night. She heard the number ring once, twice, three times.
“Mr. Rosenthal’s residence,” came a voice that she knew was an answering service.
“I must speak to Mr. Rosenthal.”
“I’m sorry. Mr. Rosenthal is away from the city for the weekend.”
“Can you tell me where he is.”
“Mr. Rosenthal is in Westhampton.”
“Will you give me the number please.”
“May I ask who is speaking?”
“This is—.” She didn’t know what to call herself. If she did not give her right name, he would not know it was she. On the other hand, she did not want to call herself Mrs. William Grenville, Junior. She heard Diantha’s dog, Sloppy, scratching at the hall door. She looked through her open door across the narrow hallway into Billy’s room and saw his naked body lying face down on the floor. She knew that she had to act quickly. “This is Ann Grenville.”
“Will Mr. Rosenthal know who you are?”
“Yes.”
“I am not at liberty to give out Mr. Rosenthal’s number, but I will call him in the morning and give him your number if you will give it to me.”
“I must talk to Mr. Rosenthal now!”
“It is almost two o’clock in the morning.”
“I don’t care.”
The answering service operator paused. “Give me your number, Ann, and I will call him.”
As his eyeballs receded upward into his head, he thought of his friend Bratsie Bleeker, also shot dead, also in ignominious circumstances, and he knew that once more vengeance would not be s
ought. And then he died.
She stepped into the front hallway and listened. There was silence in the house except for the dog. She picked it up, took it in the kitchen, and closed the door. She moved to the left and went down the narrow curved stairway that led to the basement area and the tennis court. She walked past the wine cellar, past the fur vault, and entered the small room where the guns and ammunition were stored. She reached into her black brassiere and took out the extra rounds of ammunition that she had stuffed there. Some of the rounds fell on the cement floor, others on the shelf of the gun rack. Upstairs she heard a telephone ring. She raced back to the stairs, ran up them, crossed the front hall, opened the door that led into the narrow hall that separated the two bedrooms. To the right of her was Billy’s body. She went into her bedroom and picked up the receiver before it rang a third time.
“Yes?”
“Ann?”
“Sam?”
“Yes. What’s the matter?”
“Oh, Sam.” The tears, the panic, the hysteria that she had held in abeyance since she blew off her husband’s head came to the fore.
“I can’t understand you, Ann.”
“It was an accident, Sam. I swear it was an accident.”
“You must pull yourself together, Ann, or I cannot be of any help to you.”
“I’m trying.”
“First …”
“Yes?”
“Does anyone else know?”
“No.”
“All right, now tell me exactly what has happened.”
“Billy’s dead. I shot him.”
“Start from the beginning, Ann.”
Ralph Wiggins had not heard a sound for over fifteen minutes, and he was beginning to believe that it had been the backfire of a car or truck that he had heard and not gunshots. He had pulled on his trousers and flannel shirt and boots and placed the loaded .38 revolver on the bureau of his bedroom. He had never fired a gun, although he had kept that information to himself when he applied for the job of watchman in the sylvan surroundings of the McGamble estate. He sat down on a wooden chair and began to untie the laces of his boots, ready to return to his bed for the rest of the night. From the other side of the indoor tennis court came the sounds of screams, hysterical screams. Again he froze. This time he knew there was no doubt. He rose from the wooden chair, picked up the revolver, and held it in his hand as he walked to the telephone. He picked up the receiver and dialed 0.
“Operator,” replied a harassed voice.
“This is the night watchman at the Grenville house on Berry Hill Road,” he said in a low voice. “I need the police.”
“There is a hysterical woman on the other line, and I cannot understand a word she is saying, except the Grenville name,” said the operator.
“Get the police. There is trouble here.”
She remembered the instructions Sam Rosenthal repeated and repeated in her ear over the telephone, with complete calmness, as if death by gunshot were a thing he was used to dealing with.
“If there are any lamps or hall lights on, turn them off. You must be in darkness when the police arrive.…
“Listen, carefully. Tell them you heard the dog bark. It woke you. Then you heard a sound. Outside. Maybe in the tree. Maybe on the roof. It doesn’t matter. You heard a sound. And Billy must have heard the same sound in his room. You both must have gotten up to investigate the sound at the same time.…
“Remember this, Ann. About the gun. Your husband insisted you go to ged with a gun by your side because of the prowler. Having a gun was his idea.…
“Now, you must both have opened your bedroom doors at the same time. You saw the shadow of a man standing there. You fired. Once. Twice. And then you realized it was your husband that you shot.…
“Be by your husband’s body when they find you. And don’t forget about the lights.”
“No,” she answered. “Turn out the lights.”
“Now, Ann, listen.”
“Yes?”
“Are you going to call the old lady, or am I?” he asked.
“I can’t. I can’t,” she said, hysteria beginning to break through her forced calm.
“I’ll do it. We’re going to need some blank checks. Some signed blank checks.”
“Oh, my God,” said Ann.
“Who else from the family should I call, Ann? There should be someone to arrive at the house shortly after the police. The sister, Felicity. Doesn’t she have some sons? Doesn’t she have a house out there near you? I’ll call Felicity. Now hang up, Ann. And pick up the telephone and get the operator. Tell the operator there has been a terrible accident and you need the police. Answer no questions when the police arrive. Just keep repeating over and over again that you thought Billy was the prowler. I’ll take care of everything else.”
The prisms on the great chandelier in the main hall of Alice Grenville’s house sounded—coldly, not musically—as if a wind passed through them. Alice Grenville, waking, opened her eyes an instant before the telephone rang in her darkened bedroom. She remembered for the first time in years when the chandelier had fallen on a workman and killed him. Instantly alert, she did not take the time to turn on her bedside lamp before picking up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Mère.” It was Cordelia. It was trouble.
“What time is it?”
“Late. Early. Mère—”
“What’s happened? Are you crying?”
“You must wake up completely.”
“I am awake.”
“Turn on your light.”
“Tell me what’s happened, Cordelia.”
“Something terrible. I can’t even say it. Something so terrible. I’m driving into town to be with you, but I was afraid someone might call to tell you before I got there.”
“It’s Billy, isn’t it?”
“She shot him, Mère. She killed him!”
The blood drained from Alice Grenville’s face. She felt as if she were going to faint. “Oh, my darling Billy. Oh, no. No. No. It is not possible.”
“She was saying, ‘Please help me, please help me, something terrible has happened,’ ” said Ralph Wiggins to the detective in the courtyard of the house. “You can see her through the window on the floor, but I can’t open the door.”
“See if you can climb in that window that’s open to the left of the front door,” said Detective Kramer to one of the policemen. “Then come around and open the door. You and you,” he called to two other policemen who had just driven up, “search the grounds.”
When the police entered the house, they found Ann Grenville lying over the naked body of her dead husband. She was screaming his name over and over. So covered with his blood was she that at first Detective Kramer thought she had been shot as well. They tried to pull the hysterical woman away from her husband’s body, but she would not let go. It was as if she were trying to breathe life back into him.
“Who shot your husband?” asked Detective Kramer.
Ann Grenville screamed.
“Wipe the blood off her face,” said Kramer to a policeman. “Mrs. Grenville, please, tell us who shot your husband.”
Hysterical and screaming, she was incoherent.
“Search the house,” said Kramer. “See if there’s anyone here.”
He began to rise, then saw the woman reach out to him from the floor where she was lying.
“I shot him,” she whispered. “I thought he was the prowler.”
Detective Kramer stared at Ann Grenville as if he had not heard her correctly. “You shot your husband, Mrs. Grenville?”
She nodded through her sobbing.
“This is your gun?” he asked.
“I thought he was the prowler,” she repeated.
“Why did you think he was the prowler?”
“I heard a sound, and it woke me.”
“What kind of sound?”
“The dog barked.”
“The dog? What dog?”
“There’s a d
og tied to a kitchen chair,” said one of the policemen.
“I mean, I heard a sound outside or on the roof,” she said.
“You were in bed asleep when you heard the sound?” asked Detective Kramer.
“Yes.”
“And when you got up, you grabbed your gun?”
“Yes.”
“Are you in the habit of going to bed with a gun, Mrs. Grenville?”
She feared that the man who was questioning her did not believe her. “My husband insisted. There was a prowler in the area. Our cabana had been broken into, and my husband insisted when we got home from Mrs. Bleeker’s party that we both arm ourselves. He got the guns out of the gun room in the basement when we came home from the party.”
Detective Kramer nodded to one of the policemen to check the gun room in the basement. “When did you put on your negligee, Mrs. Grenville—before or after you grabbed your gun?”
“What?”
“You are dressed in a negligee. I was curious at what point in your fear of the prowler you remembered to put it on.”
“I sleep in my negligee.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, my shoulders get cold on these October nights, and I sleep in a negligee.”
“I see,” said Detective Kramer, staring at her, disbelieving her story.
Ann Grenville was breathing heavily. She looked at the detective as if he were an enemy.
“One other thing, Mrs. Grenville.”
“Yes?”
“I notice that under your nightgown you are wearing a black brassiere. Do you sleep in your brassiere too?”
“Yes, always. I have always slept in a brassiere.”
A policeman interrupted the detective.
“Detective Kramer?”
“What is it?”
“There’s children upstairs, and the cook.”
“Put Mrs. Grenville in her bedroom,” said Kramer. “Get Inspector Pennell on the telephone. I’ll talk to the children and be right back.”
Felicity’s son, Tommy Ashcomb, age nineteen, drove up the driveway of his Uncle Billy’s house in Oyster Bay. He had never seen the long driveway so lit up. He knew that his young cousins, Diantha and Third, were asleep in the house and that he must get them out and back to his mother’s house in Glen Cove before they were told what had happened. He was to wait until the local doctor, Dr. Curry, came to sign the death certificate and make sure the doctor gave his Aunt Ann, the sexpot, who had once tried to seduce him, or so he claimed, a shot to calm her hysteria.
The Two Mrs. Grenvilles Page 23