The Two Mrs. Grenvilles

by Dominick Dunne

  “Will there be press outside?”

  “I am taking you in a wheelchair down the freight elevator to the basement and then out a side door to Eighty-eighth Street. My car and driver are there. Ready?”

  The streets were wet and dark. Ann and Sidney drove in silence for the most part. She looked out the window of the Lincoln as the streetlights turned off and the first rustlings of morning began. A girl in an evening dress got out of a taxi and raced past her doorman before daylight came. White-aproned men unloaded crates of oranges in front of Gristede’s market. A young couple unloaded weekend luggage from the rear of a station wagon. She wondered if she had valued life enough when it was there at her disposal.

  “The front door of the shop will be open,” said Sidney, “so you can walk straight in without having to wait on the street for someone to answer.”

  “You think of everything, Sidney,” said Ann.

  “Caruso will be ready for you. I’ve asked him not to talk with you, just to do what has to be done as quickly as possible. He said it will take an hour. There is a possibility that a few other customers will come in at seven-thirty, some women executives from the department stores who have regular appointments at that time that he was not able to change, but he will take you in a private room. The only time that you might encounter anyone is when you leave. Wear your hat and dark glasses then. The car will be parked right at the front door of the shop.”

  “You understand why I’m doing this, don’t you, Sidney? I mean, you know, don’t you, that it has nothing to do with vanity?”

  “It’s an awful risk, Ann, when the police haven’t even questioned you yet.”

  “I don’t want it known that my hair turned white overnight, Sidney. I don’t want Alice, or Cordelia, or any of those sisters, or, God knows, the police, to know that my hair turned white overnight.”

  “It could be interpreted as grief,” he said.

  “They would interpret it as guilt,” she corrected him.

  Dr. Skinner looked at her sideways and wondered if that was her interpretation.

  “And call Bergdorf’s, Cordelia,” said Alice Grenville. “Get Jo Hughes. We’ll need black hats, veils, dresses. She’ll know exactly what to get. Ask her to bring them up to the house this afternoon.”

  “Yes, Mère.”

  “And Grace.”

  “Yes, mère.”

  “The maids want to go to the funeral. They should be seated behind all the family but in the side aisle.”

  “Yes, Mère.”

  “Make sure they all have black hats. If they don’t, call Altman’s and order what they need.”

  “Yes, Mère.”

  “Felicity!”

  “Yes, Mère.”

  “Please don’t look out the window like that. One of those reporters will photograph you with a telephoto lens.”

  “I’m sorry, Mère,” said Felicity, closing the curtain. “I heard commotion outside.”

  “More flowers, probably. Or those awful press,” said Alice.

  “It’s Governor Milbank arriving, Mère,” said Felicity.

  “Oh, Payson, thank God,” said Alice.

  “Did you know Governor Milbank was coming?” asked Felicity.

  Alice did not answer her daughter.

  The governor entered the reception room off the front hall, where Billy’s casket had been placed against the wall opposite the fireplace in the same spot where his father’s casket had been placed. Floral arrangements were behind and on either side of it. The main hallway beyond under the chandelier was also filled with great profusions of flowers. The governor went directly to the kneeler in front of the closed casket, knelt, and bowed his head in prayer. Rising, he turned toward the fireplace, where Alice Grenville stood with her daughters and her triplet sisters.

  “My dear Alice,” he said. “I am so terribly sorry. I remember so well when he was born, and Woodrow Wilson wrote him a letter welcoming him to this world. Do you remember?”

  “We must find that letter and give it to Third,” said Alice to her daughters.

  The governor greeted Alice’s sisters and daughters. He looked above the fireplace to the large portrait of the triplets that had been painted more than half a century before. Alice followed his gaze.

  “I’m the one with the green ribbon,” she said.

  “Sargent, isn’t it?” asked the governor. “Marvelous.”

  His mission was not to admire the paintings, however, and his gubernatorial time was precious. He looked at Alice, and she understood his look, and took him by the arm and led him out of the reception room into the main hall, knowing that he wanted to talk to her privately.

  “There are people everywhere,” she said. “Every room is full. Relations are arriving by the hour from everywhere. Perhaps up to my room. There won’t be anyone there.”

  “Fine,” said the governor.

  “Cahill,” Alice called to her butler.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “See to it that the secretaries write on each card exactly what the flower arrangement is, and then enter it into that book I’ve left on the hall table.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “This house has the first private elevator in New York, Payson,” said Alice Grenville.

  “Let’s walk up the three flights, Alice.”

  “We’re getting old, Payson.”

  “We’ve got thirty years more in us, you and I, Alice. Maybe more,” answered the governor.

  They sat in her room, away from the green-canopied bed, on two chintz-covered chairs beneath the Constable painting of Salisbury Cathedral.

  “You never know what to do when your children bring home these second-rate people and say they’re in love with them. You want to scream out, at the top of your lungs, no, no, no, no, no, it must not be! There was nowhere for this to end but in disaster.”

  “You must understand, Alice,” said the governor, “a case like this is a criminal lawyer’s dream. A national reputation will be made. What is more fascinating to the American public than the rich and powerful in a criminal circumstance? Look at the newspapers. Listen to the radio. Watch the television. The country is consumed with curiosity.”

  “She took my only son’s life, Payson.”

  “And in order to save hers, they will take his again,” replied the governor, taking her hand in his to give her comfort.

  “How so?”

  “They will put your son on trial. All the dirty laundry of their marriage will be brought out. They will dig up every perverse aspect of his character, every marital infidelity, his drinking habits, his bedroom habits, his bathroom habits, for all I know.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Stand behind her.”

  “You must be mad!”

  “Believe her story about the prowler.”

  “She killed my Billy.”

  “Embrace her for the world to see.”

  “But she is guilty.”

  “There will be a shift in sympathy. You will see. In a few months, when the shock of this terrible tragedy wears off, they will begin to forget Billy, and it will be Ann’s tragedy that will take its place.”

  “The chorus girl from Kansas and the millionaire’s son.”

  “That’s it exactly. In time they will root for her, not for you.”

  “It’s so unfair.”

  “The healing process can’t begin with the trial looming ahead like a dark and evil cloud, and either way, whatever happens, there is no winning. If Ann goes to prison, it will only scar the children more than they have been scarred already.”

  “You know what this will do, Payson? It will bind us to that woman more closely than if she had been born one of us.”

  Sidney Skinner burst into Room 1010, radiating good news. From her bed, the aged Ann Grenville turned slowly to look at him. In her hands was a newspaper she had bribed a nurse to bring her, with graphic details of the kill
ing. All her life she had wanted to be famous, and now she was, but the fame that had found her at last was not the variety she had craved.

  “There is good news, Ann,” exclaimed the doctor, at the same time seeing the forbidden newspaper on the bed. “I have just had a call from Sam Rosenthal.”

  “What has happened?” she asked.

  “They have found the prowler!”

  Ann stared at him unable to believe what she was hearing.

  “It is as you said. There was a prowler, and they have found him,” said Sidney.

  She wanted to know and was afraid to know what the prowler had said. She wanted him to go on. He, in turn, wondered if she was too sedated to absorb the glad tidings he was bringing her.

  “I cannot believe the terrible stories that Fydor Cassati has written about me in his column,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter about Fydor Cassati,” said Sidney Skinner. “What matters is that the prowler has been caught.”

  When Alice Grenville hung up the telephone from Iphigene Sulzberger, whose family owned the New York Times, and Betsy Whitney, whose husband owned the New York Herald Tribune, she next called Millicent Hearst, the long-estranged wife of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper baron, for whom Fydor Cassati was such a star, selling more papers than any other with his daily coverage of the Grenville case.

  “Millicent,” she said.

  “Oh, Alice, my dear, I am so terribly sorry about your tragedy,” replied Millicent Hearst. A onetime show girl and beauty, she was captivated with society in New York. While her husband romped and built castles in the West for the actress Marion Davies, she, the mother of his five Hearst sons, enjoyed the homage paid to her by the society columns of her husband’s papers. “I saw dear Billy only weeks ago at the Belmont Ball, and he was in such marvelous form with all the great success he was having in racing. I can’t bear it that you are suffering so much.”

  “Yes,” replied the mother of the slain Billy Grenville. “Thank you, Millicent.” Wanting to rush through the condolence, she allowed it its full course for the favor she was about to ask. She had never had Millicent Hearst to any of her parties, nor had she ever contributed to the Milk Fund, which was the charity dear to Millicent’s heart, but she resolved then and there to do both if she got what she wanted.

  “What I’m calling you about, Millicent, is Fydor Cassati,” said Alice, getting straight to the heart of the matter. “My son was so fond of him, and he is indeed such a charming fellow, but we feel that his columns these past few afternoons, since Billy’s death, have been excessive and unfair.”

  “But Fydor adored Billy,” protested Millicent.

  “Apparently he did not adore Ann,” replied Alice.

  “But I have no say over what he writes in his column,” said Millicent.

  “Nonsense,” said Alice firmly. “Your husband owns the paper. Please, Millicent, make him stop. What happened in Osyter Bay on Saturday night was an accident, and his columns are suggesting that my daughter-in-law shot my son on purpose.”

  “Willie owns the papers, Alice. I have no say,” she said again.

  “That’s not so,” persevered Alice Grenville. “You got Fydor the job, after all that nasty business in Washington, with the tar and feathering, just as you got Elsa Maxwell her job. And Cobina Wright. They will do anything for you, those people. Make him stop! Oh, and Millicent, when the mourning period is over, my daughters and I will attend your next benefit for the Milk Fund and contribute handsomely to it.”

  “She didn’t know it was loaded,” said Kay Kay Somerset, screaming with laughter.

  “Kay Kay!” said Petal Wilson, adjusting her makeup in the mirror of the ladies’ room at El Morocco.

  “It could have been worse, I suppose,” Kay Kay went on, reapplying lipstick in the same mirror.

  “What do you mean?” asked Petal.

  “She could have killed Tailspin,” answered Kay Kay, screaming with laughter again.

  “Kay Kay!”

  “Billy told Brenda he had changed his will.”

  “No!”

  “And—”

  “Go on. I’m riveted.”

  “Not a word of this to anyone. Promise?”

  “On my life, darling.”

  “He said the children would get it all, leaving Ann out completely.”

  “How could he do that? With widow’s share, and all that.”

  “He had the goods on her, finally. He was going to divorce her.”

  “How much should I tip her?” whispered Petal, indicating the ladies’-room attendant.

  “A quarter’s plenty,” said Kay Kay.

  “Are you going to the funeral?”

  “Of course, darling. It’s the funeral of the decade.”

  Still dazed in sedated slumber, Ann Grenville planned her husband’s funeral. She wanted to wear black veils and her Mainbocher black dress from last season with only a single strand of pearls and the diamond circle pin that Billy had given her before they were married. She wanted to have her nails done, plain, no color; Blanchette could come here to the hospital to do them. She would wear only her wedding ring, she decided; her engagement ring was too big. She would sit in the reception room off the main hall of her mother-in-law’s house off Fifth Avenue for the prayers before the pallbearers put the casket into the hearse to take it to St. James’ Church for the service. Names went through her head of the men she wanted to be her husband’s pallbearers.

  “The hymn!” she cried out suddenly.

  “What?” asked Miss Toomey, the nurse, who had been snoozing in her chair in a corner of the darkened room.

  “What was the name of that hymn?”

  “What hymn, Mrs. Grenville?”

  “From Groton, that hymn. The one Billy liked so much.”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Grenville.”

  “About God and honor, that kind of thing.”

  “Oh.”

  “I want that sung at the service.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “The Duchess will be in directly,” said Cecil, her butler, to Inspector Stanley Pennell and Detective Kramer in the living room of the Duchess of Windsor’s ornate suite on the twenty-eighth floor of the Waldorf Towers. There were flowers everywhere of different varieties and heights but uniform color, as if Constance Spry, her florist, had advised her giftgivers that this season the duchess favored yellow and white. Invitation cards leaned against a mirror over the fireplace.

  “What do we call her?” whispered Detective Kramer to Inspector Pennell, eyeing the elaborate gold furniture.

  “I should have asked that Cecil,” whispered back Inspector Pennell.

  Three English pug dogs yapped and snapped at the intruders.

  “I hate these fucking little dogs,” whispered Detective Kramer.

  “Shhhh,” said Inspector Pennell.

  Two of the dogs, exhausted, retired to their bamboo baskets and curled up on needlepoint cushions that bore their names. The third continued to be unpleasant to the inspector and his assistant, letting him know that their call on his mistress, official though it might be, was inappropriate.

  “Disraeli, you naughty boy!” cried the Duchess of Windsor to her dog as she entered the room. “You must forgive this naughty beast, Inspector Pennell. He is just protecting his mummy. Aren’t you, you naughty thing? Yes, you are. Kiss, kiss, kiss. Yes. Now you go over there to your basket and lie down. Oh, please, do sit down, Detective Kramer. Would you like to smoke?” she asked, opening a gold box with a royal seal and offering it to them. “Or a drink?”

  The sheer social power of her overwhelmed the room. Wafts of expensive perfume surrounded her. Earrings, bracelet, pin, and rings matched. 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.

  “We are here, uh, Duchess, because of the, uh, sad—”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” she said. “What a sad occasion this is. Poor Ali
ce Grenville, his mother. Such an old friend. I talked to her today. She is bereft with the tragedy.”

  “You talked with Mr. and Mrs. Grenville on the night of the party, I understand?” asked Inspector Pennell.

  “Yes, I did, and he was in such good spirits. You know about his horse, Tailspin, don’t you? Well, he was so excited.”

  “There is a telephone call, your grace,” said the butler.

  “No, no, I can’t, Cecil. You see, I have the inspector.”

  “It is Mrs. Bleeker, Your Grace.”

  “Would you excuse me, Inspector? I must take this call. Would you ask these gentlemen again, Cecil, if they would like something to drink. Hello, Edith. Yes, darling. Of course. They’re here now. Yes. Uh-huh. Fine. Now about tonight. That nice Jimmy Donahue is picking me up. We’re going to Thelma Foy’s for cocktails, for an instant only. She has the Stamirskys, whom I long to see. I don’t think long dress, do you? Under the circumstances? Right. Then we’ll drop by poor Alice’s. And then meet up with Serge Obolen-sky for dinner. Maud Chez Elle, Serge thought. Somewhere quiet. I told Kay Kay Somerset no El Morocco until after the funeral. Strict orders from David. Now about the funeral. Do you want to go together? Fine. I’ll be ready. And after, there’s lunch at Kitty Miller’s. Yes, yes, I won’t forget. Say it once more. Fine. Fine. Goodbye, Edith.… I am sorry, Inspector. Forgive me. Oh, look at the time it’s getting to be. Has the hairdresser arrived, Cecil? It’s such a tragedy, the whole thing. They were an ideally suited couple, Inspector.”

  Detective Kramer wrote in his notebook the words “an ideally suited couple” and nodded his head quietly.

  “What is your impression of Mrs. Grenville, Duchess?” asked the inspector.

  “Alice Grenville?” asked the Duchess.

  “No, I meant Ann Grenville,” replied Inspector Pennell.

  “Oh, Ann.” She had an urge to say that Billy Grenville had told Brenda Frazier on the night of the shooting that he had changed his will, cutting out Ann, but she did not. “For bringing together all kinds of people in a gay, airy, but flawless setting, I have never known anyone to equal Ann Grenville,” she said instead to the bewildered detectives. “She mixes people like a cocktail, and the result is sheer genius.”