“Why? Are you wondering why, Ann? I do not want you to go on trial for murdering my son. I do not want the filthy laundry of your marriage to come out in public. I want the headlines of this scandal to stop. And most of all, I do not want my already deeply scarred grandchildren to bear the further shame of growing up with a mother in prison.”
“Mère,” Ann whispered.
“My son’s will has not been read yet, but there is speculation at every party in the city, and I believe it to be true, from Mr. Mendenhall at the bank, that my son cut you out of his will before he died. If this is true, I am prepared, from my own money, to settle on you what you would have received from him before he cut you out.”
“I don’t care about the money,” said Ann.
“Of course you care about the money,” replied Alice impatiently. “If there’s one thing you’ve always been eminently practical about, Ann, it’s money. I always felt your love for my son began on the moment you walked into my house the first time and saw the kind of life your handsome ensign came from.”
Receiving absolution, Ann was in no position to reply to the taunt. Remembering back, she knew it was true.
“There are conditions to all this,” said Alice.
“Conditions?”
“Things I want in return.”
“Like what?”
“That you never, ever, for as long as you live, talk to a reporter, or a writer, or even a friend about what happened in Oyster Bay last Saturday night.”
“I agree to that,” whispered Ann.
“You must go to the grave with your story.”
“I wish you believed my story, Mère.”
“I do.”
“No, I mean in your heart.”
“I am trying.”
“Have I ever lied to you?” asked Ann.
“Yes, you have,” replied Alice, calmly meeting her gaze, without challenge in it, so certain was she of her position.
“When?” asked Ann. “Give me an instance.”
“You told me your father was dead. There’s an instance. You told me that on the first day we met, and you repeated it to me on your wedding day, and you have said it again several times over the years.”
“My father is dead.”
“According to this morning’s papers,” said Alice, opening her black bag and taking from it an envelope full of newspaper clippings, which she handed to Ann, “your father is very much alive and is a streetcar conductor in Detroit.”
A deep hot flush of crimson burst through the pasty paleness of Ann’s face. She dreaded exposure of her shabby origins, and there it was, for all to see, in every edition of every tabloid: the ramshackle farmhouse; the idiosyncrasies of her mother’s curious personality; her father identified as a streetcar conductor.
“Is it for his occupation or his existence that you blush, Ann?” asked Alice.
Outside, on the East River, a tugboat passed, the same as any of a dozen tugboats that had passed in the last few hours. Ann watched it with a complete absorption that suggested a fear of dealing with the moment she was living.
“I don’t like speaking to the back of your head,” snapped Alice.
“Will you take your bag and hat off the foot of my bed? I don’t like things on the foot of my bed,” replied Ann.
Alice moved them to the window ledge.
“Would you like to sit down?” asked Ann.
“No, thank you.”
“How are the children?”
“They’re fine.”
“Are they in school?”
“I haven’t sent them back yet, no,” replied Alice.
“They can’t miss school.”
“Surely you read the papers, Ann.”
“I’m talking about my children.”
“So am I,” said Alice quietly. “The situation is all over the newspapers still and probably will be until you appear before the grand jury. It is the principal subject of conversation in every house on the Upper East Side. I have talked with the headmaster of Buckley and the headmistress at Spence, and they both agree that it would be terribly difficult at school for the children at this time. I have hired a tutor, who is working in conjunction with their teachers, and they are studying at home until after things die down.”
“Don’t you think I should have been consulted about these decisions?” asked Ann. A mild form of panic made itself felt beneath her worn-off sedation. She wondered if Alice was thinking of taking her children away from her.
Alice chose not to continue the conversation, although it occurred to her to say that this difficult woman might have thought of that before she killed her children’s father.
“Cordelia and I took them to a film yesterday,” she said instead.
“I want to see them,” said Ann.
“But you will, when this is over,” replied Alice.
“That’s not what I mean. I want to see them here. I want them to come and visit me. I want them to hear from their mother what happened.”
“I don’t think that’s wise, Ann,” said Alice. “There are reporters camped out downstairs.”
“I want my children brought here tomorrow,” said Ann in the chilling tone Alice had often heard Ann use to Billy.
“Do you not wonder why it is you are here in this hospital overlooking the East River in Manhattan rather than in the Nassau County Hospital in Mineola, where you would have been in the jurisdiction of the police who are investigating your husband’s killing? Or do you just accept this as your due?”
Ann’s heart began to beat very fast. Feelings of fear rushed through her as she remembered the police questioning her on the night of the shooting before the doctor mercifully gave her the shot that sedated her for so many hours.
“Yes, of course, I will have the children brought here tomorrow,” said Alice. She picked up her hat again and put it on, pinning it with two pearl-topped pins, noticing as she did so that there were no mirrors in the room. As she let the black mourning veil fall over her face, as a reminder of the circumstance in which they found themselves, she said, in a duplication of her daughter-in-law’s chilling tone, “And, please, don’t ever again, ever, and I repeat the word once more, ever, speak to me in that tone of voice. You need me more than I need you, Ann, although I wouldn’t have thought I needed to point that out to you.”
“Mère, I’m sorry,” said Ann in a voice filled with alarm. She reached out and touched her mother-in-law’s arm, but Alice moved past her bed to the door, opened it without looking back, and left the room.
An arrangement of birds of paradise in a clear glass bowl, left behind by a departed patient, filled the center of the round maple coffee table in the tenth-floor waiting room.
“Don’t you loathe birds of paradise?” asked Cordelia when her mother, walking slowly, joined her. Alice Grenville glanced at the flamboyant flowers, which were just past their prime. They reminded her of the woman she had just left.
Alice looked down at her shoes and didn’t answer. Her left hand brushed off the right sleeve of her black coat, which had just touched Ann. “I hate her,” she said in a voice so low that only her daughter could hear.
“Are you all right, Mère?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Let’s go.”
When the doors of the elevator opened, Cordelia and her mother entered and rode down to the street floor in silence, aware that the elevator operator and a nurse and two visitors were looking at them. When the doors opened on the ground floor, the other occupants of the car stood back in deference, or curiosity, and allowed them to exit first.
Cordelia took her mother’s arm and steered her toward the entrance, where the car would be waiting. Outside the hospital on East End Avenue a crowd of reporters and photographers awaiting them became instantly alert. Cordelia held her hand in front of her mother’s face to shield her from the flashbulbs popping and the reporters who started shouting questions at her, the pack moving in closer on the two women.
Charles, the chauff
eur, made his way through the crowd to assist Cordelia in getting Alice into the car. Suddenly Alice Grenville stopped and brushed away her daughter’s protective hand. She turned at the door of the car and faced directly the onslaught that was pressing in on her. She lifted her veil and did not flinch as the flashbulbs and newsreel cameras recorded the scene. There was about her presence a grace of carriage and aristocratic bearing that kept the crowd from jostling her and moving in any closer.
“How is she, Mrs. Grenville?” shouted one of the reporters.
“I grieve for my son,” she said, “but I also grieve for my daughter-in-law. I am very fond of her. My son’s death was an unfortunate accident. I have never thought otherwise. I am fed up with the scandalous rumors and innuendos that have plagued his death. It is time that you knew the truth. The police were convinced from the beginning that it was an accident, and they still believe that, because there is no reason for them to believe otherwise.”
Alice Grenville appeared very old as she dropped the veil over her face again, signaling the completion of her statement. With the help of Cordelia and Charles, she entered her car.
“You understand the consequences of this, Mère?” said Cordelia.
“Certainly I do. We are bound to her forever.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“It is a very steep price to pay.”
The limousine turned right on Eighty-sixth Street and made its way toward Fifth Avenue as the two women sat in silence in the darkening November afternoon.
Felicity was less compliant than her sisters concerning their mother’s decision. “We are more than bound to her; we are chained to her. A divorce would have been too scandalous, so she remained married to Billy. Now a murder trial would be too scandalous, so we remain sistered to her for all time. I am sick of that woman in our lives. I hate her.”
No one answered Felicity. They allowed her to rant and rave. She voiced what the rest of them thought but did not speak. Then her mother spoke what were to be the last words on the subject.
“We must behave as if we believe her. All of us. That goes for you too, Felicity. To whoever speaks to us about it. Even our best friends. What happened to Billy was an accident, and our heart grieves for his widow.”
“You are asking too much of us, Mère,” said Felicity.
“I am not doing this for her, Felicity. I am doing it for Billy’s children. My grandchildren. They will already have enough to grow up with, having a slain father. We cannot allow that their mother be in prison as well. Remember the children.”
“Yes, Mère.”
“If your father were alive, he would have arrived at this same conclusion.”
“Yes, Mère.”
* * *
When Inspector Pennell and Detective Kramer left Alice Grenville’s house just off Fifth Avenue, the same group of reporters that had dogged their footsteps since the night of the shooting converged on them before they could get to the police car that was parked in front of the house. Among themselves the reporters made no secret of the fact that they felt Inspector Pennell behaved with obsequious deference to the powerful people connected with the Grenville case.
“What about this report that Mrs. Grenville made a mysterious telephone call after her husband was shot but before the police were notified?” asked the Hearst reporter.
“I don’t know where you guys pick up all this stuff,” replied Detective Kramer.
The reporters ignored Detective Kramer. “What about it, Inspector Pennell?”
Reporters made Inspector Pennell nervous. Out on the North Shore, when he said, “No comment,” they would back off. In the city, where he was not on his home ground, they persisted when he ignored them.
“It seems to me ridiculous on the face of it,” replied Inspector Pennell, trying to push his way through to the car.
“Check the telephone records and it won’t look so ridiculous,” said the Hearst reporter.
“Naturally, we’ll check it,” said Pennell.
“How about the telephone call that was made to Mr. Grenville during Mrs. Bleeker’s party? Would you care to comment on that? Who was that from?”
“I have no information on that,” said the inspector.
“When do you plan to question Mrs. Grenville?”
“We would prefer that the questioning take place either at headquarters or in some other suitable place rather than at the hospital, where there are so many people around. It’s cold, gentlemen, and I would like to get into my car.”
“The night watchman says Mrs. Grenville didn’t scream for help until twenty minutes after the shots.”
“I don’t think that is significant,” answered Pennell.
“Oh, no? Wouldn’t that be when she was making the mysterious telephone call?”
“No one knows exactly what time the shooting took place. The watchman is probably very confused as to details now. It will be up to the grand jury to attack the watchman’s statement, if they want to. Now please, enough. I have an appointment to get to.”
Looking straight ahead, they drove off while the reporters continued to shout questions at them. At Fifth Avenue, they turned left and drove on in silence for a block.
“Jesus Christ,” said Inspector Pennell.
“There are rumors everywhere that my son disinherited his wife,” said Alice Grenville.
“She will not be destitute, Mrs. Grenville,” said Mr. Mendenhall from the bank. The tone of his voice told her that he, and the bank, felt very little sympathy for the killer of her son.
“Why did Billy cut her out of his will?” asked Alice.
“He did not, in fact, cut her out. What he did was decrease her portion of his estate. He built up the children’s shares and cut down hers. He was planning to divorce her.”
“Still …”
“But the house in Oyster Bay is in her name. She insisted on that when he bought it, and Billy gave it to her. The same with the house in New York. That’s in her name, too.”
“She was always clever, Ann.”
“Don’t forget her jewels. She’s supposed to have one of the best jewel collections in the city. And paintings.”
Alice nodded, aware of the jewels and paintings.
“And her portfolio,” added Mr. Mendenhall.
“What portfolio?”
“From time to time Billy gave her money, rather sizable amounts, and she has an aptitude for investment.”
“I knew none of this.”
“She has a friend called Babette Van Degan.”
“Yes, yes, Mrs. Van Degan. Used to be married to Dickie Van Degan.” Cut from the same piece of cloth, those two, she thought.
“Babette Van Degan is one of the shrewdest investors on the stock market,” said Mr. Mendenhall, removing his pincenez and massaging their resting place on either side of his nose. “She received a five-million-dollar divorce settlement from Dickie Van Degan when they divorced, and she has been able to turn that into about thirty million.”
“My word.”
“And Babette Van Degan has been helping your daughter-in-law invest.”
Alice stood up and walked around the little sitting room off her bedroom where she dealt with her correspondence and business affairs. She was deep in thought. She looked for a moment into the fireplace, where a small fire laid by Cahill to take the chill off the late-fall day was burning down. She walked over to the window, lifted back the glazed-chintz curtain, and looked down on her bare garden below, her terrace stripped of furniture, her shrubs wrapped in burlap for the coming winter. Finally she turned back to the financial adviser who had acted in her behalf, and her children’s, since her husband’s death.
“I’m going to take care of her. I want her to have what she would have gotten from Billy if he hadn’t changed his will.”
“That is overly generous, Mrs. Grenville,” said Mr. Mendenhall, who did not approve of remuneration for a woman who had brought so much grief to a family he had known for thirty
years.
“I don’t want her going to the newspapers, or around New York, saying that her husband’s rich family refuses to take care of her. There has been enough about this family in the newspapers.”
“I see your point.”
“However, there will be conditions. She will have only the income from what she would have inherited, and that income will come monthly from me, signed by me, and is subject to stop at any time that certain requests I have made of her are not met.”
In the German consulate on East Forty-second Street a hastily called meeting was taking place. The prowler arrested by the Oyster Bay police had been discovered to be a German.
“What information do you have on him?” asked Dolf von Hoffman, the German consul.
“His name is Horst Berger. Twenty-two years old. An immigrant from Berlin. Entered the United States two years ago. Has been in and out of trouble ever since. His father is a bricklayer, which is also his profession, although he does not work at it. He was arrested a year ago for robbing a market in Mineola. According to his sister, he is a bad sort.” The undersecretary looked up from his clipboard.
“That is all you have?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What I want to know is, was he on the grounds of the Grenville estate at the time of the killing?”
“He claims not to have been, although he admits to having been there on another occasion, the night before, when he broke into the cabana of the pool house.”
“He took what?”
“Food, nothing of consequence.”
“Was he armed?”
“He had a shotgun he had stolen from a house in Mineola.”
“Is he represented by a lawyer?” asked the consul.
“No, sir.”
“We must get a lawyer for him.”
“Why would we want to be drawn into this thing?”
“These Grenvilles are rich and powerful people. I have seen them at the track and the opera. Whatever they think of their daughter-in-law, which is not much, I understand, they are not going to let her go to jail. She said she heard a prowler. They might force Horst Berger to say he was there, even if he wasn’t, in order to make her story believable. I know people like this. They are not above handing money around to the police to work things out in their favor.”
The Two Mrs. Grenvilles Page 27