Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

by John Berendt

  At seven o’clock sharp, Williams opened the front door of Mercer House and stood with his mother and his sister, Dorothy Kingery, to receive his guests. The two women wore evening gowns. Williams had on black tie and dinner jacket with Russian imperial Fabergé cuff links gleaming in the cuffs of his dress shirt. He took a deep breath. “Now I’ll find out who my real friends are.” He did not have long to wait. The first arrivals were already coming up the walk.

  And they kept coming. Dozens, scores, over a hundred. Each greeted Williams with warm expressions of support and then left their coats with an attendant in the study. If the mood was subdued at first, it picked up quickly as more and more guests arrived. White-jacketed butlers circulated with trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres (“Pour with a heavy hand,” Williams had told the bartender). Soon, the laughter and hilarity rose to such a pitch it drowned out the cocktail pianist at the grand piano. Williams had invited 200 people and set a goal for himself of 150 acceptances. It was clear that he had made his goal. In his own mind at least, he had won a plebiscite of the social set. After an hour, he left his post in the receiving line and mingled with his guests.

  “What sort of people have come?” I asked him. “And what sort have stayed away?”

  “The holier-than-thou set has stayed home,” he said, “the ones who have always been jealous of my success in Savannah and who want to let me know they disapprove. In addition to them, some of the people who honestly wish me well but are afraid to admit it publicly have also stayed home. The people you see here tonight are the ones who are secure enough to ignore anyone who might question their decision to come. Like that lady over there, Alice Dowling; her late husband was the U.S. ambassador to Germany and Korea. She’s talking with Malcolm Maclean, the former mayor of Savannah and head of one of Savannah’s leading law firms. The little old lady immediately to Maclean’s right is one of the seven women who founded the Historic Savannah Foundation: Jane Wright. She’s descended from the third royal governor of Georgia. Now, to her right, you see a distinguished-looking man with a white mustache. He’s Bob Minis, one of the most brilliant and influential financiers in Savannah. His great-great-grandfather was the first white man born in the state. He’s Jewish—a blue-blood Georgia Jew, the only Jew in the Oglethorpe Club. To his right, the two men talking in the doorway are George Patterson, the retired president of the Liberty National Bank, and Alexander Yearley, the former chairman of Robinson-Humphrey, the big Atlanta investment bankers.” Williams had the look of a poker player holding four aces.

  “Now, over there by the piano,” he went on, “the lady in the bright red dress and the contralto voice. She’s Vera Dutton Strong, talking nonstop as usual. She’s the heiress to the Dutton pulpwood fortune, and she lives in a giant palace in Ardsley Park. It’s fit for an embassy. Vera raises champion poodles. She’s got about a dozen, and at least seven of them sleep right in the bedroom with her and her husband, Cahill. Vera’s audience at the moment happens to be the director of the Telfair museum, Alexander Gaudieri, which is a blessing because she won’t give him a chance to get a word in, and nobody wants to hear what he has to say anyway.”

  As we walked past Vera Strong and the museum director, we caught a snippet of their conversation. “The bloodlines on both sides are magnificent,” Mrs. Strong was saying. “You should see the way she carries herself. She has an even temperament and bright eyes. She’s very intelligent.”

  “Not another dog!” Williams cut in.

  “Who said anything about a dog?” Mrs. Strong replied.

  “Now don’t be coy, Vera,” said Williams. “‘Magnificent bloodlines … even temperament.’ No one begrudges you another poodle. Come, come. Fess up!”

  Vera Strong suddenly gasped. “My God! How embarrassing! I was talking about Peter’s fiancée. I’m going to be a mother-in-law!” She threw her head back and laughed; then she clutched Williams by the arm. “You must swear you’ll never tell anybody what I just said!” Having sworn Williams to secrecy, she turned to the couple standing next to her. “Did you hear that? Jim overheard me talking about Peter’s fiancée, and it’s simply too mortifying, I was saying …”

  Williams turned aside. “Well, that’s Vera Strong. One of her many saving graces is her sense of humor.

  “Now those two,” he said, nodding toward a handsome middle-aged man and woman, “are Roger and Claire Moultrie. He was president of the Savannah Gas Company until about fifteen years ago, when they got involved in a bit of a scandal. One night they drove out to a secluded spot along the river and parked their car. A night watchman came by and told them to leave, because they were trespassing on the grounds of some shipyard or other. They refused to budge. The watchman called the cops. A cop came and demanded identification. Roger became belligerent and scuffled with the policeman. At that point, Claire grabbed a pistol out of the glove compartment and shouted, ‘Duck, Roger, I’ll kill the sonofabitch.’ The cop dragged her out of the car and pummeled her so badly she spent a week in the hospital. Both were charged with trespassing, drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest—she with threatening the life of a policeman, he with striking a police officer. Roger refused the judge’s suggestion that he pay a small fine and be done with it, so they went to trial. At the trial Roger said they had driven to the moonlit spot to inspect the installation of gas lines and that therefore, in so many words, they had been on company business. The most respected citizens of Savannah lined up to serve as character witnesses, and the jury delivered its verdict in twenty-five minutes: innocent of all charges. Those two don’t feel they have to answer to anybody. That’s probably why they’re here tonight.”

  Williams looked around the room. “That man over there in the formal hunting outfit is Harry Cram. He’s a legend.” Williams was speaking of a patrician gentleman, about seventy, who was wearing a scarlet tailcoat with gold embroidery over one pocket. “Harry Cram has never worked a day in his life,” said Williams. “He’s one of the first remittance men to come to the low country. His family sends his monthly checks from Philadelphia with the understanding he’ll never go back there, and he leads a life of high style—traveling around the world, hunting, drinking, and playing polo. He’s a wild man, completely charming. The woman standing next to him is his fourth wife, Lucy. They live out on Devil’s Elbow, a huge, wooded island off Bluffton, South Carolina. There’s a John Singer Sargent portrait of Harry’s grandfather in the dining room.” In his formal hunting togs, Harry Cram looked a fit subject for a Sargent portrait himself.

  “Harry used to amuse himself by flying over friends’ houses in private planes and bombing them with bags of flour, aiming for the chimney,” said Williams. “One time he rode into the old DeSoto Hotel on horseback. He’s a daredevil and a superb marksman. When he was living out at Foot Point Plantation, he’d invite people for Sunday lunch and tell them, ‘Now, be sure to arrive by noon.’ And he meant it. At quarter to twelve, he’d take a drink and his rifle and climb into a tree, where he could watch his guests coming up the long driveway. At the stroke of noon, he’d take aim through the telescopic sights and shoot the hood ornaments off the cars of the latecomers, just to let them know they were late.”

  Williams caught Harry Cram’s eye from across the room, and we started moving in his direction. “One last story before we say hello to Harry,” Williams said. “About five years ago, two Parris Island marines swam over to Harry’s island in frogmen’s suits and broke into the house. They took Harry’s sixteen-year-old son, Peter, at bayonet point, down the hall to Harry’s bedroom door. Peter called out, ‘Dad, there’s two men here with bayonets. They say they’re going to kill me unless you give them some money.’ Harry called back through the door, ‘All right, just let me get the money.’ Peter knew what to expect, so the moment Harry flung the door open, he ducked. Harry fired two shots with his thirty-eight and hit both marines between the eyes.”

  At this point, Williams and I were standing in front of the Crams. “I didn’t h
ear you ask for a ginger ale, did I, Harry?” Williams asked in mock alarm.

  “I’m afraid you did,” said Cram. “Isn’t it shameful! I’m on the wagon, believe it or not. It’s been about a year now.” Cram had bright, darting eyes and wispy hair that stood straight up on the top of his head like the crest of a snowy egret. “Lucy brought me to the Veterans Hospital in Charleston drunk as a fiddler’s bitch. Apparently, they asked me who the president was. They always ask drunks that. I hadn’t the vaguest idea. So they put me in something called ‘the Tank.’ I was there a week, and I haven’t wanted a drink since. I have no idea what they did to me. I’ve been meaning to ask.”

  Mrs. Cram nodded. “The time had definitely come,” she said. “Harry wanted to play William Tell and shoot an apple off my head.”

  “I must say, though,” said Harry, “I never shot badly during my drinking years, and I don’t think I was ever sober from the age of sixteen. I’ve gone on the wagon quite a few times in my life, but I always got off it in a hurry. This dinner jacket is proof of that. See this little hole?” Cram pointed to a small hole just below his breast pocket. “One time, years ago, I stopped drinking and locked all the liquor in the closet. The next day I decided I’d been sober long enough, but I didn’t have the patience to look for the key. So I just shot the lock off the door. The bullet went through every suit on the rack.” Harry turned around. There was another bullet hole in the back.

  A couple standing next to the Crams joined the fun inspecting the bullet holes in Harry’s jacket. Williams drifted toward the living room. “And that’s Harry Cram,” he said. “I imagine he’s here tonight because it would never occur to him that he shouldn’t be. Now, see that lady standing over by the window, talking to the bald-headed man? She’s Lila Mayhew. Her family’s one of the oldest in Savannah; they’ve lived in two of Savannah’s most important historic houses. She’s a little dotty though, so it’s possible she doesn’t even know that I’ve shot anybody.”

  Williams left me and went back to the entrance hall, and I drew closer to Mrs. Mayhew. She was speaking to the bald man.

  “Now, exactly where did Jim shoot the young man?” Mrs. Mayhew asked, her voice sounding like that of a little lost girl.

  “I think it was in the chest,” the man said.

  “No, I mean where in this house?”

  “Oh, ha-ha. In the study. Across the hall, where you put your coat.”

  “And what did they do with the body?” she asked.

  “I suppose they buried it. Wouldn’t you?”

  “That’s not what I mean,” said Mrs. Mayhew. “Did they cremate it first or bury it whole?”

  “That I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Because you know what happened to Grandmother, don’t you?”

  “I certainly do,” said the man.

  “Grandmother’s body was sent to Jacksonville to be cremated.”

  “Yes, I remember that well,” he said. “That’s a famous story—”

  “And the crematorium sent her ashes back to us in an urn. We put the urn in the parlor until it could be interred at Bonaventure. But Father was a chemist, you know.”

  “And a very good one too,” said the man. “The very best.”

  “Father was feeling downcast and at loose ends. After supper, he took the urn downtown to his laboratory and performed tests on the ashes. That’s when he found out they were not Grandmother’s at all. The ashes were pure oak. They’d sent us the ashes from an oak tree. We never did find out what happened to Grandmother. When Father passed on, we took no chances. We buried him just as he was when he died, in his raincoat. That’s why I wondered if they cremated the young man Jim shot and, if they did, whether they know for certain they got his ashes back …”

  Lila Mayhew trailed off into a sort of reverie, and the bald man peered out the living-room window. “My God,” he said, “here comes that Dawes woman! She’s all in green, from head to toe!” Serena Dawes was just then coming up the walk on the arm of Luther Driggers. She was wrapped in a green feather boa, and her fingernails, toenails, and eye shadow were green to match.

  Williams greeted them at the front door. “Our emerald bird has arrived at last!” he said.

  “I need a drink and a place to rest my ankles,” Serena said, blowing a kiss and sweeping past him into the living room. She settled herself in an armchair, arranging her ostrich feathers with one hand and scooping a martini from a passing tray with the other. Her eyes swept the room. “Boy!” she called to a short man with a camera. “Come over here and take a picture of a real lady!” Once the afterimage of flashbulbs had cleared from Serena’s vision, her gaze came to rest on a pretty young blond woman.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Serena said sweetly. “I’m Serena Dawes.”

  “My name is Anna,” the blond woman said. “I’m visiting from Sweden.”

  “Isn’t that nice,” said Serena, “and what brings you to Savannah?”

  “Well, it’s such a beautiful city. I love to come here to … to look at it.”

  “Really! Just to look? Is that all?”

  “I love architecture, and you have such beautiful houses here.”

  “But do you have friends in Savannah?” Serena persisted.

  “Oh yes,” said Anna.

  “Do tell me who!”

  “Colonel Atwood.”

  “Well!” said Serena, fluffing her feathers. “Why didn’t you just say you’ve come to Savannah to fuck? We’d all have understood completely!”

  A dark-haired gentleman bowed and kissed Serena’s hand. “Serena, how lovely to see you out of bed.”

  “Colonel Atwood, you’re too kind. I’d get out of bed for you anytime.”

  Colonel Jim Atwood was a man of varied interests. He was the first person in America to cultivate water chestnuts on any considerable scale, having planted fifty acres of them in a former rice paddy south of Savannah. But that was just a hobby; Atwood was primarily an entrepreneur and a trader who dealt in everything from storage tanks to damaged merchandise. He had been known to produce his American Express card and buy, sight unseen, the contents of entire warehouses and oceangoing freighters. He had bought and sold 119 water-damaged sports cars in one deal and 400 tons of squashed dates in another. One of Colonel Atwood’s many interests was the subject of his book Edge Weapons of the Third Reich. At the time the book came out, he had cornered the market in Nazi daggers, swords, and bayonets. He had bought sixty German arms factories together with their stocks of abandoned Nazi weapons. He also owned Hitler’s personal silverware, heavy oversized pieces with AH engraved in a slender sans-serif.

  Serena batted her eyes at Colonel Atwood. “Are you carrying any of your Kraut daggers tonight, Colonel?”

  “Nope. Only my trusty sidearm,” said Atwood. He took a small revolver out of his pocket and held it in his palm. “Know what this is?”

  “Of course I do,” said Serena. “My late husband blew his brains out with one of those.”

  “Oh!” said a bone-thin woman standing next to Serena. “So did mine! I’ll never forget it.” The woman was Alma Knox Carter, a convenience-store heiress who lived across Monterey Square. “I was fixing myself a drink in the kitchen. Gunsmoke was on TV, and I heard a shot. Naturally I didn’t think anything about it. I thought it was part of the TV show, but then I walked into the foyer and saw Lyman sprawled out on the floor with a pistol in his hand.”

  Colonel Atwood’s revolver caught the attention of Dr. Tod Fulton. “Twenty-two Magnum, huh? Not bad. I carry this little number.” Dr. Fulton reached in his pocket and took out a black leather wallet. The wallet had a hole through the middle. The crescent curve of a trigger could be seen along one edge of the hole. “It’s a twenty-two Derringer in disguise,” he said. “If a mugger holds me up and demands my money, all I have to do is pull out this wallet and … payday!”

  “My word!” said Mrs. Carter.

  Dr. Fulton pocketed his wallet. “My wife carries a thirty-eig
ht,” he said.

  “So do I,” said Anna brightly.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Mrs. Carter said. “If I’d so much as touched that gun in Lyman’s hand, they’d have charged me with murder as surely as I’m standing here!” Mrs. Carter was so frail one might have doubted she had the strength to lift a gun.

  “Someday I will shoot a man!” said Serena. “God knows I’ve already tried!” She lifted a pearl-handled revolver out of her purse and held it daintily by its chrome-plated muzzle. “Just ask my former sweetheart, Shelby Grey. I wanted like hell to shoot him! I begged him to let me do it! I didn’t want to kill him, of course. I only wanted to shoot him in the toe, just to give him something to remember me by. But the coward wouldn’t hold still! I blew a hole in the air conditioner.”

  “You … shot him?” Mrs. Carter said, wide-eyed.

  “I missed.”

  “How fortunate.”

  Serena sighed. “Not for dear Shelby. Now he has nothing of any permanence to remind him of my love. Still, I am very much afraid I will have to shoot a man one day, and it won’t be in the toe. My husband left me priceless jewels, as everybody knows, and certain individuals would love to get their hands on them. I live in fear of burglars day and night. That’s why I always have this little beauty close at hand. When I’m home I keep it by my bed.” Serena glanced at Colonel Atwood. “And when I leave the house I put it in my purse. But anytime I feel the bastards are about to spring, I just stash it between my boobs.” Serena tucked the revolver into her bosom and lifted a fresh martini from a passing tray.

  Feeling in need of a drink myself at this point, I intercepted the waiter as he came in my direction. Two other guests, a man and a woman, stepped up and helped themselves too.

  “It was a crime passionnel,” the woman was saying, “so I don’t think it counts. You know, a lovers’ quarrel. These things happen. It isn’t the same as murder.”