“So she pretended to acquiesce and told David there was no point arguing as he obviously had her by the snatch, but would he continue to live with her for a month while she settled her affairs? He agreed, idiot; and immediately she began preparing the legend of the prowler—twice she called police, claiming a prowler was on the grounds; soon she had the servants and most of the neighbors convinced that prowlers were everywhere in the vicinity, and actually, Nini Wolcott’s house was broken into, presumably by a burglar, but now even Nini admits that Ann must have done it. As you may recall, if you followed the case, the Hopkinses went to a party at the Wolcott’s the night it happened.
A Labor Day dinner dance with about fifty guests; I was there, and I sat next to David at dinner. He seemed very relaxed, full of smiles, I suppose because he thought he’d soon be rid of the bitch and married to his cousin Mary; but Ann was wearing a pale green dress, and she seemed almost green with tension—she chattered on like a lunatic chimpanzee about prowlers and burglars and how she always slept now with a shotgun by her bedside. According to the Times, David and Ann left the Wolcotts’ a bit after midnight, and when they reached home, where the servants were on holiday and the children staying with their grandparents in Bar Harbor, they retired to separate bedrooms.
Ann’s story was, and is, that she went straight to sleep but was wakened within half an hour by the noise of her bedroom door opening: she saw a shadowy figure—the prowler! She grabbed her shotgun and in the dark fired away, emptying both barrels. Then she turned on the lights and, oh, horror of horrors, discovered David sprawled in the hallway nicely cooled. But that isn’t where the cops found him. Because that isn’t where or how he was killed. The police found the body inside a glassed-in shower, naked. The water was still running, and the shower door was shattered with bullets.”
“In other words—” I began.
“In other words”—Lady Ina picked up but waited until a captain, supervised by a perspiring M. Soulé, had finished ladling out the soufflé Furstenberg—“none of Ann’s story was true. God knows what she expected people to believe; but she just, after they reached home and David had stripped to take a shower, followed him there with a gun and shot him through the shower door. Perhaps she intended to say the prowler had stolen her shotgun and killed him. In that case, why didn’t she call a doctor, call the police? Instead, she telephoned her lawyer. Yes. And he called the police. But not until after he had called the Hopkinses in Bar Harbor.”
The priest was swilling another Gibson; Ann Hopkins, head bent, was still whispering at him confessionally. Her waxy fingers, unpainted and unadorned except for a stark gold wedding band, nibbled at her breast as though she were reading rosary beads.
“But if the police knew the truth—”
“Of course they knew.”
“Then I don’t see how she got away with it. It’s not conceivable.”
“I told you,” Ina said tartly, “she got away with it because Hilda Hopkins wanted her to. It was the children: tragic enough to have lost their father, what purpose could it serve to see the mother convicted of murder? Hilda Hopkins, and old Mr. Hopkins, too, wanted Ann to go scot-free; and the Hopkinses, within their terrain, have the power to brainwash cops, reweave minds, move corpses from shower stalls to hallways; the power to control inquests—David’s death was declared an accident at an inquest that lasted less than a day.”
She looked across at Ann Hopkins and her companion—the latter, his clerical brow scarlet with a two-cocktail flush, not listening now to the imploring murmur of his patroness but staring rather glassy-gaga at Mrs. Kennedy, as if any moment he might run amok and ask her to autograph a menu. “Hilda’s behavior has been extraordinary. Flawless. One would never suspect she wasn’t truly the affectionate, grieving protector of a bereaved and very legitimate widow. She never gives a dinner party without inviting her. The one thing I wonder is what everyone wonders—when they’re alone, just the two of them, what do they talk about?”
Ina selected from her salad a leaf of Bibb lettuce, pinned it to a fork, studied it through her black spectacles. “There is at least one respect in which the rich, the really very rich, are different from … other people. They understand vegetables. Other people—well, anyone can manage roast beef, a great steak, lobsters. But have you ever noticed how, in the homes of the very rich, at the Wrightsmans’ or Dillons’, at Bunny’s and Babe’s, they always serve only the most beautiful vegetables, and the greatest variety? The greenest petits pois, infinitesimal carrots, corn so baby-kerneled and tender it seems almost unborn, lima beans tinier than mice eyes, and the young asparagus! the limestone lettuce! the raw red mushrooms! zucchini …” Lady Ina was feeling her champagne.
MRS. MATTHAU AND MRS. COOPER lingered over café filtre. “I know,” mused Mrs. Matthau, who was analyzing the wife of a midnight-TV clown/hero, “Jane is pushy: all those telephone calls—Christ, she could dial Answer Prayer and talk an hour.
But she’s bright, she’s fast on the draw, and when you think what she has to put up with. This last episode she told me about: hair-raising. Well, Bobby had a week off from the show—he was so exhausted he told Jane he wanted just to stay home, spend the whole week slopping around in his pajamas, and Jane was ecstatic; she bought hundreds of magazines and books and new LP’s and every kind of goody from Maison Glass.
Oh, it was going to be a lovely week. Just Jane and Bobby sleeping and screwing and having baked potatoes with caviar for breakfast. But after one day he evaporated. Didn’t come home one night or call. It wasn’t the first time, Jesus be, but Jane was out of her mind. Still, she couldn’t report it to the police; what a sensation that would be. Another day passed, and not a word. Jane hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours. Around three in the morning the phone rang. Bobby. Smashed. She said: ‘My God, Bobby, where are you?’ He said he was in Miami, and she said, losing her temper now, how the fuck did you get in Miami, and he said, oh, he’d gone to the airport and taken a plane, and she said what the fuck for, and he said just because he felt like being alone. Jane said: ‘And are you alone?’
Bobby, you know what a sadist he is behind that huckleberry grin, said: ‘No. There’s someone lying right here. She’d like to speak to you.’ And on comes this scared little giggling peroxide voice: ‘Really, is this really Mrs. Baxter, hee hee?
I thought Bobby was making a funny, hee hee. We just heard on the radio how it was snowing there in New York—I mean, you ought to be down here with us where it’s ninety degrees!’ Jane said, very chiseled: ‘I’m afraid I’m much too ill to travel.’ And peroxide, all fluttery distress: ‘Oh, gee, I’m sorry to hear that. What’s the matter, honey?’ Jane said: ‘I’ve got a double dose of syph and the old clap-clap, all courtesy of that great comic, my husband, Bobby Baxter—and if you don’t want the same, I suggest you get the hell out of there.’ And she hung up.”
Mrs. Cooper was amused, though not very; puzzled, rather.
“How can any woman tolerate that? I’d divorce him.”
“Of course you would. But then, you’ve got the two things Jane hasn’t.”
“Ah? ”
“One: dough. And two: identity.”
LADY INA WAS ORDERING ANOTHER bottle of Cristal. “Why not?” she asked, defiantly replying to my concerned expression. “Easy up, Jonesy. You won’t have to carry me piggyback. I just feel like it: shattering the day into golden pieces.” Now, I thought, she’s going to tell me what she wants, but doesn’t want to tell me. But no, not yet. Instead: “Would you care to hear a truly vile story? Really vomitous? Then look to your left. That sow sitting next to Betsy Whitney.”
She was somewhat porcine, a swollen muscular baby with a freckled Bahamas-burnt face and squinty-mean eyes; she looked as if she wore tweed brassieres and played a lot of golf.
“The governor’s wife?”
“The governor’s wife,” said Ina, nodding as she gazed with melancholy contempt at the homely beast, legal spouse of a former New York governor. “Believe it or not, but one of the most attractive guys who ever filled a pair of trousers used to get a hard-on every time he looked at that bull dyke. Sidney Dillon—” the name, pronounced by Ina, was a caressing hiss.
To be sure. Sidney Dillon. Conglomateur, adviser to Presidents, an old flame of Kate McCloud’s. I remember once picking up a copy of what was, after the Bible and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Kate’s favorite
