An Inconvenient Woman (51 page)

“Oh, Kippie, don’t treat me like a fool. That was afterwards. He bit off your finger the next day here at Clouds.”

“But only you know that,
Mère
, and you just forgot it,” said Kippie.

There was a silence, as she realized her son had just said to her the same line her husband had once said. “Good-bye, Kippie,” she said. “Don’t come home. Not now. Not ever. I’m going to hang up now. I have a great deal to do.”

“Mom, please. Please, Mom,” cried Kippie.

But Pauline had hung up. She opened her bag and took out Hector’s note. Then she picked up a package of matches from an ashtray and lit one. Holding the note in the fireplace, she lit the piece of paper and watched it burn until she had to
drop the scorched end. Then she walked over to a sofa and lay on it, facedown. She hugged a pillow to her, as first the tears came and then the sobs, great heaving, uncontrollable sobs. When Sims Lord, Miss Maple, and Dudley returned to the library to continue with the plans for the funeral, they were touched that grief for Jules’s death had finally penetrated the stoic calm of Pauline Mendelson.

“Jules is dead,” said Camilla, when she hung up the telephone.

“When?” asked Philip.

“Last night, apparently.”

“How come it’s not on the news?”

“Look, Philip. It’s a secret. No one knows. Pauline doesn’t want anyone to know until after the service.”

“When’s the service?”

“At four.”

Philip nodded. “Do you know something, Camilla?”

“What?”

“I think he died last night when we were there at dinner.”

“Don’t be silly, Philip.”

“Do you remember when Pauline got up from the table and was gone for so long? I think that’s when he died.”

“That couldn’t be. She came back.”

“Pauline’s a cool customer.”

Nothing remains a total secret, no matter how well planned the strategy is for maintaining total secrecy. In the ambulance that removed the body of Jules Mendelson to the Pierce Brothers Mortuary for its subsequent cremation was the same attendant, Faustino, who had been in the ambulance that removed Hector Paradiso’s body to another mortuary ten months earlier, and who had reported the fact of that death to Joel Zircon, the Hollywood agent, who had been drinking and cruising at Miss Garbo’s the same time as Hector Paradiso the evening before.

Jules Mendelson’s death, like the death of all rich and famous people, fascinated Joel Zircon, and he pressed Faustino for each and every detail to pass on to Cyril Rathbone and his other friends. He especially delighted in Faustino’s story of carrying the famous financier’s body down the winding stairway and hitting his shoulder against a painting of
water lilies and knocking it askew, much to the consternation of the widow, Pauline Mendelson, who had screamed, “Be careful!” Faustino felt sure her concern was more for the picture of the water lilies than for his bruised shoulder, or the body he was carrying.

At breakfast the next morning at the Viceroy Coffee Shop on Sunset Boulevard, Joel Zircon had Curly, the manager, in hysterics, doing an imitation of Pauline Mendelson screaming over her painting almost falling off the wall, as Faustino carried the stretcher with Jules Mendelson down the winding stairway, on its way to the Pierce Brothers Mortuary. “She’s a regular Harriet Craig, that one,” said Joel about Pauline.

Pooky, the hairdresser, wondered at the hilarity at the counter between Joel Zircon and Curly, and the story was repeated to him. He could only think of Flo, whose hair he had done the previous day for her lunch party, and he wondered if she knew. Cyril Rathbone, who never spoke to anyone until he’d had his third cup of coffee, sat at his booth reading the Hollywood trade papers, and asked, irritably, what the big joke was at the counter, and couldn’t they hold down the noise,
puleeze
, as some people wanted to read their papers, and then Joel went through his story for the third time, adding embellishments to his portrait of Pauline Mendelson with each retelling.

Cyril Rathbone rushed to the pay telephone near the men’s room and called Lucia Borsodi, the editor of
Mulholland
, waking her up, and told her the latest development in the Mendelson saga. Lucia knew a story when she heard it. “Get a photographer,” she said to Cyril. “Let’s see if we can get a picture of Flo March being turned away at the gates of Clouds.”

When Pooky called to tell Flo the sad news, she had already heard it from Olaf Pederson the night before. What she didn’t know was where they had taken Jules’s body, and Pooky told her he was at Pierce Brothers Mortuary in Westwood. Flo knew that Pauline would never allow her to see Jules, so she decided to go to the mortuary and ask to look at him once more. Jules had come through on all his promises to take care of her, and she had the papers in her possession to prove that.

“Do you think they’d let me in, Pooky?” she asked.

“Act like you belong. Act like a society lady. They’ll let you in. It’s too early for them to call the house and check.”

It was as she was leaving her house twenty minutes later, dressed in a black Chanel suit, and carrying the centerpiece of tulips from Holland that Petra von Kant had arranged for her final lunch with Jules, that the telephone rang again. It was Cyril Rathbone.

“I’m very much afraid that I am the bearer of sad news, Miss March,” he said. His florid English voice was very dour, as he prepared to tell her of the death of her lover. His pencil and paper were propped to record her reaction.

“I already know what you’re going to tell me, Mr. Rathbone,” said Flo.

“Oh?” He was distressed not to be the first to have reached her with the sad news, and he wondered how many other people knew. “Who told you?” he asked.

Flo did not reply.

“I wondered if I could stop by, to tell you personally how very sorry I am,” he said. “I feel a very special interest because of having been in your house at the time of the heart attack last month.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rathbone,” said Flo. “I’m on my way out.”

“To Clouds?” he asked, excitedly. “Are you going up to Clouds?”

“No, Mr. Rathbone.”

“I could make you famous, Miss March.”

“I don’t want to be famous, Mr. Rathbone.”

“Just one shot for my magazine. You at the gates of Clouds, waiting for news. Just one shot. It would flash around the world.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Rathbone.”

Flo hung up the telephone.

Cyril, rebuffed, wondered where she could be going at that hour of the morning, still before eight. On an off chance, he called the photographer that Lucia Borsodi had assigned to him for the day and asked him to “rush, rush, rush,” to the Pierce Brothers Mortuary in Westwood. “Out Wilshire. Turn left at the AVCO Theater,” he said impatiently, when the photographer said he didn’t know where the Pierce Brothers Mortuary was. “They did Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Peter Lawford, the Zanucks,
everybody
,” said Cyril. He could not abide people who had no understanding of the things that he considered to be important.

“Did? Did what?” asked the photographer.

“Laid out. Embalmed, idiot,” said Cyril. “Get over there quick.”

“You want me to photograph a dead body?”

“No. I only want a picture of a beautiful red-haired woman, about thirty, who will probably be wearing a Chanel suit, either going into or coming out of the mortuary.”

The private and unannounced funeral service for Jules Mendelson at All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills was in great contrast to the elaborate service that had been held for Hector Paradiso at the Good Shepherd Catholic Church, only two blocks to the west on Santa Monica Boulevard, which had been attended by the social and power elite of the city. Outside on Camden Drive there were no limousines that might attract the attention of the curious. Jim, the Mendelson chauffeur, dropped off the heavily veiled Pauline Mendelson five minutes before the scheduled time, at a side entrance. She ran into the church, looking neither left nor right. There were no flower arrangements and there was no music. The service was attended only by members of the household and office staff who had been in the Mendelson employ for over ten years, as well as Miss Maple, Jules’s secretary, Willi Torres, Jules’s barber, and Sims Lord, Jules’s lawyer and closest adviser. The only outsider present was Camilla Ebury, who was Pauline’s great friend. Rose Cliveden, who could not bear to be left out of anything, felt certain that Pauline meant to invite her and had forgotten to in all the haste, so she arrived uninvited and knelt unobtrusively in the last pew of the near-empty church. She bowed her head in prayer, as the Reverend Doctor Rufus Browning read the prayers.

“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

While her head was bowed, a second uninvited figure quietly entered the church. It was Flo March, who had heard at the funeral home that there was to be a religious service at the same time that her lover’s body was being cremated. Flo meant only to drop in to say a prayer and then leave before she was seen. She had never been in an Episcopal church before, and was unsure of how different the rituals were from those of the Catholic Church. She hastily genuflected in the Catholic manner that she had learned in her parochial school as a child and made the sign of the cross, touching her forehead,
her breast, her left shoulder, and then her right, whispering as she did so, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” She rose from her genuflection and entered the last pew. It shocked her that the church was so empty. She found it inappropriate that there would be fewer than a dozen people huddled together in the first few rows for the funeral service of such a famous man. It amazed her that there were no flowers on the altar, no music playing. She looked behind her up at the choir loft. It was in darkness. The organ was closed and covered. She listened as the minister read prayers from his prayerbook.

“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.”

All her life Flo had whispered her prayers, and it was her whispering that disturbed the Protestant worship of Rose Cliveden, kneeling in the last pew opposite hers. Although Rose was uninvited herself, she knew that she was at least a friend of the family and would be more welcome at such a private occasion than would the strange woman across the aisle from her, whom she took to be a reporter. Rose cleared her throat in a loud and theatrical way that was meant to attract the attention of the mourners in the front rows and to warn them that there was an impostor in their midst. No one turned. She got up from her seat and walked up the aisle.

Pauline sat alone in the front row. Her back remained ramrod straight, while the others leaned forward to pray. Her face was covered by the black veil her couturier had sent from Paris, along with the black dress she was wearing. Behind her sat Camilla and Blondell. Next to Blondell was Dudley, and then Sims Lord. Rose leaned in and said in a loud whisper to Camilla, “Tell Pauline that there’s a reporter in the back of the church.”

Rose’s whisper carried, and was heard by Miss Maple, seated behind Camilla, who turned back to look. At just that moment, Flo raised her head from her prayer and saw that several faces in the front pews were looking back at her. Miss Maple leaned across Blondell and tapped Sims Lord on the shoulder. Sims looked up from his prayer.

“Flo March is in the rear of the church,” whispered Miss Maple.

“Shit,” said Sims, under his breath.

He too turned back to look at Flo. Recognizing her, he
leaned forward and whispered to Pauline about the interloper, “It’s that Flo March,” as if he hardly knew her.

For Pauline Mendelson, the presence of Flo March at her husband’s funeral was more than she could stand. The composure that had been so much a part of her demeanor during the months of Jules’s illness abandoned her at the news that Flo March was in the church at the private service, planned in secret, so that exactly what was happening would not happen. Enraged, she rose from her seat and turned to look back at Flo. Seeing her, meeting her gaze, she brought her hand up to her veiled face, aghast at the woman’s brazen behavior. The de Lamballe diamond on her engagement finger picked up the light from the rays of the afternoon sun that filtered through the stained-glass rose window above her.

“No, no. Sit down, Pauline. I’ll get rid of her,” whispered Sims, standing up.

Pauline disregarded Sims Lord’s offer. She left her seat and walked past him down the aisle to the rear of the church with purposeful strides. The heels of her shoes echoed her anger throughout the apse. Only Dr. Browning’s prayer continued as if nothing were amiss.

“Grant to all who mourn a sure confidence in thy fatherly care, that, casting all their grief on thee, they may know the consolation of thy love. Amen.”

The attention of the household servants and the employees of the office was diverted from the prayers for the dead to the more fascinating drama that was being played in front of them.

“How dare you come in here?” asked Pauline. “This is a private service.”

Flo, terrified, looked at Pauline. She could not make out her face through the black veil.

“I want you to leave this church
immediately
.” Her voice had risen to a scream.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Mrs. Mendelson. I didn’t know this was private,” said Flo. “I really didn’t. They told me at Pierce Brothers that there was a service here. I just wanted to say a prayer.”

“
Get out
!” screamed Pauline.

No one who knew Pauline Mendelson had ever seen her behave in such a manner. Camilla rushed down the aisle after her and placed her hand gently on her back.

“Darling, Pauline. Come back so Rufus can finish the service,” she said. The prayers from the altar continued.

“Give courage and faith to those who are bereaved, that they may have the strength to meet the days ahead in the comfort of a reasonable and holy hope, in the joyful expectation of eternal life with those they love. Amen.”