Carriage Trade (24 page)

A sister of Miss Wandrous, Mrs. Helen McCullough of South Braintree, was contacted by police. “Somebody had to have done this to her,” Mrs. McCullough asserted. “She would never have committed suicide. She was a happy, healthy, beautiful girl, whose life was full of hope and promise.”

Funeral arrangements will be made in South Braintree.

She flips through more editions of the paper, to see if there are any follow-up stories. She finds only one. It appeared two days later, buried in a back section of the paper:

AUTOPSY REVEALS MODEL WHO PLUNGED TO DEATH AT THE RITZ WAS PREGNANT

The Suffolk County Coroner's Office revealed that in an autopsy performed on the body of Christine Wandrous, 19, the part-time model and actress who plunged to her death from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Wednesday evening, it was discovered that the young woman was pregnant. Assistant Coroner James J. Bailey said that Miss Wandrous appeared to be in the second trimester of her pregnancy. The sex of the fetus was undetermined.

A sister of Miss Wandrous, Mrs. Helen McCullough of South Braintree, told the Globe, “I had no idea that Christine was pregnant. But I'd noticed that she'd been terribly nervous and despondent in recent months. I could tell that something was deeply troubling her, and weighing on her mind. She would suddenly burst into tears for no apparent reason. I assumed it had something to do with her inability to find work.”

Occupants of the hotel rooms and suites situated directly along Miss Wandrous's line of fall expressed no knowledge of the young woman, leading police to speculate that she may have jumped from the roof. But how she could have reached the hotel's roof is unclear, since access is possible only through the use of a specially magnetized key-card, supplied only to members of the hotel's maintenance staff.

A police investigation continues, with an interrogation of all hotel employees.

Well, a police investigation may have continued, but there is nothing about it in subsequent issues of the newspaper; Miranda runs the film through the next several weeks to be sure. The whole story seems to have been dropped.

Several things strike Miranda as odd about the story. First is the girl's last name, Wandrous—like Gloria Wandrous in
BUtterfield 8
, whose party-girl career ends with her fall into the paddle wheel of a ferryboat. Was Gloria Wandrous pregnant too? Miranda can't remember. Then she thinks of the phrase “jumped or was pushed.” If Christine Wandrous managed to enter an unoccupied hotel room and jump out, she would have left behind her an open window. If she had been pushed by a guest of the hotel, would the murderer have left the window open? No, he would have closed it, to make it appear she had fallen from the roof. Neither of the stories mentioned an open window, which would have been the first thing the police looked for.

But oddest of all is the way Mrs. Helen McCullough's description of her sister changed over the course of two days. First, Christine Wandrous is a happy, healthy, beautiful girl whose life is filled with hope and promise. Two days later, she is despondent, deeply troubled, bursting into unexplained crying jags at the drop of a hat: unemployed, pregnant out of wedlock, suicidal. At least Miranda's father appears to have nothing to do with the tragedy, beyond the coincidence that he happened to be in Boston and staying at the Ritz-Carlton when it occurred.

Deciding that she has been pursuing a red herring, Miranda rewinds the tape and snaps off the machine.

Now, in the back seat of the Rolls with Billings at the wheel, Miranda is being driven out to Old Westbury. Beside her on the seat, as well as on the floor and in the front seat beside Billings, are packed cartons. Still more are in the car's trunk. Each carton is labeled as to its contents. She is still thinking of her mother's words that night: “I'm talking about June nineteen-seventy! … I'm talking about Boston and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel!”

And her father's reply: “Moe Minskoff worked that one out for me.”

But her afternoon in the library has provided no clues as to what it all means.

Then, suddenly, she remembers the letter that fell out of her father's date book. She opens her purse, reaches for the letter, and shakes it out of its envelope.

It is a very short letter, typewritten on a single sheet of plain white notepaper without a letterhead, and it has the look of having been typed in great haste. She reads:

My darling—

Our long talk this morning has made this the happiest day of my life. This is my promise to you: We'll leave that horrible old, boring, nagging
hag
behind—forever—and let me become the kind of
new
wife you've always deserved, one who loves you beyond measure, and then all the heartache I have endured for these past years—loving you unbearably, but knowing that I could not have you,
all of you, all to myself
, as I have so longed to do, my dearest—seems worthwhile. I have made our reservations at the Princess, and Bermuda should be lovely at this time of year. I am walking on air, hardly able to wait until Saturday, when I will be
all yours
, and you at last will be
all mine
.

The letter is signed,
With all my love, the soon-to-be new Mrs. Silas Tarkington
.

She is stunned. She feels as though she has been dealt a blow to the center of her stomach. She reads the letter once more, her hands shaking. She looks at the postmark. It was mailed in Manhattan. Then, all at once, she recognizes something else. She presses her nose into the fold of the letter, and there it is, unmistakably: the scent of Equipage. This is the letter Tommy told her about. Everything he told her was true.

Her temples are pounding, her breath feels short, and she feels almost physically nauseated. On the day he died, her father was planning to leave her mother and the family he professed to care so much about and not only run off with Smitty to Bermuda—of all the cliché places—but also to marry her.
Oh, Daddy, Daddy
, she thinks,
how could you have wanted to do such a thing to us?
She tears the letter into tiny shreds, rolls down the window, and scatters the pieces into the wind from the speeding car.

Billings, glancing at her in his rearview mirror, senses that something is wrong. “Are you all right, ma'am?” he asks her.

“Yes, I'm fine.”

Her next reaction is rage—total, absolute, and unadulterated fury—not so much at Smitty as at her father. What had happened to her gutsy father? How could he have allowed himself to be reduced to such a state of groveling servitude, to have become so
besotted
with this woman, to use Tommy's word? How could he allow this woman—or any woman, for that matter—to get him to promise to give
all of himself
to her? How could he allow this woman—any woman—to speak of her beautiful mother, his wife for almost thirty years, in such a trashily bitchy way? Had Smitty managed to castrate him? Had he become suddenly senile? This was not the father she knew at all! All at once her father the man has become her father the wimp. All at once she has nothing but contempt for him. If this was the way he planned to treat his family, Miranda is almost happy that he is dead.

Her next wave of feelings are of total confusion and disorientation, as Miranda asks herself how she can ever face her mother again, how she can ever look her mother straight in the eye again, without having to tell her mother the truth.

Unless, of course, her mother already knows.

Her mother greets her in the entrance hall with a little kiss. She is looking lovely, as always, relaxed from her massage and rested from her nap, wearing a long hostess gown of pale blue chiffon, belted with three silver chains that tinkle as she moves. Billings is taking the car around to the garage, where the cartons of her father's things are to be stored temporarily. “Darling, come into the drawing room and meet our other dinner guests,” her mother says. Miranda was hoping to have a serious discussion with her mother tonight, without anger or recriminations, but apparently this is not to be. Some sort of party is going on.

“Do I need to change?” she whispers.

“Darling, you look perfect,” her mother says.

They enter the drawing room together, and two young men, both in black tie, rise from their chairs. One is fair, the other dark. One looks familiar, the other does not. “Darling, you remember Mr. David Hockaday from the Metropolitan Museum,” her mother says. “And this is Mr. Peter Turner, who is interested in writing a book about your father. Is it a book? Something, anyway. Mr. Turner, this is my daughter, Miranda.”

She shakes hands with the two young men. “Though we've never met, I feel I know you, Miss Tarkington,” the darker of the two says. “I saw you once when you came down to visit your brother at Yale. Blazer and I were both in Calhoun.”

“Oh, yes … I remember now. It was in the fall of Blazer's sophomore year. Mother and I had driven up from New York. You were standing in the quad.”

“You really remember that?”

“Certainly. You were wearing a red shirt.”

“You know something—I think I
was
!”

“Mr. Hockaday has come to look at your father's art collection,” her mother says. “I thought that made sense, since most of it is here, scattered about the house. The only important piece in this room is the Gauguin over the fireplace.”

Mr. Hockaday's eyes travel to the Gauguin, and he steps closer to it. “I hadn't noticed it,” he says. “Forgive me.”

“I understand it's an early piece, before Gauguin went to Tahiti,” Connie says.

Milliken appears to take drink orders and then to pass hors d'oeuvres.

“Tell me how your husband assembled his collection, Mrs. Tarkington,” Mr. Hockaday says. “Did he work through any particular dealers?”

“Oh, no,” Connie says. “He didn't trust dealers. He read in a book somewhere that people like Duveen often got Bernard Berenson to falsify the authorship and provenance of paintings in order to make sales.”

“That's true,” he says. “Did he buy from galleries and auction houses, then—Sotheby's, Christie's?”

“Never. He didn't trust the auction houses either. He bought only from private collectors.”

“He didn't want there to be any publicity about what he bought,” Miranda says. “That was another reason why he never went to auctions.”

“But I assume he did turn to one or more art experts before making his purchases,” Mr. Hockaday says.

“Well, in recent years he often consulted with Diana Smith—the woman mentioned in his will—before making an acquisition.”

“But you say she is not an art historian.”

“No, but he admired Smitty's—taste. And before that he used to consult with Tommy Bonham.”

“An art historian?”

“No. Tommy was—well, I believe he was a drama major in college.”

“I see,” he says. “Very interesting.”

“And even before Tommy—you see, my husband began his collection long before he and I ever met—he often made purchases through his friend Moses Minskoff. But always from private collectors.”

“Ah,” David Hockaday says. “Moses Minskoff. The name rings a definite bell. A European, isn't he? Based in Paris? An expert on the Fauvists?”

“No,” Miranda's mother says. “I think you must be thinking of someone else. This Moses Minskoff is—” She turns to her daughter. “How would you describe Moe Minskoff, Miranda?” she asks.

“Moe Minskoff is a financial person,” Miranda says.

“I see,” he says. “Very interesting. I look forward to seeing the full collection.”

“You will, after dinner,” her mother says.

“I take it that you yourself have very little interest in art, Mrs. Tarkington.”

She laughs her tinkly laugh. “None at all, I'm afraid, though I think some of the paintings are awfully pretty. My favorite is the Monet water lilies, which is in the New York apartment. No, my interests are gardening and music. My late husband's art collecting was something he did strictly on his own. It was his principal hobby, and I stayed out of it completely.”

Milliken appears at the doorway. “Dinner is served, ma'am,” he says.

During dinner, Miranda's mother keeps the conversation bright and lively with her usual skill, shifting her attention back and forth between her two male guests. “We must all try to remember our favorite stories about your father,” she says to Miranda. “To help Mr. Turner with the story he's writing. Oh, I remember one: Doris Duke and her dogs. There's a rule about dogs in the store—I think it's a city ordinance, in fact. And one day several years ago my husband happened to see this woman strolling through the store with two borzois on a double leash. My husband was about to speak to her, when suddenly Jimmy, the doorman, came running up behind him and whispered, ‘Mr. Si, that's
Doris Duke
!
'
Isn't that funny? Jimmy the doorman recognized Doris Duke, and my husband didn't. He'd been about to ask Miss Duke to leave the store. He often told that story on himself, so you see he had a sense of humor.… What else, Miranda?”

“Well, when I was nine years old, he persuaded American Airlines to let me pilot a seven-twenty-seven between New York and Washington.”

“Miranda, Mr. Turner wants to hear stories about how your father ran the
store
—not stories about airplanes!”

“Well, there was one client in Florida who used to keep dresses for months and months and then return them for credit.” She eyes her mother. “Is that a suitable story?”

“Mrs. Curtis LeMosney?” Peter Turner says.

“Yes. She's dead now, so you can use her name if you want to. Once it got into the papers, and my husband was terribly embarrassed. It happened dozens and dozens of times. We always knew the clothes had been worn. She'd return them with wine stains, lipstick—”

“But she always was given credit.”