Approaching the home, Judith felt a pulse of affection for Desiree, her alter ego. Tonight, Desiree was dressed like a white woman, to counter any possible problem in the restaurant. Though America’s capital was not officially segregated, Washington still found ways to be less than evenhanded toward its blacks. This took the shape of poor service, sideways glances, arms-length engagement. Judith wore heels, a slimming charcoal jacket and matching skirt, and her hair in a tight French twist. This evening needed to go smoothly.
Annette came to the door dressed more humbly, in a plain olive frock and flats. She seemed self-conscious until Judith swept the old maid down the steps with assurances of her beauty. Judith chided herself that she’d overshot the mark in her dress, drawing needless attention and comparison.
“I’ve got us a table at a nice restaurant, just three blocks from here,” she said, switching the conversation.
“Merci.”
Judith strolled at the big woman’s pace. Annette laid out the duties she served for her madame: She was dresser, cook, housekeeper, and confidante. She’d been with her lady for twenty-five years, since the first days of her marriage. The monsieur had died one year ago next week. He was many years older than the madame. “And you, Desiree?”
“Me, I’m just a housekeeper right now. And I serve at table sometimes. But I can do anything. I can cook French, Italian, Middle Eastern, anything. I can sew and write invitations. I can garden, too.”
Annette smiled her approval. “You say your madame is crazy. She must be, to use you so little. Eh?”
The two giggled. Judith did not want to hurt this cheerful woman.
At the restaurant, the waiter took their coats and seated them. Annette ogled the fancy interior and clientele.
“I’m buying,” Judith said. “It was my birthday last week and my mama sent me some money to have a nice meal out. And that’s what I’m having. With you.”
She asked Annette to select a wine. When they were settled and the entrees ordered, Judith asked, “Who is your madame?”
Annette sipped from her glass. “Mrs. Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd.” With no reason between them to defend her employer, she added, “She is a very fine woman.”
“I’m sure. What does she do?”
Annette shrugged, confused by the question. “She is a widow. I suppose she travels. She tends to her properties. Do?” The woman chuckled. “What does your madame do?”
“Cries half the day, hoots like a barn owl the rest of the time. Like my old daddy used to say, I can’t tell if she’s going south or bowling.”
Again, Annette seemed confounded, but her good nature made her enjoy the odd idiom. Judith poured more wine.
“Annette, who was that picked up your lady?”
The Frenchwoman shook her head. “That I cannot say, chère. How do you know this?”
“I was so excited about having dinner with you tonight I got there a little early. I saw a big black car pull up and she got in. The fellow that opened the door for her looked like some kind of bodyguard.”
Annette squinted over her wineglass. “And so he is. But I cannot say for whom. It is a most powerful man.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t tell anybody. We’re friends. And you ought to be happy for her, seeing somebody new so soon after her husband died. Must be a load off poor Mrs. Rutherfurd’s heart.”
“It is, it is. They are old friends, she and this man. But I cannot say. It is a big American secret.”
Judith held her wineglass below her lips, pretending to think hard. She set the glass down, swilling wine over the lip onto the white tablecloth.
“Oh, my stars. Is your lady dating somebody in the government?”
Annette shrugged. Judith saw how the old Frenchwoman wanted to hold back the secret, but also how she would enjoy the credit that revealing it would bestow on her with young, admiring Desiree.
“A senator?”
“Desiree, you must stop. I cannot say.”
“Not the President?”
“Shhh.”
Judith borrowed a phrase from Mrs. P. “No she is not!”
Annette worked her hands at Judith as if shooing bees away, still shushing her.
“The President? I knew it. That was the Secret Service picked her up.”
“Desiree, lower your voice.” The old woman flattened both palms on the cloth and looked to see who might be listening. “She is not dating the President.”
“She is too.”
“The President is a married man. Mrs. Rutherfurd is a proper widow.” Annette wagged a finger. “The two have known each other for thirty years. That is all.”
Judith sat back in her seat. “Oh, my stars.” Then she leaned forward, to lap her hand over Annette’s meaty arm. “Girrrl,” she clucked, then sat back again, grinning. She topped off Annette’s wineglass in a show of admiration.
Judith waited moments to let Annette’s mood bubble up. The old maid had let the secret slip and had to recover. Judith aided her with a hand over her heart.
“Swear to God, Annette, I will never breathe this to a soul. I swear. But, it is so exciting.”
This helped the Frenchwoman smile again, and to play the classic role of veteran and complaining servant.
“It is more trouble than you might think.” She sighed dramatically. “Believe me.”
“Do you ever get to meet him?”
“Yes, several times. But of course only most briefly.”
“Have you cooked for him?”
“Oui.”
Judith leaned across the table to confide, “Oh, I would kill to cook for him.”
Their own meals arrived then. Judith ate mussels; Annette had ordered a chop. Judith called for another bottle of wine. She pressed Annette for details of her mistress’s relationship with the President of the United States. The old maid sighed, hemmed and hawed. Judith drew out the tale with patience and well-timed gasps.
In 1914, while Franklin Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the Navy, his wife Eleanor had hired a social secretary to help keep up with the many obligations required of a rising young political star. At the suggestion of her uncle Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor hired Lucy Mercer, a girl from a formerly good Washington family whose father had fallen out of grace through alcoholism.
“Mrs. Rutherfurd has always been a lady to her fingertips,” Annette added, “even when she was twenty-three.”
Young Franklin Roosevelt saw this, as well, and was sufficiently moved by it to begin a romance with Lucy, despite his marriage and five children. Eleanor was kept in the dark. Franklin and Lucy attended parties together and dined in public during Eleanor’s absences from the city.
“Eleanor Roosevelt is a marvelous woman,” Annette was careful to add. “She is a leading light for women everywhere.”
Three years later, in 1917, with the war on and Washington’s social life curtailed, Lucy’s work for Eleanor lessened and she was dismissed by Eleanor. That summer, Lucy enlisted in the Navy as a female yeoman and was assigned to secretarial duties in the Navy Department that kept her near Franklin. The affair between the two blossomed. Gossips in Washington wagged tongues, but Eleanor refused to listen, believing it was below her station to do so.
In the summer of 1918, Roosevelt traveled abroad to inspect naval facilities. In September, he returned to New York, sailing on the ship Leviathan. Eleanor met the boat at the quay, in time to see her husband carried ashore, incapacitated on a stretcher. The diagnosis was double pneumonia; several sailors on the Leviathan had already died at sea from the disease.
At their Manhattan home, Eleanor unpacked her sick husband’s luggage for him. In it, she discovered a ribbon-wrapped packet of letters from Lucy Mercer.
The affair was in the open at last. It was then closed down as quickly as it had come to light.
“Mrs. Rutherfurd believes,” Annette said, downing more wine, “it was the President’s mother who stepped in and sorted this out. Eleanor wanted a divorce, but the grande dame who controlled h
er son’s money said non.”
Sara Roosevelt would not give Franklin another cent, and he would not inherit the family home in Hyde Park, if he divorced Eleanor. The old woman feared for her son’s political career, at a time when divorce was social suicide. Besides, Lucy was Catholic. Marrying a divorced man presented a huge obstacle for her faith, as well as for mother Sara’s staunch Protestantism. The whole episode was written off as a disgrace, but a private and contained one. Both Franklin and Lucy promised never to see each other again.
With his love affair over, his marriage altered, and the Great War done, Roosevelt was ready for a change. He ran on the Democratic ticket as vice president alongside James Cox in the 1920 election, the first ballot in America to allow women voters. The Democrats lost, and Franklin returned to the private sector.
Lucy, too, altered her life. In 1920, the twenty-eight-year-old accepted the hand of a wealthy fifty-eight-year-old widower, Winthrop Rutherfurd, who’d hired her as governess to his five children, none of them out of their teens, after the passing of his wife three years before. Over the next twenty-four years, she cared for Winty and family on his estates in New Jersey and South Carolina. She bore him one more child, a daughter, Barbara.
In 1921, while on vacation in Canada, Roosevelt, at thirty-nine years of age, was stricken with polio. For the next seven years, he concentrated on rehabilitation, seeking water treatments at Cape Cod and in a little town in Georgia, Warm Springs. By 1928, he’d strengthened his arms and back enough to swing in and out of a wheelchair and walk with the aid of leg braces and a cane. That year he was elected governor of the state of New York. Four years later, he was President.
“Mrs. Rutherfurd saw every one of his inaugurations,” Annette declared with pride, “from a car with the Secret Service. But she was there, always.”
The two who had vowed never to see each other again kept their promise for three decades, although they had not pledged to stop writing or speaking on the phone. Sometimes they would chat in French to keep White House operators from listening in. With the passing of grande dame Sara in the autumn of 1941, “and the pressures the President had been under for so long,” explained Annette, the old friends renewed their acquaintance in person. Soon after Franklin’s mother’s funeral, Lucy traveled to bring her ill husband Winty to Washington, D.C., to Walter Reed Hospital for treatment of a stroke. While in Washington, she and Franklin laid eyes on each other for the first time in almost a quarter century. Thereafter, whenever Lucy was in Washington, she came to the White House for dinners, or the President called for her at sister Violetta’s house. After Winty died in March of 1944, at age eighty-two, Lucy not only increased her visits to the White House, but also saw Roosevelt at Hyde Park and at the Little White House in Georgia. The President began to divert his train to pay Lucy house calls at her estates in New Jersey and at her home in Aiken, South Carolina.
“That is why Mrs. Rutherfurd has come to Washington. To visit with the President.” Annette wagged a finger. “And shame on anyone who says different. She is a lady,” the loyal old maid repeated, “down to her fingertips.”
Judith set down her fork, done with her mussels. Annette had hardly touched her pork chop. She’d talked nonstop for a half hour; once the secret parted the woman’s lips, there seemed no room for anything to flow in the other direction except wine.
Annette saw the cooled chop and lifted her silverware,
”Fini,” she said, waving the knife across her face the way Mrs. P. might have done. “C’est tout ce que je sais.” That is all I know.
Judith watched Annette tuck in. She poured the last of the wine.
”Annette.”
The woman answered around a mouthful. “Oui?”
“Thank you. That’s a terribly romantic story. And like I promised, I won’t tell a soul.”
”I believe you, my dear. The reporters, they already know. But they do not say. With a war on, why make something of it? He is a sad man. Very lonely. And not well. Are we to say he does not deserve an old friend?”
”No. Of course he should see your madame.”
”Bon. The President is a great man.”
Judith let the old maid finish every morsel of the chop, then asked if they would have dessert. Only coffee, Annette answered, patting her belly.
When the waiter had filled the cups, Judith asked, “When do you leave?”
”The madame is visiting at the White House this week. Next week, we will take the train south to Aiken.”
Judith lowered her eyes into her coffee and sipped with contemplation. She went silent, and waited for Annette to notice.
”Desiree, qu’est-ce que c’est?”
”Annette, I know we just met and all. But I have a favor to ask.”
The big woman smiled and cocked her head. Judith leaned past the coffees to put her hands on the maid’s wrists.
”I want to come work for Mrs. Rutherfurd.”
Annette did not pull her arms from under Judith’s hands, but breathed deeply with reluctance.
“Chère, I do not know if this is possible. Madame is a very private person.”
Judith squeezed. Eagerly, she said, “I’ll work for half wages. Just ‘til I can prove myself to you both.”
Judith felt the flesh of Annette, the depth of the other woman’s softness. She quickly calculated how much belladonna it would take to make the woman too sick to work, but not to kill her.
“Annette, I can be a help. I don’t mean offense, but I see how difficult it is for you to get around. Those groceries we carried tuckered you out pretty good. I can do anything you need me to do.” She took her hands from Annette’s arms, satisfied with her assessment.
“I don’t want to go back to New Orleans. And I can’t stay in this city; I hate it here. Please, Annette. Will you talk to your lady for me?”
Annette sat back, shaking her head. “I do not know how I can do this____”
Judith smiled appreciatively. The tablecloth lay bare but for the coffee cups. Judith would wait a moment, then make the scene pleasant and whole with a laugh and an admission that maybe it was too much to ask. She would invite Annette to a good-bye luncheon tomorrow while her lady was at the White House. Or order more coffee tonight and slip the poison from her purse into the maid’s cup. Or help her into her coat with a touch to the neck. Or something.
Annette gazed at Judith. Those eyes would dilate and blur. The heartbeat in her great breast would be audible from several feet away. Her pulse and breathing would triple in rate. She would collapse into fever and convulsions. She would, if Judith were careful, survive. Judging from her weight and age, tissue and color, she would have a lengthy convalescence. She could not travel back to Aiken the day after tomorrow. She would be visited often by her new friend Desiree.
Under Judith’s stare, Annette stirred in her seat.
“You say you will work for half?”
“Absolutely. Just feed me and give me a bed indoors, and I won’t charge her a full wage until she says different. That’s how sure I am she’ll like me.”
Annette sighed, resigned but pleased. “Ah, chère, you are right. I could use the help. I am not so young and lovely as I once was. I will ask the madame. I make no promises. “Will you have a letter of referral from your current employer?”
Judith clapped. At that moment the waiter brought the bill in a leather binder. Judith eagerly snapped it off the tablecloth. Annette inclined her head in gratitude.
“She came home just today. I’ll see her first thing in the morning and ask her to write me one up.”
On the walk back to Q Street, Annette told her to come tomorrow at four o’clock.
“If the madame agrees, you must be ready to leave with us next week. Can you do that?”
“I’m ready right now.”
At the front door of the brownstone, Annette set a hand to Judith’s shoulder. “You know, we are going to South Carolina. It is segregated. Here, this city is not. You have left that behind
once in New Orleans. Are you sure you want to go back to it? I must suppose it is hard to live that way.”
Judith kissed the old maid on the cheek. “You know why I’m good at what I do, Miss Annette?”
The woman’s eyes crinkled at the proud question. “Tell me, chère.”
“Because no matter what happens, I know my place.”
She spun on her heels and skipped into the darkness.
* * * *
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
March 14
Fort Myer
Arlington, Virginia
The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01] Page 30
