Murder Under the Palms

by Stefanie Matteson

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a rap on the door. It was room service with the Manhattan she had ordered a few minutes before. Drink in hand, she sat down, put her feet up, and indulged herself in the memories that the vision of the dress evoked. It had happened in the Grand Salon, the first night out. Eddie had been noodling on the piano in between sets. A mutual acquaintance had introduced them. Charlotte and the acquaintance had been standing beside the piano, waiting for Eddie to finish. Then he had gotten up and turned around to meet her. The acquaintance later said it was the only time in his life that he’d ever seen two people fall in love right before his eyes. If he’d filmed the event, he joked, he could have sold the footage to colleges for use in their behavioral science classes. Later, she and Eddie had danced. Oh, how they had danced! On that wonderful parquet dance floor, the pattern of which was an exact replica of the one on the floor in the Fontainebleau throne room. Eddie was a wonderful dancer. Afterward they had walked on the covered promenade, talking. When the orchestra had stopped playing in the Grand Salon, they had gone to the circular Café-Grill at the stern of the ship and danced to the music of a French tango orchestra. That was the night they’d had the unforgettable thrill of watching the sun rise over the sea through the curving wall of bay windows surrounding the room. Eddie had played “Just One of Those Things” on the baby grand piano.

  After that there had been three more wonderful days—and nights. And that had been it: four days in a lifetime. An isolated piece of time, an isolated piece of space. The elegant surroundings, the gourmet food, the threat of war. She had often wondered if it would have been different had they met somewhere else.

  Her reverie was interrupted by a telephone call. It was the front desk calling to tell her that a courier would be dropping something off at her room.

  When she peered through her peephole a moment later, she could hardly believe her eyes. It was a pageboy from the Normandie—or rather, a catering company employee posing as a pageboy from the Normandie—dressed in the same scarlet livery with the same polished brass buttons and the same jaunty little scarlet pillbox cap with the chin strap.

  It was as if she’d pressed a button on a time machine. They had been everywhere on board the Normandie, these quick-footed servants, always on hand to meet the passengers’ every need and request.

  For a moment she just stood there in surprise. Then she opened the door. With a white-gloved hand, the page handed her that evening’s dinner menu, along with a card showing the table seating and a copy of the ship’s daily newspaper, L’Atlantique. Just so had the pageboys on board the Normandie delivered the same information to the passengers fifty-three years ago.

  “Courtesy of Mrs. Harley T. Collins of Villa Normandie,” he said as he saluted sharply. Then he spun on his heel to leave, but not before Charlotte had tipped him generously.

  She looked at the seating card first. She would be sitting at the captain’s table. Then she opened the card to see who the other guests at her table would be. They were Mrs. Harley T. Collins; Admiral John W. McLean III (USN, retired), whom she supposed to be the “captain”; Mr. and Mrs. Spalding L. Smith; Mr. Paul Feder; Ms. Marianne Montgomery; Ms. Diana Montgomery; a couple she didn’t know; and, at the bottom of the list, just below her own name, Mr. Edward Norwood. No Mrs. Norwood was listed.

  Taking a deep breath, Charlotte went back to her chair and picked up her drink and the copy of L’Atlantique. The headline was “100th Crossing of Normandie.” The front page featured a story on the crossing, along with photographs of the ship. The middle two pages were taken up by a photo layout of celebrities who had sailed on the ship in the one hundred crossings since its maiden voyage in 1935. They were displayed according to category: stage, screen, society, sports, diplomatic service, and so on. The back page listed all the records that had been broken by the Normandie, including 572,519 bottles of wine and champagne consumed in one hundred voyages.

  Setting down the paper, she then picked up the menu. The cover was the same as the menu aboard the Normandie: a colorful drawing of fish, poultry, game, fruit, and wine. Seeing it brought back memories of that marvelous dining room, which had been the length of a football field—supposedly the largest single room ever built aboard a ship.

  Inside, the menu was headed:

  SS Normandie

  Diner de Gala

  Samedi 16 Juillet 1938

  The menu was typical of the first-class dining room, with eight courses, ranging from hors d’oeuvres and potages to fromages and pâtisserie.

  “Yes,” she thought, “it’s going to be quite an evening.”

  Spalding and Connie picked her up in front of the Brazilan Court at five-thirty. Marianne would be going with Paul, and Dede would be going on her own. Charlotte was waiting for them as they pulled up in Spalding’s ten-year-old Cadillac. Though he came from wealth, Spalding was a throwback to an earlier, more conservative era of society in a Palm Beach that was rapidly being taken over by junk bond financiers, German industrialists, and fifteen-minute celebrities. It was typical of Spalding’s old-money social stratum that they drove cars until they fell apart. Charlotte was enormously fond of him. He sat now behind the wheel, portly, rubicund, and comfortingly dependable, attired in the same English-tailored tuxedo that he’d been wearing to social events for as long as Charlotte had known him. Finding a thirties-style tuxedo wouldn’t have been a problem for Spalding, since his own was probably of that vintage. Though Connie had been married three times, her marriage to Spalding had lasted now for more than twenty years and seemed as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. In fact, Charlotte suspected that her own subconscious envy of their marriage had been one reason she had married her fourth husband. As with Spalding, Jack Lundstrom’s appeal had been his dependability. But Charlotte should have known that what worked for Connie wouldn’t work for her. Though she and Jack had worked very hard at making a go of it, they’d eventually come to recognize that Charlotte wasn’t cut out to be the wife of a Midwestern businessman—she especially hadn’t been cut out to live in Minneapolis!—and Jack was unsuited to play the part of Mr. Charlotte Graham. After several years of vacillating, they’d parted amicably a couple of years ago.

  After four husbands, Charlotte figured it was time to put the whole “men” issue to rest. It had taken her some time to come to terms with this decision, which is why she was finding the anticipated meeting with Eddie Norwood so disturbing.

  “You look beautiful this evening, Charlotte,” said Spalding politely as the doorman helped her into the back seat. “As always,” he added.

  “Thank you,” she replied. “This is the gown that I wore in The Normandie Affair. I haven’t had it on in fifty-three years.”

  “I’m amazed you could still fit into it,” said Connie, referring to her own plump figure, which was clothed in a diaphanous blue gown that matched the sapphires in her gem-encrusted bracelet.

  Though Connie was still a pretty women, the years hadn’t been as kind to her as they had to Charlotte. She had the kind of delicate skin that doesn’t stand up well to time, and she had put on a lot of weight in her later years.

  “Actually, so am I,” Charlotte said as the doorman closed the car door behind her. “But the pleats help.”

  After crossing the width of the island, Spalding headed south on South Ocean Boulevard, which ran along the oceanfront, with the rolling turquoise sea on their left and, on the right, the gated mansions that were screened from the road by the tall hedges that were the foremost manifestation of Palm Beach’s fierce desire for privacy. The mansions, whose turrets and upper stories were visible above the hedges, were a stylistic mishmash: Old Spanish next to Venetian Gothic next to Palladian Revival next to French Regency; money next to money next to money next to money—an unremitting display of wealth. And growing everywhere were the mop-headed coconut palms, their lithe, slender trunks leaning this way and that like dancers frozen in exotic poses. Charlotte had read that Palm Beach had its origins in the misfortune
of a Spanish ship that had been swept ashore during a storm in the late nineteenth century with a cargo of coconuts. Two enterprising homesteaders claimed the coconuts, and started selling them to other settlers for a few cents apiece. The settlers planted them along the beach and the lakefront. When Henry Morrison Flagler, the Standard Oil tycoon, visited some years later, he was so entranced by the palm-fringed coral island that he decided to transform it into a resort mecca for the wealthy. Though in recent years many of the island’s palms had died as the result of a blight, the community had recently launched a campaign to replant the roadsides with the trees that had come to symbolize the exotic, languorous mood of their town.

  As they headed downtown, Connie and Spalding filled Charlotte in on their hostess, Lydia Collins, who lived around the corner from them: hers was oceanfront property—in fact, it stretched from ocean to lake—while theirs was on a side street. Lydia belonged to a distinctive Palm Beach type that Spalding and Connie disdained, though they would never have come right out and said so. Palm Beach had often been called the back door to society, and Lydia was one of those people who, having been snubbed at the front entrance, had gone around to the rear. Spalding especially, with his snobbish, old-guard sensibilities, could not abide the kind of affectation that led people like Lydia to pretend to social connections they didn’t have. She was the widow of a businessman from Flint, Michigan, who had made his fortune in the manufacture of automobile bumpers. “The bumper king,” Spalding called him, with a hint of contempt. For Spalding, anybody who made their money from anything other than clipping bond coupons was déclassé. But along with the Smiths’ disdain came the recognition that it was social aspirants like Lydia Collins who kept Palm Beach oiled and running and devoted their time to the charity functions around which the town’s social life revolved.

  As for Charlotte, she had long ago removed herself from the social game. Or rather, she’d been removed at an early age by virtue of her mother’s divorce. Her lawyer father had been wealthy, but her mother hadn’t had two pennies to rub together after he deserted them. Moreover, Charlotte had spent most of her adult life in Hollywood, where an actress friend of hers had once quipped that anyone with a high school diploma was considered society.

  After a pause in the conversation, Connie turned to face her friend, who had the spacious back seat all to herself. “I did a little investigative work today,” she announced.

  “On what?” Charlotte asked, turning away from the view of the sea, which had turned a deep violet blue in the late afternoon light.

  “I called up Sally Wardell. She’s the chairman of the committee in charge of the Big Band Hall of Fame Ball this year.”

  “And?” Charlotte asked.

  “I found out that Eddie Norwood is a widower. His wife died of cancer last spring. Nor does he have any”—Connie paused to fish for a word—“love interests.”

  Connie, bless her heart, was a strong proponent of the institution of marriage and had been very upset when Charlotte’s last marriage had broken up. She had wanted Charlotte to be with someone.

  Charlotte said nothing. She only raised a dark, flaring eyebrow in an expression that was one of her screen trademarks, along with her broad Yankee accent and her forthright, long-legged stride.

  Connie reached over the back of the seat to clasp Charlotte’s hand. “Nervous?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Charlotte admitted. “I am.”

  The house was down around Delancey Street. At least, that’s how Charlotte thought of it. It hadn’t taken long for a New Yorker such as herself to realize that Palm Beach was, at fourteen miles, roughly the same length as Manhattan (though it was much narrower) and bore striking similarities in its layout. Instead of the Hudson River to the west there was Lake Worth, and instead of the East River to the east, there was the Atlantic Ocean. The north end was not unlike Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a residential neighborhood of middle-class professionals—middle class for Palm Beach, that is, where an average home cost several million dollars. The oceanfront neighborhood at the northern end of the island, which was lined with spectacular mansions, was Palm Beach’s equivalent of Sutton Place—a tropical Upper East Side—and the faintly urban shopping district was in a location that corresponded roughly to Herald Square. Even the location of the local theatre, the Royal Poinciana Playhouse, corresponded to the location of Lincoln Center, and as Royal Palm Way (the main east-west thoroughfare) was to Palm Beach, so was Forty-second Street to Manhattan.

  They were now headed downtown on South Ocean Boulevard, which was the Palm Beach equivalent of FDR Drive, with minor differences, such as that the road was lined with mansions and beach cabanas. There was no Alphabet City here, folks. Charlotte hadn’t confided this idiosyncratic view of the island’s geography to Connie and Spalding. With their frame of reference limited to the heavily traveled path between Newport and Palm Beach and the Connecticut suburbs, she was sure they would have no understanding of the geographical centrism of the typical New Yorker.

  After fifteen minutes, they reached their destination: a large house which, were Charlotte to extend her Manhattan analogy, would have been located at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. The house was set back from the road at the rear of a manicured lawn planted with coconut palms on a lot that stretched to Lake Worth. This was the island at its narrowest, probably no more than five or six hundred feet. The house, which was set sideways on the lot to take advantage of the water views to the east and west, was built in the art deco style of the 1930s, but with a marine twist. Nautical balconies ringed each of the three oval-shaped stories, and a gangway led to the door on the second deck, as it were. Where Paul’s house strove to create an impression of antiquity, this house strove for an impression of modernity: a 1930s modernity that now seemed quaintly out of date.

  They pulled up to the entrance, where they were greeted by a valet wearing a French sailor cap with the words SS Normandie imprinted in navy blue on the brim. Lydia had really gone all out, Charlotte thought. The French tricolor flew from a flagpole on the deck of the second story.

  “Looks like a ship, doesn’t it?” commented Spalding, as they emerged from the car and walked up the gangway to the house, which was aglow with lights that shone through the porthole-shaped windows.

  “Yes,” Charlotte agreed. With its sleek, curving lines and three increasingly narrow stories, it looked like an ocean liner that was sailing down the island. “I can see why it’s called Villa Normandie.”

  As she spoke it struck her that the Normandie and Palm Beach had a lot in common: they both represented a way of life with no rough edges.

  They were greeted at the front door by an elegant-looking older gentleman wearing a navy blue uniform trimmed with gold braid and brass buttons. “Bon soir, Miss Graham,” he said with a gracious smile and a little bow. How had he known who she was? Charlotte wondered. Though she was often recognized, it usually took people who were familiar with her only from her movies a minute or two to make the connection. Then it was her turn to recognize the face under the visor of the officer’s cap. It belonged to René Dubord, who had been the sous-commissaire, or assistant purser, aboard the Normandie. Though his temples were now gray and his face was fleshier, he still had the same dashing waxed mustache and the same expressive brown eyes that had sent the women passengers into a swoon. Since the commissaire principal, or chief purser, had been occupied behind the scenes, keeping the accounts and meeting the payroll, the job of keeping the passengers happy and entertained had fallen to his assistant. Though he was quite young at the time, René had acquitted himself with distinction in this position and had developed a well-deserved reputation for thinking of everything—including names. He had known the name of every passenger aboard the ship—at least every first-class passenger—and, it was clear, still remembered them fifty-three years later.

  “René!” Charlotte exclaimed, stepping forward to kiss him fondly on each cheek. “It’s been a long time.” In fact, René had been a
s much a friend as a member of the crew. A witty conversationalist and an excellent dancer, he had mingled easily with the passengers and had become the doting overseer of the romance that had blossomed so quickly over the course of that short voyage.

  “My dear Miss Graham,” he said, clasping her hands in his and gazing at her with his warm brown eyes. “It has been a long time,” he agreed in his slightly accented English. “But, if I may be so bold: tonight you will still be the most beautiful woman aboard Normandie.”

  “Thank you, René. It’s wonderful to see you again. You’re looking very well yourself. And you’re just as flattering as always.” Charlotte turned to Spalding and Connie, who were standing just behind her. “I’d like you to meet my good friends, Mr. and Mrs. Spalding Smith.”

  Stepping forward, René grasped first Connie’s hand and then Spalding’s. “Ah,” he said. “But I am already acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. What I didn’t know was that they were acquainted with you!”

  René must have been the friend who Spalding said had described the Normandie as the world’s most perfect ship, Charlotte thought. “How do you know one another?” she asked.

  “The Smiths are members at Château Albert,” said René.

  Spalding explained: “René is the owner of Château Albert, which is a private dining club here in Palm Beach. Connie and I are charter members. How long has it been now, René? Fifteen years?”

  René nodded.

  “You’ll have to come with us one night, Charlotte,” Spalding continued. “The food is the best on the island.” He smiled at René and corrected himself: “Make that the best food in the South.”