In death as in life, Myrtle Bennett created more puzzles than she solved. No one knew with certainty why she bequeathed her own family less than one half of 1 percent of her estate while leaving 80 percent to the family of the husband she shot dead. Mary Jacobs, the primary benefactor of Myrtle’s will, who lived with her husband in Santa Rosa, California, died in 1996, four years after Myrtle’s death. The will had specified that if Mary died before Myrtle, the $656,000 would go to her husband, Walter.
When I phoned him in Santa Rosa, Walter Jacobs, then ninety-five years old, cordially agreed to meet me and discuss Myrtle. He warned me that he had not really known her. I asked if Mary had been close with her. “Moderately close,” he said. They visited Myrtle in Florida “two or three times,” Walter told me, but then he remembered that one of those trips came after Myrtle’s death. Only a few hours after our brief telephone conversation, though, Walter Jacobs called back to cancel any interview. A family member, he said, had advised him against talking.
The words moderately close rang odd to me. If Jack’s niece and Myrtle were no closer than that, why lavish riches on her and pennies on her own relatives? Armshaw asked Myrtle that question as she rewrote her will in August 1990. “Why are you giving all this money to Jacobs and not your own family in Oklahoma?” He heard Myrtle say, “Well, first off, my own family doesn’t need it.” Armshaw never met Mary Jacobs, but he understood she had visited Myrtle during her final year. “And Myrtle felt Mrs. Jacobs really cared for her,” he said.
I drove an hour north to Santa Rosa. I wanted to know why Myrtle had given most of her money to the Jacobses. Walter Jacobs lived still in a retirement community in the heart of Sonoma County. I knocked on his door. Months had passed since our unsatisfying phone conversation. Now I identified myself, and he eyed me for a moment, warily. I asked for a few minutes of his time. He led me inside. We sat in his living room, the late morning sun warming the otherwise cool reception. I asked about a dozen questions. His answers were brief, uncomfortable. He said he barely knew Myrtle, and had heard about Jack’s killing only in passing. He said he knew nothing about Myrtle’s trial. He did not talk about Myrtle’s $656,000 gift. He only wanted to know why Myrtle was of any interest to me.
Armshaw offered another answer as to why Myrtle had given the lion’s share of her money to Jack’s family. He thought the will’s stipulations were Myrtle’s attempt at atoning for the killing of her husband. He thought she felt the guilt of that night even sixty-two years later. The will was her way of saying she was sorry. “I can’t think of any other reason for it,” Armshaw told me. “There is no way I could prove that. It’s just my gut feeling.”
Scruggs believes Myrtle felt a genuine regret and love for Jack. “She still loved him,” Scruggs said, “and she didn’t want me to think ill of him.” Once, Myrtle gave Scruggs two photographs of herself to keep. Then she began to give her a photo of Jack, but pulled it back. Myrtle said she wanted to hold on to that one.
Scruggs told me she once saw an article in a national women’s magazine with the headline THE BENNETT MURDER HAND and showed it to Auntie Mame. “Maybe you should sue them,” Scruggs said, but the response was only a wave of the hand. “That was a long time ago …” On another occasion, traveling together in Geneva in 1964, Scruggs finally summoned the courage to say, “Oh, Auntie Mame, I sometimes think of your life—”Myrtle interjected: “Well, my dear, it was a great tragedy and a great mistake.” She studied Carolyn Scruggs’s face for a moment, and said, “I was just about your age when it happened.” Scruggs replied, “Well, you know, we’ve never talked about it but I guess”—Scruggs stammered to say it just right—“I guess I want you to know that I understand it.” Auntie Mame said, “No, my dear, you don’t understand it.” Scruggs said this was the only time Auntie Mame ever discussed the shooting with her.
One view of Myrtle Bennett is that her story began and ended on that night in 1929. In an age of increasing female assertion, at the end of the Roaring Twenties, taking part in the American craze of the moment (contract bridge) with a handsome husband involved in a timeless game (adultery), she reached, in alcohol-infused fury, for a Colt .32. But that view is wrongly limited. In truth, Myrtle Bennett’s story continued on the same narrative path for another sixty-two years. I believe the humiliation, rage, and impetuosity that moved young Myrtle to shoot Jack were the same fires that moved her at the age of ninety-six to strike from her will those relatives who sent her to a nursing home and those whom she believed plotted at her bedside. I believe Myrtle’s will was shaped by guilt finally resolved in the redemptive act of making right with Jack’s memory and his family.
The woman born on the hardscrabble farm of nineteenth-century Arkansas, the lead character in the most famous Kansas City murder trial of her time, a survivor who left behind her four spades bid and the melancholy of her past and built a new life among New York’s rich and famous, a life of gin fizzes, bridge games, and world travel—this singular, stubborn, bold, exasperating, difficult, and remarkable woman—stepped into the Miami airport terminal in 1982.
There, Scruggs and an old friend waited for her. As Scruggs retrieved her luggage, she advised her friend, “You wait here for Auntie Mame.” “But, honey,” said the old friend, who had known Myrtle in Memphis, “I haven’t seen Myrtle since 1924!” Scruggs laughed—it had been fifty-eight years, after all—but she knew there was only one Auntie Mame, so she replied, “I think you’ll know her.” Just then, an eighty-seven-year-old woman approached, moving briskly, just as she had moved upon first spotting Jack Bennett on an Illinois Central train during World War I. She wore a fine navy blue outfit, a red-white-and-blue scarf and high-heeled Spectator shoes. Noticing boldness in her gait still, the old friend said, “Why, of course! I’d know Myrtle anywhere.” Later, at a hotel restaurant, here came Auntie Mame into the room, and the piano man, on cue from Carolyn Scruggs, struck up the theme song from the long-ago Broadway musical. Myrtle Bennett, in the twilight of a robust life, sang aloud the lyrics:
You make our black-eyed peas and our grits, Mame,
Seem like the bill of fare at the Ritz, Mame,
You came, you saw, you conquered
And absolutely nothing is the same.
Like a burst of light, Myrtle danced a jig in the restaurant and sang about a 1929 party girl who coaxed the blues out of a horn and charmed the husks off the corn.
She never changed. She was always Lorelei Lee, always Auntie Mame, forever Myrtle.
CONTRACT BRIDGE IN BRIEF
A partnership game for four, two against two, contract bridge starts so innocently. In each hand, all fifty-two cards are dealt face-down, thirteen to each player. Players sort the cards into suits and study their hands. How nice it is to fan your cards out and discover those six high spades, one at a time, a king here, a jack there, and the ace hiding under that club on the far right, or nicer still, to find a treasure trove of the most valuable high cards in multiple suits—four aces, three kings, two queens.
Now the auction, the bidding phase, begins, with the two sides competing for the right to play the hand. One by one, beginning with the dealer, players bid aloud using a strictly prescribed shorthand to explain to their partner the distribution of cards and suit strength in their own hand. Through bids, players try to discover their partnership’s greatest interlocking strength. Each bid is a statement to one’s partner, and a query, to discover how strong they are together and which suit the partnership has in abundance and might control.
The bidding vocabulary comprises fifteen terms: the numbers one through seven; the four suits (clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades); and the words no trump, pass, double, and redouble. Bids sound cryptic: “one spade” or “three hearts” or “six no trump.” Extraneous words, voice inflections, and arched eyebrows are not permitted. That would be cheating.
At stake in the play of the hand are thirteen tricks, each created with one card put down by the four players.
Bids specify how many tricks the partnership pledges to win in the hand and what suit, if any, will be the trump suit. The thirteen cards in the trump suit are akin to wild cards in poker and have special value over all others. A lowly deuce or trey from the trump suit defeats all cards from other suits. The hand may also be played at no trump, meaning without wild card power.
In typical auction fashion, each bid must be higher than the previous one. To facilitate matters, suits are ranked in a hierarchical order, starting at the bottom with clubs, up to diamonds, then to hearts, spades, and highest of all, no trump. Thus, during the auction one diamond outranks one club. Two spades outranks two hearts. But nothing outranks seven no trump. Once the play begins, however, the ranking of the suits has no further relevance.
Bidding moves in a clockwise direction, sometimes making several full rotations around the table, until three consecutive players decide to pass. When this happens, there is a tacit understanding that everyone is content, for their own reasons, and not prepared to go any higher. The last bid made—that is, the one followed by three passes—constitutes the final contract.
Every bid in bridge has an automatic six tricks built into it. That means a bid of one heart is a pledge to win not one but seven tricks (six plus one), with hearts as the trump suit. A bid of four diamonds is a pledge to win ten tricks (six plus four), with diamonds as the trump suit, and so on. Just to start, then, the first bidder must have a good hand, as he is committing his partnership to taking more than half the available tricks.
In order to succeed, the partnership that captures the final contract must win at least as many tricks as it bid. Failing that, it will suffer penalty points for overbidding. (For instance, with their contract of four spades, Myrtle and Jack Bennett needed to take ten tricks, but Jack only got eight and failed.)
The bidding done, the play of the hand begins. The player who first named the trump suit—and now vies to make the final contract—becomes declarer. The opponent to his left puts down the first card, face up. Now the declarer’s partner, called the dummy, exposes his thirteen cards on the table, in four neat rows, the cards aligned by suits for all to see. The dummy thus bows out of the hand entirely. Only three will play the hand. The declarer plays alone for the partnership, drawing cards from the dummy’s exposed hand, and his own.
The other players are obliged to play a card from the suit led, if they can. If not, they can play another card, including one from the trump suit. The highest card of the suit led (or the highest trump) wins the trick and earns the right to lead the next trick.
The role of declarer can be exhilarating or exasperating, depending on the experience of the player. With the partnership’s fate in his grip, a confident player relishes the opportunity to showcase his playing skills. An unsure declarer, however, now flying solo, can be consumed by nerves, anticipating criticism, should he fail to make the contract. All the while, the dummy looks on, approvingly or icily, as the situation might warrant.
Social players typically play rubber bridge, a rubber being the best of three games. A side needs to score 100 points to win a game (that might require one hand or several deals), and two games to win a rubber, and the handsome bonus that comes with taking the rubber.
The first six tricks are nonscoring. Only those from the seventh one on count toward fulfillment of a contract. No-trump tricks score the highest: 40 points for the first trick and 30 points for each trick thereafter. Hearts and spades, as the major suits, score 30 points per successful trick after the first six. Clubs and diamonds, as the minor suits, score the lowest, 20 points per trick. Thus, bidding and making a four spades contract (4 times 30 points) would give a partnership enough for game.
The opponents, of course, will be doing all they can to beat declarer. For their efforts, however, all they can earn is penalty points (none of which count toward a game for their side) and the satisfaction that they have prevented declarer from getting a plus score.
A partnership becomes vulnerable after winning one game in a rubber, meaning the rewards and penalties for making or failing in the next contract are all the greater. If both sides have won one game in the rubber, then both are vulnerable.
Like chess, contract is a kaleidoscope of possibilities that multiply with every turn of thought. For the eager novice, those possibilities are both daunting and seductive. For the serious player, such is the endless charm of the classic game.
A CONTRACT BRIDGE
GLOSSARY
Adapted from The Encyclopedia of Bridge (New York: The Bridge World, Inc., 1935), edited by Ely Culbertson, et al.
AUCTION: Known loosely as the bidding, the period during which players may bid in rotation for the contract, beginning when the deal is finished and ending when three consecutive players have passed.
DECLARER: The player who for his side first made a bid of the denomination that became part of the final contract. For example, if the contract is four hearts, the player who first named the heart suit is declarer. The declarer plays both his own (closed) hand and that of his partner (the dummy hand), the latter being placed face up on the table for all players to see.
DEFENDING HAND: The hand that makes a call after one of the opponents has opened the bidding, or, in the play, one of the opponents of the declarer; loosely, any player who is defending against an adverse contract, either in the bidding or the play.
DOUBLE: The call made in bridge which would double or otherwise increase certain points won or lost in the event the last preceding bid becomes the contract. A double call may be made only by an opponent of the last preceding bidder. It may be redoubled by an opponent of the doubler, thereby further increasing the points won or lost.
DUMMY: The declarer’s partner. After the opening lead is made by the opponent on the declarer’s left, the dummy places his cards face up on the table. The dummy takes no part in the play. He may not suggest by word or gesture any lead or play, but may call attention to errors of play or violations of law. The term originated in Dummy Whist, in which there were only three players, the fourth hand being exposed as the “dummy,” an imaginary and silent player.
DUPLICATE BRIDGE: The form of bridge in which the same hand is played more than once. It is the form played in tournaments since it reduces the amount of luck, scores being based on a comparison of the results achieved with the same cards.
FINAL CONTRACT: The last bid in the auction followed by three passes, or by a double or redouble, and three passes. The final bid becomes the final contract. If a suit is named in it, that suit becomes trump suit for the hand.
GAME: The side first to score a minimum of 100 points for tricks bid and made wins a game. The game score may be made in one deal or in more than one. As soon as a side wins a game, both sides start afresh (no score) toward the next game.
MAJOR SUITS: The two higher-ranking suits, spades and hearts, so called because, in bidding, they are higher ranked than the two other suits, diamonds and clubs. In either major suit, a four-bid (30 points per trick) is required for game.
MINOR SUITS: The two lower-ranking suits, diamonds and clubs, so-called because, in bidding, they are inferior in rank to the two major suits, spades and hearts. In either minor suit, a five-bid (20 points per trick) is required for game.
NO TRUMP: One of the five denominations of calls at bridge, the other four being suit calls. The characteristic of a no trump contract which distinguishes it from a suit is that there is no trump suit; all four suits have equal trick-taking value in the play.
OPENING BID: The first bid made in any deal. The opening hand may select any bid he wishes to open the auction, from one to seven in a suit or in no trump. By far the great majority of opening bids are one-bids in a suit.
PASS: A call which indicates that the player does not on that occasion bid, double, or redouble, made by saying “Pass” or “No bid.” Whenever a player passes, he should observe the same form of indicating eve
ry time, not first saying “Pass” and on another hand saying “No bid.” Individual variations of indicating a pass by knocking on the table, or using any other expression, may be regarded as unethical.
PSYCHIC BID: A bid which violates established conventions, or agreements, usually made for the purpose of deceiving opponents.
RESPONDING HAND: The partner of the player who has opened the auction.
RUBBER BRIDGE: Contract bridge played with a view to winning rubbers, or best-of-three game sets. A side that wins two consecutive games at the start of a rubber wins the premium of 700 bonus points, or 500 bonus points if the rubber extends to a full three games. These premiums are not affected by vulnerability, doubling, or redoubling.
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