It was not, however, this sort of being that the World had in mind when it ran its attention-grabbing headline. Citing an unnamed police official, the paper quickly made it clear that the suspect who had sent the poison to Cornish “was not a degenerate of the Lombroso type.” Rather, he was a “moral degenerate”15—a man of “evil habits and evil associations,” “immorality of character,” with a taste for lavish decor that seemed highly suspicious. While at the club, he was rumored to have “luxuriously furnished” his room with “many fine bits of bric-a-brac, pictures, and all that sort of thing.”16
In short, the World was employing the term “degenerate” in a way that would become increasingly common in the coming century: as a code word for homosexual.17
Though proclaiming that “the name of the suspected murderer is known to The World,” the paper declared that—for the sake of civic duty—it was being “withheld from publication.” Even at that moment, “the energies of the police are being devoted to completing the chain of evidence against the suspect.” To release the suspect’s name prematurely might jeopardize the case—“defeat the ends of justice.”18
It was an uncharacteristic display of self-control on the part of Pulitzer. His rival, William Randolph Hearst, would show no such restraint.
31
In certain respects, Blanche’s honeymoon had been everything she could have wished for. Roland had spared no expense, taking a suite in the Waldorf, squiring her to concerts and the theater, treating her to lavish gifts in the exclusive shops along Fifth Avenue. They dined at Delmonico’s, attended a holiday party at the Opera Club, and traveled to Brooklyn for a celebratory meal with Roland’s elderly aunts, Anne and Emma—the General’s surviving sisters—who exuded a “highbred and aristocratic” air that Blanche, with her social pretensions, found deeply impressive.1
If she had hoped, however, that marriage would unleash the latent virility in Roland, she was gravely disappointed. On their wedding night, he had displayed none of that “brute masculine force” she so desperately craved. Though he had managed to consummate their union, Roland had proved to be a tentative, if not halfhearted, lover, and the entire experience left her baffled and dismayed.2
Under the circumstances, it was only natural that her thoughts kept returning to Henry Barnet, who unlike Roland had been so ardent, so masterful. It was still hard to believe that her former lover, with his irrepressible joie de vivre, was gone. The remembrance of Barney, Blanche would write in her memoirs, cast a deep pall over her honeymoon. Though she struggled to conceal her feelings, “secretly I grieved…. I thought of the times when we had laughed and been gay, had touched the rims of our champagne glasses, holding them high while he gave a little toast; and then our drinking to the now, and to the future days. There were persistent thoughts of him, sad and tender—full of grief.”3
She did not, of course, expect Roland to share in these feelings. There had been too much “bad blood between the two men.” Even so, she was taken aback by the ill will he continued to harbor.
“You are so strange and indifferent about Barney,” she remarked at one point. “You knew him so well, and for so long a time. I think, when one dies, any little difference should be forgotten.”
Roland gave a bitter laugh. “You think that? Well, let us talk about something else—anything else in the world.”
It was clear to Blanche that “Roland’s feelings were implacable. They had not changed, even though Barney had died.”
As the days went by, Blanche’s mood grew increasingly gloomy. “Married! But somehow, all glamour seemed gone.” It was as though “something vivid, of splendid hue and intensity,” had vanished from her life. Her new husband, so attentive during their courtship, now seemed distracted and remote. During the second week of December, he would disappear each afternoon on some unspecified errand, leaving her alone in the Waldorf, in the grip of a “feverish restlessness.”
Her only consolation was that, “through this marriage, there would no longer be any monetary problems to face. All the anxieties relative to ways and means were in the past. Economic worries could be dismissed.” Her dream of going abroad to study in Paris—“Paris! That fascinating city of the Seine with its charm and witchery and allurement!”—would finally come true.
And then, with the coming of Christmas, a change seemed to come over Roland, as if a great burden had been lifted from his mind:
The Yuletide came and there were gifts and flowers galore. I was like a small child finding that Santa Claus was a reality beyond all imagining! In a spirit of merriment, Roland had added to the more beautiful things a pile of foolish and childish little gifts. These he had wrapped about in many folds of tissue, to give added zest and piquancy to my curiosity, as I delved for the hidden contents. There was frolic, and merrymaking and fun! We jested and played, and Roland’s gay wit flashed as it always did when, as now, the mood was upon him.
Two days later, their monthlong honeymoon at an end, Blanche and Roland moved back into her rooms in Alice Bellinger’s home on West End Avenue. Within forty-eight hours, the Great Poison Mystery would burst into the headlines and Henry Barnet’s name would be all over the papers.
In her memoirs, however, Blanche makes no mention of these early developments. Evidently, in the days immediately following the death of Katherine Adams, Blanche remained oblivious of the case. There is a perfectly plausible explanation for this. She lived, after all, in an era before 24/7 cable news—indeed, before the advent of television or even radio. To be sure, the “media,” as it existed back then, had pounced on the Adams poisoning with all the prurient zeal of today’s tabloid journalism. But in 1899, the media consisted entirely of newspapers, and it appears that—absorbed, as always, in the ever-fascinating drama of her own life—Blanche simply never bothered to glance at a paper during that time.
New Year’s Day brought the predictable “restless round of gaieties.” By then, Blanche—anticipating the time, not far off, when she would finally travel to Paris and immerse herself in the “life and atmosphere of the glamorous and enchanting Latin Quarter”—was feeling happier than at any point since her wedding day.
Her happiness, however, was to be exceptionally short-lived—“as ephemeral as mist before the sun, as the bubbles in a goblet of wine. How could I know,” she writes in her most histrionic style, “that there would be drum-fire of another kind, when my dreams would end, and I would be driven like a dead leaf before the wind?”
On the second day of the New Year, 1899, Blanche was awakened by a commotion from below stairs. She opened her eyes and looked groggily about her. The room was so dark that she thought it must be midnight. Straining to hear, she could discern muffled voices speaking in an urgent tone. Then the tread of footsteps on the stairs, followed by a knock on the bedroom door.
Still only half awake, Blanche turned to her husband beside her. “What is it?” she mumbled.
“I’ll see,” he said. Rising from the bed, he crossed the room and threw open the door. The housemaid stood there, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Roland stepped into the hallway, shutting the door behind him.
Again, Blanche could only hear a low murmur of voices. An instant later, Roland came back inside, hastily donned his robe and slippers, and—without saying a word—left the room again.
By now, Blanche was fully awake. Lighting the lamp at her bedside, she looked at the clock on the night table and was startled to see that the hands pointed to the hour of six. Six in the morning! What in the world could have happened? Who could have come to their home at that ungodly hour, before daylight, to rouse her husband from their bed?
Throwing back the satin coverlet, she sat up, wrapped herself in her robe, and turned an ear to the door. She could make out several male voices talking rapidly. Suddenly, with a start, she recognized the voice of Roland’s father, General Molineux.
Instantly, she was seized with alarm. Something dreadful must have happened. Perhaps Roland’s mother had taken ill—o
r even died! Blanche sat on the edge of the bed, biting her lower lip nervously.
When, after what felt like forever, Roland finally reentered the room, Blanche sprang from the bed and cried, “Tell me, has anything—”
“Yes,” he said before she could finish her sentence. “Something has happened.” There was a tautness and anxiety in his voice that filled her with dread.
“Tell me, tell me quickly,” she cried.
Roland’s answer was so unexpected that, for a moment, Blanche could only stare at him in silence.
“You believe in me, don’t you?” he said.
“That’s a strange question—a strange thing to say,” she stammered. “Why do you ask me that?”
Only then did she notice that he was clutching something in one hand—a newspaper. Now he held it up so that she could see the front page.
It was the New York Journal—Hearst’s paper. Running across the top of the page was the headline POLICE WANT ROLAND BURNHAM MOLINEUX IN THE POISONING CASE.
Blanche stared at it, uncomprehending. She opened her mouth but was unable to speak—her throat had gone completely dry. She looked up again at Roland and saw that his forehead was beaded with sweat. He was saying something to her, but she could not understand the words.
“Tell me again, Roland,” she finally managed to say. “What did you say?”
“My father and a reporter from the World are downstairs, waiting for me,” he said. “We are going to see McCluskey.”
“McCluskey?” she said. “Who’s McCluskey?”
But Roland didn’t answer. Handing her the newspaper, he quickly got dressed.
Blanche sank back onto the bed, scanning the paper, trying to make sense of it. It was something about a murder, a woman named Mrs. Adams who had taken poison sent to someone else—to Harry Cornish, Roland’s old enemy at the Knickerbocker Club!
All at once, as she continued to read, Blanche’s gaze fell upon a subhead, halfway down the page: MOLINEUX’S MARRIAGE TALKED OF.
She made a little whimpering sound. The story quoted unnamed members of the Knickerbocker Club who had been discussing the sudden death of Henry Barnet. “After Mr. Barnet died,” read the article, “Molineux married a lady who had been exceedingly friendly with Barnet.”4 Blanche began to tremble violently. A nightmare had overtaken her. All at once, she became aware that Roland was standing over her, saying something. She willed herself to focus on his words.
“Everything will be all right,” he was saying. “Don’t worry. Go back to bed and try not to think about it.”
In another moment, he turned and was gone.
Still frozen on the edge of the bed, Blanche tried to get hold of herself, but her thoughts were in chaos. Her husband of only one month—implicated in a poison murder!
Suddenly, the whole situation struck her as a hideous joke. She slid from the bed and began to laugh wildly.
When, a few moments later, Alice Bellinger burst into the room with the maid, they found Blanche on the floor, still in the grip of hysteria.
32
When Roland had first come downstairs after being roused by the maid, he had found his father in the company of William Inglis, an old friend and fellow member of the New York Athletic Club who worked as a reporter for Pulitzer’s World.
In their unflagging efforts to outscoop their rivals, Hearst and Pulitzer’s men kept constant tabs on each other’s stories, and Inglis had managed to procure a copy of Monday’s Journal while the ink was still damp on the page. Recognizing the storm that was about to engulf Roland, Inglis wanted to alert his friend but wasn’t sure of his whereabouts. And so—despite the untimeliness of the hour—he had secured a cab and driven out to Brooklyn, where, shortly before 5:00 A.M., he awoke the General and showed him the headline naming Roland as the main suspect in the city’s most notorious murder.1
At sixty-five years of age, Edward Leslie Molineux had lost none of the firm resolve or fighting spirit that had served him so well on the battle-fields of Cedar Creek and Winchester. He still believed in the motto of his boyhood hero, Louis Kossuth: “It is the surmounting of difficulties that makes heroes.” Less than a half hour after Inglis’s arrival, the two men were in a carriage headed for Manhattan. Reaching 757 West End Avenue around six, they awoke the housemaid and had her fetch Roland from his bed.
When Roland saw the headline, the color drained from his face. “What a horrible accusation!” he cried. “What shall I do?”2
His father—coolly decisive as ever—immediately took charge. Though dawn was just breaking, they would proceed at once to the residence of Captain McCluskey and demand a retraction of the outrageous charge.
As it happened, McCluskey resided only a few blocks away, at 77 West Sixty-eighth Street. The sky was just showing the first inklings of daylight as Roland and the General, accompanied by Inglis, strode through the frigid streets, arriving at McCluskey’s home just before seven.
Early as it was, McCluskey was already awake and on the job, conferring with a pair of detectives from the central bureau. After a curt introduction, the General thrust the newspaper at the captain, whose face assumed a look of marked displeasure as he read.
“This is newspaper work, not mine,” he said when he was done, then turned to Roland and added: “I don’t want you and never have.” He advised Roland to go on about his business as usual. “Don’t bother about this thing,” he said. “Believe me, if we had wanted you, my men could have found you long ago.”
Barely mollified, the General removed a card from his pocket and wrote out Roland’s addresses both at home and at work, along with his own. “If you need us, you can find us at one of these places,” he told McCluskey, handing him the card. “We are as anxious to get to the bottom of this matter as you, and wish to assist in every way in our power.”3
With that, the General, Roland, and Inglis took their leave.
Their next stop was the residence of Roland’s friend, Bartow S. Weeks, the prominent attorney and former president of the NYAC who had been the unwitting catalyst of Roland’s resignation from the Knickerbocker. Weeks was immediately retained as Roland’s counsel. Roland then returned home to Blanche, while the General traveled back to Brooklyn, where he paid an early-morning visit to his own lawyer, Hugo Hirsh, who was also put on the case.
By the time the General reached home, the Journal had hit the stands. The story set off the predictable furor, particularly in Brooklyn, where Edward Molineux was a revered and influential figure and Roland himself a renowned athlete. Within hours, a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle had arrived at the Molineuxs’ stately Fort Greene home, where he was granted an interview by the General.
With the loyalty and devotion that would never waver in the harrowing years to come, Edward scoffed at the notion that a bitter rivalry existed between his son and Harry Cornish. True, there had been a “difference of opinion” between them “in regard to the management” of the club. When the Board of Governors sided with Cornish, Roland had felt that “there was nothing to do but resign and make his residence the New York Athletic Club.” It was, said the General, “the gentlemanly thing to do, and I supported him in the action.” The whole matter was of an utterly “trivial character,” and to suggest that it would lead Roland to plot Cornish’s murder was more than preposterous—it was libelous.
“He is a bold and fearless young man,” said the General with undisguised pride. “From his childhood up there has never been anything in his life to indicate that he was the slightest bit ugly in disposition or quarrelsome, and certainly never held malice towards anyone. Everyone is interested in trying to find out who the villain is who would be guilty of so foul an act. But anyone who would accuse a man—a young and married man, especially—before the law has acted or the authorities have investigated the matter is guilty of malicious, vile conduct and deserves to be heavily punished.
“They shall be punished,” the General continued, sounding every bit the iron-willed commander who, in his army d
ays, had made many a shirker quail. “They shall find out I am a fighting man when the occasion demands. I consider it my duty as a citizen and as a father to leave no stone unturned to clear him or any other unfortunate who is unjustly accused of such a fearful crime.”4
The General’s threats were echoed by the two lawyers he had immediately retained to deal with the crisis. Hugo Hirsh declared that he had every intention of instituting a libel case against Hearst, though he felt that “horse-whipping would be the proper course.”5 Bartow Weeks likewise announced that he would “proceed against the newspaper that printed this story.” Almost sputtering with indignation, Weeks proclaimed his absolute faith in Roland’s innocence. The idea that a man so “above reproach”—so “intelligent and refined”—might commit such a “dastardly” crime was too outrageous to contemplate. Why, it would make as much sense to accuse Weeks himself! “I also had trouble with Cornish over matters relating to the club. I might just as well be brought into the case as Mr. Molineux.”6
Later that day, after meeting with McCluskey, Weeks arrived at Alice Bellinger’s home to confer with Roland and Blanche. Though McCluskey had repeated the assurances he had given the General, it was clear to Weeks that the Molineux name was not going to disappear from the papers anytime soon. Not only Roland but his wife as well would be hounded mercilessly by “the reputation-destroying yellow wolves of the press.”7 The only sensible course was to flee Manhattan and seek refuge in the relative privacy of the General’s home in Brooklyn.
The Devil's Gentleman Page 14
