Savage Grace - Natalie Robins
Page 42
2
REORIENTATION
Susan Lannan
The International Social Service of Great Britain was still looking into the matter of Antony Baekeland’s rehabilitation in America when we heard that he had been released. We were concerned.
Cecelia Brebner
And so we arrived. It was ninety-two degrees in New York that day. Tony said, “You know something, Celia—New York hasn’t changed. It’s just the same.” And he was extraordinary—he saw to all the baggage and when we got into the cab he said, “I want to stop and get Nini some flowers but I haven’t any money on me,” and I said, “I have money,” so he got her a huge bouquet.
Shirley Cox
Nini did not know Tony was coming until she got a call, I believe the day before, saying he would be here the following day. That’s what she told me when I stopped by to pick up her mail. I live in her building and I handle all her bills and all her business affairs—I’ve done that for many years.
Lena Richards
Mrs. Daly had broken her hip and needed round-the-clock care. I was the weekend nurse but I was still there on Monday afternoon when Tony came in from the airport with Mrs. Brebner. She wanted to know what the setup was going to be, who was to be responsible for Tony’s care, and when Nini and I said nobody, she couldn’t believe it.
He looked a little distant to me, but I didn’t know what his problems were. Nini had never said anything, she’d never said anything but good things about him.
Cecelia Brebner
When we arrived at Nini’s apartment on Seventy-fourth Street, we went directly into her bedroom to see her. And there was a huge painting of Barbara Baekeland there, and Tony saw it and said, “Nini, take it down!” And she said, “Oh no, Tony, it’s my favorite, favorite portrait of Mummy.” “Take it down!” he said. I saw the look on this man’s face and I knew that I had done the wrong thing.
Dr. Thomas Maguire
My conscience is quite clear. I did ten times the normal amount of work to get Tony to America. I tried everything I possibly could to find the proper care for him.
Brooks Baekeland
I felt sorry for Maguire then, and I feel sorry for him now. I did not berate him, as you might think. I tried to comfort him, whom I did not know—realizing how he must be feeling, how I would feel.
Shirley Cox
Nini told me later that the moment he walked in the door she knew he wasn’t well. And later I saw that for myself. My first thought was, “I’m going to call Fred Baekeland.” But Nini said, “No no no no! Promise me you won’t do that. Promise me you won’t! You’re my friend, promise me.”
Ethel Woodward de Croisset
When he wrote me saying he was going back to his grandmother’s place where he had spent so many happy days as a child—it was where he sometimes used to go in the afternoons when he was let out of Buckley School, you see—I said to myself, This boy’s going to find that apartment very small. And later Nini told me that she could see at once that he felt oppressed—and it was also very hot, to make matters worse—so she suggested they go out immediately, that first night, and have dinner around the corner.
Brooks Baekeland
By coincidence I came back to the U.S. at about the same time as Tony. I went, first, to stay with probably my oldest friend, my cousin Baekeland Roll, and his wife, Kate, in Rhode Island. The Rolls are much reputed for their hospitalities and other virtues: a gregarious, large-familied tribe, their house always bulging with children and guests. I had not seen it, breathed its wacky air, for many a year, and a great weight seemed to go off me there for a while.
I had not been on Block Island more than a week, I think, when I got a telephone call—everyone in the house listened to it—from Tony, who had just arrived at Nini’s. He said he wanted to come out to that full, happy, child-brimming house. I said no.
Clement Biddle Wood
I suppose Brooks was terrified to see Tony for fear that Tony might attack him.
Brooks Baekeland
For myself I felt no fear. My pessimism makes me immune to fear, and I have a certain confidence, even now, in my wits and brawn. But I knew my tiger, and I did not even ask the Rolls if they would receive him. I just said no. My bad reputation increased with that “no.”
Oh yes, he had often wanted to assault me—I saw the lust for it come into his eyes. But he never did—he was a woman-beater. I said to him once in Mallorca, in Robert Goulet’s house in Fornalutx, “Crazy you may be and you are, but there are crazy saints—the hospitals are full of gentle Christs—and there are crazy brutes, and you are one of the latter.” I had crossed him about something, and he was crouched in front of me with his fists clenched and a murderous look on his face. But I was bigger than he was—and I wasn’t kneeling on the floor like poor Sam Shaw! Had I turned my back and had he been armed, he would have killed me. Tony never attacked anyone equally armed or stronger than he was—had he done so, had he ever dared to take me on, for instance….
Cecelia Brebner
I was staying nearby, on Sixty-ninth Street, with Georgette Klinger. I was going to look after her little poodle for about three months while she did a European tour. I called Nini every day and she always said, “He’s okay, Celia,” and one day I said, “Look, I’d like to come round and see him,” so I took him out for dinner, and he seemed quite rational, perhaps a little bit strange but certainly not manic.
Shirley Cox
Tony promised he would get Nini’s breakfast every day, she told me, because, you see, her nurse could not be there overnight when Tony was staying, there was simply not enough room. This meant that Nini had no care at night if she wanted to get up and go to the bathroom and things like that.
I know he didn’t fix her breakfast because the nurse would arrive in the morning and he would still be in bed. Nini told me he stayed up all night playing the record player. Well, I think that’s understandable. Having been incarcerated for so long, you now have freedom, you know, to do all the things you’ve been prevented from doing. But he was in a small apartment, in a small apartment house, where the people on either side and around have to get up and go to work, so Nini knew that if the noise lasted for more than two or three days the neighbors would complain and she was terrified of that. So she said she asked him to lower the volume, and he completely ignored her.
Sam Green
He called me right after he got to town and it was a close call. Bart, my assistant, took the call. Tony said he wanted to see me urgently, that I was his only friend and he wanted me to get him some dope so he could get high. Bart told him that I was out of the country.
At some point you just have to protect yourself. I mean, clearly one should have been nice to Tony, and generous—he had been through a terrible ordeal and needed companionship and forgiveness, but I just didn’t want to do it anymore.
Tom Dillow
Tony asked Bart for my number, and Bart called to warn me that Tony was trying to find me. I mean, I was in the phone book, but, you know, for the Baekelands a telephone number didn’t exist unless they got it from someone. Bart said Tony told him, “T-t-t-tom n-never understood why I m-m-murdered M-mummy.”
Bart Gorin
When I first started working for Sam Green, he told me that probably someday a person named Tony Baekeland would call and that I was just to make up anything to keep him away. I guess it was just sort of understood that Tony would be coming back at some point, but we never knew when exactly. So anyway, one hot day there he was on the phone. Sam was out on Fire Island, but I said, “Gee, Tony, Sam’s in Singapore,” or somewhere like that. And then he asked if I knew about him and I played sort of dumb, and he said, “You don’t know who I am?” And I said no. Then he told me fairly matter-of-factly that he had killed his mother. I said, “What are you going to do now? What are your plans?” And he said, “Well, my grandmother Mrs. Daly is the only person who has stood by me all this time, in fact she was the one who got me out of that awful plac
e I was in. She’s an old lady now and I want to make her last days as happy as possible”—I remember that very well. And then he asked me if I would go shopping with him because all he had were winter clothes, from England, and it was summer out. I said I was going away for the weekend and he said, “Can I call you on Monday?” and I said sure. I never spoke with him again.
Gloria Jones
I didn’t know they’d let him out till he called from New York. He called Muriel Murphy first and then he called me. He said he’d like to come out to visit me on Long Island, where I was living now. I was absolutely terrified. Jim was dead by then so I called up Irwin Shaw, who I wouldn’t have bothered if Jim were alive. Irwin said, “You can’t have him come out,” and I said, “Well, God, we’ve got to do something about him.” Irwin didn’t know the Baekelands that well—I guess he was very smart, he just stayed away from the whole thing, very clever. He said to me, “Stay totally out of it. You just don’t know…. You have children around and everything.” So I called Tony back and said that my house was filled, you know. And it was filled.
Clement Biddle Wood
Jessie and I had come over from Europe for the summer and we were visiting Muriel Murphy in East Hampton when Tony called. He said, “Muriel, I’m in New York and it’s boiling.” It was an exceptional heatwave—I mean, even for July. He said, “I’m cooped up in this tiny little apartment with my grandmother and there are pictures of my mother everywhere and her ashes are in an urn on the mantelpiece and I’m just going crazy. I’ve got to get out of town.” Obviously he was hoping Muriel would invite him out to Long Island. Which she didn’t. And then he said, “Maybe I can find rooms for my grandmother and myself out there somewhere.” And Muriel said, “Everything’s pretty full up,” which of course is always true in the summer. So then he said, “Well, I’ll probably be coming out if I can find anywhere to stay, and I’ll give you a ring.” Muriel got terribly upset, she said to us, “This boy’s a homicidal maniac, he shouldn’t be in an apartment alone with his grandmother, but I certainly don’t want him coming out here and fastening on to me as some sort of mother substitute.”
Phyllis Harriman Mason
One day that week I thought I saw him on the street, Sixty-ninth Street, and I was scared stiff because I was afraid he would identify me with Barbara.
René Jean Teillard
I saw Tony on Lexington Avenue. I am a friend since a very long time of his beautiful grandmother, Mrs. Hallowell. I was going to buy a newspaper and suddenly I saw him there and I said, “Tony, what are you doing here? I’m so glad you came back,” and he said, “I’m buying a pair of shoes.” I said, “But to buy a pair of shoes you should go to Alexander’s.” “Oh,” he said, “I didn’t know. I’ve been in England.” And so we chatted and I said I wanted him to come and have dinner and he came the next day and it was all right.
When he and his mother left for London a year before her assassination I invited them to dinner and I gave them some frogs’ legs, because they were international and I’m French myself. And I gave him frogs’ legs again. I gave him the exact same dinner as when he had left.
We ate on a little bridge table which I had beautifully prepared, near the telephone and close to some weights which were on the floor by my feet in case something should happen, since I hadn’t seen him since he left that night for England and if something happened now because he was crazy in a moment, I was therefore prepared with my telephone and my weights.
He was not reluctant to answer all the questions I asked. First of all I asked him what happened and he told me how he had killed his mother. He was able to tell me without any emotion how he plunged the knife in her chest. I told him, “You need friends now that you are back here and you need to see the doctor.” “I don’t need to see any doctor,” he said. I said, “But Dr. Greene is a friend of yours since your youth, and I am certain he would be delighted to see you since he even went over to England to see you.”
His face changed when I first spoke “doctor.” But then when I said “Dr. Greene,” everything was just fine and we finished dinner. I said, “You can come back, you have my telephone number.” And he left.
Shirley Cox
On Wednesday and Thursday, the third and fourth days he was here, he put all the pictures of his mother and some candles on a chest of drawers in Nini’s living room—he made it into an altar.
Cecelia Brebner
He was evidently playing the most macabre music and he had those photographs of Barbara and the black candles and he was performing a kind of black mass.
Lena Richards
I was nervous around him because I just didn’t know what to expect—I couldn’t tell. He didn’t have much to say, really. And he didn’t seem to have much patience for anything, I noticed. Apparently all week he’d been using the telephone a lot and drinking all the wine—Nini said, “He’s to have it,” so he ordered more. On Saturday when I got there, he asked me to go to the store for him to get him some writing paper. I was wondering why he couldn’t go out himself. I told him it was early, I didn’t feel like going out yet. So he did go, after all, and I asked him to get me a newspaper, but he forgot. And when he came back he curled up in a chair and slept for a long time.
Cecelia Brebner
Late Saturday afternoon I went over to have tea with Tony and Nini and no sooner had I gotten there than the nurse beckoned me into the bedroom, she said Nini wanted to talk to me. Nini told me, “I’m so frightened of him, Celia.” I said, “Well, Nini, I don’t know how to advise you at this point. I don’t know whether we can call the police because he hasn’t committed a felony.” When I came back into the living room, Tony said to me, “I’m not well, Celia,” and I said, “Now, Tony, tell me—define this. Are you sick mentally or are you sick physically?” He said, “I wake up at three in the morning,” and I said, “Well, so do I. It’s the jet lag, the time difference. But each day it will get a little better. And you know where I am if you need me.” And he threw his arms around me and said, “Oh, I love you, Celia, I love you.” I said, “Well, Tony, prove your love. All I want you to do is be kind to Nini and show them that you can fit into normal society again.” He said, “Yes, yes, I can, I can.” So I said fine.
Lena Richards
I didn’t prepare supper for Nini that Saturday because he said he wanted to do it. He even told her what he was going to make her. But then I think somebody called and asked them out to dinner. Anyway, I left.
But later that night I called to see if she was okay. She said she was. I knew she wasn’t going to say she wasn’t, but I thought she wasn’t her own self.
Dr. Frederick Baekeland
I had dinner with them that night, the Saturday after his arrival, and he seemed rather tense but not extraordinarily so—and of course I’ve seen him very tense at times. One of the big problems in psychiatry is the limits of predicting behavior. Another big problem is that a person may look tense and it could have to do with any number of things, and if the person’s not going to tell you anything about it, that presents still another problem.
Thilo von Watzdorf
Tony called me in New York and I told my secretary, “No no—tell him I’m not available.” I had only arrived in town a few days before and was just starting a new job at Sotheby’s and a new life. The telephone call came during my very first meeting with the staff of my department. The last time I’d seen Tony was at the party Barbara gave on Cadogan Square the night before he killed her, and I hadn’t communicated with him at all during the whole time he was in Broadmoor.
When he couldn’t reach me by phone in New York he wrote me a letter saying how fondly he remembered me from Ansedonia and how all he wanted now was to take care of his little grandmother and how he didn’t have any friends in New York his own age and would so much like to see me and couldn’t we meet.
I got the letter on a Sunday night—I’d been in the country for the weekend—and I was touched by it. I rang and rang and kept gettin
g no answer. I couldn’t imagine why no one was picking up since I knew his grandmother was in her late eighties and there had to be somebody there to look after her.
3
ATTACK
Lena Richards
On Sunday I came maybe a couple minutes after nine a.m., and Tony didn’t open the door for me right away. I didn’t have my own key, I’d given it to him. When he finally came to the door—he was wearing his cutoff pants—he said, “Lena, quick! Get the police!” Or the ambulance, or something to that effect. “I just stabbed my grandmother.” He didn’t move. I got scared, so I didn’t go in. I ran back down the stairs—I had on high heels—and I ran to the corner and called the police. Then I waited outside Nini’s building for them to come, and when they did I took them up.
Sergeant Joseph Chinea
We responded to a 911 call, and when my partner John McCabe and I entered the apartment on East Seventy-fourth Street, he came running out of the bedroom at us, saying, “She won’t die!” We could hear his grandmother screaming. I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him past me, and McCabe, who’s a beefy man, grabbed him and he didn’t struggle. He kept repeating, “She won’t die, the knife won’t go in! And she keeps screaming! I can’t understand it.”
I ran into the bedroom and saw this elderly, frail lady lying against the wall. The nightstand was turned over and she was in the corner. It looked as if she was trying to get away from him. She was wearing a satiny nightgown and the blood was just running through it, it wasn’t soaking up. She was still screaming, but once she saw me she started to calm down. The nurse had arrived during the assault, and she probably saved the woman’s life.