The Two Mrs. Grenvilles

by Dominick Dunne

  “Hello?” she answered as if she knew who it was going to be. “Oh,” she said, surprised. “Mère.” When she married into the family, Ann had picked up the habit of calling her mother-in-law what Billy and his sisters called her, although there was never a bit of affection shared between the two Mrs. Grenvilles, only carefully observed amenities. Ann relinquished the telephone to her husband and went about the day’s business.

  “What did your mother want?” she asked Billy later.

  “She’s canceled out of Edith’s party tonight. She’s not coming to the country this weekend. She’s decided to stay in New York.”

  Ann was delighted, although she didn’t say so. She always felt inhibited at parties when her mother-in-law was there. Later, looking for signposts along the way, people wondered whether if Alice Grenville had not canceled out of Edith Bleeker’s party, the tragic event that followed it might not have happened. Certainly, Ann would not have made the scene she made with her mother-in-law present. She was known to be frightened of her. And the scene she made, everyone who was there agreed, no matter what they said to the police afterward, must have led up to what happened.

  Her garden was closing down for winter. There were early chrysanthemums, late dahlias, and a few surviving roses. Ann leaned over and plucked off two dead dahlias and lay them on the edge of the bed for the gardener to find. “I can’t bear them when they turn brown like that,” she said. Ann was proud of her garden, and liked nothing more on a weekend than to walk guests through it and point out this flower and that bed, and talk about annuals and perennials in the way she had observed English ladies doing it.

  “I am talking to you,” said Billy, measuring his words in quiet fury.

  “I’m listening. I’m listening,” she replied. “Go on.”

  The situation did not warrant his stalking off in a state of agitation, but she knew it was what he was considering.

  “About the car,” she helped him. “The Studelac, wasn’t it? The prowler broke into the Studelac, you were saying. He’d probably never seen one before. That’s all. What was taken?”

  “Nothing, actually,” he said finally. “After all, what is there to take in a car? Maps. Gloves. Dark glasses. I mean, that’s not the point, what was taken. The point is, there was someone here, several times, in our garage, and in the cabana by the pool.”

  “Kids, probably. The caddies from that Jewish golf club through the trees.”

  “I wish you’d take me seriously.”

  “Look at that marvelous rose still blooming this late in October. I’m going to cut some flowers for the table.”

  “I’m going out to look at the new plane.”

  “No, not now, Billy. I told the new cook we’d have lunch at one with the children, and it’s lamb chops, so don’t go off now.”

  She looked after him as he walked toward the house. The prowler, real or imaginary, did not seem to her the problem with Billy. What, after all, was a prowler to them? A call to the Oyster Bay police station to report it, or, at most, the hiring of a guard to patrol the grounds, as the Twombleys had done, and the matter of the prowler would be at rest. People who lived behind gates and high walls must expect to be preyed upon. It was in the natural order of things. Did not Alice Grenville keep an unheard-of amount of money in the wall safe behind the Constable painting in her bedroom ever since the attempted kidnapping of Billy over twenty years earlier, simply to be prepared in the case of an emergency? The trouble with Billy had more to do than with prowlers, she knew. It had to do with their marriage. Uncourageous, except for his single incident of bravery in wartime, he could not bring himself to keep after her about the divorce he wanted, and, in frustration, seized upon the prowler as something to brood about.

  With her blunt garden scissors she clipped the October rose, and another, open to full lushness, and searched for more. She could, she knew, cajole Billy through this period of marital unrest. Settled now, even complacent, in her own success, she was, to her very marrow, Mrs. William Grenville, Junior, and nothing was going to disrupt that fact of her life, even if it meant giving up her lover. She would miss Ali Khan, but she could do without him.

  “Mommy.”

  “Mommy.”

  From the house Diantha and Third called her for lunch, excited to be sharing a meal with their parents.

  * * *

  “What’s the new cook’s name?” Billy was leaning against the door to Ann’s room, still in his maroon polka-dot dressing gown.

  “Anna, I think. Or Annie.” She was seated at her dressing table, putting on her makeup.

  “Which?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “It makes a good deal of difference. It’s one of the reasons we have a new cook every two weeks.” There was a tone of annoyance in his voice. “In my mother’s house—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, spare me that old chestnut about your mother having her cook for thirty-two years, and her butler for twenty-eight, and her maid for seventeen.”

  “My mother knows how to treat them properly, and that’s why they stay with her.”

  “Do you want to move back home?”

  “You are a pain in the ass, Ann.”

  “You’re always disagreeable after you come. Does your wop princess ever tell you that?”

  She leaned toward the mirror and rubbed her finger back and forth across her lip, evening her lipstick. Her eyes met his in the mirror. She watched him turn sulkily and walk across the hall to his own room and regretted she had mentioned Simonetta d’Este.

  “Billy,” she called after him.

  He didn’t answer.

  “It’s Anna,” she called again.

  “What’s Anna?” He appeared again in her sightline in the mirror.

  “The cook’s name. It’s Anna. Anna. Gorman. Fifty-six years, old. From the Creedon Domestic Agency. Good references. Last worked for a Mrs. Slater of 563 Park Avenue, not the Mrs. Slater we know. Why this great interest in the cook’s name?”

  “I want to show her how to lock the doors after we leave.”

  “You’d better get dressed. We can’t drift in late tonight. Edith wants everyone there at eight sharp, before the duchess comes down.”

  “I still want to talk to the cook about locking the front door. It’s tricky.”

  “How do I look?” She stood up and turned around toward him.

  “ ‘Mrs. William Grenville, Junior, was in powder-blue satin by Mainbocher,’ your friend Elsa Maxwell will write.”

  “Balenciaga. I’m branching out. And Elsa Maxwell was not invited.”

  “No rocks tonight?”

  “If there is this prowler around, as you insist, I’m not going to put on my jewels until I’m in the car.”

  “Anna!” she called out. “Anna!”

  “What’s the matter?” asked Billy, crossing over from his room, adjusting his black tie.

  “Where the hell is she?”

  “She’s in the kitchen eating her dinner. What’s the trouble?”

  “There’re some things I want her to do after we go out.”

  “That’s no reason to yell for her like that. I thought something was wrong.”

  “Oh, go tie your tie,” said Ann.

  “Did you want me, Mrs. Grenville?” asked Anna Gorman, opening the door into the small hallway that separated their two bedrooms.

  “Mr. Grenville said I was interrupting your dinner. I am sorry,” said Ann in exaggerated friendliness.

  “That’s all right, missus,” said Anna. Anna Gorman had heard a thing or two about Mrs. William Grenville, Junior, at the employment agency.

  “We’ll be leaving in a few minutes, Anna, and there are a few things I wanted to go over with you. You see, we can’t be late, because we’re going to a dinner for the Duchess of Windsor, and all the guests must arrive before the duchess comes down.”

  Behind the cook’s back, Billy Grenville shook his head slowly in disapproval of his wife’s name-dropping in front
of a servant, a thing he would never have done himself, and returned to his own room to finish dressing. His head-shaking was not lost on Ann, and it added to her annoyance that the cook did not seem impressed with her social disclosure.

  “The chauffeur’s bringing the children home from the riding instructor’s Halloween party at about eight-thirty.”

  “Mr. Grenville told me.”

  “Tell the children to go right to bed, no television. Mr. Grenville’s going to take Third flying in the new plane in the morning, and he won’t if he stays up late. Also, would you telephone this number in the city and say that Third is in the country with his parents for the weekend and cannot come to Bobby Strauss’s birthday party tomorrow. If the nurse hadn’t left, she’d be doing this.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Grenville.”

  “I bought a lot of cosmetics in the village this afternoon. I wonder if you’d unwrap all those packages for me and throw away all the papers and strings.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Grenville.”

  “When you pick up my clothes and straighten up the bathroom, I wonder if you’d do me the most enormous favor, Anna?”

  “What’s that, Mrs. Grenville?”

  “The laundress—what’s her name?”

  “Lil.”

  “Lil, yes. She creased my sheets when she ironed them, and I simply cannot bear to have my sheets creased. She’s supposed to fold them over her arm and carry them to the bed to change. Do you think you could run the iron over them, just this once, and I’ll explain it again to Lil when I see her on Monday.”

  “I’m just the cook, Mrs. Grenville.”

  “Yes, of course, but I just thought if you had a few minutes to spare after we leave and before the children get home, you might, uh, you know, run the iron over the creases, and also, about the lights, leave all the lights on in the house, don’t be worried about the electric bill, the people who rent the indoor tennis court pay all the electricity bills, and if there’s a prowler in the area, as Mr. Grenville seems to think, he won’t come near a house that’s all lit up.”

  “I’ll light it up like the Catholic church,” said Anna.

  “What?”

  “Just an expression, missus.”

  “Now, the telephone number where we’ll be having dinner at Mrs. Baker’s is—”

  “Mr. Grenville gave me the number, missus, in case he received a call.”

  Ann let this fact register but said nothing. Instead she picked up her brush and brushed hard her already brushed hair. She wondered from whom he was expecting a call.

  “Is there a guard on the place, Mrs. Grenville?”

  “No, there’s not, but the Oyster Bay police patrol the grounds every hour or so, and there is a guard that the people who rent the indoor tennis court have, called Ralph, or something. We’re going to be late. Billy, are you ready? Hand me that bag with my jewels, would you, Anna?”

  “Here, missus,” said Anna, handing Ann the bag.

  “And you won’t forget about the sheets, will you?” she said, finishing the conversation and sweeping out of the room.

  Anna Gorman looked after her, shaking her head slowly in the same way Billy Grenville had. She turned toward the unmade bed with its upholstered headboard and creased linen sheets, and resignedly stripped them from the bed. On Monday, she decided, she would call the Creedon Employment Agency in Manhattan.

  The car was parked in the cobblestone courtyard, and Billy Grenville was seated behind the wheel smoking a cigarette. Beside him on the seat was a revolver.

  “What in the name of God are you carrying a gun for?” asked Ann as she opened the door of the car and got in.

  “The garage has been broken into. The cabana has been broken into. I’m not taking any chances,” said Billy.

  “But nothing was taken, except some food in the cabana,” said Ann. “It’s probably kids.”

  “I think it’s someone who’s living in the woods there,” said Billy, pointing in the direction beyond the garden and the swimming pool. “I’m going to set a trap for him.”

  “Oh, Billy, for God’s sake, if you’re so concerned, you should have hired a guard,” said Ann. She did not press her point and suggest that if he was so concerned about the prowler, they should remain with the children and stay home from the party instead of leaving them alone in the house with a brand-new cook. She particularly wanted to go to this party to show all the North Shore families that the Grenville marriage, despite all the rumors to the contrary, remained on a firm footing. “What are you stopping for?”

  “I’m going to turn on all the driveway lights down to the road.”

  The lights shone on the rhododendron bushes that lined the long driveway. Ann shivered, wondering if anyone was standing behind one watching them drive away. From her gold minaudier she took a cigarette and matches. Ignoring Billy’s outstretched lighter, she lit her own cigarette with a match. The matchbook, she saw in the flash of flame, was from an obscure French restaurant where she had lunched the day before with Ali Khan. Billy, meanwhile, withdrew his gold Zippo.

  “Those lights are so bright.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “Anna will say it’s lit up like a Catholic church.”

  “What?”

  “Just an expression, missus.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “It’s quicker to go 25A than Berry Hill Road,” said Ann as the car turned out from the driveway.

  “You don’t have to tell me how to get to Edith Bleeker’s house. I’ve been going there since I was ten years old.”

  “Right,” said Ann, twisting the rearview mirror around to watch herself put on her earrings. “Just don’t tell me that story again of Bratsie’s tenth birthday party.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t twist the rearview mirror around like that when I’m driving,” said Billy. “It’s very dangerous.”

  “If you’d put a mirror on the back of the visor as I’ve asked you to, I wouldn’t need to use your damn rearview mirror.”

  “Poor Bratsie,” said Billy quietly, as he always did when Jellico Bleeker’s name came into the conversation.

  “Necklace, earrings, ring, bracelet, brooch,” Ann said, checking off her jewelry in the rearview mirror. “I hate this damn clasp Jules Glaenzer talked me into. It pinches my earlobe.”

  “Did I tell you I drove by your old house in Pittsburg, Kansas, last week when I was picking up the new plane?” asked Billy. “West Quincy Street, I think it was.”

  Ann’s face reddened in the dark car. She had, even before meeting the family she married into, disengaged herself from her past. She disliked being from a place for which apologies had to be made. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, really,” said Billy. “It just seemed like a natural segue from your sapphires pinching your earlobes.”

  “You’re a shit, Billy,” she said, lighting another Camel.

  “I want a divorce, Ann.” The words held no threat for her, as they once had. Too often spoken and never acted upon, they had become part of their conversational discord.

  They arrived at the gates of Edith Bleeker’s estate on Viking’s Cove. “Look,” said Ann quietly. “I don’t want to be the first one there. Let’s drive around for a few minutes before we turn in at Edith’s.”

  Billy dutifully backed the Studelac out of the drive and took off in the direction of Locust Valley.

  “Did you hear what I said?” he persisted.

  “Do I feel the presence of Princess Simonetta d’Este in this domestic crisis?” asked Ann.

  “You keep Simonetta out of this,” he said.

  She did not want to let him know that she had been having him followed by private detectives and wished she had not introduced Simonetta d’Este’s name into the conversation.

  “I want a divorce, Ann,” he repeated. The calmness of his request began to unnerve her.

  “His own kind. That’s what they’ll say about Simonetta d
’Este. So much more suitable than the show girl. What his mother always wanted for him.”

  “I am waiting for an answer,” said Billy.

  “You know my price and my conditions,” said Ann nervously, taking a gold-and-diamond compact from her gold-and-diamond minaudier. She opened it, looked at herself in the mirror, and began powdering her face.

  “I haven’t seen that before,” said Billy.

  “Seen what?”

  “That compact.”

  “Of course you have.”

  “Who bought you that, Ann? My old roommate Neddie Pavenstedt? Or that greaseball Ali Khan?”

  He wound down the window of the car.

  “What are you doing that for?” she asked. “I’m cold, and it will blow my hair.”

  “To do this,” he answered. He reached over, pulled the compact out of her hands, and threw it out of the window as he sped on. Again her face reddened in the dark car, this time with rage.

  “The duchess will say what lovely color you have tonight, Ann,” taunted Billy.

  “I’m going to get even with you for this,” said Ann, stabbing her cigarette butt into the ashtray where; unextinguished, it continued to emit smoke. She lit another.

  “And do me a favor, will you? Don’t curtsy to the duchess. It’s so tacky.”

  They turned through Edith Bleeker’s massive wrought-iron gates, each supported by a red brick column surmounted by a stone griffin on a ball of stone, and drove silently up the long white-pebble driveway to the porte cochere extending from the entrance of the enormous red brick house over the adjacent driveway. The air of the Studelac was clouded with the smoke of Ann’s Camel. The outdoor staff, dressed for the occasion in black mess jackets and ties, lined up to park the arriving cars. Ann drew deeply on her cigarette one last time, as if she wanted more out of it than it could give her.

  Billy, lugubrious no longer, sprang from the car when his door was opened. Edith Bleeker’s was a house he always enjoyed coming to, and he never was not filled with childhood memories when he reached up to push the bell that hung from a cord in the ceiling of the porte cochere. “Bratsie and I used to stick pins in this bell on Halloween when we were kids, and the bell rang inside interminably, and Edith would have a fit, but Brats and I would run like hell, and …”