Cold Morning (17 page)

***

The café got still when I walked in after the morning session of the trial ended. Aleck sat alone by a window seat, motioned to me, but the look on his face suggested he'd rather be sharing a convivial sandwich with Lizzie Borden. A table of Hearst reporters, huddled nearby, stopped mid-sentence and mid-bite as I moved by, their eyes accusing.

“Pariah,” Aleck said too loudly as I sat down.

I spun around to take in the packed room. Lowell Thomas was chatting with Margaret Bourke-White, both watching me. Douglas Fairbanks was sitting with Clifton Webb, both signing autographs, and thus paying me no mind. Worse, Joshua Flagg sat with his back against a window in a chair set apart from the table, as if he'd been exiled. And, perversely, he was pointing at me, a silly grin on his face. Walter Winchell, wearing ridiculous dark glasses tipped up onto his forehead, was holding court with three others at his table, and his rat-a-tat ticker-tape voice flowed over the heads of the other diners. “Incredible.” At least I believe that was the word he hurled my way.

Of course, I understood the reason.

A copy of that morning's
New York Times
lay on different tables, opened to an inside page. In fact, Aleck cavalierly shoved his copy toward me, his fingers anxiously tapping the page. I saw my byline under the provocative headline: “Violet Sharp, A Cautionary Tale.” The editor's headline, not mine, I hasten to add. I'd submitted it as “Violet Sharp, A Woman of Secrets.” My editor Marvin Loeb said it lacked verve. So does my editor.

No matter the wording, the content of the piece obviously infuriated folks.

My first line: “The world should never forget Violet Sharp.”

No chance of that, these days—in this Fourth Estate gladiators' ring, all the reporters maneuvering for blood and a scoop.

What I'd done was assemble what few facts we knew about the sad life of the servant in the Morrow household who killed herself rather than be interrogated one more time by Inspector Walsh of the New Jersey police. An abbreviated character sketch of a pretty young girl, described as a little plump but with lovely eyes, maybe an overbite, a woman who came to America to enjoy a better life—one who planned to return to her native England with cash in her pocket to help her parents. A young woman who liked to dance and go to the movies and to frequent illegal roadhouses. Nothing unusual there—most young folks did so in that restrictive era of Prohibition. Innocents all. An innocent abroad. But a young woman caught in the horrible fabric of the Lindbergh kidnapping, swept into the confusions of guilt and mistrust and accusation. It was too much for her. The first “insider” accused by Colonel Norman Schwarzkopf, who stated his conviction that she was party to the kidnapping, although he later changed his mind.

A familiar story, a few years old now, but brought back into the light by the current trial. A profile of an aborted life. I wondered in the last paragraph if Violet Sharp had died with a secret.

But obviously I'd overstepped some line.

“Edna, how could you?” From Aleck, stewing and eyeing me over the rim of his coffee cup.

“I'm a journalist.”

“You're a provocateur.”

I chuckled. “Rather extreme, no, Aleck?”

“Look around you, my dear.”

I did: censorious eyes, frowns, pursed lips, the claque of disapproval.

“Edna, your portrait of that sad suicide deflects from the horrors of the crime at hand. You've opened a raw wound. Everyone is reading between the lines—you're impugning the aviator himself. Everyone is focused on Hauptmann and Lindbergh, and you pen some melancholic song to a dead beautiful girl. Edgar Allan Poe you are not.”

“Aleck, I didn't mention any of the”—I dropped my voice to a whisper—“the business with Annabel and the letters from cousin Violet to her. There's no mention of Dwight and the Morrow household. Certainly nothing about Blake Somerville and Violet's infatuation with him.”

I watched his face carefully. He drew his lips into a tight line, flicking his head as if to suggest I might be overheard. “You mention her sister, Emily—her flight back to England.”

“So what? All I did was write about a young woman's sudden place in the whirlpool of a national tragedy. It's a morality tale. The common man suddenly, well, thrust onto the front page. Out there. A girl horrified.”

He dismissed me with a wave of his hand. “You're talking nonsense.”

I looked around. “I really didn't expect my article to create such a furor.”

“Thousands of words are produced every day, Edna. A million words a day are telegraphed from Flemington. Every scrap of information on Lindbergh and Hauptmann, real and imagined, makes its way into the press. But, as you've noticed, all the sympathies are with Lindbergh and the Morrows. With Charles and Anne. I myself described Anne Lindbergh on the witness stand as—as a wistful Madonna.”

“You're a sentimentalist, Aleck.”

His jaw dropped. “Your focus on the dead girl suggests…well, secreted information, a story not fully told.”

I stormed, “Well, Aleck, that's exactly how I view it.”

He thundered back, “But that's wrong.”

“Who are you to tell me I'm being ridiculous?”

He sighed. “Edna, we are friends.”

“You sound doubtful.”

A thin smile as he adjusted his tiny glasses on his cheeks. “We've had our bitter moments, our battles royal, but I do get protective of your rash behavior. On occasion.”

I seethed. “I've never done a rash thing in my life.” A pause. “Save, perhaps, befriend you.”

Aleck eyed me curiously, silent, one hand fingering the cigarette holder he'd extracted from his breast pocket. Instead, he struggled to stand, though he announced in a loud voice, “Nevertheless, I will accompany you tomorrow, as planned. Your capricious pursuit of nonsense. It'll do me good to leave this sad hamlet for greener pastures. I've appropriated Marcus and the car tomorrow. Marcus is ours for the whole day. A foolish venture, but nevertheless I promised you I'd arrange things.”

“Thank you, Aleck.”

Tomorrow, a quiet Sunday, I planned to visit Montclair Manor, the asylum where Dwight Morrow and Blake Somerville had been patients. Earlier Aleck had told me he knew a retired nurse who lived in the area. He'd make a few phone calls, set up a meeting. “Frivolous,” he'd told me, but I persisted. In an aside he'd said, “She took care of Zelda Fitzgerald there. She violated that confidence, and doubtless she'll violate every other confidence. A couple of free front-row theater tickets, and the woman will do electric shock on Helen Hayes. Which would enliven any party, frankly. The woman has few scruples. The two of you should get along famously. I'm only going because I want to watch the two of you engage in a battle of wits.”

Quietly, “Thank you again.”

“Marcus will call for us at seven. I told him to appropriate a road map. For all his Valentino looks, the lad is a provincial—he knows only Trenton and Newark and workable parts of Manhattan. Montclair is wilderness to him.”

I repeated, “Thank you.”

“But don't expect me to be pleasant on the long, long ride.”

“I wouldn't expect the axis of the earth to shift.”

Aleck lumbered out of the café, leaving me alone at the table. As he walked by Walter Winchell's table, I noticed the pesky reporter wave to him, as if in recognition of Aleck's decision to abandon the heretic Ferber.

I sat alone, nursing a cup of coffee and feeling strangely triumphant, isolated from that swelling, gaping crowd. Horace Tripp walked by, a sheaf of menus in his hand, and he glanced down at me. I started to say something—another expression of sympathy at the death of Peggy, perhaps—but he was looking away. When the waiter asked me what I wanted to eat, I said nothing. Just coffee. A table for four with me alone, sipping a cup of lukewarm coffee. He didn't look happy.

A short time later Walter Winchell rose, and his entourage trooped out ahead of him. He lingered, shuffled near my table, and, unbidden, dropped into the chair Aleck had vacated.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“The question is, can I help you?”

“You first.” My winsome smile broke at the edges.

“I read your piece in the
Times
,” he began. “We all did. Probably Colonel and Mrs. Lindbergh. Colonel Schwarzkopf. It smacked of rampant sentimentality, some sob sister posturing on your part. You depict this—this Violet Sharp as some faded ingénue from one of your romances. Why is that, Miss Ferber? The only thing lacking would be harps playing and angels singing her to heaven.”

“Leave her to heaven.”

“What?”

“A line from another writer. Shakespeare. I don't think you've heard of him.”

An unhappy grimace, his tight ferret's face distorted. “All I'm saying is that this trial is being watched by the whole world. Colonel Lindbergh is a genuine American hero, beloved, revered. Honored.”

“And I respect him.”

“I wonder about that.” A snide twist of his lips. “I do.”

“Well, that's your peculiar failing then.”

“Bruno is a monster.”

“But Violet Sharp was not.”

“But you are suggesting that she had something to do with the kidnapping.”

I sat up. “I never said any such thing.”

“The mention of her name—singling her out, especially harping on the police questioning—its harshness…”

“Because she died a horrible death.”

“She was an hysteric.” He nodded toward his sycophants, clustered nearby.

“Really?”

A snicker. “Something you should understand.”

I remained silent.

He stood. “You know, Miss Ferber, there is an awful price for nonconformity.”

I waited a moment. “Words I can hear Adolf Hitler saying to his robotic SS minions.”

He flushed, stammered, “How dare you?”

“We are in a democracy. Innocent until proven guilty.”

“That doesn't include Bruno the German.”

“Nor obviously me as well.”

“Nonconformity.” He stressed the word.

“I know. I heard you. Nonconformists, even in a democracy, are a small club of enlightened souls. A small club, but a refreshing one. There's a certain liberation when you break away from the herd of fat, grazing cows.”

“Be careful.” His final words, hissed, fierce. He tapped his fingers on the table, planted his feathered fedora on his head, adjusted his dark glasses, and left the café.

I sipped my coffee. Looking down, I wanted no contact with anyone, but someone was hovering over me. Joshua Flagg had left his seat in the corner and had approached my table.

“Now what do you want?” I asked.

A blank expression on his face, his eyes dark and unblinking. “That Winchell fellow is a strange man.”

I fumed. “Is that why you've approached me? To tell me what I already know?”

A devilish smile now, dark and cruel. “You're playing a dangerous game, Miss Ferber. Dangerous.”

“What are you saying?”

“I've said it. Dangerous.”

With that he scuttled out of the café.

I sipped coffee. Cold now, filmy and dark.

Distracted, I heard yelling in the street. The state police officers were walking the jurors back from their lunch, sheltered as they were at the end of the dining room, lamentably in earshot of the talkative reporters on the other side of the curtain. Walking in a straight line, tense, shoulders bumping, the six men and four women, bundled up against the cold, moved toward the courthouse. A daily ritual, this awful passage from courthouse to hotel and back again. And, as usual, crowds of people lined the street, blocked the street and sidewalk, watching, watching. Cameras snapped photographs, newsreel footage rolled, but no one dared address the jurors. The stern eye of the state police made that certain.

But as they moved across the street, the chanting began.

“Kill Bruno. Kill Bruno. Kill the kraut.”

Kill the baby killer.

Kill him.

Burn him
.

The voices rose, swelled, broke in the icy air, overlapped and became thunderous.

Kill Bruno.

Kill.

As I watched, one of the defense lawyers, Lloyd Fisher, hurried to the doors of the courthouse, opened them, and Anna Hauptmann, looking dowdy in a bulky black cloth hat and cheap coat, brushed by him, her shoulders hunched.

Someone in the crowd spotted her and the crowd shifted toward her.

“Kill her. Kill her.”

Let her die.

Kill her.

Chapter Seventeen

Aleck grumbled as I entered the lobby. “Edna, the car is waiting. Must you dawdle?”

Outside, exhaust spewing from the long car, Willie stood with the back door open.

“Where's Marcus?” I asked him, and Aleck raised his eyebrows. He mouthed the words: foolish woman.

“With his wife over to Trenton.”

“Marcus is married?”

“So am I,” Willie said. “You surprised?”

Aleck leaned in. “Miss Ferber was hoping Marcus would be available for the next Hollywood version of
Show Boat
. Gaylord Ravenal behind the wheel of a chariot of the gods.”

“Quiet, Aleck. Willie has yet to step on the gas and already you're annoying me.” I turned to Willie. “Do you have children?”

“Everybody has family, ma'am. It's what you do in New Jersey. I got grandchildren older than Marcus.”

“Hear that, Edna? Procreation as diversion among the swamp-and-toxic-fume people.”

“Shut up, Aleck.”

I slipped into the backseat and Aleck toppled in beside me.

“Sunday in Flemington,” Willie sighed. “Last Sunday over sixty-thousand sightseers clogged the streets. Already the crowds are gathering at the doors of the courthouse. On Sunday the sheriff allows visitors access to the halls—madness I can't fathom. While state troopers stood guard last week, lines of them, alert, unhappy, well, folks used pen knives to whittle slivers from chairs and tables, tried to secret spittoons under bulky coats, tucked toilet paper in purses, some carving initials in benches. Kilroy was here. Fistfights broke out. They sat on the judge's dais, shuffled through the jury box—‘Hey, John, get a picture of me'—or sat in Bruno's chair and made buzzing sounds as if they was being electrocuted.”

Unfortunately, in my opinion, they weren't.

“I know,” I said to his back. “Craziness.”

“Human stupidity still amazes.”

Aleck rolled his eyes at me. “Yes, I agree. Craziness is trooping off to this mad house with you, Edna.”

I'd assured my editor at the
Times
that I was pursuing an angle on the kidnapping. Faced with his doubtful look, I'd mumbled, “Violet Sharp.” My article had engendered hateful mail and furious telephone calls. But my magical words energized the young man, and he nodded approval. He told me,
sotto voce
, that one of the managing editors—whose mother had been one of the haughty Knickerbockers—had spent recuperative time at Montclair Manor, a short visit, where he'd followed Zelda Fitzgerald around the hallways, peppering her with infantile questions about Scott's
Gatsby.
She never answered. “It's the domain of the very rich and the very disturbed.”

Aleck and I lapsed into silence, his dislike of our adventure obvious, but Willie found the backseat stillness unbearable, and a few times, shifting his scrawny, ancient body in the seat, he began a ramble about the stark winter scenery, the cold weather, and the awful fog that settled on the hills. He volunteered a remark about the superiority of New Jersey over New York, though Aleck's egregious belch at that moment slammed Willie into a confused silence. Not to be silenced, Willie chronicled his disaffection with the Roosevelts, in particular Eleanor. “No one likes a pushy dame.”

“Really, Willie,” I pleaded. “Enough.”

We held eye contact as he looked into the rearview mirror. “Don't mean no offense, ma'am.”

“And yet it seems your only talent.”

He shut up.

As the car turned into the grounds, Montclair Manor struck me as a Gothic backdrop for a chilling British parlor drama: stark Tudor turrets, hemlocks leaning on the slate roof, creeping ivy withered under the harsh blast of January. Small leaded glass windows dotted the façade. The grounds were darkswept now, ice-tinged, and even at midday I could detect faint illumination seeping through, though most of the buildings seemed forbidden, if not abandoned.

“Lord, Aleck,” I told him. “Such a building could only exacerbate any depression I had.”

A ridge of old mansions high on a hill that overlooked the distant Hudson River, the gigantic homes of moneyed Robber Barons now transformed into clinics, hospitals, charity organizations.

Aleck was peering out the window. “Please behave yourself, Edna. They have the power to hold us there.”

“It's for the rich, Aleck.”

“My point exactly. You qualify. I don't. I will be compelled to scrub the toilets.”

The front door swung open, a creaky whine, and I expected to see Mary Shelley jotting notes on a steno pad for a sequel to
Frankenstein
. We were met by a tall stringbean of a man dressed in a charcoal morning suit with a carefully appointed ascot and a matching light-blue handkerchief peeking from a breast pocket. So tall was this man that he had to bend dangerously as he endeavored to shake our hands. “I'm Thomas Colby, the director. I've been told to expect your visit.” Another bow, precarious as he swayed a bit, and then a toothsome smile. Too many teeth in so tiny a mouth. “Such an honor to have such famous guests.” Then, without pausing, “We understand you're doing research for an article on mental aberration and its successful treatment.”

I sucked in my breath. “Well…”

Aleck jumped in. “You are correct.
The New York Times
, you know.”

“Oh, I know.”

Aleck shot me a look.
Careful, Edna
.

“Mark Jamison called ahead, of course. He's on our board. A friend to our institution.”

“A wonderful friend,” Aleck went on. “We were at Hamilton together.”

“So I understand.”

Which, I knew, was how this questionable visit had been orchestrated. Aleck called a friend from his college days, someone connected with the
Times
, and the machinery had been oiled. A few other surreptitious phone calls that touched base with Mark Jamison's sister, whom Aleck had never met. A casual lie about the purpose of our visit, a journalistic ploy that skirted some ethical boundaries…

Director Colby ushered us in to a reception area where coffee was waiting. He dipped and swayed as he poured for us, although he never asked us if we wanted any. He nodded toward a plate of dry, unappetizing cookies, which I shunned but Aleck immediately reached for, swooping up two at a time. Both disappeared into his mouth, though he was compelled to wash them down quickly with gulps of hot coffee. “They are good, no?” Colby intoned and I wondered if he intended satire. I doubted it. But I noticed he touched not a one.

He sat there stiffly, his long flamingo legs drawn up almost to his chin, his eyes watching us. A drip of unnecessary drool seeped from the corner of his mouth and, in a flash, a large geographic tongue flitted out, captured the vagrant spit, and made it disappear. I stared, wide-eyed, enthralled. A Dickensian character, this Thomas Colby, but accommodating, suddenly producing expensive colorful brochures touting the effects of any stay at the institution.

“I understand Zelda Fitzgerald was here for a brief visit,” I said, though I immediately regretted my words.

He looked flustered and glanced away at the ceiling as if to check that she was not hiding there, and announced, “Issues of confidentiality, my dear Miss Ferber. You do understand.”

“Of course.”

“Lord, Edna,” Aleck sympathized, “I'm surprised your family allows you out in public.”

I smiled weakly.

A discreet knock on the door, and Colby looked up, irritated. “Oh, yes, of course.” He hesitated. “Nurse Smith will give you a tour.”

We walked through a common area, a recreational lounge, and a library, and I saw not even one patient.

An hour later we thanked Colby and left the grounds for lunch at a small coffee shop, The Copper Kettle, as planned. We met Mark Jamison's sister, a retired ward nurse who'd agreed to talk with us.

Alice Jamison was a small, fussy-looking woman, late sixties perhaps, dressed in a crisp cardigan sweater and a butterfly brooch, sensible polished black shoes, her gray hair pulled into a severe bun and her nails bitten to the quick. When we shook hands I noticed thin lines of dried red at the edges. Alice Jamison had a quirky smile, mischievous, the town scamp who'd metamorphosed into a middle-aged gossip or town crier. As we walked into the eatery, she caught my eye and offered a quick, furtive wink, conspiratorial. I knew I was going to like this woman.

No one from Montclair Manor ever frequented the place, she told us.

“Too many farmers in overalls and five-cent cigars.”

Which suited me fine. At midday the tiny eatery smelled of savory cheese and fresh baked bread, the raw hint of rising yeast and aromatic coffee beans. A long counter did, indeed, exhibit a gaggle of locals, none however in overalls but all chummy and joking, men and women from a local brewery affectionately teasing the red-faced counter boy, a lad who stuttered and guffawed and seemed to be having the time of his life. We sat at a back table, a crisp white tablecloth covering it, and ordered the specialty of the day: homemade Belgian stew, advertised as a concoction of shredded roast, peas, carrots, and diced potatoes. It was, to my delight, the perfect meal for a cold, blustery day.

Alice sat back, smacking her lips after the last sip of coffee, her wadded napkin dropped onto the table. “Of course, I haven't been at the Manor for a while. Things change.” A hint of a smile. “And now I can tell tales out of school. I suppose you two didn't travel here for a commentary on the latest research in psychiatric methods.”

Aleck grinned. “Always of interest to Edna, true…but no.”

Alice leaned in. “My brother tells me you're in Flemington at the Hauptmann trial.”

“That's true,” I told her.

“Does this have anything to do with that?”

I debated what to say, but demurred. I wanted no repercussions. But her wide, eager face demanded the truth. Or, rather, some part of the truth.

“I'm researching the family background. Particularly Anne Lindbergh's side, the Morrow family. So rich and famous, so prominent in the headlines now. A family that long shunned tabloid scandal—a father predicted to become President of the United States—and now finds itself smack-dab in the middle of it. Who are these people? I wondered.”

She caught my eye and twisted her lips. “Dwight Morrow, Jr.”

Startled. “What?”

“I'm not a fool.”

“I never said you were.” I smiled back at her.

She waited a heartbeat. “I've been reading your pieces in the
Times
. Both of yours.”

“And?” I waited, anxious.

Again that mysterious smile. “Mr. Woollcott, you have a jaundiced view of the defense team.”

“And I?” I wondered.

“You, Miss Ferber, have a jaundiced view of the prosecution.”

“Interesting,” I said. “I'm trying to remain impartial.”

“You're not doing a good job of it.”

Aleck whooped it up, enjoying himself. “Alice, my dear, you are like your brother.”

“Yeah, I've heard that before.”

“He never let me get away with anything at Hamilton.”

“He still talks of the time you played Lady Macbeth.”

I howled. “Really, Aleck?”

Aleck grumbled, “No one did it better.”

“Oh my Lord,” I chuckled.

“Really, Edna.” He nodded at Alice. “Go on. Point out Edna's myriad faults. Her horrible bias. Her wilting before the shrine of Bruno.”

But Alice backtracked. “No, not true. All I'm saying is that Miss Ferber enjoys—maybe that's the wrong word—
likes
exploring the darker side, the underbelly, accused.” She breathed in. “I loved your piece on Violet Sharp. I'd forgotten about her. You made her come sadly alive, Miss Ferber. No one took note of her emotional turmoil. You refuse to let that troubled girl be forgotten.”

“Thank you.”

“But I'm not saying you name her as suspect—or guilty. She is just—there. A happenstance of history, the accidental victim.”

“Exactly.”

“And what about me?” Aleck preened. “I write, too.”

She broke in. “You talk of procedures and opinions and evidence and authority and state police methods. You made Anne Lindbergh and Charles Lindbergh statues—the wife is a Madonna to you, and the husband is an icon. Statues in a frieze. Miss Ferber talks about people.”

I waited a second. “Dwight Morrow, Jr.”

“Yes,” she hummed. “The real reason for your visit here. The Morrow family. So little has been written about the siblings.” A shrug. “No reason to, really.”

“Yet fascinating,” I added.

She watched me closely. “I agree.”

“So?” Aleck went on. “Tell us.”

For a moment she gazed off. “Tales out of class, forbidden, but”—her smile belied her schoolmarm hairdo—“I'm among friends.” She sat back. “I liked Dwight quite a bit. Respectful, shy, humble almost. Always polite and stepping out of your way.”

“He sounds like a good house pet,” Aleck noted.

Alice frowned. “Quite a sense of humor as well, that Dwight. Sardonic, quick. Then, other days—boorish, impetuous.”

“Did the Lindberghs visit him here?”

She shook her head back and forth. “Nobody visited here. It was like…this whole business will not be discussed.”

I went on. “His sister Anne?”

“As I said, no. The strange thing is, Dwight talked about her all the time. I gather he'd been obsessed with her, the favorite sister, doted on her, she on him. But when she married the aviator, everything shifted. The imperious mother liked her three daughters—and not him. That was clear. The whole family was troubled with health problems. The father had a misshapen arm and battled migraines and depression. High-achievers, all of them. Looked out from that mansion over the Palisades, and they crumbled. Elisabeth had a weak heart, Anne hid in her room, and Dwight went to Groton where he had a breakdown. A stutterer who heard voices. Dwight continued to have problems, in and out of care, patterns not unfamiliar in that family, I hear tell. But a sweet man, I need to tell you that. I
liked
him.”