Murder Under the Palms (6 page)

“Yes,” Charlotte admitted. “I am.”

The house was down around Delancey Street. At least, that’s how Charlotte thought of it. It hadn’t taken long for a New Yorker such as herself to realize that Palm Beach was, at fourteen miles, roughly the same length as Manhattan (though it was much narrower) and bore striking similarities in its layout. Instead of the Hudson River to the west there was Lake Worth, and instead of the East River to the east, there was the Atlantic Ocean. The north end was not unlike Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a residential neighborhood of middle-class professionals—middle class for Palm Beach, that is, where an average home cost several million dollars. The oceanfront neighborhood at the northern end of the island, which was lined with spectacular mansions, was Palm Beach’s equivalent of Sutton Place—a tropical Upper East Side—and the faintly urban shopping district was in a location that corresponded roughly to Herald Square. Even the location of the local theatre, the Royal Poinciana Playhouse, corresponded to the location of Lincoln Center, and as Royal Palm Way (the main east-west thoroughfare) was to Palm Beach, so was Forty-second Street to Manhattan.

They were now headed downtown on South Ocean Boulevard, which was the Palm Beach equivalent of FDR Drive, with minor differences, such as that the road was lined with mansions and beach cabanas. There was no Alphabet City here, folks. Charlotte hadn’t confided this idiosyncratic view of the island’s geography to Connie and Spalding. With their frame of reference limited to the heavily traveled path between Newport and Palm Beach and the Connecticut suburbs, she was sure they would have no understanding of the geographical centrism of the typical New Yorker.

After fifteen minutes, they reached their destination: a large house which, were Charlotte to extend her Manhattan analogy, would have been located at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. The house was set back from the road at the rear of a manicured lawn planted with coconut palms on a lot that stretched to Lake Worth. This was the island at its narrowest, probably no more than five or six hundred feet. The house, which was set sideways on the lot to take advantage of the water views to the east and west, was built in the art deco style of the 1930s, but with a marine twist. Nautical balconies ringed each of the three oval-shaped stories, and a gangway led to the door on the second deck, as it were. Where Paul’s house strove to create an impression of antiquity, this house strove for an impression of modernity: a 1930s modernity that now seemed quaintly out of date.

They pulled up to the entrance, where they were greeted by a valet wearing a French sailor cap with the words SS
Normandie
imprinted in navy blue on the brim. Lydia had really gone all out, Charlotte thought. The French tricolor flew from a flagpole on the deck of the second story.

“Looks like a ship, doesn’t it?” commented Spalding, as they emerged from the car and walked up the gangway to the house, which was aglow with lights that shone through the porthole-shaped windows.

“Yes,” Charlotte agreed. With its sleek, curving lines and three increasingly narrow stories, it looked like an ocean liner that was sailing down the island. “I can see why it’s called Villa Normandie.”

As she spoke it struck her that the
Normandie
and Palm Beach had a lot in common: they both represented a way of life with no rough edges.

They were greeted at the front door by an elegant-looking older gentleman wearing a navy blue uniform trimmed with gold braid and brass buttons. “
Bon soir
, Miss Graham,” he said with a gracious smile and a little bow. How had he known who she was? Charlotte wondered. Though she was often recognized, it usually took people who were familiar with her only from her movies a minute or two to make the connection. Then it was her turn to recognize the face under the visor of the officer’s cap. It belonged to René Dubord, who had been the
sous-commissaire
, or assistant purser, aboard the
Normandie
. Though his temples were now gray and his face was fleshier, he still had the same dashing waxed mustache and the same expressive brown eyes that had sent the women passengers into a swoon. Since the
commissaire principal
, or chief purser, had been occupied behind the scenes, keeping the accounts and meeting the payroll, the job of keeping the passengers happy and entertained had fallen to his assistant. Though he was quite young at the time, René had acquitted himself with distinction in this position and had developed a well-deserved reputation for thinking of everything—including names. He had known the name of every passenger aboard the ship—at least every first-class passenger—and, it was clear, still remembered them fifty-three years later.

“René!” Charlotte exclaimed, stepping forward to kiss him fondly on each cheek. “It’s been a long time.” In fact, René had been as much a friend as a member of the crew. A witty conversationalist and an excellent dancer, he had mingled easily with the passengers and had become the doting overseer of the romance that had blossomed so quickly over the course of that short voyage.

“My dear Miss Graham,” he said, clasping her hands in his and gazing at her with his warm brown eyes. “It has been a long time,” he agreed in his slightly accented English. “But, if I may be so bold: tonight you will
still
be the most beautiful woman aboard
Normandie
.”

“Thank you, René. It’s wonderful to see you again. You’re looking very well yourself. And you’re just as flattering as always.” Charlotte turned to Spalding and Connie, who were standing just behind her. “I’d like you to meet my good friends, Mr. and Mrs. Spalding Smith.”

Stepping forward, René grasped first Connie’s hand and then Spalding’s. “Ah,” he said. “But I am already acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. What I didn’t know was that they were acquainted with you!”

René must have been the friend who Spalding said had described the
Normandie
as the world’s most perfect ship, Charlotte thought. “How do you know one another?” she asked.

“The Smiths are members at Château Albert,” said René.

Spalding explained: “René is the owner of Château Albert, which is a private dining club here in Palm Beach. Connie and I are charter members. How long has it been now, René? Fifteen years?”

René nodded.

“You’ll have to come with us one night, Charlotte,” Spalding continued. “The food is the best on the island.” He smiled at René and corrected himself: “Make that the best food in the South.”

“You could bring Miss Graham with you to our Normandy dinner on Thursday evening,” René suggested. He turned to Charlotte. “It’s going to feature the food and wines of my native province in France.”

“Excellent idea,” said Spalding as he removed Connie’s and Charlotte’s wraps and passed them to a young man dressed in the white-jacketed uniform of a
Normandie
steward.

Behind the steward stood a stocky man in an ill-fitting tuxedo whom Charlotte took to be one of the plainclothes security guards hired to protect the guests from jewel thieves.

“How did you ever end up in Palm Beach?” asked Charlotte, turning her attention back to the former assistant purser.

“It’s a long story,” René replied.

“I’d like to hear it.”

He glanced up at the next group of arrivals and greeted them warmly. “
Bon soir
,” he said with his little bow. “Welcome to
Normandie
. The most perfect ocean liner ever to sail the seas.”

Clearly he had lost none of his flair, Charlotte noted.

Turning to the young steward, René asked him to take over. “I’m ready for a break,” he announced. Removing his cap, he gestured to a sitting room off the foyer. “Would you like to sit down?” he said to Charlotte and the Smiths.

When they replied that they would, he caught the eye of a passing waiter and asked him to bring them some champagne.

A moment later, they were comfortably seated in the art deco-style chairs of a small sitting room, flutes of bubbly French champagne in hand. They talked for a few minutes about the upcoming Normandy evening at Château Albert, and then, at Spalding’s urging, René began his story:

“I stayed with the ship until 1941. I was part of the skeleton crew. There were only a hundred and fifteen of us, compared to an original crew of one thousand three hundred and fifty, but we did as good a job as a crew ten times our size. She was our pride and joy. In truth, we had nothing else to do except worry about what was going on back home. We used to say that the ship was interned but we were marooned.” He smiled. “We wore out every deck of cards on the ship. Then, after Pearl Harbor, all the French ships in American ports were seized, as I’m sure you know.”

“Were you upset about that?” Connie asked.

He shrugged. “We would rather have given
Normandie
to the Americans than let the Germans have her. We volunteered to stay on. We were the ones who knew how to run the ship. The Americans knew nothing,” he added with contempt. “But they didn’t want us. They gave us two hours to pack up our belongings. For me this was the accumulation of nearly six years on board. I had come aboard just before the maiden voyage in June, 1935, when I was nineteen years old, and I had never left.
Normandie
was my home. Then they loaded us into a Coast Guard cutter, our sea bags on our shoulders, and put us ashore on Ellis Island. They treated us like stowaways.” His voice was bitter. “They could have learned from us, but they thought they knew everything.”

He paused for a moment to sip his champagne and then went on: “I still remember that day perfectly. December twelfth: it was cold, a gray sky, light snow. As we pulled away from
Normandie
, we stood up on the afterdeck, removed our hats, and sang ‘La Marseillaise.’ There wasn’t a dry eye among us.”

“Why didn’t they want to take advantage of your knowledge?” Charlotte asked as René refilled their glasses.

“They were afraid we were Vichy sympathizers, that we would sabotage the ship. Vichy!” He turned his head aside as if to spit. “To assuage their fears, DeGaulle even offered to crew the ship with Free French troops, but they weren’t having any of it. They were afraid that
we
would sabotage the ship, and they killed her with neglect within two months.”

“Did you go back to France then?” Charlotte asked.

“Not right away. I had no place to go back to. My native village was occupied. Besides, I couldn’t leave
Normandie
. She was my love, my life. I stayed at the Twenty-third Street YMCA. I would go down to Pier eighty-eight every day to visit her. Then she burned. It was the saddest day of my life.” He stared pensively into his glass of champagne for a few seconds, then drained it before going on. “There was nothing to stay for anymore, so I booked passage on a ship to Marseilles and joined the Maquis.”

“The Maquis!” Charlotte exclaimed. Centered in southem France, the Maquis had been the fiercest of France’s many resistance groups. They had specialized in blowing up railroads.

René nodded. “I fought the Boches for two years.” Lifting a finger, he pointed to the the red and black rosette pinned to his lapel. “The
Médaille de la Résistance
,” he said. “So much for my being a saboteur, eh? Then I was captured. I sat out the rest of the war in a Nazi prison.” He gave a world-weary Gallic shrug.

Charlotte thought back to the René of before the war: gay, charming, devoted to a life of pleasure. On the surface he still seemed the same, but the superficial gaiety cloaked a war-wounded soul.

He held up the empty bottle of champagne. “We have finished the bottle, but I have not yet finished my story. I warned you that it was a long one.” He glanced over at the staircase that led to the room on the third floor where the party was in progress. Newly arrived guests were still streaming upstairs. “I’m afraid I must excuse myself,” he said as he stood up. “I’ll have to finish my story another time. Perhaps when you visit Chateau Albert.”

“I hope so, René,” said Spalding, giving the former assistant purser a hearty thump on the back. “You can’t leave us hanging. I understand that you’re catering the party. That means the food is bound to be excellent.”

“Thank you,” René replied. “We are serving a duplicate of the chef’s menu suggestions for the one hundredth voyage in 1938.”

“We’re looking forward to it,” said Charlotte.

As she rose from her chair, René leaned over to look at her necklace. “I see that you are wearing the same necklace that you wore on the return crossing in 1939. It’s very beautiful.”

“I’m surprised you remember!” she said, raising her fingers to the ruby pendant.

“Every detail of that voyage is permanently engraved in my memory,” he said. “I think you will agree that it was a most memorable crossing.”

“Yes. Actually I wore it on the voyage over too, but as you point out, that trip wasn’t nearly as memorable. It’s not the same necklace, actually. It’s a copy of the Cartier original. It’s from the new
Normandie
collection that’s being previewed tonight.”

Connie held up her arm to display her bracelet. “Many of the guests will be wearing pieces from the collection, which was designed by my daughter, Marianne Montgomery, in collaboration with Paul Feder of Feder Jewelers,” she said. “We’re going to model them after dinner.”

Connie was an indefatigable promoter of her daughter’s creations.

“Ah, yes!” said René He had leaned over again to look at Charlotte’s necklace. “I remember noticing the necklace as you descended the grand staircase on our first night out.” He paused before adding, “If I remember correctly, that was the night that you met M. Norwood.”

The
Normandie
passengers had entered the dining room by way of a dramatic staircase, which allowed them to make a grand entrance. Charlotte remembered well the nightly challenge of descending those stairs into the cavernous room. “René, you have a memory like an elephant.”

He smiled. “The crew always takes delight in a shipboard romance, and yours was one of the most romantic. Such a handsome couple!”

And all the crew knew exactly what was going on, Charlotte might have added.