12

The Art of Shunning

THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES of the Metropolitan Museum of Art meets twice a year in the serene C. Douglas Dillon boardroom, with members taking their places around a richly stained dark brown oak table crafted by Viscount David Linley, the son of Princess Margaret. Those chosen for Manhattan’s most sought-after board memberships represent a mixture of New York aristocracy, both old money and new money, culled from society and Wall Street.

Annette de la Renta, a board member since 1981, is vice chairman of the museum and heads the acquisitions committee, two powerful positions. On the afternoon of September 12, 2006, when the first board meeting since the Astor scandal hit the newspapers was scheduled, the museum staff believed that Tony Marshall would not be attending, since he had not RSVPed. Many gathered at the handsome table had been angry to learn that Tony had not only sold his mother’s Childe Hassam, repeatedly promised to the museum, but made off with a $2 million commission. The assumption was that Tony would be too embarrassed to show his face. So there was a collective gasp when, just as the meeting was beginning, he strode in. “We thought he did it for shock value,” says one staffer. Heads swiveled to Annette de la Renta, who conveyed her fury with a what-the-hell-is-he-doing-here grimace.

“I debated, should I go or not?” Tony told me several months later. Elected to the board in 1986, he had graduated to nonvoting emeritus status in 2000 when he turned seventy-six, so his appearance at this meeting was primarily symbolic. “I thought, Look, I know I’m right. I know the truth, we know the truth. I’m not going to shy away from there. I want to see how people react to my being there.”

The answer was immediately apparent: he was persona non grata. The museum’s director, Philippe de Montebello, recalls, “I averted my eyes—my gaze never met his. Everyone did. We were rather surprised that he showed up.” For Tony, walking to his seat was the equivalent of a long day’s journey into social death. It was a shunning worthy of Edith Wharton, although Tony lacked the rebelliousness of Lily Bart in The House of Mirth. Out of compassion, two men broke ranks. Carl Spielvogel, the retired advertising CEO and Clinton ambassador, turned to Tony and simply asked, “How are you?” Malcolm Wiener, a wealthy commodities trader, made a point of walking all the way around the table to be gracious, saying, “I’m sorry to hear about all this. Did you know about it beforehand?” Tony replied, “Absolutely not.” Wiener replied, “That’s appalling.” Tony was so grateful for the gesture of support that he later wrote Wiener a thank-you note.

As de Montebello launched into his description of upcoming exhibitions, the other board members kept glancing at the adversaries. “It was an unpleasant situation,” Annette de la Renta says. “I just did not look at him.” Tony, who had seated himself across from Annette, carefully watched her reaction, happily remarking later, “By my being there, for the next hour and forty-five minutes, she was visibly upset.” Spouses had been invited to join the members after the meeting for a private tour of the new exhibit, “Cézanne to Picasso,” but Charlene stayed away, maintaining an anxious vigil at home with Daniel Billy. When the meeting ended, Tony headed for the exit. “One female—I won’t say who it is—went down in the elevator with me,” Tony says. “She gave me the worst look you can possibly imagine, this stare.” But he had shown up, and he was rather proud of having faced everyone down. He vowed to me that he would not be forced out by social stigma, but this would turn out to be his last board meeting.

 

In public, Tony Marshall was sticking with his Marine Corps attitude, holding his head high and being tough under fire. But in private, his life was a shambles. Ten days before the Metropolitan board meeting he had sent Alec a two-page typed letter that was a howl of pure pain, describing the sleepless nights, death threats, and damage to his reputation. Tony painted a bleak picture of himself and Charlene cowering at home, weeping. With skyrocketing legal bills and no salary, Tony wrote, he was worried about running out of money.

The other melody in this chorus of woe was an unsubtle effort to convince Alec to pressure Philip to back off. Tony stressed that the lawsuit was a huge drain on Brooke Astor’s resources and might diminish Alec’s and Philip’s inheritance. To Alec, parts of the letter read as if they had been vetted by a lawyer; Alec thought that the words did not entirely sound like his father’s voice. Tony closed with the accusatory sentence “Is this what Philip wanted?”

Although Alec was still trying to play Switzerland in his family’s war, this neutral stance was becoming increasingly hard to maintain. Philip had become his frequent overnight guest, taking advantage of Alec’s proximity to Holly Hill, only a five-minute drive away. Of course Alec showed Philip the letter from their father. Philip became angry at Tony’s divisive effort to set brother against brother. As he puts it, “That letter was so manipulative.”

Charlene’s safest refuge was St. James’ Church, where she sought comfort from the rector, Brenda Husson. “She certainly came to me to talk and pray,” says Husson. “To have your picture splashed in the paper and people stopping you on the street, that can’t help.” At Sunday church services, Charlene appeared anxious about the reactions of her fellow parishioners. “She’d sit in the back of the church, try to be like a little mouse not to be seen, and people would swarm around her,” says Sam Peabody. “When all this hell broke loose, she was very needy. She was teary-eyed—she never thought she could get through something like this. She was called a gold digger, which was really disgusting.”

New York scandals usually fade fast, but the Astor saga was becoming as hardy a tabloid perennial as outbursts from George Steinbrenner and his sons. Christopher Meigher, the CEO of Quest Media, publisher of the on-line magazine New York Social Diary, marveled at the public’s seemingly endless appetite for the latest Astor news and gossip. “You would think that people would get tired of it, but they did not want to let it go,” Meigher says. “Just like Diana, she was of interest to several generations. Any story having to do with Mrs. Astor, our traffic jumped fifty to sixty percent.”

The plot had shifted from a family feud to a fight over Brooke Astor’s money. Les Fagen, representing Chase, alerted Justice Stackhouse that the bank was looking into whether Tony had improperly obtained $14 million, including cash and Cove End, from his mother. Fagen’s legal document was filled with moral outrage: “Was Mrs. Astor competent to understand and then authorize or intend these transactions at the relevant times? . . . Who are the witnesses to these transactions who can support or contradict Mr. Marshall? . . . And above all, is Mr. Marshall telling the truth?” Chase’s lawyer asked for expanded powers to investigate. The judge denied the request as being “overly zealous and premature at this time, however well-intentioned.”

As part of the ongoing blizzard of legal paperwork, Tony Marshall had submitted a thirty-page affidavit denying all charges and insisting, in a wounded tone, that he loved his mother. He blamed Chris Ely for instigating the lawsuit out of spite over losing his job. He said he had deferred to Dr. Pritchett on Mrs. Astor’s medical care, and submitted a purveyors-to-the-queen list of the Upper East Side gourmet shops (Marche Madison, Butterfield Market, Ottomanelli’s) where he maintained charge accounts for his mother’s food. In an effort to demonstrate his mother’s affection, Tony even included poems and notes from Brooke, some dating as far back as twenty-one years, such as this birthday note from May 30, 1985:

 

Darling Tony—On this very special day, your birthday, I feel so proud, so grateful and so happy that you are my son. Of all the creations you are the Best! But I want to tell you what a difference it has made in my life having you here after all those years abroad. I no longer feel alone because I know that you are there with your wisdom and common sense and affection to help me. It has meant more to me than I can possibly tell you—But I hope that you know.

With much love and Very Happy Birthday, Mother

 

There was another, undated birthday poem from Brooke, with the lines “How much you mean—how much you better my life, being my son and with your own dear wife, Who brings such joy to you and me too, so thank you both and without much ado.” Tony also included a limerick that his mother wrote on May 29, 1989:

 

There is a young man named Tony

Who can’t stand anything phony

He likes things to be clear as a bell

and will go through hell

in order to avoid cacophony.

 

Scholars of Astor history drily noted that at least two of these missives were written before Tony became involved with Charlene and the third was undated. But the image of Tony Marshall desperately searching through memorabilia to prove his mother’s love to the world was ineffably sad.

In the New York social strata where the latest news about Brooke had become ubiquitous, the most surprising development was the revelation that Tony had won the support of Freddy Melhado, Brooke’s dancing partner of forty years. Tony had invested millions of dollars of Brooke’s money with Melhado, and he had done well for her via hedge funds (the most impressive was a $3 million investment that climbed to $20 million). Melhado filed an affidavit stating that Brooke was “impeccably dressed,” that her apartment was “clean and well-maintained,” that Tony was astute in managing her money, and that “Brooke loved Tony very much and it was obvious to me that Tony felt exactly the same way.”

Melhado knew that he was backing the unpopular side and says that his friends “were furious at me.” Sitting in his Park Avenue apartment, with sadness in his voice, he asks, “What else can I do? I wasn’t going to lie about Tony and lie about what I saw. I never saw in the apartment any neglect or abuse, or think, ‘Oh, God, she’s got to get out of here.’” Melhado called Annette at her country home to smooth things over and was relieved when she came in from the garden to take his call. “I’ve known you all my adult life, and I love your children,” Melhado says he told Annette, “and I just want you to know that this has nothing to do with the way I feel about you.” He adds, “She said she understood. But I’m sure she’s not happy with me.”

Indeed, he soon received an ominous legal letter from Annette’s lawyer, Paul Saunders, demanding the return of the dog painting that had vanished from Brooke’s stairwell at Holly Hill. Melhado explains that he had lent Brooke the painting twenty-five years ago; Tony agreed to return the art, but Melhado claimed the staff sent him the wrong painting. “I would never take advantage of Brooke,” Melhado insists. “That’s what burned me up so much, when they implied that I did.” Word of the purportedly purloined painting made it across the Atlantic Ocean to Viscount Astor. “If anyone deserved a painting, it would be Freddy—he was incredibly kind to Brooke,” Astor says. “But Freddy behaved in a stupid manner. The painting he said he lent Brooke was six inches by six inches, and the picture he collected was six feet by four feet. Freddy is a nice man who got on the wrong side. He got sucked into Tony Marshall’s web, Charlene’s web.”

The painting that provoked intense interest, however, was Flags, Fifth Avenue, long gone but hardly forgotten. Tony abruptly admitted to his lawyers that he had made a major error on his mother’s 2002 tax return in reporting the sale of the painting. Tony had claimed to the IRS that Brooke originally paid $7.42 million for the artwork, although the actual purchase price was $172,000. Tony Marshall’s inaccurate number dramatically reduced the capital gains tax due after the painting was sold for $10 million. Tony never explained or provided documentation for the figure of $7.42 million.

This admission of potential tax fraud was a major blow to Tony’s credibility and virtually guaranteed that Justice Stackhouse would never allow him to resume control of his mother’s finances. Tony blamed the error on Brooke Astor’s accountant, Samuel M. Cohen. Of course the accountant, who had kept copies of the paperwork that Tony had provided, did not let this accusation go uncontested. Alan Pollack, Cohen’s attorney, says, “My client was outraged that Tony was looking to make him the scapegoat. The WASP is trying to hang the Jewish accountant out to dry?”

Despite the anticipated high drama of a courtroom confrontation over Brooke Astor’s care, the action was taking place either offstage or on the written page, with histrionic claims and counterclaims punctuating the deluge of documents filed with the court clerk at 60 Centre Street. Out at Holly Hill, an unlikely trio had forged a close bond that transcended class boundaries: Annette de la Renta, the intimidating and super-wealthy philanthropist; Chris Ely, the ever-proper butler; and the free-wheeling college professor Philip Marshall were now in this together, joking and talking and confiding in one another with abandon. Annette later said, “I consider Chris and Philip to be among my closest friends.”

Susan Robbins had also won their trust and they hers. She hitched a lift with Annette one afternoon to Holly Hill. “I liked her immediately,” says Annette; a year later she recommended Robbins to a friend for another guardianship case involving a wealthy family. Robbins, in turn, had been skeptical about Philip Marshall and his motivations for filing the lawsuit, so she was surprised by her own reaction when they met at Holly Hill in September. “I loved him,” she says. “Maybe it’s the Buddhist part, that inner peace and genuineness. At first I thought, This guy is too good to be true. I thought I was being taken. That was what I was really afraid of. But I never saw any evidence of it.” Philip watched Robbins gently speaking to Brooke and trying to make eye contact. “She was so great with my grandmother,” he says. Philip drove the lawyer to the station afterward; she lit a Marlboro and he bummed one; she mentioned that she had a twin brother too; and so it went. From then on, Philip took to calling her more often than his own lawyer to chat about the case.

 

As a son protective of his mother’s image, Tony Marshall had stalwartly kept her secret for nearly six years, confiding in just a handful of people he trusted. Now, out of the blue, that secret surfaced, at exactly the worst moment for Mrs. Astor’s son, and became a weapon to be used against him.

Although Tony had told his sons and Chris Ely that Brooke had Alzheimer’s disease, the name of her doctor and the actual date of the diagnosis had been shrouded in mystery. Even when nurses were hired to care for Mrs. Astor around the clock and were briefed on her physical ailments, in mid-2003, they were apparently never directly informed that she suffered from dementia. Tony had given Chris Ely a handwritten list of symptoms that seemed to have been copied from an Internet site. For all anyone knew, Tony could have come up with the Alzheimer’s diagnosis himself by watching his mother’s behavior and putting two and two together.

But while paging through Brooke Astor’s medical records, Ira Salzman noticed the name of Dr. Howard Fillit, a geriatric specialist, in the file of another one of her doctors. Paul Saunders contacted Dr. Fillit, asking for any records relating to Mrs. Astor. An astonishing document materialized, a letter more damaging to Tony Marshall than any allegation in the original guardianship petition. As Paul Saunders circulated this letter to the other lawyers, he announced that he had found the smoking gun. After a quick read, Susan Robbins promptly e-mailed him back to say that this “was a smoking cannon.” Ira Salzman recalls being equally amazed, saying, “It was an oh-my-God moment.”

It was a deep, self-inflicted wound for Tony Marshall. What he had done, after taking his mother to be examined by Dr. Fillit, was to write the physician a remarkably revealing seven-page follow-up letter, dated December 26, 2000, describing his mother’s mental decline. Tony’s tormented outpouring covered everything from Brooke Astor’s inability to understand and remember simple things, such as basic arithmetic, to her hostile mood swings and delusional behavior. The letter read as if it had been cathartic to write, a way for Tony to put down on paper how wrenching it was to watch his mother deteriorate and to deal with her constant hurtful remarks to him, her loving son.

For the lawyers, however, it was the date on the letter that had overwhelming significance, because that proved that Tony, fully aware that his mother had Alzheimer’s, had nonetheless allowed and encouraged her to make monumental changes in her estate plan and revise her bequests, from selling the Childe Hassam to signing a new will in 2002 and the three codicils in 2003–2004.

Tony wrote the letter on the day after Christmas, just hours after he and Charlene returned to Manhattan after spending the holiday with Brooke at Holly Hill. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I feel awful. I feel like I’m losing my mind,” Brooke told her son that day as he was leaving. Tony described how his mother had resisted seeing Dr. Fillit, even trying to discourage Tony from accompanying her to the doctor’s office. “When I arrived, Mother, who was half-an-hour late to leave for her appointment with you, said to me: ‘You only want to come to see how soon I will die. Why are you coming?’”

Brooke, then ninety-eight, was constantly misplacing things, Tony wrote, adding that “writing/spelling are increasing problems” and that numbers had become “incomprehensible.” “Mother asked me, ‘What is my income?’” Tony informed the doctor. “I told her, giving the annual figure. ‘Is that for the month or the year?’” Given that Tony’s entire income came from his mother, that remark made it sound as if she had no idea what she was paying him.

Yet she was determined to carry on, and Tony sounded baffled about how to protect his mother, given her iron-willed insistence of keeping up a schedule that would wear down a person half her age. “Mother has an overpowering drive to ‘keep going’ and her resource of adrenaline keeps her on the move,” he wrote, but he conveyed that her outings were tinged with the constant potential for disaster. She did not recognize people, her hearing was poor, and there had been embarrassing incidents when his mother had become incontinent.

So much acuity had been lost. “She is delusional at times having asked me, ‘Are you my only child?’” Tony wrote. He closed by telling the doctor that “now that you have provided me with a diagnosis of my mother’s illness,” he had passed along the news to her lawyer, Terry Christensen, her social secretary (then Jolee Hirsch), and Chris Ely. “While I’m deeply saddened by the news you’ve given me it is, at the same time, a relief for me (and an enormous help to the three in whom I have confided) to know what the problem is and not that she is just an elderly person being difficult.”

The letter raised many questions, but one dominated everything: how could Brooke’s trusted lawyer, Terry Christensen, knowing of her diminished condition, let her make changes in her will? The timing of Tony’s decision to take his mother to the doctor was intriguing too. He sought the diagnosis of dementia just a few months after his mother had expressed her desire to give her Maine cottage to Philip. It appeared as if Tony initially wanted a legal rationale to stop Brooke from giving away possessions but then ignored her mental state when the diagnosis was inconvenient for him.

Paul Saunders wondered whether Tony had simply forgotten about the letter or had not informed his lawyers about it. “We knew it was a significant piece of evidence,” Saunders says. “It was not consistent with a lot of things Tony said in his petition.” Tony, in his affidavit, had portrayed his mother as dancing the night away at parties and being fully cognizant of events.

For Susan Robbins, this letter was an ace to be played to complete a winning hand. Arguing that the document proved that Brooke Astor had been incompetent since 2000, she asked Justice Stackhouse to give her access to Mrs. Astor’s original wills and codicils, not mere copies, and to permit her to hire a handwriting expert. The opposition was caught off-guard: Tony’s lawyers responded by personally attacking Robbins’s reputation. Ken Warner charged that she was “on a witch hunt of her own creation, having long ago abandoned the role of Mrs. Astor’s advocate.” In thunderous language, Corn insisted that “Mrs. Astor was obviously competent when she executed the first and second codicils. Is Mrs. [Ms.] Robbins alleging that Mr. Christensen, whose firm had represented Mrs. Astor for decades, performed a will signing ceremony with an incompetent Mrs. Astor?”

That was exactly what Robbins was suggesting. Ignoring the complaints of Tony’s lawyers, the judge gave Robbins the go-ahead. To protect Brooke Astor’s privacy, Robbins had filed the Fillit document under seal from the press, the status that Mrs. Astor’s medical records had. Tony Marshall’s letter to Dr. Fillit would not become public for another year.

With the guardianship hearing scheduled for mid-October, Tony put his money into public relations. Unhappy with the firm of Citigate Sard Verbinnen, which billed them $42,375, the Marshalls hired Sean Healy and Christopher Tennyson of Fleishman-Hillard. For the first major interview with Tony and Charlene—a classic journalistic “get”—the new PR men chose an unlikely venue: Forbes magazine, for its annual “400 Richest People in America” issue. During the three emotional hours that the financial writer Neil Weinberg spent with the Marshalls, at the PR firm’s offices in the former Daily News building on Forty-second Street, the couple portrayed themselves as victims of a society conspiracy. “What I’d really like to know is, who is giving orders,” Tony said. “It isn’t Henry [Kissinger]. Is it Annette? Is it David? It certainly isn’t Philip. It’s out of his ballpark.” After minimizing his son, Tony sought to elevate himself by comparing the current ordeal to being wounded during World War II: “This is worse than Iwo Jima because my wounds there healed.” Published on October 9, 2006, Weinberg’s short piece stated that some of the allegations “are clearly overblown, if not wrong.” Weinberg gave Tony the last word. “The opposition’s prime interest is not in my mother’s care,” Tony says, “but her estate and control over her life. This could happen to anybody.”

In the full transcript of the interview, which Weinberg generously provided to me, the Marshalls alternate between rage, paranoia, and despair. They rip into the “cabal” that has ruined their lives, claiming that “Annette de la Renta wants to be the next Brooke Astor” and that “Philip wants more assets.” Charlene criticizes Philip as a bad son, saying, “Not only was he not close to his grandmother, he wasn’t particularly close to his father either. We saw Philip once a year.” When Weinberg asked why Morrissey had become involved, Tony replied, “Francis Morrissey was a long-time friend whom my mother confided in.”

The couple acknowledged that the press scrutiny had been brutal. Tony defended his wife, saying, “They’re trying to make Charlene out as just after the money. We’re not only in love, what’s really nice about this is that we’ve gone through this together and not had one argument between us. Lots of people would have scratched each other to death, either mentally or physically.”

On Park Avenue and in other wealthy enclaves the article was perused and deconstructed with the kind of minute attention usually given to changes in the capital gains tax. Tony and Charlene’s claim that Annette was motivated by a desire to be “the next Brooke Astor,” revealed a misunderstanding of twenty-first-century society. It was as if the couple envisioned a diamond tiara waiting to crown Brooke’s heir, which Annette had rudely grabbed for. But Jane Engelhard’s daughter had never had to grab for anything; now in her mid-sixties, she had a position that had long been secure. Old society was vanishing into the obituary columns: C. Z. Guest, Nan Kempner, Pat Buckley. New society, epitomized by Tinsley Mortimer and Tory Burch, was preoccupied with marketing the term socialite as a brand name. Brooke Astor, born in 1902, had been a legend, a self-created phenomenon, and was an irreplaceable creature of her white-gloved era. There would be no “next.”

If you ask David Rockefeller whether Annette’s motive in the guardianship fight was to elevate her social status and become the new Brooke, his face creases with merriment. When he stops laughing, he searches for the right word to convey his reaction. He’s too polite to swear, so instead he replies, “The term I would use is not repeatable. It’s completely absurd.”

Yet if Tony’s wounding remarks were aimed at an audience of one, he likely hit his mark. Annette de la Renta, who had spent her life avoiding the limelight, was now facing a daily diet of publicity and found all the stories mortifying. As Barbara Walters says, “Every time there was something in the paper, she died. If it was something critical, she wanted to hide under the covers.”

For all the Marshalls’ bravado in the Forbes interview, by the time the magazine hit the newsstands, the couple had already reached the reluctant conclusion that they could not win and it was time to find a graceful exit. The court evaluator, Sam Liebowitz, had been trying to broker a deal, and the couple leaped at the chance to retire from the headlines, as did their adversaries.

In the hope of heading off a potentially devastating inquiry into the Marshalls’ finances, Tony grudgingly agreed to give up guardianship of his mother and his lucrative yearly salary. As Paul Saunders recalls, “They were deathly afraid the bank was going to sue them.” In return, Tony and Charlene insisted the agreement had to include the phrase that they admitted to no wrongdoing; legal claims against the couple would be frozen until after Brooke Astor’s death. “I wanted a standstill,” says Harvey Corn, Tony’s lawyer, explaining that the ordeal had become unbearable for the Marshalls. “My guy is eighty-two years old. He couldn’t go outside his house.” Tony and Charlene, along with Francis Morrissey and Terry Christensen, gave up any claim to serve as executors of Brooke Astor’s will, which left the question of who would handle that task in limbo.

Susan Robbins was the lone dissenter during a settlement conference held at the offices of Chase’s lawyers. “What would Mrs. Astor want?” she argued. Robbins was frustrated because she thought that the other lawyers were giving way to battle fatigue. Tony was on the ropes; he should be forced to give it all back. The three new codicils should be judged invalid; Cove End, along with the $5 million granted to Charlene and Tony’s $2 million self-dealt bonus, should be returned. Robbins wanted to ensure that Mrs. Astor regained her financial position before the “men in suits” took advantage. “That’s when I said I’m not signing it, and they were ready to kill me,” Robbins explains. But as far as Saunders was concerned, this was just a lull in the proceedings; the real bombardment would begin in surrogate’s court after Mrs. Astor’s death. “Susan didn’t want to let Tony off the hook,” Saunders says. “But I knew that because of the structure of the settlement, he wasn’t off the hook.”

Even though Robbins refused to sign, she won a concession. She had noticed that Mrs. Astor, who had provided only $100,000 each for the education of her three great-grandchildren, had inquired in a note to Terry Christensen whether she ought to do more for them. Robbins negotiated an increase to $400,000 each for Philip’s son, Winslow, and daughter, Sophie, and Alec’s daughter, Hilary Brooke, included in the stipulation settling the guardianship. These college funds represented, of course, an indirect way to funnel money to Brooke Astor’s two grandsons, who would otherwise have paid this tuition themselves.

The denouement arrived, fittingly, on the morning of Friday, the thirteenth of October, 2006, a mere six days before the case was to go to trial. Annette de la Renta, in a simple black sheath, white coat, pearl earrings, and stilettos, appeared before Justice Stackhouse. In a dingy courtroom with fluorescent lights, she spoke to the judge in a quiet voice. “I have known Mrs. Astor for approximately forty years,” she said. “She was a friend of my parents before, when I was young.” Stackhouse asked if she had been responsible for taking Brooke Astor back to Holly Hill. Annette replied, “Yes, that’s what I considered to be her home.” The judge concurred approvingly, saying, “That’s what I believe she considered her home as well.” There were no courtroom theatrics; it was all merely a formality.

Yet the actual legal agreement, available to the press, contained titillating details. It read as if Tony and Charlene had admitted to pulling off a daring daylight robbery from Brooke’s apartment and bank account but had now agreed to load up a Brink’s truck and take it all back, $11 million worth in cash, jewelry, and art. That included $1.35 million to Chase Bank to cover the tax penalties on the Childe Hassam sale. Tony had even agreed to put up his beloved boat, the General Russell, as collateral.

As for the possessions, the Marshalls had apparently prematurely taken home two gifts intended for them in Brooke Astor’s 2002 will, the diamond snowflake necklace and a Giovanni Tiepolo drawing worth $500,000, plus valuables that had been designated for others. The couple returned a 10-carat diamond ring and three brooches; Brooke had requested that any pieces of her jewelry worth more than $1,000, with a few specific exceptions, be sold, with the proceeds going to charity. A John Frederick Lewis drawing (worth $500,000) and a collection of five gouaches by the eighteenth-century Venetian painter Francesco Guardi made a return trip to 778 Park Avenue; Brooke had left her drawings, in her will, to the Metropolitan Museum and the Morgan Library. Tony and Charlene were ordered to return the Astor flat silverware, which had been bequeathed to Viscount Astor. The couple also returned twenty-four volumes by Rudyard Kipling and two Chinese porcelain figures.

This turn of events was humiliating for Tony and Charlene, and they decided to go public yet again to defend themselves, this time to Vicky Ward of Vanity Fair. Raising a cudgel as if she were Margaret Thatcher waging war in the Falklands, Charlene announced, “There will be a battle royal when Brooke Astor dies.” This was a threat and a promise. “The important point is that the money we are returning is not ‘taken’ money or ‘stolen’ money, but money for collateral, in case of future disputes,” Charlene continued. “The things are presents given to us since 1992. They are in the will, and we expect to get it all back.” Since Mrs. Astor’s will was not yet public, Vicky Ward was unable to challenge Charlene’s claims. Tony made similar remarks to Grace Richardson, a Juilliard Council member and friend, when she went by for tea. “Tony said those had been gifts from his mother at Christmas,” Richardson recalls. “I said, ‘Didn’t she write you a note? “Dear Tony, I’m giving you these books, love Mom”?’” According to Richardson, Tony replied, “I gave them back, and I’ll get them back later.”

It was over, but it wasn’t over. One week later, the nationally known forensic handwriting expert Gus Lesnevich submitted his report on the variations in Brooke Astor’s signatures, and his findings were unambiguous. Mrs. Astor could not have produced the Brooke Russell Astor signature on the codicil dated March 3, 2004, he wrote, “due to the deterioration of her ability to write her name.”

Woe to Francis Morrissey, who claimed that he had supervised while Brooke Astor signed the third codicil in the presence of two witnesses. This new and well-publicized development created a dilemma for Susan Robbins. Lawyers, as officers of the court, are required to report to the authorities when a crime has been committed. Robbins had brushed off the expression of interest in the case by the prosecutor Elizabeth Loewy. Now she had no choice but to offer to hand over her files. She met with Loewy, joined by Paul Saunders. Robbins had hoped that the prosecutor would focus on Morrissey. “I thought he was brilliant,” she says. “I thought he had orchestrated the whole thing.”

But Robbins, for all her legal zeal, was subject to the law of unintended consequences. “I never wanted this to be a criminal investigation against Tony,” she says, sensitive that her client was Mrs. Astor. “Who would want their son to go to jail?” But the latticework of ties between Morrissey and Marshall made it nearly impossible to separate the two men in a criminal investigation.

The door was now open for the prosecutors to satisfy their curiosity about Mrs. Astor’s will. Almost no one involved in the guardianship case had anticipated the legal ramifications for Tony. Philip had never imagined that he would be placing his father in criminal jeopardy. Annette de la Renta and David Rockefeller just wanted a way to restore Brooke to a more comfortable life at Holly Hill. So many things had to go wrong with this family to bring in the DA’s office—such a confluence of misunderstandings, relationships torn asunder, words left unsaid, and, the most dangerous ingredient of all, money substituting for love. Yet now the fate of Brooke Astor’s only son, Tony Marshall, was in the hands of the prosecutors. The investigation would last for a full year, holding the Marshalls and Morrissey in limbo.

 

Had all of this angst been worth it? If the yardstick was the well-being of the 104-year-old Brooke Astor, she was doing everything within her limited power to convey her appreciation. After her near-death experience at the hospital in July, she had chosen a tangible way to convey her renewed interest in life—she was eating again. At home at Holly Hill with meals cooked by her French chef, Mrs. Astor eventually added nearly fifteen pounds to her slender frame.

For her newly hired staffers, she was a daily source of inspiration and astonishment. “When I spoke to the doctor at Lenox Hill, the prognosis was not good. I didn’t think she’d last six months,” says Lois Orlin, the social worker hired to coordinate Mrs. Astor’s care. “But it was amazing how well she did. Going back to Holly Hill was very positive for her mentally—she blossomed. Even when people are not aware of everything that’s going on, certain things still filter through.” For the nurses who had been with Mrs. Astor for several years, her revival was pure validation. As Minnette Christie recalls, “I kept telling everyone, ‘Just you wait, she’s going to surprise you.’”

Surrounded by an army of cheerful people united in the mission of keeping up her spirits, Brooke Astor spent her days in a carefully choreographed way. Opening the curtains in Mrs. Astor’s bedroom in the morning, Pearline Noble would point out the birds pecking at the feeder perched in a tree outside the window. “Come on, Mrs. A., wake up. The birds are waiting—it’s time to get out of bed,” recalls Noble, explaining that if the feeder was empty, the blackbirds would knock on the window. “Mrs. A., the birds are knocking, they want breakfast. We have to hurry.” The nurse says, “She would smile and say okay.”

Mrs. Astor liked looking at pictures of her younger self (the house was certainly full of them) and hearing her own words. Sandra Foschi discovered that the best way to motivate her client to exercise was to read aloud Brooke’s poem “Discipline,” a paean to the importance of keeping going:

 

I am old and I have had

more than my share of good and bad

I’ve had love and sorrow, seen sudden death

and been left alone and of love bereft.

I thought I would never love again

and I thought my life was grief and pain.

The edge between life and death was thin,

but then I discovered discipline.

I learned to smile when I felt sad,

I learned to take the good and the bad.

I learned to care a great deal more

for the world about me than before.

I began to forget the “Me” and “I”

and joined in life as it rolled by:

this may not mean sheer ecstasy

but it is better by far than “I” and “Me.”

 

“I recited it every time I treated her, three times a week, and she did respond,” Foschi recalls. On sunny days Mrs. Astor was taken outdoors in a wheelchair to see the grounds, with Boysie and Girlsie frolicking along. Alec Marshall recalls that his grandmother enjoyed the change of scenery. “They’d wheel her all the way past the greenhouse, on a loop around the property to the gate,” he says. “She’d wake up. She loved looking at the dogs running around.”

Reunions with former staffers who had been fired by Tony Marshall were arranged. Naomi Packard-Koot, Mrs. Astor’s former social secretary, and Marciano Amaral, her chauffeur, came out on separate occasions for tea. “You could see her eyes light up a bit and focus,” says Packard-Koot. “It was wonderful to be there. I thought I’d never see her again after Tony and Charlene fired me—that was the most crushing thing.” She brought along her husband, Michael Koot, a six-foot-six blond Dutch airline pilot. “Philip and I were laughing because Mrs. Astor was still doing her own version of flirting,” Packard-Koot recalls. “She was making eye contact with Michael—she sat up straighter when he spoke.”

Whether Mrs. Astor truly recognized people, or was even peripherally aware of the fight that had swirled around her, remained a source of debate in the household and among her friends. “Fortunately, I really don’t think she ever knew any of these terrible things had happened,” says David Rockefeller. “I don’t think her life was made unhappy by them [the Marshalls], except to the degree they caused her to be less comfortable. She appreciated being at Holly Hill. She appreciated it when I came, and we had a good time.” Noreen Nee, a new weekend nurse, said it was touching to see them together. “Mr. Rockefeller would hold her hand and say ‘I love you, I’m here.’ When he would get a response, he would be so happy, like he’d won a million dollars.”

Reverend Charles Pridemore, of Trinity Church in nearby Ossining, visited every week and noticed that the rituals of religion still mattered to Mrs. Astor. “When I would give her communion, she made the sign of the cross. She knew it was me,” he said, adding that she appeared to pay attention to the conversations in the room. “One day Philip and I were sitting around together, and he was talking. She raised her head and looked right over at him. I think she recognized him too.”

But the relaxed environment vanished during visits by Mrs. Astor’s son. Suddenly the household went to Code Red, aware that Tony Marshall was eager to spot any fault; he even brought a camera once and snapped pictures. When he gave his mother a plant and it wilted overnight, Chris Ely, fearful of being accused of being a plant murderer, tried to revive it by giving it the attention normally reserved for someone needing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. “It was tense when her son came,” says Noreen Nee. Most visitors sat next to Brooke, held her hand, and talked to her, but Nee recalls, “He would sit across the room and just look at her.” Either unable or unwilling to express himself under the watchful eye of the staff, Tony communed with his mother in silence.

 

On Thanksgiving Day 2006, Tony and Charlene were guests at the annual party given by Sam Peabody and his wife, Judy, at the New York Racquet Club. Although he was a member, Tony had not been to the private club in months. As Peabody recalls, “All the staff came to him and said, ‘Please come back—we miss you.’”

Philip, Nan, and their children spent the holiday with Brooke at Holly Hill. The family shared turkey with the staff and then serenaded Brooke in the sunroom. “They sang for her like a band,” recalls Pearline Noble. “They had different songs that they made up. Mrs. A. was awake, and blew kisses and smiled.” Winslow played his guitar; Nan and Sophie harmonized on “Amazing Grace” and “Time of Your Life” and one of Winslow’s original compositions, “Opportunities.” Philip massaged his grandmother’s feet. Sophie, then eleven, came away with another good memory of her great-grandmother. “We didn’t have to be so formal,” she says. “Every so often her eyes would just stare at us—that was really nice. I feel like at that point we had a different connection with her.”

The next day the family drove to Manhattan, and while Nan took the children to join the crowds of Black Friday shoppers, Philip traveled downtown to meet with the two district attorneys, Elizabeth Loewy and Peirce Moser. As he began to answer the lawyers’ questions, he broke down and wept. He was emotionally ragged, recalling Brooke’s fear and despair from the nurses’ notes, yet also facing the reality that he was providing damaging information about his father.

Pearline Noble and Minnette Christie, whose complaints to Philip had set off the lawsuit, were also summoned to meet with the prosecutors. Annette de la Renta sent a town car to take them to the DA’s office. Both women, whom I later interviewed together, say that they were flabbergasted by the turn of events. “If I knew that things were going to get to this point, I would not have opened my mouth,” says Minnette Christie. “I didn’t want him to get into trouble. Believe you me, I was just doing this for Mrs. Astor.” She continued, “After Mrs. Astor got out of that apartment, I thought it was over, kaput. When I got the call to go down to the DA, I didn’t know what the hell I was going for.” Pearline Noble insists, “I had no clue there was anything criminal. We didn’t go after them, never.”

 

For Brooke Astor, the financial cost of her move to Holly Hill turned out to be exorbitant, more expensive than spending a year in Palm Beach, chartering a fleet of yachts in the Caribbean, or taking up residency at the Connaught in London. The problem was not the bills for the ambulance from Lenox Hill or for sprucing up her country house, but rather the millions of dollars in legal fees arising out of the guardianship lawsuit, all paid out of her account, in keeping with legal precedent.

On December 4, 2006, Justice Stackhouse, ruling on the legal bills, began by noting that he had fee applications from fifty-six lawyers, sixty-five legal assistants, six accountants, five bankers, six doctors, a law school professor, and two public relations firms. (The number would have been higher, but Annette la Renta paid her own legal bills.) Asked to approve $3,044,055.71, the judge knocked the sum down to $2,223,284.42. The exactitude was comic, but the lawyers wanted every penny.

The warring legal strategies were on display by virtue of their final accounting. Tony’s lawyers bore such animosity toward Susan Robbins that they had launched an effort to disqualify her as Mrs. Astor’s lawyer, hiring another lawyer, David A. Smith, who billed $18,512.50 for research on Robbins. Stackhouse denied that request. The judge also refused to cover the public relations firms or lawyers’ conversations with the press. Ken Warner, Tony’s attorney, was the big loser: he had billed $35,000 for talking to journalists, which the judge noted primarily constituted of speaking to Serge Kovaleski of the Times.

The most newsworthy nugget was buried on page eight of this thirteen-page document—a simple sentence that dramatically changed the press coverage and public perception of the Astor case. Ruling that Tony was entitled to be reimbursed for $409,451.65 worth of legal bills, the judge announced: “I make this ruling based on the conclusion of the court evaluator that the allegations in the petition regarding Mrs. Astor’s medical and dental care, and other allegations of intentional elder abuse by the Marshalls, were not substantiated.”

That phrase, “not substantiated” would be repeated ad infinitum every time Tony and Charlene Marshall were mentioned in news stories. “ASTOR SON IS CLEARED,” trumpeted the New York Post. This phrase allowed the couple to tell the world that they had been falsely accused. The New York Times initially tucked the story away on page B3, with a misleading headline: “In Aftermath of the Astor Case, How the Final Fees Piled Up.” The next day the Times offered a follow-up on page one of the metro section: “Astor Son Claims Vindication Over Words in Judge’s Ruling.”

Justice Stackhouse had not intended his ruling to be an exoneration of Tony, according to a courthouse source, and expressed surprise at the “repercussions” from his statement. “Sure, there were things that concerned us—of course there were,” says the person who spoke with the judge. “But if you’re going to prove x and y in the apartment in New York, you have to have a trial. Don’t forget, the house was opened, the staff was rehired.”

Henry Kissinger, who carefully parsed the judge’s phrasing and use of the words “not substantiated,” made a similar point. “My understanding is that the judge didn’t say it didn’t take place,” he says. Gallantly eager to defend Mrs. de la Renta, he added, “Annette did not go into this to prove anything against Tony. She went in there on the basis of facts presented to her by staff members and Brooke’s grandson. She didn’t throw around charges of elder abuse.”

Court evaluator Sam Liebowitz’s report on the Astor affair, according to those who have seen it, is a mixed bag, validating some of Philip’s charges but not all of them. Liebowitz, who conducted interviews with Brooke’s doctors, staff, and friends, acknowledged that her apartment was not in top-notch condition and that her dogs were not being regularly walked, with the dining room used as a dog run.

Tony Marshall was blamed for poorly supervising the household. Brooke Astor’s mental decline was detailed with a series of examples depicting her as confused and unable to sustain a conversation. Tony had included in his legal papers the speech that his mother gave at the Knickerbocker Club in February 10, 2004, as proof of her acuity. But Liebowitz challenged this claim, noting that Dr. Pritchett stated that Mrs. Astor would not have had the ability to write or dictate the thoughts contained in the speech. The report concluded that Mrs. Astor was not the victim of elder abuse as far as her medical and physical care was concerned, but did not deal with the question of financial abuse.

For Tony and Charlene Marshall, the judge’s ruling represented vindication, but not everyone in their social world agreed. Several days later there was a funeral for Eleanor Elliott, a former magazine editor who had attended Brooke’s one hundredth birthday party and whose husband, Jock, had been the best man at Tony’s first wedding. At the service, at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel on Madison Avenue, Charlene went over to commiserate with Louis Auchincloss. “She threw herself into my arms,” he recalls with distaste. “It was disgusting.”

At year’s end, two players in the Astor drama wrote about their experiences. Fraser Seitel, the Rockefeller spokesman, had schmoozed the press corps and become a favorite. Objectivity is a journalistic ideal, but charm usually trumps. Seitel’s essay (“Crisis Management Lessons from the Astor Disaster”) in the December 2006 issue of O’Dwyer’s PR Report, offered such helpful hints as “strike first,” “anticipate leaking, loose-lipped lawyers,” and “stick to the script.”

Seeking normality, Charlene had returned to teaching a healing prayer workshop at St. James’, although as Rector Husson says, “She came to it from a place that was pretty tired and weary.” In the December 2006 issue of the St. James’ Epistle, she wrote about her ordeal as a test of faith and humanity:

 

As you may know, Tony and I have been going through a rather rough patch. But we’ve not had to endure this time of trial alone. You’ve all been there for us and our family Sunday after Sunday, week after week, with hugs, kisses and words of encouragement; praying for us when we couldn’t stand, speaking for us when we had no words.

There were some days that were so very dark and worrisome. On one of those days during my morning reading I came across a story about a prisoner in a concentration camp who had scratched on the wall these words: “I believe in the sun even when it doesn’t shine, I believe in love when it isn’t shown, and I believe in God even when He doesn’t speak.”

I wept as I shared these words with Brenda [Rector Husson] that day because not hearing God speak in the midst of our troubles was very difficult for me. Tony and I arrived home later that evening after spending hours at our attorney’s office and as I opened the day’s mail, out of one envelope poured a whole array of words of love, affection and encouragement sent by all the Stephen Ministers at St. James’ Church. And that was only the beginning. God has been speaking to us with a whole symphony of voices—yours. Here, truly, at St. James’, is the body of Christ. Jesus can only be so happy that you are his and love you more than ever. Thank you.

 

By publishing this heartfelt letter, Charlene was conveying her hope that the Marshalls’ bad times were safely behind them.

But the periodic rumblings from One Hogan Place, the headquarters of the New York County district attorney’s office, were disquieting. In February, Charlene and Tony Marshall celebrated the christening of a new grandchild, Inness’s baby boy. The reception at their home afterward lacked the gaiety typical of such occasions. “We went, we made our excuses, and then we left,” says Paul Gilbert. “Under the circumstances, it was not very joyous. I was there for Inness.” Francis Morrissey, godfather to Inness’s older child, chatted amiably with the other guests, who included Daniel Billy and Sam Peabody. The threat of indictment had not eroded Morrissey’s close relationship with the Marshalls. They were all in this together, their legal futures entwined.

Morrissey had been heartily telling friends that he was convinced justice would prevail and his name would be cleared of the forgery allegations, but in truth he was deeply depressed. “It has nearly destroyed him,” says Catia Chapin. “I said, ‘Frank, this is very hard, but you have to stay in there, you cannot let this get you down. A lot of us have crosses to bear—you can do it.’” She adds, “This has gutted his soul.” News accounts suggesting that Morrissey had been the criminal mastermind did not sit well with his friends. The retired high school teacher Chuck Merten, Morrissey’s former neighbor in South Salem, New York, says, “I don’t know Tony Marshall from Adam, but he doesn’t sound like anybody’s fool. He’s misled by someone like Frank?”

To sustain a legal practice was difficult, given Morrissey’s notoriety. He lost at least one client, a friend of twenty years’ standing, the photo-realist painter Richard Estes, who sounds mournful about the parting of ways. “I’ve never had a lot of legal things to deal with, but if I did, I’d call Francis,” says Estes. “I took him out to dinner and said I didn’t believe any of it. Then a month later, I sort of fired him.” The painter adds, “I used to give him little pictures for my fee—he had a whole wall of things by me. For all I know, he’s sold them, or doesn’t want to look at them anymore.” An Estes painting is not a trivial gift; his work commands hundreds of thousands of dollars. For Morrissey, it was distressing to look around his office and be constantly reminded of Estes’s abandonment. He railed angrily to friends, What happened to loyalty and the presumption of innocence?

Morrissey was also weighed down by family tragedies: his sister Catherine was battling breast cancer; a niece had been injured in a cab accident; and he was underwriting the care of his elderly father, then ninety-six, living in Boston. The spry retired municipal judge Francis X. Morrissey, no stranger to scandal himself, offered a sympathetic ear.

Here they were, like actors taking a break between the matinee and evening performances, with time to contemplate the reviews and their relationships with their fellow cast members. Destiny and DNA plus Brooke Astor’s unseen hand had led inexorably to this moment. What a troubled thread had passed down through the male line of the Astor family: Tony had been estranged from his own father, and now he was estranged from his son. Brooke Astor, charming and crafty, had contributed to family disintegration by heaping insults on her son and his wife while making loving gestures toward her grandson late in life. One look at her luminous, pleading eyes and Philip had leapt into action.

During this lull, I asked Philip, “Were you and your father ever close?” and a few weeks later he found and forwarded a copy of a letter that he had written to Tony on March 18, 1993, shortly after Tony had married Charlene and Philip’s second child had been born. The letter brims with longing for a better relationship. As Philip wrote:

 

So much has changed during the past few years. But during this time I feel that we have gotten closer to each other. Perhaps from your end it might be ascribed to leaving Tee or perhaps it may be the constructive influence and effect of your developing relationship with Charlene. But ultimately it is because of a changing dynamic between the two of us—when we are talking on the phone or seeing each other or even thinking of each other when apart. As for myself, many questions may remain unanswered and there is much in the past which could have been said and done, but wasn’t. But now I take a new look upon being a father and son, as I am both . . . it couldn’t be a better time to talk—or write—as father, and friend.

 

Many years had passed since Philip had sent out this nakedly emotional note to his father. Maybe Tony had wanted things to be better too; maybe he had tried. But oh how things had gone badly awry. Philip admitted that he was taken aback when he found this letter, and said to me, “It’s kind of a killer, don’t you think?”

Tony was also reflecting on his life, and he too dug up an item of emotional import. In March 2007, he and Charlene went to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, where Tony donated the pistol that had belonged to his grandfather to the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The gun had been used by the general in 1914 in Veracruz, Mexico, and given to his grandson for luck. Tony took the pistol to Iwo Jima and then carried it with him through many moves and marriages. “I always kept it in a drawer and would take it out once in a while and ask myself, ‘What good is it doing here?’” Tony told the Quantico Sentry, an on-line newsletter. Maybe he had once considered giving it to his sons, but he was no longer speaking to them. Whatever his reasoning, he did not want to have a gun so close by anymore.

 

No save-the-date cards were sent out in the weeks preceding March 30, 2007. This year Brooke Astor’s birthday would be celebrated in a very private fashion. But it was nonetheless an extraordinary occasion. She was 105 years old, an age when simply waking up each morning is an achievement. She was not in apparent pain. Mrs. Astor had lived to see one more spring with its glorious fields of daffodils and crocuses.

The lawyers actually negotiated over her birthday celebration. Ken Warner got in touch with Paul Saunders to inquire whether Charlene Marshall could visit Brooke. Saunders denied the request, recalling, “I said no, let things remain as they are. I had a court order to obey. They could easily have gone back to Justice Stackhouse. They never even went back during the settlement talks.”

Warner disagreed with that premise. He was convinced that as a matter of law, the temporary restraining order had expired once Annette de la Renta became Mrs. Astor’s permanent guardian, and thus Annette could have granted permission for the visit. But Warner decided for future strategic reasons not to force the issue with the judge. As a result, the two sides then had to coordinate the birthday visits so that Tony would not overlap with Annette, Philip, and the others. Of course the press would be writing about Mrs. Astor’s birthday—yet another public relations opportunity for both sides.

Tony went to see his mother early in the day, taking pink azaleas. She slept through her son’s visit. She often dozed in her chair when Tony came and then opened her eyes the minute he left, to the point where the staff wondered whether her actions were deliberate. “She does spend a lot of time sleeping,” Warner was forced to explain to the Associated Press. “It can be difficult to catch the lucid moments. But he did see her.” Fraser Seitel had the pleasure of telling the press that Mrs. Astor was awake for her party later in the day.

The nurses dressed her up in a white shirt, bright pink slacks, an orange and pink scarf, pearl earrings, and gold bracelets and rings, which she fingered with pleasure. Annette took a three-inch lemon cake with white frosting; David Rockefeller carried a bouquet of sweet peas from his greenhouse. Philip’s daughter, Sophie, and Alec’s daughter, Hilary Brooke, sang “Happy Birthday” several times, giggling and laughing, while their fathers looked on proudly. As Annette recalls, “She knew that everyone was there for her. It was really sweet. Everyone had a glass of champagne.” The celebrants included Alec, Nan, Chris Ely, Naomi Packard-Koot, and the philanthropist Florence Irving. “My grandmother was taking it all in, smiling,” recalls Philip. “David and Annette and I hadn’t been together since our meeting in June. We had come a long way.” The family was all there—but minus two key members.