St. Thomas Episcopal Church, on the northwest corner of 53rd Street and Fifth, was built in the early twentieth century in the French High Gothic style. Not as enormous as the great cathedrals of Europe, it has its own grandeur, not only in the architecture but in the height and sweep of the interior, especially the magnificent white stone screen, rising nearly 100 feet, at the rear of the church.
I entered and signed one of the guest books. It was early, so only a sprinkling of people had arrived. I stepped into the sanctuary and turned right; there in the corner was Monaghan. He pointed across the way and down the side aisles to three of his men, dressed in black or dark blue suits, which meant they could easily be mistaken for part of the funeral team from Campbell’s rather than cops.
The same groups who had been at Dorothy’s apartment for the visitation attended the funeral: The Connecticut contingent, the New York Upper East Side friends, and the two theatre groups: actors, directors, designers, and the more mainstream producers and managers. The chief difference was that for the religious service everyone dressed in slightly more formal and conservative outfits.
I wondered if Wilfred Covington would come, especially after that stinging piece in the morning paper. But he did appear, with someone who could only be his wife, Lorinda. Coming in quietly, almost stealthily, they sneaked down a side aisle and attempted inconspicuously to drop into their seats as quickly as possible. As various people of interest arrived, I pointed them out to Monaghan: Alistair, the former companion; Lance; other socialites; important theatre people. Some he recognized, especially those connected with our production whom he had interviewed: Ardith, Rowan, a couple of actors, and Elliott, the playwright.
The family, of course, would come in last and move down front. That was when I would have to begin speaking rapidly to identify the key players among Dorothy’s relatives. At about ten to 11:00, the family gathered in the vestibule, and the funeral officials lined them up. In the front row would be Annie, Curtis, their children, Danny, and Dorothy’s older sister from St. Louis with her husband. In the second row I pointed out Warren, with a couple I did not recognize, but who I assumed were his sister, and brother-in-law with their three grown children. Behind the immediate family were two rows of people, no doubt various cousins, nephews, nieces, and the like. When everyone had moved down to take their seats, I left Monaghan standing in the back corner, slipped across the way, and sat toward the back next to an actor friend.
The service began. The organ boomed forth, the boys’ and men’s choir processed down the center aisle followed by various clergy, and finally the two ministers, one the head clergyman of St. Thomas and the other the Reverend Claude Merrivale, Dorothy’s longtime minister from her church in Connecticut, who delivered an appropriate and heartfelt homily. The transcendent aspect of any service at St. Thomas is the boys’ choir, the most highly regarded musical group of its kind in the country. It’s safe to say that they produce one of the truly glorious sounds on the planet. At Dorothy’s service they led us in singing “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” and “Abide with Me.” On the final chorus of each one, the choir sang a descant, which elevated these ancient numbers even further.
After the service, I slipped out early and disappeared around a corner. When others had scattered, the family came out, and I briefly moved over and spoke to the ones I wanted to see: Annie, Curtis, and Danny. I moved away and started walking to the Savile Club ten blocks away, where I was to meet Alistair for lunch.
Alistair Hargrave was a “walker,” a creature virtually unique to Manhattan. Walkers could vary in age from the mid-thirties to the mid-sixties, and, if well preserved, a tad older. They were always male and almost never overtly gay. They could be somewhat androgynous, even a touch epicene, but they must also convey a certain sense of solidity, a trace of masculinity—in other words, not be too louche. They are escorts for a variety of women: divorced, separated, widows, of course, and women whose husbands are frequently out of town or who have openly taken on a mistress.
A good walker has to be not only presentable but distinguished-looking, preferably bordering on handsome. He has to be well-read and up on current affairs—the Times and the Post every day, select books on the arts, fashion, travel, and the like. His knowledge need not be exhaustive but broad enough to keep up his end of the conversation in any circle: cocktail parties, museum openings, benefits. Moreover, in terms of masculine libido, he must achieve that tricky balance of being neither a limp dishrag nor a raging Lothario. On almost every count Alistair was the quintessential walker, which is no doubt why Dorothy took up with him a year or so after her divorce from Warren.
Alistair escorted her for almost three years; then she seemed to abruptly drop him. Maybe it wasn’t all that sudden, but most people looked at it that way, and Alistair gave the stiff upper lip performance of a lover spurned. I had my own theory about why she ended the arrangement. As companionable and ideal as Alistair was, the code of the walker phenomenon is that it almost always excludes ongoing sexual intimacy, and one of Alistair’s strong points was his adherence to the code. In this case, though, I think it began to work against him.
One thing that led me to this conclusion were the times Dorothy and I saw each another at openings and play readings, when I came to sense there was definitely a frisson between us. We both knew it would never go anywhere. But it was there: one of those unspoken but unmistakable feelings. Later I came to suspect that there was not only a desire for a man with more to offer than Alistair, but also her growing sense of wanting to be her own person.
• • •
The Savile Club is a four-story Georgian brick building on Fifth Avenue in the low sixties. The Upper East Side of Manhattan is a world unto itself. Lots of ordinary people live there, and it has the usual mixture of small groceries, florists, banks, dress shops, bookstores, and the like. But within that world there is another world. It has its architectural artifacts: museums, art galleries, condominiums, co-ops, expensive restaurants—which are an indispensable part of this other world. Condominiums, by the way, exist all over the world, but the co-op is unique to a certain part of Manhattan. There are financial differences, of course, between a condo and a co-op, but the most important difference is control. The board of a co-op has considerably more options when it comes to rejecting prospective apartment buyers. Put another way, a co-op can be far more exclusive than a condo.
As with any foreign land, enclave, or world-within-a-world, the Upper East Side has its own language with its own vocabulary, not to mention its own set of symbols. This has to do with where you went to school, what restaurants you frequent, where you go in the summer, where you go in the winter (in Florida, it may be Hobe Sound on the east coast or Boca Grande on the west). If you are born into this world, you imbibe all this with your mother’s milk (or, if your mother does not breast feed, with the formula administered by your nanny). You may marry into it, of course, and if you are nimble and quick on your feet, you can adapt to it reasonably well, but, if you are neither born to it nor marry into it, you must absorb the codes, the signals, the sign language until they are second nature. You might send out a signal like a semaphore, but if no one responds, you remain in outer darkness.
An integral part of this unspoken code are the clubs. Not only must you know which ones they are, a husband and wife must each belong to several. We are not speaking here of country clubs in Connecticut or Long Island, but clubs in town. For the women, the Colony and the Cos Club; for the men, the Union, the Brook, the Knickerbocker, the Savile. You start with those and go on from there.
• • •
When you enter the Savile, the uniformed man at the door politely asks if he can help you.
“Mr. Hargrave?” I say.
“He’s expecting you, sir. Upstairs in the lounge on the right.”
You ascend a steep series of steps, past oil portraits of ancient worthies, and end up on a marble floor at the top. To your right is a dining room, not overly large but with understated elegance, strictly of the masculine variety. Just to the left of the dining room is a lounge. As I moved in that direction, Alistair, who was clearly on the lookout for me, rose and greeted me. His handshake was solemn and serious, a clear sign that he was grieving.
Alistair was about five feet ten, clearly fighting to stay as trim as possible but losing the battle slightly around the middle. With pink cheeks, a dimple in his chin, and gray temples, he appeared a bit cherubic. Always impeccably dressed, usually in a dark blue blazer and gray slacks, but today, because of the funeral, he wore a dark business suit, a blue shirt with white collar and cuffs, gold cuff links with his initials, and a yellow tie patterned with miniscule figures that looked like small yachts or country houses, I couldn’t tell which.
“You’ve been here before, of course,” he said.
“Edgar Lawrence is an old friend and kind enough to invite me from time to time.”
“Lovely man, Edgar. Shall we have a drink? Sherry, wine, a cocktail?”
“I will take a glass of white wine, thank you, but if you don’t mind, could we have it with lunch?
“Of course.”
He steered me toward the dining room, whereupon the headwaiter took us to our table, in a corner overlooking Central Park and the silent, passing traffic on Fifth Avenue. After we had ordered drinks, we discussed the funeral service and agreed it was both infinitely sad and, at the same time, extremely inspirational.
“Truthfully, Matt, I’m devastated,” he said. “I’ve hardly slept a wink since I heard. Finally, the last two nights I did something I rarely do: I took sleeping pills both nights.”
“I know how close to her you were.”
“I loved her, Matt. It was that simple. I know, someone like me, an escort—you’re not supposed to be the kind that falls in love, truly in love, and I never did before.”
“You’ve been the companion of a number of elegant, interesting women.”
“Not like Dorothy. There was no artifice there, no pretense. She was smart, of course, attractive, quick, and clearly she loved the arts. I’ve never known anyone quite like her: all that intellectual power combined with grace and good taste.”
“First the blow of losing her, and now this one. I would think it’s almost too much to bear.”
“I’m so glad you understand.”
“That first blow, when she ended the relationship: that must have been difficult to understand.”
“Impossible.”
The waiter appeared with our drinks and asked if we were ready to order. We had not looked at the menu, but both of us were familiar with it, so we looked somewhat hurriedly and ordered: lemon sole for Alistair, a Cobb salad for me. When the waiter had disappeared, Alistair continued. “From left field, Matt. I never saw it coming.”
“Awful for you.”
“I was stunned. I still can’t wrap my mind, my emotions, around it.”
“There were no warning signs?”
“None as far as I could see. I’ve gone over it time and time again, and, as far as I can tell, there was not the slightest hint.”
“I have a theory, Alistair.”
“Oh?”
I then proceeded to explain my idea of Dorothy’s notion of a kind of personal Declaration of Independence. Alistair listened with great interest. “I hear what you’re saying,” he said, “but I still don’t understand why—”
“I think she felt it had to be across the board. My own hunch is that, if there was any one attachment she would have wanted to hold on to and hated to give up, it was you.”
“Do you really feel that?”
“It’s my sense of things,” I said. I wasn’t at all certain this was true, but Alistair was so shaken I thought there was no harm in reassuring him. Besides, I didn’t want to spend the entire lunch listening to his lament. I had never thought of Alistair as a serious suspect, but now I was certain he was not. His grief was too genuine; besides, looking at him, I could never imagine this immaculate figure involved in any kind of basement skulduggery.
At this point the waiter arrived with our lunch, and as we began eating I turned to the other question I wanted answered. I was reasonably certain that Dorothy and Alistair must have travelled in the same circles as Mulholland and his wife, and I was anxious to find out what he knew about those two. “This murder at the Met,” I said.
“Horrible, grotesque, truly repulsive.”
“Did you know him, or his wife, Roxanne?”
“Dorothy was invited to their place for dinner, of course, but she didn’t accept the first couple of times. As you can imagine, she could have gone out every night of the week. But she was a working producer and didn’t have time for constant rounds of social engagements. Besides, more often than not she was bored to death. But she had heard that the Mulholland parties were different from most: smaller, more intimate, more intellectual. So we went to one and after that to several more.”
“And were they?”
“What?”
“Different.”
At this point the waiter returned with the coffee and macaroons and silently disappeared.
Alistair continued: “The key was Roxanne—a remarkable hostess. The apartment was impeccable, the height of good taste—restrained, lovely colors, just the right accents. And the food: she had hired a sous-chef from one of the Boulud restaurants as her cook. The menus were simple: straightforward dishes prepared with great inventiveness, and small portions of everything—a trick most people never learn. The company was carefully chosen, and there was always a museum trustee, maybe two, though sometimes it was a curator. Over dinner, Roxanne and the curator would strike up a conversation about some acquisition or upcoming exhibition. It made you feel that you were in on the ground floor.”
“What about Clifford, the husband?”
“I never figured him out. He was invariably polite, and Roxanne was careful to defer to him periodically. Though he was generally part of the conversations, I never could tell whether he was genuine or playing a role.”
“Maybe some of both.”
“Maybe.”
We moved from the table to the top of the steps, and I was ready to leave.
“By the way,” he said, remembering that I was rehearsing a play. “How are rehearsals going?”
“It hasn’t been easy; a difficult week, to say the least.”
“But I pray it will be a success—Dorothy would want that.”
“It’s taking us time to regain our stride, but I think it will come right in the end. It’s a good play with a strong cast. Keep your fingers crossed.”
“I will.”
I was starting down the steps, but he remained at the top. “I’m staying a while,” he said. “I need to recover from this morning.”
“I understand,” I said. “Thanks, Alistair, for a lovely lunch. I’m just sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”
“That makes two of us.” As I started down the steps, he added, “Break a leg.”
• • •
When I got back to the loft after lunch with Alistair, the answering machine showed I had a couple of calls. The most important by far was from Seymour Pascall, my friend in the coroner’s office. I had been anxiously waiting to find out what the autopsy of Dorothy had shown. When I reached him on the phone, he told me it had revealed that strangulation was definitely the main cause of death, but she had also suffered a severe blow to the head with some blunt instrument—a small pipe, a hammer, something like that. I raised the possibility that it might be a wine bottle, since it happened adjacent to the bar in the lounge. He said they had thought of that and had asked the pathologist to examine her head again with that in mind—either before or after the blow, probably after, the person proceeded to strangle her.
“Any fingerprints?”
“Yes,” he said, “but they haven’t been processed so far.”
“Would you let me know when they find out?”
“Will do,” Seymour said. I thanked him profusely, telling him this report might certainly help lead to Dorothy’s killer.
• • •
After I rang off, I went over the information I had so far on the murder itself. Someone had arranged it so that Dorothy would arrive thirty minutes before she was to meet Danny, probably someone who had stolen or had access to Danny’s cell phone. The killer or killers had positioned themselves in the darkened basement ahead of time, possibly entering through the front of the theatre, but most likely coming in through the alley that exited on 50th street. After the murder they left by the same route. As for the murder itself, I continued to think they would find upside-down fingerprints on the neck of the wine bottle. The murderer or murderers might have used gloves, but somehow I thought it had all the earmarks of an impromptu, unplanned event. There was intention to intimidate Dorothy—but to kill her? I was not so sure.
• • •
Friday night was our first dress rehearsal. It was supposed to have been earlier, but Dorothy’s death pushed everything back. We would have a regular performance—costumes, lights, the works—with our first audience: about two dozen friends and relatives of the cast and crew. It went reasonably well, but as always, there were a few problems. The character of Mark, the oldest of the three children, seemed a bit vapid and ill-defined. There was a slow spot midway in act two when the husband and wife were at each other’s throats recalling past quarrels. On the technical side, two-thirds of the way through act one, the rain, thunder, and lightning were so loud that the actors could barely be heard. Then it was overcorrected and became more like a “gentle rain from heaven” than a storm. Obviously, a sound level between the two was the answer to this problem.
As for the other weaknesses, the director and playwright conferred and decided that the problem in act two—the scene where the forward thrust of the play seemed to stop in the argument between the spouses—could be largely cured with judicious cuts. Giving more definition to Mark’s character would not be so easy, though Elliot, the playwright, thought he had an idea: an expanded scene toward the end of act one between Mark and my character, where he challenges me more and gets a number of things off his chest. Elliot planned to work on this over the weekend and get a new scene to us either Sunday afternoon or early Monday morning. We would work on the scene Monday afternoon and hope to put it in that night. For the most part, however, our small audience seemed impressed with both the play and the performances.