We should have lived happily ever after. But there hadn’t been a murder this big for years. Not to imply that Loudon and Fauquier Counties were any strangers to scandal: the most recent being when the Cummings twin shot her polo-player lover to death and was sentenced to sixty days for voluntary manslaughter because he’d been beating her up, stealing all her money, and manipulating her until she was little more than a slave. But ours was a scandal of major international proportions, involving two super-luminaries and one trusty butler. Madam was world-famous for her portraits and her crazy mother, and Junior for his excesses. It was the stuff movies-of-the-week were made of—spoiled people, tons of money, sick sex, violent crime, international locales, loyal servants gone amok.
Mr. Slater had hired a security company to protect the farm, and us, from the media, but it seemed nothing could stop them from climbing trees across the meadow and taking our pictures with menacing telephoto lenses as big as umbrella stands.
Madam and I treated each other with complete deference. There was no silly chatter, no letting down of appearances. I kept my time around her to a minimum and spoke only when required, since—in spite of the fact the house was swept every day for listening devices and none were found—we operated on the assumption that every word we said inside our walls was heard, the phones tapped, the house bugged. It was torture. We kept all the blinds drawn, and whenever one of us went outside—to the studio or the garden—we felt we had to run, almost as if we were criminals trying to escape from jail, to avoid the hidden cameras lurking in the woods. We started to scoot everywhere, hunched like crabs. It was exhausting.
Madam spent most of her days on the phone with Junior’s lawyers, working out his estate. Other than lawyers, nobody phoned, nobody came to call. We were in our own dimension, as untouchable and undesirable as voodoo spirits.
“They’re making me feel as if I were the one who did something wrong,” Madam complained. “I’m the victim. This is crazy.”
She had an uncanny knack for talking herself into things.
“Good news,” Leonard Slater informed me over the phone. “The district court schedule is working in our favor. Your preliminary hearing is scheduled for next week.”
It was only ten days after the shooting. And by now, we were so accustomed to the flashbulbs neither Madam nor I even blinked when we ran their gamut into the courthouse to testify. The bruises around her neck had come fully into their own, and she dressed so they were visible, like a tattooed necklace of angry, black barbed-wire.
As it turned out, a number of things worked in my favor: the bruises themselves, the photographs of the extensive damage done to the rest of her body, the medical examiner’s report, which stated that not only had Junior’s blood alcohol level been at three-point-one—practically off the charts—but evidence of cocaine in his blood had also been found, meaning he had rendered himself dangerous and irrational. The coup de grâce was Leonard Slater’s closing argument that the 911 tape was inadmissible and I had not been properly informed of my rights since the deputy was an acquaintance and had simply said, “You know I’m going to have to take you in.”
“Your honor,” Mr. Slater urged. “Nigel Weatherby-Smythe should be recognized as a hero, not a killer. He shot Junior Hammond to prevent him from killing Mrs. Hammond. He fired both those guns from fear and passion, not malice. We should all be lucky enough to have someone as quick-thinking and loyal in our employ.”
The charges were reduced to involuntary manslaughter and I was placed on six weeks’ probation. There would be no trial. While Mr. Slater addressed the press, a deputy escorted us out the back of the courthouse and we went straight home.
It took almost a week for the media to clear out, leaving the countryside completely trampled and trashed with McDonald’s and Burger King and 7-Eleven coffee, hamburger, and french fry containers. If this were Nepal, they’d be fined.
But inside our little house, we were finally at peace. That night, Effie brought us dinner in the library, small grilled filets and sliced tomatoes, and we ate from TV tables and watched a biography of the Captain and Tenille. I would say we were both basically brain-dead. It was the first quiet night we’d had since Junior Hammond appeared on our doorstep in June.
“Madam,” I asked during a commercial. “May I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What was in your prenuptial agreement? I mean, is there any chance they could take the money away?”
“No. Not a chance. I fulfilled the terms.”
That wasn’t enough. She had to tell me and she knew it. I just stared at her until she started talking again.
“All right. There were three conditions: One, that I be lawfully and legally married to him. Well, we had a proper license and the ceremony was officiated by Judge Ruxton. Two, that I take his name, which I did, and which I will continue to do. And three, that the marriage be consummated. Which, as you well know, it was. In spite of the manner in which it was accomplished, his semen was present. Inside.” She made a wretching face.
“What if I hadn’t come up when I did? You’d be dead.”
Madam nodded. “It was a big gamble, but I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”
“What do you mean, ‘a big gamble’? You had this all planned?”
“Well.” She tapped her fork on the edge of her plate as she considered. “That would be somewhat of an overstatement. But, I admit, it had occurred to me.” Her expression was wry.
Wow. I thought about it, how, back in June, she’d insisted he stay for a few days, and how she’d taken away his guns and given them to me after he shot the fawn and the rabbit, instead of making him leave. Her insistence that I stay through the wedding. The whip around her neck. His protestation that she’d wanted him to do it, and now the realization that she must have told him that was what she wanted. She had egged him on. Because she was certain of my love and dedication to her, and my enmity for him. She was certain I would rescue her.
“You mean you orchestrated the whole thing?”
Madam glanced at me sheepishly. “Not in the beginning. I really thought there was some hope for him, but as the summer went on, I realized he was beyond salvation. I set him up. It was the only way I knew to get my hands on some money. I was sick of being broke and used.”
I sipped my wine and, a few moments later, asked, “Exactly how much money is there?”
“Close to eight hundred million dollars.”
“Lovely.” She had been his wife for less than seven hours. That had turned out to be very expensive sex for Junior Hammond—$115 million an hour, to be exact. At the next commercial I asked her what she had planned for the future.
“I think we both deserve a vacation.”
“What do you propose?”
“How about a few days in Paris and then a week at the Splendido?”
“Sounds like an excellent plan. Let’s call the pilot and tell him to gas up the jet.”
“Let’s give it a few days to let the dust settle,” she admonished. “Then we can do whatever we want.”
We banged our glasses together and laughed like the hyenas we were.