McNally's Dilemma (3 page)

I sat at my desk and dutifully recorded
l’Affaire Tremaine
in my journal. Recording my experiences as CEO, Office Manager, Secretary, and Mail Boy for Discreet Inquiries is a chore I adhere to faithfully and one I enjoy. My jottings this evening, and my cool dip in the Atlantic earlier, reminded me of Lolly’s remark about cold water being Vance Tremaine’s undoing. The story played out thusly.

Vance was in New York on business—what business will soon become clear—and stopping at the Yale Club, as they say. This twenty-one-storied limestone edifice, solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, is situated most conveniently on Vanderbilt Avenue between Grand Central Station to the east and Brooks Brothers to the west. After a hard day on Wall Street, an Eli on the run can purchase a pair of cashmere socks, sip a tall Scotch and soda, and still make the seven-fifteen to Greenwich with time to spare. That the school and club are now both coed went a long way in attracting the patronage of Vance Tremaine when in the Big Apple.

We open with Vance sitting in the football-field-size second-floor lounge, furnished with leather chairs, couches, and mahogany tables. Two fireplaces, towering windows, and oil paintings of presidents who went from Yale to the Oval Office with nary a backward glance complete the picture of a gentlemen’s club favored by New Yorker cartoonists. The bar is also on the second floor, enabling the late-afternoon crowd to amble between bar and lounge, toting their drinks and little glass bowls filled with peanuts or other tidbits.

Having been introduced to Vance’s predilection, it will not surprise you to learn that he struck up a conversation with a charming recent Yale grad wearing a very tailored aubergine skirt, white blouse, Hermès print scarf knotted in the fashion of a man’s necktie, and carrying a Coach briefcase. All this, and especially the briefcase, was the ultimate turn-on for Vance, for reasons known only to his analyst. Her red hair was the cherry atop the sundae.

When he asked her if she was free for dinner, she didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no. Neither did she say Vance was old enough to be her father, but stated demurely that he, Vance, had graduated Yale the same year as dear old Dad. Vance, who is quick on the snappy retort, said, “Then he married in prep school or you are the most precocious ten-year-old I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”

“I’m twenty-two, Mr. Tremaine.”

“I’m forty-seven, and the name is Vance.”

For the record, it’s a PBR that this year marks the third anniversary of Vance Tremaine’s forty-seventh birthday.

Next he hinted, none too subtly, at the expertise an older man brings to a relationship. He ended with, “If you’ve never dated a man of my vintage, consider the allure and the mystery of the unknown, Allison,” for that was indeed her name. “Shall we meet here at seven-thirty?”

Employing the skills she had learned in four years’ rigorous study, Allison didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no.

Invigorated, Vance retreated to the fifth floor of the Yale Club, which houses the men’s locker room, the men’s showers, the men’s steam room, the men’s sauna, the men’s masseuse, and, the target of Vance’s mission, the swimming pool. An inside staircase leads to the gym and squash courts on the sixth floor. Vance was pleasantly surprised at the vast changes he encountered on the fifth floor. The old open stall lockers had been replaced with modern, slim closets with, of all things, doors. The floor was carpeted and upholstered chairs and odd tables formed a comfortable lounge area around a television set.

Vance approved of the renovation. He signed in for a “steam and plunge” (“swim” being too pretentious a word for a pool of rather modest proportions). He hung his clothes in a new, slender locker and walked into the shower area, off which were the steam, sauna, and pool rooms.

He peered through the windowed door of the sauna but was put off by the sign that cautioned men with heart problems from entering. This was reminiscent of the notice Dante had posted on Hell’s Gate:
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate!
(Leave all hope behind, ye who enter here!) Moving right along, he ventured into the steam room, a six-by-ten-foot rectangle, where he singed his behind on the marble bench before fleeing in favor of a cold shower. Ready for his plunge, Vance grabbed a towel from a stack conveniently placed by the entrance to the pool, draped it around his neck, opened the door, and marched right in.

One swam at the Yale Club, as the French say,
au naturel
or, as the boys at Yale say, bare-assed. So, imagine Vance’s surprise when he came face-to-face with Allison and another young lady in territory that only a few years ago was sacrosanct to those poor little lambs who had lost their way—
baa, baa, baa.
Vance gasped and turned the color of Allison’s hair. The girls, being well bred, did not gasp but stood their ground and kept their eyes above Vance’s waist. If he turned and ran to from whence he came, he would be exposing his rear flank, and reasoning in a nanosecond that one exposure per viewing was sufficient, he took a giant step forward and leaped into the pool, losing his towel in midair.

Perhaps in anticipation of such an occurrence, the pool’s designer had positioned the deep end nearest the portal from the men’s showers, so Vance was spared a broken leg or two. However, upon surfacing, Vance was more the color of Allison’s blue eyes than her red hair. As usual, those in charge of such things had neglected to press the button marked “heater,” rendering the pool’s water temperature a degree or two above frigid.

Hugging the pool’s tiled perimeter, Vance shouted at his audience. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“We, sir,” said Allison, “are here to swim and, as you can see, are properly attired for the sport.” Referring, no doubt, to their smart one-piece swimsuits. “What did
you
have in mind?”

“Since when are you allowed to use the pool?”

“If by ‘you’ you mean ‘women,’ we gained entrance to the fifth floor seventy-five years after being granted the right to vote.”

Good God, Vance thought, women’s libbers. Next thing you know they’ll have us doing the backstroke with Democrats. “Would you please hand me that towel,” Vance said, clinging closely to the tiled wall. The pool water at the Yale Club, besides being often cold, is always clean and clear, the better to see the mosaic tiled Y that graces the pool’s floor.

The girls, laughing, made their way to a door opposite the one from which Vance had entered. A door that had been a solid wall on his last visit just two short years ago.

“How the hell am I going to get out of here?” Vance wondered aloud.

“The way you got in,” Allison called over her lovely bare shoulder before making her exit.

At this point, the lifeguard entered from the men’s lockers and at a glance noting the situation, picked up the towel and helped Vance out of the water. The boy’s name was Jesus. He was Cuban, as was most of the help at the Yale Club; however, being saved by Jesus did not cause Vance Tremaine to be born again. In fact, he had the temerity to show up in the lounge at seven-thirty, only to see Allison on the arm of a recent Yale graduate who looked like the cover boy of a Brooks Brothers catalogue.

“I thought we had a date,” Vance protested.

“Sorry, Vance, but you blew the cover on the mystery of the unknown,” Allison retorted.

This amusing reverie was shattered by my ringing telephone. I checked the time on my desk clock; I have a policy against taking calls after midnight, especially if it might be bad news. Bad news can wait until morning. It was one minute before the witching hour, and, being a purist, I picked up and said, “Archy here.”

“Archy? It’s Melva. Melva Williams.”

“Melva? How nice to hear your lovely voice. I heard you were down for the season.”

“Yes. A bit early, but I’m here.”

“How are you, Melva?”

“As well as can be expected under the circumstances.”

Now there was an opener if ever I heard one, and this poor fish nibbled at the bait. “What, Melva, are the circumstances?”

“Geoffrey is dead.”

I gave that the obligatory beat and then responded with the requisite condolence. “My God, I’m sorry. When? How?”

“When?” Melva Williams said. “About a half hour ago. How? I shot him, that’s how.”

I glanced at my desk clock. It was one minute after twelve.

Well, the season had certainly started off with a bang!

I
KNEW MOTHER WOULD
have retired to the master suite, just as I knew
mon père
would be in his den, reading Dickens. If you are beginning to believe that Dickens is all the man reads, you would be correct. For as long as I can remember this has been his sole leisure pursuit, rendering my father either a very slow reader or one who has come full circle and is on his second, or perhaps third, time through. Whenever I lament my given name, Archibald, I also remember to count my blessings. I could have been christened Ebenezer McNally.

“You’re still up,” my father stated after permitting me to enter.

“Yes, sir. And on my way out.”

“Trouble, Archy?”

“I’m afraid so, sir. At the Williams manse.”

“Melva Ashton Manning? They’re here?”

The Ashtons and Mannings are New York’s version of Boston’s Cabots and Lodges, hence Father’s refusal to be amused by Melva’s second marriage to Geoffrey Williams, who, PBR has it, came into the world as Jeffrey Wolinsky. When Ted Manning was killed in a polo accident, Father would have liked Melva to remain a widow rather than marry beneath her. A latter-day Victorian, Father often refers to divorce as “an unfortunate separation,” not unlike a surgeon telling a patient, “Sorry, old chap, but I must unfortunately separate your right arm from your shoulder.”

Father will no doubt be delighted to learn that Melva has finally performed the ultimate unfortunate separation from Geoff.

“Yes, sir, they’re here.”

“And?”

“Geoff Williams has been shot, sir. I believe he’s dead.”

Did I see him smile at the news or was he recalling an amusing passage from
Bleak House
? “An accident, Archy?”

“Melva shot him, sir.”

The pater executed a perfect one-eyebrow lift, which was as ruffled as Prescott McNally’s feathers ever got, and asked hopefully, “Justifiable homicide?”

“I don’t know the details, sir, just what Melva said on the phone not five minutes ago. I believe ‘I shot him’ were her exact words.”

“I see. Well, Melva Ashton Manning will need a lawyer, Archy.”

One doesn’t become the proprietor of the McNally Building on Royal Palm Way by being shy about soliciting trade. “I believe she called me as a friend, sir, and I imagine she has a New York lawyer.”

“Who is most likely not admitted to practice in Florida. They will need a firm to liaise between their client and the court. Tell me, have the police been notified?”

“I don’t think so, sir. Melva seems to be in a state of shock, so I’d best get there and do what has to be done.”

“Very good. Express my sympathy to Melva and assure her that we are at her disposal. And keep me posted, Archy.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jamie and Ursi occupy the apartment over our three-car garage but no lights emanated from their quarters. As I approached, our dog, Hobo, ambled out of his gabled doghouse, sniffed the cuffs of my trousers, and wagged his tail. Hobo is part terrier; his brown and white spots suggest one of his parents was a Jack Russell and the other a one-night stand. I patted Hobo’s head and he ambled back into his canine abode.

My red Mazda Miata convertible is the type of car one should leap into in the manner of Tom Mix mounting Pal. But when it’s garaged and the top is up, I recommend a more conventional approach, such as opening the door and sliding into the driver’s seat. Comfortably if not dashingly ensconced, I sped south on the A1A, recalling the events in the life of New York’s erstwhile “Debutante of the Year” that brought her to this sad impasse.

Melva Ashton was as top drawer as one can get without sitting atop the family’s pedigreed highboy. Miss Porter’s was followed by Radcliffe, which was followed by a trip to Hollywood for a screen test, when it was fashionable for debs like Melva and Gloria Vanderbilt to be screen-tested. Their names never appeared in lights, but Gloria’s, for a time, graced the derrière of many a jeans-clad lady.

Her first late husband—I’m not quite sure how one can be “first” and “late” at the same time—Teddy Manning roughed it at St. Paul’s and Harvard, where he majored in polo. He and Melva took dancing lessons together when she was ten and he twelve. They danced their way to the altar a dozen years later, took up residence in a triplex on Fifth Avenue, summered in their Further Lane mansion in East Hampton, and wintered in a palatial rental in Palm Beach. They produced a daughter, Veronica, and when she was thirteen Teddy fell from his pony during a match in England he attended annually as the guest of the royal family. Teddy Manning died with his boots on and in the company of gentlemen.

Geoffrey Williams arrived on the scene as, of all things, tennis instructor to Lady Cynthia Horowitz. He resembled Wallace Reid of the silents and, unlike past “gorgeous” tennis instructors on Lady C.’s payroll, he actually knew how to play the game. In addition, Geoff filled a pair of tennis shorts, as Lolly Spindrift put it, “with remarkable efficiency.”

Melva and I met on the Palm Beach tennis beat and made a good team both on and off the courts. We enjoyed our easygoing relationship too much to ruin it with even a hint of romance, and when Veronica came down from prep school on long weekends, we made it a jolly threesome, munching hamburgers at the Pelican Club. “I like this much better than the Bath and Tennis,” precocious Veronica declared. Out of the mouths of babes...

When Geoff started courting the widow Manning and she encouraged the attention, I kept an open mind and a closed mouth regarding the affair. PBR had it that Geoff was a tennis pro, but I couldn’t find him listed on any of the tennis pro circuits. He was also touted to be a golf pro, and although he was usually under par, I couldn’t find him listed on any of the golf pro circuits. He was also reputed to be Geoffrey Wolinsky, minor Russian nobility, whose ancestors made it out of St. Petersburg a minute before the Bolsheviks marched in.