“Seeing to the”—she looked around the room—“bedding, Madame.” Renée folded and then unfolded her hands before her waist. “To change the sheets.”
I felt a sudden surge of blood to my temples. “Bedding?” I looked at her empty arms.
Renée swallowed, saying nothing. I narrowed my eyes, studying her suddenly with a prickling feeling of discomfort: she looked prim and tidy as always, but was that a tinge of flush on her cheeks? And did her hair look as though it had been just recently brushed, more recently than when she had dressed that morning? She smelled of her fresh rose water, but why would she have reapplied it in the middle of the afternoon? And where were these bedsheets she had been fetching?
I shook my head no. Surely not. My own lady’s maid? She would never. He would never. But then I knew it: yes. I felt it like a tug within my breast, my heart’s immutable response to my head’s attempts at reason—and denial.
Yes, he would.
And now there was no way to unknow what I had seen in the bright and stark daylight of the truth. My heart felt as if it might rupture, and I plopped down on top of my trunk with an audible sigh. Bedsheets. Bedsheets, indeed.
* * *
—
That was it. To continue on in such a manner would have driven me mad. But how to proceed? How does one go about getting a divorce—a second divorce—from the man she still loves? The man who runs her company and manages her millions. The man who adores her, their, beloved daughter. The man who would no doubt fight to keep all of these things.
Ed Close, though he’d been deeply disappointed by my request for a divorce, had accepted my decision with his customary civility, the same cool resignation that I’d found so infuriating at so many other points in our marriage. Divorce was not how things were done in Ed Close’s world, but if we were going to do it, he wanted it done swiftly and quietly, with no whiff of scandalous discord to further add to the unpleasantness, not a single morsel of gossip to set society tongues to wagging.
Ned would be different. Ned, as I knew all too well, was a man of passions. Our love, like our fights, had been mad and fiery, and I already knew that he would oppose a divorce if he found even the slightest opportunity to do so. And Ned Hutton never shied away from a fight. If I wanted to do this quickly, my dignity coming out intact, I would need to be smart about it. I would not ask Ned for permission; I would present him with my decision as a fait accompli.
But according to the law, I would need proof of his infidelity in order to do that. Only if I, as a woman, could prove to the court that the man was a philanderer would I have the right to sue him for divorce, with my custody of Deenie assured and no possible claims on my company or my money. And so I would get it, I decided. And my husband, by carrying on his dalliances right under our own roof, had just given me the best way to do so.
* * *
—
I may have been Mrs. Edward F. Hutton to my staff, but the fact of the matter was that the servants had their generous salaries from my bank account, and they worked for me. And so the next day, while Ned was out, I summoned his valet to my suite.
“Mrs. Hutton, you asked for me?”
“Good morning, Clip. Yes, I did. Shut the door, please,” I said, waving him into the room. “I have something you can help me with.”
The proof came in the shoe prints—two pairs of distinct shoe prints, crossing my husband’s bedroom and leading into the bed. I’d asked Ned’s valet to carry out the plan precisely: on my direction the man had sprinkled the wood floor and carpets of Ned’s suite with the thinnest layer of mineral powder. Not enough to see with the naked eye—certainly not if one had other, more pressing matters on the mind when crossing that suite.
When I hired a private detective to come in and check two pairs of shoes against the suspicious prints that led into my husband’s bed, we got a perfect match—Ned’s and Renée’s.
Chapter 31
New York City
1934
“You’re way off the mark, Marjie. I don’t even know the girl.”
“Her name is Renée, Ned, and you know her quite well. At least show her—and me—what little respect you can in this dreadful business.”
“Aw, Marje, this is crackers. Why would I dally with your servant?”
“It beats me, Ned. I was hoping you could explain that one.”
“Goddamn it, Marjorie, you’ve got it all wrong! You know I love you. More than anything!” He huffed, indignant, trying to deter me with this show of righteous outrage.