But Staff Captain Anderson was able to convince the millionaire to receive us-Vanderbilt was a frequent Cunard guest, crossing two or three times a year-and the interview (with Vanderbilt and his friend Williamson) was scheduled for Monday afternoon.
The remaining interviews, of course, were with crew members Williams and Leach, but Miss Vance wanted to wait for the reports from Pinkerton on the pair. She knew questioning them at all would be delicate, considering the defensiveness of the two captains; better to limit it to one round of informed interrogation.
So on Monday afternoon, a few minutes before the appointed time of three o’clock, Miss Vance and I made our way to the starboard side of the promendade deck. There, Vanderbilt occupied the second of the two so-called Regal Suites, the other on the portside of the ship-our side of the ship-being filled by Madame DePage and Miss Vance herself.
We were approaching the door to the suite when a figure emerged from within, and seized our attention, to say the least. Suddenly we were face-to-face with a brown-haired, blue-eyed young man whose complexion rivaled a fish’s belly for paleness-none other than Steward Neil Leach.
“Mr. Leach,” I said. “Good afternoon.”
“Mr. Van Dine,” he said, with a nervous nod. Then he smiled a small, polite, canary-color crooked-toothed smile to my companion, saying, “Good afternoon, Miss Vance.”
My tone pleasant, conversational, I said, “We haven’t seen you since the unfortunate events of Saturday night.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Terrible. Just awful.”
Miss Vance said, “Having all of that happen on your watch. . must have been distressing.”
“Oh, it was. It was.”
With a sweet smile, as if commenting on the nice day, she said to him, “You may have been the last to see them alive.”
His eyes widened. “How is that, ma’am?”
“Well, you must have delivered their supper. I would think that would, at least, make you the last crew member to see them before. . the unpleasantness.”
“I did serve them, yes.”
Now, that was an interesting offhand admission, considering the likelihood of the cyanide having been introduced into the dead men’s systems, in that manner.
“But,” he was saying, “I’m fairly sure Mr. Williams looked in on them, later. . if you’ll excuse me, ma’am. . sir.”
He began to move off but I touched his arm. Gently. “Mr. Leach, may I ask why you were in Mr. Vanderbilt’s suite?”
“Delivering a Marconigram, sir.”
“I see.” I nodded in dismissal, and moved toward the door of the suite, poised to knock.
“Sir!” Leach said.
Miss Vance and I looked back at him-he appeared even whiter than usual.
“I’m not sure you should be bothering Mr. Vanderbilt,” Leach said, “if I’m not overstepping saying so. . He’s had some bad news.”
I frowned. “The Marconigram?”
Leach nodded. “It’s the second he’s received today, sir-the other came this morning, and I delivered that one, too. This new ’gram was confirmation of the earlier one.”
“Well?” Miss Vance asked, with an edge in her voice.
“I believe a friend of Mr. Vanderbilt’s has died. . a close friend. . If you’ll excuse me.”
And Leach hurried off, apparently having had enough of this awkward encounter.
I glanced at Miss Vance, as we stood in front of the white door, and my eyes asked her what we should do.
“We have an appointment,” she said. “We received no word of it having been cancelled or postponed. . It would be rude not to keep it.”
She was right, of course-she so often was-and I knocked.
A valet in full butler’s livery answered, a tall, distinguished-looking character whose expression conveyed instantly how troubling it was to him, having to share the planet with the likes of me.
I announced myself and Miss Vance and told the imperious valet that we were expected-we had an appointment. We waited in the hallway while he checked; then, less than a minute later, we were shown in.
This was the drawing room of the suite, panelled in sycamore, decorated in the Colonial Adam style with inlaid satinwood furniture, the walls draped with tapestries, the windows shaped and curtained as in a private residence, or perhaps in the private apartment atop the Vanderbilt Hotel on Park Avenue. We were shown to a brocaded settee where we sat, and waited.
I knew something about Vanderbilt, though unlike Hubbard, he had not served as the subject of my writing; but my employer Rumely had provided a file on several of the prominent potential interviewees, and Vanderbilt had been among them. Like anyone in America who occasionally read a newspaper, however, to me Vanderbilt’s story was well-known.
Alfred Vanderbilt was heir to the world’s greatest fortune-estimated at one hundred million dollars-and head of that fabulous empire of shipping interests and railroads forged by the notorious tycoon Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, Alfred’s great-great-grandfather. Though he’d long been a familiar figure at resorts and spas frequented by the wealthy of the world-and especially a habitue of sporting events-Vanderbilt had in recent years developed the reputation of a near recluse.
As a younger man, he had been the typical playboy, whose love of fast cars and faster women was legendary-a dashing young man with assorted polo ponies and countless memberships in exclusive clubs, but no interest at all in the fantastic enterprise his forefathers had built and his father had passed along to him. He preferred instead to race his thirty-thousand-dollar sports car over Florida beaches like a man demented; or to join with cronies to flee the family’s country home at Oakland Farm in taking wild trips in mixed company.
Yet Vanderbilt had not grown up into the standard-issue extroverted, partygoing, cigar-in-one-hand-drink-in-the-other lout of his privileged class. He was said to be shy, painfully so, avoiding crowds and reporters, hating being pointed out. He was by all accounts happily married to his second wife, Margaret Smith Hollins McKim-the Bromo-Seltzer heiress-and devoted to their two sons. Many said the breezy young millionaire had matured into a responsible adult.
Others said that he was suffering from the pall cast over his life by the tragedy that followed the dissolution of his first marriage. In 1901, when he married tall, titian-haired society beauty Elsie French, the wedding cake had been baked in the shape of a trolley, each slice of which contained a precious item of jewelry, so guests would have keepsakes. But within seven years, the trolley of wedded bliss was off its tracks-Elsie had divorced him on grounds of misconduct with one Mary Agnes O’Brien Ruiz, wife of the Cuban attache in Washington, D.C.
Vanderbilt had gone on with his life, and he and the Bromo-Seltzer heiress began a courtship which led to marriage only a few years after the expensive divorce. But Mary Ruiz made a nuisance of herself, in the press, in the courts, a spurned mistress who was embarrassingly persistent in her refusal to just go away.
Then, one day, finally she did-by committing suicide in London. The details of the inquest into Mary Ruiz’s death “by her own hands, while of unsound mind” (off her trolley?) were never revealed to the public; attempts by the press to secure the records of the proceedings were blocked, and hush money had reportedly been lavished on both friends of Mrs. Ruiz and certain officials.
This was why Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt shunned the press, and the spotlight; the Ruiz suicide was a matter he had never publicly discussed.
A man entered from the bedroom, but it was not Vanderbilt, or the valet, either (who had politely disappeared): This was Charles Williamson, slender as a knife in his dark suit with a dark red bow tie, a dark-haired fellow whose keenly intelligent blue eyes were the most distinct of his otherwise blandly regular features.
I knew little of Williamson, though Miss Vance said he was an art dealer who advised Vanderbilt and other prominent moneybags in the purchase of paintings, sculptures and assorted objets d’art.