Stolen Away

So deep into the afternoon, on an overcast day like this one, it struck me as weird that the stained-glass skylight could still turn this room into a golden shrine. Then it hit me: not the how, but the why—Evalyn Walsh McLean’s father, Thomas F. Walsh, had been a Colorado mining millionaire. A gold miner who struck it rich.

The butler returned without my coat and bag, but with the same air of superiority.

“Was this by any chance the Walsh family home?” I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

That explained the gold motif, all right.

“Who lives here now?”

“Mrs. McLean, sir, and her three children, when they’re not off at school, sir.”

“And Mr. McLean?”

He pursed his lips. “Mr. and Mrs. McLean do not live together, sir. Please come with me. Mrs. McLean is waiting.”

Our footsteps echoed and reechoed across the oak parquet floor. The door he opened for me, over to the left, was small; one would not expect it to lead anywhere grand.

One would be wrong.

We were now in what seemed to be a ballroom: an elaborate mural of angelic babes—both the bosomy and cherubic varieties—playing musical instruments on a curved plaster sky; the walls were surprisingly unostentatious plaster, but the wood trim was all gilt-edged. There was a cut-glass chandelier, and a stage behind which sheer-yellow-curtained windows bathed the room golden.

“What is this?” I asked him, working to keep up with him, as we cut diagonally across the smooth wood floor. We seemed to be heading toward a gold-veined marble fireplace.

“The Louis XV ballroom, sir.”

“I’ve never been in a house with a ballroom before.”

“There are several more upstairs, sir. Not to mention the roof garden.”

“Not to mention that.”

He opened a door just past the fireplace and indicated I should go on in.

The half-circle sun porch I stepped out onto seemed small in comparison to where I’d just been, but in reality was bigger than a suite at the Palmer House. Horizontal golden stained-glass panels above the windows painted the white room yellowish. This whole goddamn house had jaundice.

There wasn’t much furniture: just a few hard-back plush-seated chairs here and there. She wasn’t using one of them. She was standing, staring out at the street, across the snow-smattered and surprisingly meager brown lawn. She was small, and she was wearing a brown-and-yellow plaid woolen housecoat, the kind you could get for under a dollar at Sears Roebuck. Her back was to me, but her hand was turned toward me, away from her, diamonds and rubies on the fingers, a cigarette trailing smoke toward the doves in the stained glass above.

The butler cleared his throat and, with an expression he might have used while disposing of a dead rat by its tail with two fingers, said, “Mr. Heller to see you, madam.”

Her back still to us, she said, “Thank you, Garboni.”

I knew he was no limey.

“Leave the door open, Garboni. I’m expecting Mike any minute.” Her voice was husky; a sensual, throaty sound, two parts sex, one part chain-smoking.

He left us and I stayed planted well away from her, waiting for her to recognize my presence.

She turned slowly, like a ballerina on a music box. She was a morosely beautiful woman, with sad blue almond-shaped eyes, a slender, gently aquiline nose, lips neither thin nor full, painted blood-red. Her hair was short and dark brown, several curls studiously poised on her smooth, pale forehead. The dowdy bathrobe was floor-length but sashed around her small waist rather tightly; silver slippers peeked out from under. She was slim, almost tiny, but her breasts were large and high, a Gibson Girl figure, and she had that kind of face as well. She looked perhaps thirty, though forty was more like it.

She smiled but it only made her eyes sadder. “Mr. Heller,” she said, and moved toward me quickly, extending a red-nailed, bejeweled hand. “So kind of you to come. So kind of Colonel Lindbergh to send you.”

I took her hand, wondering if I was expected to kiss it, which I wouldn’t have minded doing—you got to start someplace. But before I could make up my mind, she tugged me over to one of two chairs on either side of a small glass-topped table where an overflowing ashtray sat next to a square, silver, sleek decorative lighter and a flat, square, silver decorative cigarette case on which “EWM” was engraved in a modernistic flourish.

She perched herself on the edge of the chair across from me, crossing her legs, robe falling away enough to reveal gams that were smooth and white and shapely. Being rich agreed with her.

“Excuse my appearance,” she said, shaking her head of curls, smiling ruefully. “Around the house, I’m a regular slob.”

“You look fine to me, Mrs. McLean.”

“If I’d known you would turn out to be such a handsome young man,” she said, her smile turning wicked, “I might have tried to dazzle you. I was expecting a policeman.”

“That’s what I am.”

“But not the rumpled, potbellied kind.” She flicked ashes into the tray. “You’re from Chicago?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I understand Gaston Bullock Means is well known there.”