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Peterborough, New Hampshire, 1954
It’s not Mary’s first time in jail, so she means it when she says this the nicest jail cell she’s ever stayed in. Well-lit and dry, could be warmer, but it’s not intentionally freezing. That’s New England for you; hospitable to the end.
Mary has to think the reason it looks so good is because the county doesn’t get to lock up many women. It’s empty except for her and Mrs. White. Peacock’s long gone; they all made their phone call after being processed and someone bailed her out thirty minutes later. Looks like the bribes were good for more than just votes.
Peacock didn’t even look at them while she was in there. Just stared straight ahead, like they were all strangers who had never spent a murderous evening together.
Not that Mary and White are chatty. But they aren’t ignoring each other either. She asks White the time, White asks how far they are from D.C. At one point, White pulls out an emery board that the police missed during processing and begins filing her nails. When she’s done, White holds it out to Mary with a raised eyebrow.
She did break a nail trying to get out of the lounge. So she takes the offered board and starts to file the jagged edge down. Keeping her eyes on her nail and her voice calm, Mary says “You know, you killed one of my best girls.” Not that ‘Yvette’ was still working for her; Dorothy had left for New York about a year before, but it was on good terms. As betrayed as Mary felt to see her at the mansion, she had to admit that Dorothy still had it. She might have offered Dorothy a position again, if White hadn’t made it a moot point.
“I thought that was one of the hazards of the jobs,” White responds coolly.
“Not with me,” Mary responds. “They work for me because I don’t let that happen. If this gets out, my professional reputation is done.”
“I think you mean ‘if we get out,’” White corrects.
Mary rolls her eyes. “I haven’t spent a full night in jail since I was sixteen and you’ve murdered how many husbands and got away with it? We’ll be fine.”
White makes a little ‘hmph’ noise that could either be scoffing or in agreement, so she decides it’s the latter. After all, it’s absurd to be fatalistic about the situation. It’s Green’s word against theirs, and the cops have nothing else on them. And neither does the FBI. Probably.
As if on cue, an officer comes in and starts to unlock the cell. “Miss Henderson,” he says, and she’s so unused to hearing her actual name that for a moment she thinks he’s talking to White. “You’ve been bailed out and your lawyer’s outside.”
Mary flashes the cop a charming smile, stands up, and then looks down at her empty hand in faux surprise. “Oh, sir,” she asks and carefully adds some waver to her voice. “Will I be able to get my clutch back? I feel naked without it.”
She usually hates doing the “flustered housewife” act, thinks it’s beneath her, but it has its uses. The cop blushes at “naked” and stammers that “of course, miss, they can get it on their way out.” Mary really needs to get arrested outside the city more often; the last few times she tried this in D.C., the cops (correctly) said her bag was evidence and wouldn’t budge no matter how much charm she threw at them.
There’s a scoffing noise behind her and she turns at the door of the cell to look back at White, who isn’t as impressed with her act as the cop. Mary wants to say something cutting, but seeing White sitting there looking very small in the now-empty cell stops her. She doesn’t particularly like White, and she did kill Dorothy, but she’s not like Peacock. White’s not doing her dirty work for a man; she’s doing it to men, which Mary appreciates.
“I’ll be by in the morning, to bail you out,” she tells her quietly.
White nods. “That would be lovely, thank you.”
It turns out not to be necessary. Mary’s up early, burning the contents of her clutch in the hotel trashcan, when she gets the call from her lawyer.
“All the charges were dropped,” he tells her. “A friend at DOJ told me that Senator Phillips made them drop it, terrified that if any of you went on trial you would implicate his wife in it.”
“That was very kind of him,” she muses.
“How’d you ever get involved in a murder case with Phillips' wife in the middle of nowhere, anyway?” he asks, and he sounds genuinely curious. “This some high-class orgy gone wrong?”
She could tell the whole story, but she thinks she likes the mystery better. “Something like that,” she says, and she watches the film strips burn in the trashcan, breathing in the acrid smoke until it’s gone.
Washington, D.C., 1961
The 1950s were good for business. The war in Korea had segued nicely into a cold war, which was Mary’s preferred kind of conflict. Less soldiers, sure, but D.C. swarmed with influential men who didn’t know how to keep their dicks in their pants or shut their mouths. People knew that they should be scared of atomic bombs, but the danger felt so remote that it had the effect of good champagne: it urged people on and made them want more. And if there was something she was good at, it was providing what the people wanted.
The 1960s should be the same. And they are, in some ways. One of her best Senate clients is President now, and although she understands there’s too much risk for him to continue patronizing her business, he always discretely recommends her services to visiting dignitaries. Because of him, she’s never short on sources of information.
The information, though…it’s not as fun now as it used to be. Mary had always assumed that they would have at least reached a détente with the Soviets by now, if not beat them entirely. When the USSR launched its first ballistic missile in ’57 (which she knew was coming a week before the Department of Defense, thank you very much), she threw parties in some of the bigger bomb shelters that had popped up. But now, she can’t imagine going in one of those metal-lined cellars unless there were an actual bomb coming. It just seems gauche now, especially with the rumors that the Soviets were cozying up to Cuba…
At least the sex is still steady. The only bump to business is the Hays Code falling apart; nudie films can never truly compete, but they are a distraction. So she starts sending her girls to see all the new releases. Not just the nudie films either, but all the movies. For as long as Mary can remember, movies have driven men’s tastes. After Niagra came out, every other man who came in wanted a Marilyn Monroe-type. And she’s still kicking herself for being late to the Bardot trend (and ruefully thinks of how helpful Dorothy’s French accent would have been then).
So when Mary sends her girls to the movies, she tells them to watch the women on screen, but more importantly to watch how the men react to them. She can’t predict where the world is going, but she can still try to predict what men will like.
It's Evelyn’s turn at the movies this week. Mary likes Evelyn, young but with a good head on her shoulders. May even leave her in charge the next time she has to go out of town for a week. Just for a week, though. She’s not leaving the business any time soon.
“Boy, that Audrey Hepburn, she’s real classy.” Evelyn’s been describing ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ to Mary while she goes over the books. It doesn’t sound like one she would enjoy, but Evelyn’s in raptures. “She reminds me of you sometimes.”
It’s meant as a compliment, but Mary rolls her eyes and Evelyn blanches, gets back on track. “I don’t really think it’s one for the men, but they might like how she dresses. That big hairdo she wears, like a big bun, I’ve been seeing it more. I think it may becoming a trend.”
“Well, keep an eye on it,” she says, looking back down at the books. “Anything else?”
“Went to see another one while I was there, ‘Horror at Hill House.’ It was all right.”
The name makes her stop what she’s doing and look up. Mary shouldn’t ask, but she does a lot of things she shouldn’t do. “And what was that about?”
Evelyn shrugs. “Kind of a detective mystery, but there wasn’t really a detective. Bunch of people invited to a party at a house, the host gets killed and it turns out they all had a motive. There was a working girl in it, but I didn’t really like her. She wasn’t realistic.”
Evelyn doesn’t seem to notice that she’s rattled, moves happily to the next topic of business (Defense Appropriations Committee rising star, likes blondes and covertly selling arms to Eastern European countries), but she’s only half-listening.
Mary honestly hasn’t thought about that night in years. It sounds like a cliché, or a lie, but she really hasn’t thought of it. Other than a brief impact on business (Colonel Mustard must have said something), it was a situation that ultimately resolved happily. Even the terror of it didn’t seem that bad once they had walked away still alive and free. It was all kind of funny, actually. Mary even uses “Ms. Scarlet” as an alias on the occasions that she needs one; she has to give Mr. Boddy credit for coming up with a catchy name.
So no, it wasn’t some horrible event she is still haunted by.
But after so many years of not thinking about it, Evelyn’s comment about the movie can’t leave her head. It’s probably a coincidence, but what if it’s not? What if everything that happened that night is out there and waiting to get her in trouble? Mary may not be haunted by the experience, but she is also aware that getting charged for murdering a cop wouldn’t be pleasant.
So against her better judgment, she finds herself buying a ticket to a ten p.m. showing one night when she knows she won’t be able to sleep.
Five minutes into the film and Mary knows that her secret is still safe. It’s her story, but it is also definitely not her story. There’s blackmail, and murder, and a brothel owner. But there’s also no woman under the age 25, the men are heroic or dashingly evil, and there’s a lot more sex than she remembers from that night.
At the climax, ‘Big Red’ lets the cop go because she’s realized she loves ‘Dr. Smarts’ too much to continue being a madam, and Mary laughs in the middle of the theater, and laughs even harder when a man angrily shushes her. Pulp baloney she can live with.
(Mary’s in L.A. a few months later, putting feelers out at a movie industry party, and one of her contacts tries to introduce her to the man who wrote ‘Horror at Hill House.’
“He used to be a psychiatrist, but he thought it was too stifling and got into film,” Neely tells her excitedly. “He’s a genius.”
When she sees that Neely’s trying to lead her to Professor Plum, Mary excuses herself to the bathroom. She can’t say she’s surprised he wrote the movie, but she is disappointed.)
Arlington, Virginia, 1972
It’s a beautiful June day when she hears the news that Mrs. Peacock died.
That Peacock died isn’t “news” per se. Her husband had been out of the Senate since the ‘60s and neither of them have been relevant for years; it’s nothing Cronkite would announce, but it is the type of thing that would make its way into Diana McLellan’s column.
Her lunch guest is late and Mary reads the column to pass the time, a mixture of dread and bemusement washing over her as she does.
The traffic to get onto K Street today will be worse than usual as some of D.C.’s most venerable politicians kill two birds with one stone: attend the funeral of Edith Phillips at St. Paul’s and swing by their lobbyists’ offices for a free lunch afterword. That darling grand dame of Senate spouses passed away earlier this month; although it’s been almost fifteen years since she was last officially connected to the Senate, aides tell me that her influence was still strong. After all, it’s a fact of Washington life that money makes the world go round, as long as you’re not flashy about it. Edith’s methods were certainly never flashy; she may be remembered as the reason the Capitol started putting attendants in the women's bathrooms too.
What else Edith will be remembered for is certainly up for debate. A certain mouth from the south told me that Edith hated her chef’s cooking so much she had the woman killed; apparently Edith was also involved in that 1953 (or was it ’56, or ’51) New England murder weekend that’s implicated everyone from J. Edgar Hoover to Albert Einstein. It’s absurd, of course, but the rumor does mark the end of an era. Our Senator’s wives just don’t have that sort of power anymore; no one would even think of suggesting that, say, Howard Baker or Charles Percy’s wives could be involved in a murder and get the whole thing covered up.
Perhaps next term we’ll get some more Ediths in town. Until then we must say goodbye to the last one Washington had.
“Hello.”
Mary looks up from the paper. It’s Colonel Mustard, who is also her lunch guest after he called her up out of the blue the night before.
“Colonel,” she smiles and gestures at the chair across from her, but doesn’t get up or offer him a hand to shake. He takes his seat and they both spend a moment clearly sizing up the other one. He’s gained some weight over the past twenty years, she notes, and his hair has gone totally gray. She likes to think that he’s seeing the same person he saw in 1954; she’s been dyeing her hair and staying as trim as always, but she knows there are wrinkles now and she’s always a little self-conscious about whether her makeup is in style or too much. Getting old is awful.
“Not a colonel anymore,” he says finally. “Discharged seven years ago. Honorably,” he adds before she can make the obvious joke, and she settles for raising an eyebrow at him instead.
“Oh, I think it still fits,” Mary says lightly, perusing the menu. “From what I’ve heard you’ve had a very active retirement.”
It’s subtle, but he squirms when she says it. “Where did you hear that?”
“Oh, here and there.” Mary hasn’t, really. After he called her, she reached out to people better connected to the military than she and got the scoop from them. But he doesn’t need to know that and she does still enjoy making men uncomfortable.
“In that case,” he says, “No need for small talk.” He clears his throat and she suddenly remembers that he did like to make a speech or two that night. “As you already know, I’ve been working with the Republican Party over the past few years. I was at loose ends when I retired, and working with the Party has been very rewarding. Like being back at war, but still in America.”
Mary wants to ask if this means he’s still selling stolen supplies, but if she goads him too much he might get mad and leave before she finds out why he called.
He goes on about Nixon for a while, and eventually it comes out that Mustard’s involved in the re-election committee.
Well now she has to tease him. “Oh, CREEP? It’s such a fitting name.”
He flusters. “It’s CRP.” he corrects angrily. “And yes, I am involved in CRP. That’s why I’m here. I won’t beat around the bush.” He looks around and then lowers his voice. “What can you tell me about the prostitution ring being run out of the Democratic National Committee’s offices at the Watergate Hotel?”
It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but once they do, she starts laughing so loudly that other diners look over at them and Mustard starts shushing her.
“Are you trying to get people to notice us?” he angrily whispers at her.
“I’m sorry,” Mary tries to catch her breath but the giggles keep coming out. “I haven’t heard a joke that good in a long time.” She takes a drink of water and, attempting to keep a straight face, asks “Do you actually think that I, or any businesswoman worth her salt, would let a political party crowd in on my territory?”
“We have reason to believe that is exactly what is happening –”
“What’s the reason?”
He looks uncomfortable, but quickly elides it by saying “You of all people know how important it is to keep sources of information confidential.”
The waiter comes to their table, and while they order, she thinks about his reference to the Watergate. After the waiter leaves, she says “I think I know where your sources tripped up. There’s a woman who operates her business out of a building next to the Watergate, not in it. I’m afraid you weren’t given the full story. Hope you didn’t pay too much for it.”
He thinks on it and then says “Do you think she would, er, take Democratic clients?”
She shrugs. “Probably. It’s not like we check a man’s voter identification when he walks in.” He looks hopeful at this, and she adds “Why do you care?”
“I think the American people should know the morals of the people who make up the Democratic Party,” he answers sanctimoniously and this makes her laugh again.
“Are you forgetting the many hours you spent in my own establishment?”
“Yes but that was on my own time, not during work! There is a difference,” he tells her, anticipating her skepticism. “If they’re making calls for prostitutes during the middle of the work day, then that says something about their character.”
“They sound like polite customers to me,” Mary says lightly. “It’s always a pain when people come in wanting a specific girl at the last minute.”
Mustard sighs. “So you can’t tell me anything helpful?”
“Sorry, you’ll have to reach out to your other prostitute friends.”
Of course, she knows the name of the woman who runs her business near the Watergate. Barbra’s competition, and while Mary wouldn’t mind sending Mustard over there to make things difficult, in this business you have to be friendly with your rivals. Be too cutthroat, and your competitor could tip you off to the police when they needed to get out of a jam.
Once he knows Mary can’t be helpful, Mustard’s interest in the lunch wanes. Oh, he makes conversation, even jokes with her when conversation turns to the Metrorail system (“Maybe they’ll find some of Peacock’s money in the sewers when they start laying rail,” he laughs, in the only reference to that night either of them make.) But when the waiter comes with the food he asks for the check, and as soon as he finishes his sandwich he starts to get up, claiming he has a CREEP meeting to get to.
As he leaves, she thinks about what he said, that the DNC men were making calls to get prostitutes in the middle of the day. So he has phone records or bugs, and either way she needed to call her security guy and learn how to avoid both of them. And call her contact at the DNC too. Might as well even the playing field a little bit.
Washington, D.C., 1985
The bad thing about being less involved in her business is it has been a while since Mary went to a party with the intention of getting information. She had forgotten what it’s like to be sober at one of these things; she downs her soda water too quickly and keeps having to get refills, she’s too aware of how much her feet hurt from all the standing, and if she has to make any more small talk about what Nancy Reagan will wear to the inauguration she’ll scream.
But Mary accomplishes her mission for the evening; it’s a cop-heavy party for some charity, and she needs to shore up her support among that crowd. She still has a few in her pocket, but it seems less secure than it did before. But she turned on the charm for the old guard tonight and set up a few meetings, so she feels like she made progress.
To celebrate, Mary takes herself out of the Willard's ballroom and over to its bar for a much-needed drink.
She feels so revived by her first sip of whiskey that when someone sits down in the stool next to her in this almost-empty bar, she’s ready to turn around and make a snide comment at whatever louse decided to ruin her solitude.
But instead she sees Mr. Green.
“It’s good to see you again,” he says calmly, like they run into each other every day.
“You as well,” she answers, taking her cues from him. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“If you insist.” Mary waves the bartender over and Green orders a gin and tonic.
“What brings you out tonight?”
“My retirement party,” he says. “Technically it’s still going on in one of the smaller ballrooms, but I’ve never done well with big parties.”
She raises her glass to Green and he does the same. “Fancy venue for the FBI,” she observes. “If they have all their retirement parties here I’m a little insulted I haven’t known about it.”
“It’s a private party,” he corrects her. “My wife and some of our friends started planning it and went a little overboard. I believe the FBI will have a cake in the 5th floor breakroom for me. I’m looking forward to that,” he adds, and he seems genuine.
They both sip on their drinks in silence until Mary finds herself blurting out “I think I’m going to retire soon too.”
It’s the first time she’s said it aloud, or even had a clearly-defined thought about it. But it’s been lurking there for a while. The idea of stopping is terrifying, but she’s been doing less and less over the years. Evelyn transitioned out of working-working ages ago and handles a lot of the business. And then there’s her age. She’s almost 65, and although she wouldn’t be the oldest madam in history, or even this century, she feels old. No business needs that, especially not hers.
“Congratulations,” he responds. “I should probably tell you something, so you can retire with a clear conscience.” Green pauses, and Mary can’t tell if he’s doing it for effect or if he really is deciding whether or not to tell her. She’s reminded of that night, and how afterward she couldn’t pin down which parts of his nervous demeanor were real and which were fake.
Regardless, he tells her. “I’ve been clearing out my office, and I came across my file about a certain night in 1954.”
He’s smiling when he says it, and suddenly she worries that he’s going to whip out handcuffs and arrest her right there. Green must notice that she’s eyeing the exits, because he adds “Don’t worry, I shredded it.”
She takes another sip of her whiskey to hide her relief. “I didn’t realize there was a file, since the Senator killed the investigation.”
“Oh, there was a file,” he assures her. “It lived in my office for the past 30 years. I kept hoping I could get DOJ to do something with it, but no luck.”
“How do I know you really shredded the file,” Mary asks. “Maybe you left it in your desk for the nice Mr. Teal who’s replacing you.”
He smiles. “No way to know for sure. Guess you’ll just have to trust me.”
She doesn’t know how she feels about that prospect. Not awful, but suspicious enough to keep her on her toes for the next few years. Probably the best place to be.
“Anyway,” he adds, “Now that the FBI is more concerned with catching drug dealers than protecting the US from espionage, no one has any use for it.”
“Ugh, don’t complain to me about drugs,” she rolls her eyes.
He smiles at her. “Bigger part of your job than you were expecting too?”
Green may be charming, but he is still an active FBI agent so she chooses her words wisely. They do buy coke, but not in a volume that would put them on anyone’s radar and she’s not about to set off any alarm bells. “A lot of these guys just expect cocaine now, like they’re free ketchup packets. It makes them feel like hotshots in Miami, and not third-undersecretary in the third least important cabinet department.”
“At least it gets you business,” Green tells her. “I’m losing resources for cases, and now DEA keeps poaching my best guys to send them to Colombia.”
They commiserate for a while and it’s the best conversation she’s had in months. Green may be a Fed, but he’s a Fed with a sense of humor about these things.
“Did you see that they made some awful TV-movie about us?” Green asks her. Mary hasn’t watched it, had gotten her lifetime fill with Haunting at Hell House, or whatever it was called. But she knows there had been a three-night event on NBC about a bunch of people who murder their blackmailer, with an American Sherlock Holmes-type solving the case.
“It was horrible,” Green tells her. “But it’s what made me want to shred the file. It’s become its own story. There isn’t space for the official record anymore.”
Something catches his eye across the bar and he quickly finishes his drink. She follows his gaze and sees a nicely-dressed older woman, who mimes tapping a watch and waves him over. “I think I’m needed at my party.”
“Good luck with retirement,” she says.
“You too,” he calls over his shoulder. Mary watches him leave and warmly greet the woman who must be his wife. If she’s annoyed that her husband left his party to go drink with another woman, she doesn’t show it.
Normally Mary would think that she’s losing her touch, but maybe they’re just so happy and secure together, she doesn’t even register for Green’s wife.
Ugh, she thinks as she finishes her drink, happily married people are insufferable.
The less said about the 90’s, the better.
You know what, same with the 2000s. God she’s bored.
Bethesda, Maryland, 2015
She’s 95 now. Physically, she’s doing fine. “Betty-White-spry,” Evelyn joked once. Mentally she’s still there. Mostly. It’s not that she’s losing her memory, it’s more that there’s just so much to remember.
Mary’s biggest problem, before she moved into the home, was the loneliness. She had gone from a life filled with people to one by herself. She had friends, but they moved out of D.C., and the ones who stayed started to die off. Soon it was just her and a future filled with tedium.
It’s why Evelyn suggested the home. “Not a nursing home,” she’d assured Mary. “Assisted living. You’ll have your own place with a kitchenette and everything. But there’d be people to eat dinner with when you want company, and staff around to help out.”
On her darker days Mary thinks Evelyn wanted to get rid of her. She knows it’s not true, of course. This way Evelyn knows Mary’s being taken care of without having to come by every day. But it reminds her of the girls who would disappear from the job the second they got too old. Mary managed to avoid that and resents that she was finally hooked off the proverbial stage and made someone else’s problem.
Evelyn’s true to her word, though. The home is nice. Most of the residents are a bunch of bores, but there are some she gets along with well. And if Evelyn’s trying to get rid of her, she’s bad at it. Evelyn comes by once a week, and the staff assumes they’re mother-daughter. Neither bothers to correct them. Might as well be true, at this point. Evelyn’s certainly stuck around long enough, longer than any family she ever had.
Evelyn even sprang to get her an iPad for Christmas last year. Mary’s nursed a professional hatred for the internet for years; girls use it to make appointments themselves, totally cuts out the infrastructure that people like her provided. But Evelyn insisted, and Mary has to admit she’s grown fond of the damn thing. She doesn’t have to demean herself and use a magnifying glass to read the paper now that she can just zoom in. And she likes that she can watch old movies on it whenever she wants instead of waiting for something to come on TV.
The iPad is also how she finds out about podcasts.
There’s a nurse on her floor she really likes, Brenda. Brenda always comes by a few times a day. She does that with the whole floor, of course, to make sure no one’s fallen over or died. But Mary likes to think that she’s Brenda’s favorite. Brenda will stay and chat with her for a long time, but she usually only stays five minutes with everyone else.
(There’s a part of Mary that’s disgusted with herself. She used to casually gather information that spies would kill people for and now she’s reduced to figuring out if a nurse likes her best. Still, she has to make her own fun somehow.)
Brenda’s the one who suggests listening to podcasts when Mary’s eyes are killing her and she can’t read like she usually does in the afternoon. She’s ambivalent about it at first – it sounds like a radio show, and there’s a reason those are gone – but dammit, Brenda knows her and picked well. She’s gotten into reading murder mysteries in her old age, and Brenda has her listen to a podcast about a senator who was accused of killing his intern. But unlike the murder mysteries, it’s a real story (“true crime,” Brenda calls it) and even if it’s different from what she’s used to, she finds herself enthralled. It makes her feel like she’s back in D.C., back at work, learning other people’s secrets.
“If you’ll forgive the diversion,” the host says in this week’s episode, “I want to go back to the past for a bit.” Mary sits up a little in her chair at that. She does like the past.
“While I’ve been researching for this podcast, I’ve learned that people in D.C. of a certain age can’t talk about political cover-ups without mentioning Edith Phillips.” Well now she’s sitting up even straighter.
Brenda must notice because she says “Is that a name you remember?”
“Oh yes,” she smiles. “She was very memorable.”
“Edith was this wife of Senator John Phillips,” the host continues.
By all accounts, Senator Phillips was a very unremarkable person. Senate aides described him as quiet, the sort of guy you might forget was in the room. But a large number of bills he sponsored passed, and an equally large number of ones he opposed did not. Probably a coincidence, right? If he was in the majority party, of course things went the way he wanted. But this happened even when he was in the minority. And records are filled with references to him helping move things along. So how was he the most unimpressive guy in a room and the most influential?
The answer is probably Edith. If you read between the lines of gossip columns back in the day, Edith was allegedly bribing people to get them to vote how she wanted. We’re not talking “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” like you see today; this was money slipped under bathroom stalls at the Capitol. If these rumors are to be believed – and most people do; there are a few smoking gun letters that came out after her death that could be a whole podcast in of themselves – she was doing a better job of running the Senate than the actual Senate leadership.
As a side note: I don't think that Senator Phillips particularly wanted to go into politics, but that Edith did. And since women couldn’t hold high-ranking positions then, she made him do it for her. It’s almost tragic. Here’s this woman who was by all accounts smart and charming, who could have used that influence in her own name, but the only way she could operate was behind the scenes, hiding out in bathrooms and slipping envelopes of dirty money. Allegedly, at least.
Anyway, murder cover-ups. Another Edith rumor centers around one night spent in a house in New England. You probably know the story - a bunch of people, a blackmailer, a murder (or two, or five). It's a pop culture and conspiracy theory staple. Everyone who was in anyone in D.C. was rumored to be involved at some point - from J. Edgar Hoover to J.F.K. But Edith's name is the one that comes up the most consistently. And the story is always the same: she murdered her personal chef . No one can agree on why, although plenty of jokes about bad food have been made. What people can agree on is that the murder happened, the FBI arrested her for it, and then the case just disappeared. She was set free like nothing ever happened.
Which wouldn’t be the most shocking thing; Edith was a pretty powerful person, and if bribes worked on Senators, they’d work on the FBI too. I think that’s why this rumor resonated with people; “very privileged person commits a horrible crime and avoids the blame” is not a new story. Edith and her cook are a shorthand for all those other injustices.
Until recently, this rumor was just another crazy D.C. story. And then six years ago, filmmaker Randall Vane’s estate auctioned off a bunch of his papers. Vane made a lot of B-movies in the 60s and 70s. Some critics called him the “thinking man’s Russ Meyer;” I’ve watched some of his movies and I think that means his work had all the boobs of a Meyer movie but with occasional mansplaining lectures on the characters' psychology.
One of the items auctioned off was Vane’s early script notes for his movie “Horror at Hill House.” In that movie, a bunch of strangers are lured to a house where they are all accused of killing the man who was blackmailing him. The characters have very clichéd names; there’s a femme fatale actually named “Noir.” But in the notes that were auctioned, that character is named Mrs. White. In fact, everyone originally had a color-themed name, including Mrs. Peacock, who Vane describes as a Senator’s wife who killed her cook.
The character who Mrs. Peacock becomes is “Specks,” who I can best describe as a Sexy Velma From Scooby-Doo. And she doesn’t kill anyone, her cook or otherwise; there’s one criminal mastermind who does it all. It looks like Vane traded one cliché for another. But there are people who believe that those original notes weren’t brainstorming, it was something that actually happened. The people who believe this point to the fact that these notes weren’t found filed away with his other film records, but with the journal he kept while working with the U.N. Maybe he was writing about something that really happened, something that he was involved in (the corollary for Dr. Smarts is suspiciously absent in these notes).
People who believe this theory also point to the notes on Ms. Scarlet, a D.C. madam with a side business in selling state secrets. And there are a lot of rumors about a madam in D.C. who went by the name Ms. Scarlet. There’s no information on her beyond that, but it's more circumstantial evidence towards the theory that Edith killed someone and got away with it.
Coming up, after the break: Senator Smith's first meeting with the police, which didn't live up to the Edith Phillips standard.
“Well,” Brenda says while an ad plays, “That’s quite the story. Had you heard any of those rumors before?”
“No,” Mary says, completely honest. “This is the first time I’ve heard it.”
Well. First time she’s heard it told correctly. Same difference.