Chapter 6 - The Eviction of Margaret
The fog hung low over the hills of Greenwich on Monday morning, clinging to the damp branches of the weeping willows and turning the crushed white limestone of the Harrington driveway into the color of cold oatmeal.
At precisely eight-thirty, four forty-foot commercial moving vans bearing the blue-and-gold livery of Allied Van Lines rumbled through the iron gates, accompanied by two unmarked black Ford Explorers belonging to the Fairfield County Sheriff's Department.
I stood on the stone balustrade of the terrace, wrapped in a heavy camel-hair coat, holding a steaming porcelain mug of Earl Grey tea. Beside me stood Deputy Sheriff Kovacs, a heavy-set man with twenty-five years on the county force, holding an eight-page writ of execution stamped with the seal of the Superior Court.
Below us, on the front portico, Margaret Harrington was staging her final, desperate stand.
She was dressed in a three-piece tweed walking suit from the late nineties, her silver hair uncombed and standing out in frizzy tufts around her ears, her feet shoved into a pair of worn velvet slippers. In her right hand, she held an antique silver-plated fire iron that she had pulled from the hearth in the morning room; in her left, she clutched a leather-bound family Bible that looked as though it had not been opened since the turn of the century.
"You will not set foot across this sill!" she shrieked at the two moving supervisors who stood at the bottom of the limestone steps with clipboards and rolls of packing tape. "This house is protected by a royal charter granted by King George the Second! Charles! Call the governor! Call the National Guard!"
Charles did not call the governor.
He was sitting on an upturned wooden packing crate on the lawn, thirty yards away, wrapped in an old wool blanket that had been retrieved from the stables. His eyes were fixed on the grass between his knees, his jaw slack, his mouth open in that vacant, paralyzed stare that strikes stroke victims when the second hemisphere gives way. He had not spoken a coherent sentence since the federal marshals padlocked his office on Park Avenue at midnight.
"Mrs. Harrington," Deputy Kovacs spoke through a battery-powered megaphone from the terrace, his voice flat and amplified to an unbearable volume that bounced off the stone facades. "Under Section 52-361a of the General Statutes of Connecticut, this property has been transferred to the court-appointed receiver. You have forty-five minutes to vacate the premises with your personal effects, limited to three pieces of luggage containing clothing and essential toiletries."
"I am Margaret Sterling Harrington!" she screamed back, waving the fire iron at the sky like an ancient crone cursing the rain. "My grandfather built the railroad that made this state! You are common thieves! You are working for that... that peasant girl from Michigan!"
She turned her head, her bloodshot eyes finally spotting me standing on the terrace above her.
The fire iron dropped from her hand, clattering against the limestone steps with a dull, hollow ring that echoed across the courtyard.
"You," she hissed, her voice dropping into a register of pure, vitriolic venom as she began to claw her way up the terrace stairs, her slippers dragging through the wet leaves. "You did this. You planned this from the day you met him in Switzerland! You poisoned his mind! You ruined my boy!"
I didn't step back. I didn't set my tea down. I waited until she reached the top landing, until she was standing six feet from me, panting like an exhausted animal, the smell of stale gin and cold sweat rolling off her tweed lapels.
"Your boy hit me, Margaret," I said, my voice level, rhythmic, and cold as river ice. "Less than twelve hours after promising to protect me. In front of your husband. In front of your younger son. And you laughed."
Margaret’s throat clicked as she swallowed, her hands twitching against the leather binding of the Bible. "He was teaching you your place! A wife belongs behind her husband, not in front of him! You were insolent! You were haughty! You thought because you had a few pennies from a bankrupt factory, you could look down on three generations of blood!"
"My father's factory wasn't bankrupt, Margaret," I said, taking half a step toward her, forcing her to tilt her chin up to meet my eyes. "Your husband stole it. He used a corrupt state maritime inspector to seize three barges of raw steel in Cleveland, claimed the cargo was contaminated with industrial grease, and forced the company into an involuntary liquidation."
Margaret blinked, her eyes darting toward the moving men who were already carrying the first antique credenza through the double doors below. "That... that was business. Charles was an investor. Men do what they must to protect their houses."
"And women do what they must to burn them down," I replied softly.
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a small, velvet-lined jeweler’s box.
I opened it.
Inside lay the five-carat cushion-cut diamond engagement ring that Daniel had placed on my finger six months ago at the 21 Club in Manhattan—the ring that Margaret had informed every woman at the country club was an "ancestral heirloom worn by four generations of Harrington brides."
"Take it," I said, holding the box out toward her.
Margaret’s fingers twitched, her eyes lighting up with a sudden, desperate spark of avaricious hope. "You're... you're returning the heirloom?"
"It’s not an heirloom, Margaret," I said, my voice dropping into a tone of quiet, devastating amusement. "I had the stone appraised by Harry Winston on Friday afternoon while you were getting your hair set for the rehearsal. The setting is platinum-plated brass. The diamond is a synthetic moissanite manufactured in an industrial lab outside Shenzhen, retail value: four hundred and eighty dollars."
Margaret’s face went completely, terrifyingly white.
"Charles bought it in the diamond district forty-eight hours before the engagement party," I continued, tossing the small velvet box into the wet leaves at her feet. "Because the original Harrington diamond was sold to a private collector in Tokyo in 1994 to pay Daniel’s tuition at Choate."
The old woman looked down at the velvet box lying in the mud, then up at my face.
A strange, high-pitched whistling sound came out of her nostrils—the sound of an engine whose safety valve had failed thirty seconds too late.
She didn't scream. She didn't shout.
May you like
She simply sank onto the second step of the terrace balustrade, her tweed skirt spreading out across the wet stone like the wings of a shot crow, her hands trembling as she opened the leather Bible and stared at the blank, yellowing flyleaf where the family names had stopped being recorded forty years ago.
"The vans will be loaded by two o'clock, Margaret," I said, turning my back on her and walking toward the French doors that opened into the gallery. "The bus to Bridgeport departs from the train station at three-fifteen. Make sure you don't keep the driver waiting. I understand they are very strict about five-minute delays."
