Murder at the President's Door by Elliott Roosevelt

Author:Elliott Roosevelt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2011-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

Weel a-bout and turn a-bout

And do just so.

Every time I weel a-bout

I jump Jim Crow.”

“Jim Crow laws are—” Mrs. Roosevelt began.

“Come see! They don’t care about Jim Crow laws. They don’t know about Jim Crow laws. To the Nigra it’s a song and dance.”

“I appreciate your informing me about this,” said Mrs. Roosevelt.

VIII

1

THE PRESIDENT AND MISSY had watched a movie after he returned from his visit with Holmes: Grand Hotel, with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, John Barrymore, and Wallace Beery. They had seen it before but thought it worth seeing again. After the picture, she put on some records.

The president, in his pajamas, sat propped against fluffed-up pillows, a Camel in the holder atilt in his mouth. Missy, in a royal-blue silk nightgown covered by a sheer white peignoir, sipped from the last glass of the bottle of red wine they had shared. It was a peaceful time and a good end to the day.

But then. the telephone rang.

Missy answered. “What? You! How dare you call me here? How’d you get the switchboard to put you through? This is outrageous! I don’t want to talk to you anytime. But to talk to you now, and here … ! How’d you know where I am, anyway? Don’t you ever dare do this again! You hear me? Not ever!”

Missy hung up. Immediately she began to tap the plunger to raise the White House operator. “Yes. The president’s room. Why did you put that call through?” *** “He said he was who?” *** “Damn!”

The president had never seen Missy angry. “What’s up?” he asked.

“That … creep told the operator he was J. Edgar Hoover and said he had to talk to the president, urgently.”

“Who is the creep?” asked the president.

“His name is Nathan Clarke. He thinks he’s got a crush on me. He’s from New York. I met him during the nineteen-twenty campaign. He’s got money he hasn’t even counted yet. He proposed marriage right off—that is, in nineteen-twenty. He said he’d take me around the world, that we’d live on his yacht, and so on. It was all very appealing, but I didn’t like him; besides which, I didn’t trust him. So he married another woman. She divorced him, and he called me and proposed again. By then we were living in the governor’s mansion in Albany. Again I turned him down. He’s bothered me from time to time, and lately he’s gotten persistent. He’s going to marry me and take me away from all this.”

The president took his cigarette holder from his mouth and showed the big, toothy Roosevelt smile. “I don’t know. Maybe you ought to think about it. Going off to live on a yacht … Living like a queen … Cruising … Spending …”

“Effdee,” Missy said solemnly, not at all amused. “If you’re suggesting I should consider a thing like that, maybe I should consider it.”

“My earnest prayer would be that you would consider it and reject it. I have no right to demand that you stay and burden yourself with the load that goes with this work.

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