Had She But Known Read online




  HAD SHE BUT KNOWN

  Charlotte MacLeod

  Lovingly and gratefully dedicated

  to my sixth-grade teacher at

  Bicknell School

  ALMA ROCHE DRISCOLL

  INTRODUCTION

  In 1989–90, American mystery fans joined their British counterparts for a long, gala celebration of Dame Agatha Christie’s hundredth birthday. In 1976, America let the centennial of its own Mary Roberts Rinehart slip its collective mind. The fact that the country happened to be celebrating the two-hundredth anniversary of its founding that same year may be taken as a mitigating factor, perhaps, but it was still a pretty shabby way to treat the memory of a compatriot who, over a span of half a century, was the best-known, best-loved, and by far the best-paid writer America had ever known.

  Like Christie, Mrs. Rinehart wrote many books and several plays, some of which were box-office successes and one a long-running smash hit. It’s interesting to note that Mary’s bonanza was The Bat and Dame Agatha’s The Mousetrap. Later playwrights might ponder whether inserting small mammals in their titles might be the key to success in modern mystery drama.

  Like Christie, Mary wrote many short stories, straight novels, and an autobiography that dealt more with her family life and travels than with her writing. Like Christie’s, her mystery novels are still in print, although her other writings have to be tracked down in used-book stores.

  Totally unlike Christie’s reticence was Mary’s magnetic attraction to public life. Young Mary Clarissa Agatha Miller yearned to become a professional musician but was too shy to perform before even the smallest audience. Mary Ella Roberts played the piano every morning to accompany the hymns with which her fellow high school pupils were required to start the day. As the youngest probationer in Pittsburgh Homeopathic Hospital’s nurses’ training school, quarantined at Christmastime with a wardful of riotous male smallpox patients, Nurse Roberts played carols to quiet them down while a hot-tempered young bachelor surgeon named Stanley Marshall Rinehart led the singing in a magnificent baritone voice.

  Mary also played the piano for her first publisher on that fateful occasion when he’d come to find out how many more potential best-sellers this unassuming little doctor’s wife might have tucked away in the bottom drawer of her secondhand desk. That evening he sang, she sang, her husband sang, their three small sons and the family dog all sang together. And well they might, for a mystery novel more beguiling, more innovative, and more amusing than any that had gone before was soon to leap off the booksellers’ shelves and fling itself into the welcoming hands of the great American reading public.

  Mary’s overwhelming success as a writer, along with her insatiable urge to be in on whatever was happening, led her onto strange paths. She trod them with equal parts of zest and decorum, in flowery hats and ladylike frocks sewn by herself or her talented mother until she got rich enough to afford a dressmaker. Going overseas during World War I as a correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post and an inspector of field hospitals for the Red Cross, she packed her furs, her jewels, and a white velvet evening gown along with her khaki trench suit and notebook. She did zealously inspect field hospitals in France and Belgium, she did reach the front lines, to the chagrin of less favored correspondents, and she did exchange her muddy trench boots for her furs and elegant costumes when she met with kings and queens and lesser dignitaries.

  Back in America, Mrs. Rinehart was asked by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels to visit the Atlantic Fleet and write it up for propaganda purposes. That led to a request from Secretary of War Newton D. Baker to report on conditions in army camps around the country. Invited by noted guide and sportsman Howard Eaton to join a grueling trail ride through newly opened Glacier National Park, she donned her riding boots, mounted her horse, and wound up acting as unofficial ombudswoman for the Blackfoot Indians.

  And on she went, always writing, always finding something new to write about. Inevitably, Mary Roberts Rinehart was not universally adored. She was too prolific, too free with her opinions, too damnably successful for too long a time. As the old lioness went into her final decline, some of the lesser Felidae began to move in. Her style was passé, they said, too fraught with emotion, too inhibited by outworn mores.

  They joked about her penchant for moving the action forward by inserting little previews of coming attractions. “Had she but known …” How could Mary’s heros and heroines have got into the pickles she so adroitly contrived for them, had they but known that the bloom was off the rose, the fat was in the fire, and somebody’s goose was about to be cooked? After her death in 1958 at the age of eighty-two, certain critics showed a tendency to dismiss Mary Roberts Rinehart as a joke in rather poor taste.

  Not so the many writers who recognized their indebtedness to a true mistress of the mystery; not so her fans, among whom I enthusiastically include myself. Mary and I go back a long way together. I clearly recall spending part of a summer sitting on the floor behind a standing bookcase in the North Weymouth branch of the Tufts Library in Massachusetts, reading snatches from a new book titled My Story that I was not yet old enough to take out. After I got to high school, I could and did borrow all her mysteries, most of them rebound and showing signs of heavy use. Later I bought copies of my own, in paperback or secondhand, and read them over and over. I still do.

  It must have been in the summer of 1987 that I got such a hankering for a new Rinehart mystery that I tried writing one myself, siting it off the Maine coast, where Mary had spent happy summers during her later years. Coincidentally, The Gladstone Bag would appear in 1989, the year when everybody else was getting worked up for the Christie centennial. It was then that my urge to attempt a little public-relations job for my old and valued book friend really took hold.

  Writing is largely a matter of small miracles. The Gladstone Bag, for instance, was sparked by seeing a bright red truck with GLADSTONE painted on its side. Then one thing led to another and lo, a book was born. Had She But Known happened much the same way. I mentioned to my beloved editor, Sara Ann Freed at Mysterious Press, that I was thinking about a biography of Mary Roberts Rinehart. Sara had just met Frederick Rinehart, a grandson of Mary’s eldest son and himself a publisher. He put me in touch with his father, George, who gave me iced tea with fresh mint from his garden, some interesting reminiscences about Grandmary, as he’d known her, and the addresses of other family members. Betty Rinehart, widow of Mary’s youngest son, her daughter Connie, and Connie’s husband, B. Albert Burton, treated me to lunch and provided me with valuable material from the family archives. Gratia (Mrs. Gordon) Montgomery, daughter of Mary’s middle son, added further insights. My grateful thanks go to them all.

  It was an eye-opener to discover that, while books about Agatha Christie were proliferating like hamsters, only one biography of Mary Roberts Rinehart had been published since her death. Improbable Fiction, written by Jan Cohn, then chair of the English department at George Mason University, appeared in 1980 from the University of Pittsburgh Press and has since been reprinted, as well it deserves to be. Dr. Cohn’s zeal to preserve as much information as possible about one of the most charismatic women this century—and the last quarter of the century before—has ever known, plus her diligence in tracking down and setting forth information that would otherwise have been lost about Mary the woman as well as Mary the public figure, merits both praise and thanks from all who value our literary heritage.

  Jan Cohn’s book is particularly rich in material pertaining to the later years, obtained from members of the immediate family who were still alive when she began her research. Had She But Known deals largely with the years before Dr. Stanley Rinehart’s death. A book has to stop somewhere, and it would have been both pr
esumptuous and superfluous for me to attempt a pastiche of what Dr. Cohn has already done so well. I do hope she won’t mind my having made use of her superbly organized chronology, which saved many hours of repetitive research on dates and payments.

  During the three years or so since I began this project—warned by my agent that it would take about three times as long as I thought it would, and how right he was!—I have been pleased to see further stirrings of interest in my old friend Mary. In 1992, Crown of Life, a young adult story about Mary by Sybil Downing and Jane Valentine Baker, was released by great-grandson Frederick’s firm, Roberts Rinehart Publishing. It is to be hoped that there will be more to come. A life so long, so full, and so lavishly documented deserves to be explored from many directions and various points of view.

  Warm thanks are due to Mr. Charles E. Acton, Jr., at the University of Pittsburgh Library, Rare Books, and his coworker Eleanor R. Ferber, for their kindness, helpfulness, and forbearance in offering access to the Rinehart archives. Especially heartfelt thanks to bibliographer Ellen Nehr, who did the rummaging. Mrs. Nehr has been of great service in tracking down Rinehart-related writings and photographs, not to mention lending a sympathetic ear to my frequent whimperings for aid and comfort.

  Thanks also to Betty G.Y. Shields, executive director of the Sewickley Valley Historical Society, for information relating to the Rineharts’ years at the Bluff, and most particularly to my good friend and fellow writer Barbara Paul, who stayed me with flagons, comforted me with haute cuisine, and let me watch her Marx Brothers tapes during my stay in Pittsburgh.

  My sister and secretary, Alexandria Baxter, has by now word-processed so many drafts that it seems almost unfair to make her punch out the praise she has so greatly earned for her patience, perseverance, and pep talks during what has sometimes seemed an endless run of writing and rewriting. But here it is, kid, and you might as well finish the job.

  So much interest has been shown and so many good people have contributed in one way and another to the writing of this book that it would take reams of paper to write a proper acknowledgment. I can only hope that all who helped will take the wish for the deed, accept my sincere gratitude, and enjoy the results of our combined efforts.

  —CHARLOTTE MACLEOD

  Durham, Maine, August 17, 1993

  CHAPTER 1

  As the Twig Is Bent

  How the tree inclines may depend on who gets to bend the twig. Some precocious seedlings may prefer to handle that job themselves. Take, for instance, Mary Ella Roberts, born in what was then the city of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, on August 12, 1876, under the sign of Leo. The infant Mamie, as she was dubbed, could not have picked a more congenial zodiacal sponsor. A little over three decades later, as Mary Roberts Rinehart, wife of a hardworking doctor and mother of three little boys, this chubby, blue-eyed baby was to become the most lionized woman in America.

  It is doubtful whether, on their firstborn’s natal day in the centennial year of the United States, any thought of future glory flitted across the minds of Thomas and Cornelia Roberts. The young parents must have had more immediate concerns, such as whether their wee bundle of joy was going to yell all night and keep the whole household awake. Well might Tom and Cornelia worry, for the old gray brick house on Diamond Street was crammed to the eaves with Robertses.

  As to who was head of the house, there could be no question. Tom’s mother, widowed since 1863, had supported herself and five children by taking in sewing, one of the few employments by which a respectable woman could make a living. By now her business was thriving, her children grown up and able to lend a hand. Both sons had white-collar jobs. Tom was the eldest of the brood, but his brother John was the real go-getter. He and his beautiful though delicate wife Sarah, called Sade, were already settled in the spacious front bedroom on the third floor when Tom won the heart and hand of pretty Cornelia Gilleland, a farmer’s daughter who’d come to the city to get away from her new stepmother.

  A young clerk on small wages was in no position to set up housekeeping on his own; Tom followed his brother’s example and brought his bride home to mother. This was common practice then, as it seems again coming to be; families stayed together, pooled their resources, and rubbed along until the inevitable breaking point. Tom and Cornelia were cheerfully allotted the front room on the second floor, one flight closer to the workroom where Mother Roberts had set up a few treadle sewing machines and hired seamstresses by the day to help fill her customers’ orders.

  Mary’s earliest memories of Cornelia Roberts, related in her delightful biography My Story, were of a high-colored young woman with a magnificent head of curly hair and a warm contralto voice. She sang all day, and why shouldn’t she? Tom’s three sisters had welcomed her with open arms. Sade, though less demonstrative, was by no means unamiable. Mother Roberts must have been glad of an extra pair of capable hands in a big old house without running water or central heating, where the laundry was done on a scrubbing board in a washtub, where tea leaves were sprinkled over the carpets to keep some of the dust from flying up under the vigorous but not terribly effective assault of a corn broom in a housewife’s hands, where the ever-present clouds of coal dust wafted over from the Pittsburgh steel mills and settled on the white lace curtains that had to be washed and stretched by hand every few weeks.

  All these tasks were jam to a farmer’s daughter. Cornelia worked and sang with equal fervor while Tom went off every morning in the boiled shirt, starched collar, and top hat that she laid out for him, mulling over his increasing solvency, making plans to start his own business and move his wife and child to a house they wouldn’t have to share with anybody. Though his wife seemed in no great hurry to leave the family enclave, Tom himself was finding his mother’s domination increasingly onerous.

  Both the Gillelands and the Robertses had sprung from Covenanter stock. The Covenanters were stern Presbyterians, Robert Burns’s “Orthodox wha believe in John Knox.” They had supported Oliver Cromwell against Charles I in the Civil War of 1642–48 and held to their convictions during the Restoration despite sometimes brutal oppression. Many of them had emigrated from Scotland to Ireland; it was from there that Mary’s ancestors had pushed on to Pennsylvania.

  The Gillelands had evidently stuck to farming; Mary seemed not to know a great deal about them except that they were respectable folk who had worked hard and done well. The Robertses had been mostly teachers and preachers, although one, a postmaster, had run a profitable sideline selling liquor to the indigenous population. Tom might have inherited a few genes from that wicked postmaster; he liked to remind his mother that, while he and his siblings could claim blood relationship to Scotland’s great Argyle family, they were also descended from a notorious buccaneer, Bartholomew Roberts.

  For Mother Roberts, life was real, life was earnest. The seventh day of the week was for her not the pagan Sunday but the Sabbath, always the Sabbath. Keeping it holy meant not playing the piano, not playing cards, not doing much of anything except behaving yourself and trying to stay awake during the sermon. The household went faithfully to receive their weekly ration of religious uplift, all but Tom. He, to his mother’s deep distress, was an avowed agnostic. He did obey the biblical injunction to go forth and multiply, though; when Mary was four, she acquired a baby sister.

  Olive’s birth raised the family nose count to ten; for the time being nobody seemed to mind. Life in the old brick house went on as usual, cheerful and noisy. On weekday evenings, the three young aunts, Tom’s sisters, entertained their gentlemen friends in the parlor, where the old-fashioned rosewood sofa with its slippery horsehair seat must have contributed to an ideal ambience for togetherness. Maybe it was the horsehair sofa that hastened the final breakup. Tillie, Mary’s favorite aunt then and forever-more, got herself a new beau; and this one had serious intentions.

  Until now, Tillie had stayed home and kept house while her mother sewed. All of a sudden, here she was, swishing through the back parlor in a beautiful gown
of dark red taffeta while the minister waited to perform the ceremony and little Mary peeked out from behind the assembled skirts. No eyebrow was raised at Tillie’s red wedding dress. In those days a bride-to-be did not have to proclaim herself a virgin by wearing white; it was taken for granted that she wouldn’t dare be otherwise until the wedding night.

  So Tillie was united with her Joe. The marriage was blessed with nine children and lasted for sixty happy years.

  Maggie, the middle sister, never married. She was happy for many years at her job in a department store, except for the time when her boss, described by Mary as a middle-aged man with a roving eye, presented her pretty teenaged niece with some silk stockings. Mary never mentioned to her aunt that he’d also offered to help put them on. She might have been naive, but she certainly wasn’t stupid. Maggie stayed with her mother until the household was finally broken up, then she and Mrs. Roberts went to live with Tillie, Joe, and their multiple progeny. As a husband and provider, Joe must have been among the all-time greats.

  Not so the cad whom Tish, the eldest sister, got stuck with. He was a floorwalker in the store where Tish clerked for a while, was about twice her age, had already married three wives in succession and cheated on every one of them. He cheated on Tish also, and sponged on the whole Roberts family for money to cover his rubber checks and sundry other defalcations. He really cooked his goose with Mary when he telephoned her husband-to-be before the wedding, pleading for bail money to keep him out of the jail where he surely belonged.

  Tish must have had superior powers of self-deception. However outrageous her husband’s behavior, she went back to him time and again, believed he meant it when he told her she was beautiful, and mourned him when he departed for that bourne whence none returneth. She taught herself to believe that the checks Mary sent were in fact dividends on her own investments. She also believed that she had been Mary’s inspiration for Letitia Carberry, the imaginary Tish who, in a long series of short stories, was to keep America in stitches for years to come. Granted, Mary’s Tish had her eccentricities, but she’d at least have known better than to tie herself up to a no-good moocher.