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Judd stayed with his question. “What did I promise?”
“You vowed your passion for me was so immense that you would go to infinite depths for me, even if it meant giving up your own life or erasing another’s. At least, that was the gist of it.”
“I’m guessing I was less coherent.”
“But you are going to keep your promise?”
Judd meekly said he would. And the plot developed.
At home, no one spoke to him. Even Jane left the front room at his entrance. Judd heard whispers of conspiracy being hissed behind closed doors. And so in a late February snow, and earlier than he’d planned, he left for upstate New York to sell the Bien Jolie fashions for spring.
Ruth secretly went to the Queens-Bellaire Bank and got out the safety deposit box registered to Ruth M. Brown. She’d told no one, not even Judd, about the Prudential insurance policies on Albert’s life. She scoured the fine print again, jotting on a scratch pad $1,000 + $5,000 + $45,000 x 2 = $96,000. She could do the arithmetic without a pencil, but reading the numbers was more thrilling.
She then went home and called Judd in his office. When she was told he was on the road, she said she was a lingerie buyer calling from Batavia. Would he be there this week? The office secretary said she knew only that Judd was first heading to Albany. Ruth consulted the hotel list he’d given her and she wrote Judd at the Morgan State House Inn, saying she was so miserable she was going into Manhattan to find its highest building and end it all, and by the time he received this letter she would be dead. She gave the stamped envelope to the postman, George Marks, just as he was walking next door. The postman smiled at seeing the sender’s name was Mrs. Jane Gray. “I’ll see he gets it, Tommy.”
“You think tomorrow morning?”
“Oh yeah.”
Judd frantically called Queens Village the following night, and she answered in the foyer. “Are you free to talk?” he asked.
She wh
ispered, “They’re all upstairs right now.”
“Your last letter frightened me.”
“Which was that?”
“About suicide.”
“Oh,” she said. “That was just a mood I was in.”
“Well, I don’t want you to give way to such moods.”
“There’s only one thing you need to do.”
“Look, I’m going to rescue you from your dire straits very soon.”
Ruth loudly called to no one, “Just a salesman!” And then she softly said, “I have to hang up.”
Albert Snyder and his wife were invited to a Saturday-night card party at Milton and Serena Fidgeon’s home on Hollis Court in Queens Village on February 26th, 1927. Joining them were Serena’s brothers, George and Cecil Hough, and Dr. Arthur W. Stanford and his wife—Ruth forgot her name. A folding table was placed in the front room and the dining room table was used for the second bridge game. Water pitchers filled with Gilbey’s gin and ginger ale were within hand’s reach, and jazz, Live from the Empire Room, played on the radio.
The Snyders played north and south at the dining room table, with Milton and Serena in the east and west seats. Serena touched Ruth’s forearm as she said, “Won’t it be delightful being together on Shore Road again next summer?”
“Oh. You’re going back?”
“So are we,” Albert smugly said. “Same cottage. I just put the deposit down.”
Ruth restrained a scream as she asked in a tight voice, “Weren’t you going to consult me, honey?”
Albert seemed flummoxed. “When have I ever? And why?”
“Careful, friend,” Milton said. “Thin ice.”
Serena frowned at Albert as she dealt out the cards.
Within an hour Albert became so vexed by Ruth’s unpredictable bidding that Milton invented a rule that some players needed to rotate, which sent Albert to the folding table as Milton invited George Hough to team with Ruth.
