Read Online A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion by Ron Hansen - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ron Hansen
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Historical fiction, General, Historical, New York, New York (State), Nineteen twenties, Adultery, N.Y.), Trials (Murder), Women murderers, Ruth May, Housewives - New York (State) - New York, Queens (New York, Women Murderers - New York (State) - New York, Trials (Murder) - New York (State) - New York, Gray, Husbands - Crimes Against, Housewives, Husbands, Henry Judd, Snyder
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Albert has created. She could learn and be safe and far away from a father who has no regards for her. But I cannot bare to part with her. She is all I have of love and happyness.
I feel certain I could get a job in business. Selling stocks and bonds maybe. I need financial advice, your smarts. Oh please won’t you call me? Orchard 8591. Each night I pray, “Dear God, give me back the past.” I would do so much so different. You have shown me all that is possible.
The final letter was postmarked on Saturday:
Dear Darling Mr. Gray,
You must think I’m some loon since you haven’t answered. Please accep my apologies for the desparate tone of my letters. They would certainly scare me if I were a man! I have notwanted to call your office for fear people there will talk, and that would be distructive. I have no other expectations beyond speaking to you since I value your intelligence and mastery of situations. Won’t you call when Al is gone? Eight in the morning to 6 at night. Orchard 8591. We can meet at Henry’s if you’d like to.
Judd did nothing.
Earlier, in 1924, Albert Snyder had felt certain his wife was having an extramarital affair. C. F. Chapman, the publisher of
Motor Boating
magazine, recommended Albert initiate actions for a divorce and forced him to leave their offices on West 40th Street to have a conversation with Judge Nathan Lieberman, a New York state assemblyman and a high-paid Broadway attorney. The judge reviewed New York’s divorce laws with Albert, urged him to hire a private detective to find proof of Ruth’s infidelity, and then introduced him to an ex-cop named Jacob Sanacory. She was investigated for a week, and at its conclusion Sanacory wrote Judge Lieberman, “We have incontestable evidence on this man’s wife.” And that same afternoon Sanacory telephoned Albert to say, “She’s in your house with a guy right now.”
Albert stood in the front yard with the gumshoe and vaguely heard a Brooklyn voice and Ruth’s giggling in Lorraine’s bedroom, but though Sanacory got his camera out and egged Mr. Snyder to hurry inside, saying they needed a photograph of the lovers in flagrante delicto, Albert hesitated. “And then what?” he said. “End it? She’s an adequate mother and domestic. With Root I can at least be sure that the house and the girl are being taken care of.”
Sanacory shook his head as he went off, and Albert sat on the front porch for a full hour, inventing ever-bloodier ways to destroythe diddler’s face. And then he did not even do that. “I could have done a lot,” he told C. F. Chapman, “but I would have had to be in love.”
Soon after that the Snyders established an unspoken accommodation: Albert would ignore Ruth’s nights out or counterfeit an acceptance of the lies she told, and she would affect a nonchalance about him.
And so it was that in August 1925, both of them could be going out on the town, but alone. Thursday was Albert’s night for duck-pin bowling in his Flatbush summer league, so he came home from work earlier to get his six-inch ball and high-top bowling shoes. But he also took a bath and changed his shirt and necktie.
Ruth carried in a stein of his Pilsener as he hunched toward the dresser mirror and tied a Windsor knot. She got his royal blue Jacquard from the closet tie rack and said, “She’ll like you better in this one.”
Albert frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” But he tugged the plaid necktie off and took the Jacquard from his wife. “So what are your plans?”
She told him Josephine was staying home and could watch the baby, so she was going out with Ethel. “She wants to see that new Rudolph Valentino movie.
The Eagle?
”
Albert swallowed some beer and said, “I have no idea why you females swoon over that foolish, effeminate
Italian
.”
“Could it be we find manliness overrated?”
“Well, it’s like they say. Women have the last word in any argument. Anything the man says after that
I feel certain I could get a job in business. Selling stocks and bonds maybe. I need financial advice, your smarts. Oh please won’t you call me? Orchard 8591. Each night I pray, “Dear God, give me back the past.” I would do so much so different. You have shown me all that is possible.
The final letter was postmarked on Saturday:
Dear Darling Mr. Gray,
You must think I’m some loon since you haven’t answered. Please accep my apologies for the desparate tone of my letters. They would certainly scare me if I were a man! I have notwanted to call your office for fear people there will talk, and that would be distructive. I have no other expectations beyond speaking to you since I value your intelligence and mastery of situations. Won’t you call when Al is gone? Eight in the morning to 6 at night. Orchard 8591. We can meet at Henry’s if you’d like to.
Judd did nothing.
Earlier, in 1924, Albert Snyder had felt certain his wife was having an extramarital affair. C. F. Chapman, the publisher of
Motor Boating
magazine, recommended Albert initiate actions for a divorce and forced him to leave their offices on West 40th Street to have a conversation with Judge Nathan Lieberman, a New York state assemblyman and a high-paid Broadway attorney. The judge reviewed New York’s divorce laws with Albert, urged him to hire a private detective to find proof of Ruth’s infidelity, and then introduced him to an ex-cop named Jacob Sanacory. She was investigated for a week, and at its conclusion Sanacory wrote Judge Lieberman, “We have incontestable evidence on this man’s wife.” And that same afternoon Sanacory telephoned Albert to say, “She’s in your house with a guy right now.”
Albert stood in the front yard with the gumshoe and vaguely heard a Brooklyn voice and Ruth’s giggling in Lorraine’s bedroom, but though Sanacory got his camera out and egged Mr. Snyder to hurry inside, saying they needed a photograph of the lovers in flagrante delicto, Albert hesitated. “And then what?” he said. “End it? She’s an adequate mother and domestic. With Root I can at least be sure that the house and the girl are being taken care of.”
Sanacory shook his head as he went off, and Albert sat on the front porch for a full hour, inventing ever-bloodier ways to destroythe diddler’s face. And then he did not even do that. “I could have done a lot,” he told C. F. Chapman, “but I would have had to be in love.”
Soon after that the Snyders established an unspoken accommodation: Albert would ignore Ruth’s nights out or counterfeit an acceptance of the lies she told, and she would affect a nonchalance about him.
And so it was that in August 1925, both of them could be going out on the town, but alone. Thursday was Albert’s night for duck-pin bowling in his Flatbush summer league, so he came home from work earlier to get his six-inch ball and high-top bowling shoes. But he also took a bath and changed his shirt and necktie.
Ruth carried in a stein of his Pilsener as he hunched toward the dresser mirror and tied a Windsor knot. She got his royal blue Jacquard from the closet tie rack and said, “She’ll like you better in this one.”
Albert frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” But he tugged the plaid necktie off and took the Jacquard from his wife. “So what are your plans?”
She told him Josephine was staying home and could watch the baby, so she was going out with Ethel. “She wants to see that new Rudolph Valentino movie.
The Eagle?
”
Albert swallowed some beer and said, “I have no idea why you females swoon over that foolish, effeminate
Italian
.”
“Could it be we find manliness overrated?”
“Well, it’s like they say. Women have the last word in any argument. Anything the man says after that
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