This is a photograph of my lovely great-aunt, Elisabeth Congdon, the family dowager. Although I am related to Elisabeth by marriage, I am not, alas, a blood relative. Had I been a blood relative, I would have been mentioned in her will. At her death, Elisabeth was worth an estimated $80 million.
For a woman of such wealth, Elisabeth was unpretentious. She dressed modestly with minimal jewelry, a simple strand of pearls, a small ring, and she wore her hair in a plain, old-fashioned style. She was short and, frankly, stout. She stuck to hearth and home and involved herself in extensive charity work with hospitals. Elisabeth was the founder of several clinics for women and children, one of which became Planned Parenthood. During both world wars, she functioned as a nurse’s aid. She is remembered as a warm woman with a great sense of humor.
No one understands why Elisabeth didn’t marry. In her mid-twenties, a handsome young man gave Elisabeth a beautiful diamond engagement ring. She gave it back. He was crushed and he threw the ring into Lake Superior. He never married. When he died, he left money to her in his will. Elisabeth bought a sapphire and diamond ring in his memory. She had the ring on her finger when she was killed. The murderer tore it off and took it. It was found in the possession of Marjorie and her husband weeks later. Marjorie had always coveted that ring.
I grew up hearing stories about Marjorie, how she stole money from Elisabeth’s purse, took her charge cards and forged her signature. I decided that, in order to write about her, I had to search more thoroughly into Marjorie’s past. The sheer quantity of criminal charges was staggering. There are hundreds of police reports. The family was so powerful the police didn’t want to press charges and the district attorneys didn’t want to prosecute. Elisabeth covered all Marjorie’s bad checks and there were thousands of those. Elisabeth paid Marjorie’s defaulted loans to the tune of millions of dollars. Marjorie had a good forty years of the kind of protection from the law that great wealth can buy. And that was why Elisabeth was murdered. Because no one stopped Marjorie.
Strychnine in the Marmalade 