Death in Miniature
Despite the family's elevated social standing, when Stella Wittenmyer, wife of Thurman Wittenmyer (whose name was synonymous with the large department store chain he founded), delivered her child, the birth was met with little fanfare. First, the long-awaited heir turned out to be a girl. Second, the Wittenmyers were considered "new money"—glorified shopkeepers to the snooty members of Mrs. Astor's Four Hundred. Third, she was born in April of 1912 when the minds of New York's wealthiest families were reeling with the news of Titanic's sinking and of the deaths of close friends and family members who had gone down with the doomed ship.
Even though the world did not take much notice of the tiny baby girl, her parents were delighted with their daughter. Stella, in particular, cherished the newborn. The youngest of seven children of a Pennsylvania dairy farmer, she was not born into wealth. Nor did she marry into it, for Thurman had just opened his first corner dry goods store when the couple met. By the time they took their vows, that store had tripled in size. Sixteen years later, when little Charlotte entered the world, there were more than three hundred Wittenmyer's department stores across the country, and the chain's owner was one of the hundred wealthiest men in America.
However, her husband's millions brought little joy into Stella's life. Uprooted from her hometown and replanted in a Fifth Avenue mansion, the farmer's daughter felt out of place among Manhattan's elite. A shy, sensitive, introverted woman by nature, she was exceedingly uncomfortable when necessity demanded she associate with her wealthy neighbors. She did not enjoy parties, especially when she knew the other guests saw her as being beneath them. Thankfully, Thurman did not care for the Brahmins any more than they cared for him, so he did not pressure his wife to try to "fit in." Rather, he let her live her life the way she chose. But being married to a successful man was a lonely existence since his business kept him away from home so often.
Charlotte's birth changed everything. The child became the center of her mother's life, her very reason for living. There was no need for nursemaids or nannies. The devoted parent saw to all her daughter's needs. Thus, she was present when the girl took her first steps and spoke her first words. Even as the growing toddler gradually became more independent, the two remained inseparable. When Stella was not tutoring the girl in her studies, she took her on outings to Central Park, the Bronx Zoo, the Museum of Natural History and Coney Island's Luna and Steeplechase Parks.
Although his business frequently kept him away from his home and family, Thurman loved his only child no less than Stella did. Unlike his wife, however, he accepted the fact that one day Charlotte would leave the Fifth Avenue mansion to pursue a life of her own. With that thought in mind, he believed there was a need for his daughter to be integrated into society.
"I've been thinking about buying a cottage in Newport," he announced on one of those rare occasions he was home for dinner.
"Whatever for?" his wife asked.
"As a summer home. It will do Charlotte good to get out of the hot city and spend some time at the beach."
"But why go all the way to Rhode Island when there are beaches in New York and New Jersey?"
"Because there's a different class of people in Newport."
"People we don't like very much, the ones that look down their long, aristocratic noses at us. I won't subject my little girl to the likes of them."
Thurman was never a man to argue with his wife. After nearly two decades of marriage, he still loved her dearly and wanted her to be happy. However, he had a responsibility as a father to see to his daughter's future.
"Whether we like them or not," he said, "they are the people that matter in this city. When it comes time for Charlotte to marry, it would be best for her to choose one of their sons as a husband."
"Never!" the outraged mother cried. "I won't have my daughter trapped in a loveless marriage to the spawn of some robber baron. This is twentieth-century America! Arranged marriages between wealthy families are a thing of the past."
"Who said anything about an arranged marriage? I want Charlotte to marry for love, just like you and I did. But if she's exposed to these people from a young age, she's likely to fall in love with one of them. Isn't it better she marry a man with money of his own who loves her in return than having some fortune hunter seek her out for her inheritance?"
"Money, money, money! Why is it everything always comes down to money?"
"Make no mistake about it," Thurman answered. "Money makes the world go round."
When he saw the tears in his wife's eyes, he relented.
"There's no need for us to worry about who she will marry right now."
"You're right," Stella agreed. "Besides, she might never marry. She certainly doesn't need a man to support her."
Thurman's faced turned grim. He did not want his beloved daughter to grow up to be a lonely spinster. Whether his wife approved or not, he decided to purchase the cottage in Newport and introduce four-year-old Charlotte to New York society.
* * *
For the next several years, Charlotte Wittenmyer was in the midst of a gentle, unacknowledged tug of war between the two parents. Much to his wife's dismay, Thurman continued in his efforts to thrust their daughter into the world of privilege by accepting invitations from the Astors, the Livingstons, the Schuylers, the Vanderbilts and the Van Rensselaers and by inviting them to the Wittenmyers' Fifth Avenue home in turn. Thankfully, so far, "those" people had yet to sour the child's personality with their unrestrained greed and hubris.
In her efforts to sway Charlotte to her own way of thinking, Stella devoted hours on the pastime she and her daughter enjoyed most: building miniatures. Whether they were in New York or Rhode Island, mother and child spent time each day creating shadowboxes, panoramas and dollhouses with detailed scaled models of people, animals, furnishings, clothing and all manner of ordinary household items. Both their Manhattan mansion and Newport cottage contained rooms devoted to their hobby with workbenches and shelves loaded with art supplies, fabrics, tools and scraps of wood.
One afternoon as the two of them were creating a Victorian Christmas scene in miniature, Charlotte reached into her pocket and took out a pouch containing a selection of small glass beads, which she spilled out onto the workbench.
"Where did you get those?" Stella asked.
"The Posts' maid gave them to me. The necklace broke, and Mrs. Post couldn't find all the beads, so she told her maid to get rid of the rest. I think they'll make perfect Christmas ornaments for our little tree."
"Indeed, they will," her mother agreed.
"Besides, it would be a shame to throw all these beautiful beads in the trash. It seems so wasteful."
"I'm sure Mrs. Post has many other necklaces."
"Why is that, do you think?" the daughter asked. "How many necklaces does one woman need?"
"She has them because she can afford them. With wealthy people, it's never a question of need but of want, and the Posts have enough money that they can buy whatever they want."
"But Daddy has a lot of money, doesn't he? Why don't you have a lot of necklaces?"
"I'm not like most of the women in our social circle," Stella explained. "My family, although not terribly poor, were far from rich. As such, my siblings and I were taught to economize."
"What's that?"
"It's a way of being careful with your money. We bought most of what we needed at Woolworth's. My parents mended things when they broke; they didn't replace them unless it was absolutely necessary. And we didn't get rid of perfectly good clothes because they were no longer considered in style."
"That seems like a much better way to live," Charlotte announced after giving the matter some consideration.
As Stella finished sewing the small pair of drapes for the miniature window, she smiled to herself. Despite the child's exposure to New York's upper class, there was hope for her little girl.
* * *
"Charlotte will be turning sixteen this year," Thurman announced as he and his wife were getting ready to attend a charity event at the New York Yacht Club. "You ought to start planning her coming-out party."
"Do you think it's wise?" Stella asked.
"Yes, of course. Sixteen is the age debutantes are presented to polite society."
"Polite society?" she laughed with disdain. "Do you see the way our so-called friends behave? They go out drinking in speakeasies. More than half of the men we know are having affairs with younger women. And the young women! They've got their skirts hiked up around their knees and their hair cut short. They drink. They smoke. And God only knows what else they do!"
"We've had this discussion before," Thurman said with a sigh, tired of constantly bickering with his wife over their daughter's future.
"But the matter is never settled," Stella argued.
"Yes, it is. Charlotte is going to take her place in society. She'll marry a suitable young man with good breeding ...."
"Breeding? You mean money. Don't you?"
"You speak of having money as though it were a bad thing. You don't know how lucky you are we've got it. You forget, I've spent my life trying to provide for you and our child."
"I know that, and I do appreciate it," Stella said in an effort to soothe her husband's injured pride. "Having money is one thing, but insisting our daughter marry into that crowd is quite another. I simply won't have it."
After years of yielding to his wife's wishes, Thurman finally had enough. He was the man in the family; he wore the pants. His word would be law.
"And what would you have her do? Spend the rest of her life a lonely spinster, making dollhouse furniture?"
"That's better than being married to one of them!"
"I am her father. She will do as I say. She will attend the debutante ball and have a coming-out party, after which we will take her to Europe where, hopefully, she will acquire the culture necessary for her station in life."
Despite women finally having been given the right to vote, they were still expected to be subservient to their husbands. Thus, Stella held her tongue. The following week she presented him with a preliminary guestlist for the party.
"We can hold it in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria," she suggested.
"Excellent!" her husband beamed. "I'm delighted you finally see things my way."
"It has always been my intention to do what's right for my daughter."
"Don't you mean our daughter?"
"Of course. It was just a slip of the tongue."
"We both want what's best for her," Thurman declared. "So, continue with your plans for her party, and I'll see about booking a trip to Europe."
However, neither the coming-out party nor the grand tour of Europe ever took place. Three months after Stella presented the preliminary guestlist for the proposed party to her husband, his dead body was found on the stoop of their Fifth Avenue mansion.
Fifteen-year-old Charlotte, who loved her father just slightly less than she did her mother, was devastated by his death. She locked herself away in her room for days, speaking to no one and refusing the trays of food that were sent up to her. When the authorities released Thurman's body for burial, the girl insisted on attending the funeral; but when she saw her father lying in the casket, she collapsed in a swoon. The doctor was called, and he gave her something "to calm her nerves."
The subsequent few weeks of the teenager's life passed by in a blur of drug-induced confusion. She was aware that a steady stream of people came to the house—both friends expressing their condolences and policemen investigating the murder as well as lawyers, accountants and real estate agents—but she neither saw nor spoke to them. She remained upstairs, a ghostly figure silently haunting the rooms of the second floor. Eventually, the number of visitors dwindled and died down, and soon thereafter the doctor stopped giving her medication. That was when her mother announced that she had put both the Fifth Avenue mansion and the Newport cottage up for sale and had purchased a new home for them in New Jersey.
"I'm sure you're going to love it there. It's located in a nice, quiet town, far from the city."
"But what about all our social obligations?" the girl asked. "And my coming-out party?"
"With your father gone, I don't see any point in associating with those people any longer. It's time you and I built a life of our own."
Charlotte was not saddened by that bit of news. The idea of being a debutante and entering into a suitable marriage had never really appealed to her. That had been her father's dream, not hers—and clearly not her mother's wish.
"What will we do in New Jersey? Will I have to find a job?"
"Oh, dear girl, what nonsense!" Stella laughed. "You're an heiress, one of the richest young women in the country. We'll live in a nice house. Not one as ostentatious as those in New York and Newport, but it will be comfortable, and we'll have servants to see to our needs. And, best of all, we can devote more time to our miniatures."
"And what about marriage?"
"I'm sure someday you'll find the right man, but why worry about that now? You're only fifteen."
Thus, in the year 1927, Charlotte Wittenmyer began the second chapter of her life, far from the world of the Astors and the Vanderbilts, the coming-out parties and charity balls, the theater and the opera, Coney Island and Central Park, speakeasies and bootleg whiskey. Instead, she and her mother settled down into the large, stately house set on more than fifty acres of rolling green hills.
With the exception of an occasional shopping trip to the city, the two women rarely left their home. People from the surrounding town considered them wealthy eccentrics, but mother and daughter were content living as hermits, enjoying each other's company and spending long hours together in their workroom, crafting their miniature masterpieces.
As though by silent agreement, they never spoke of Thurman. Charlotte never asked her mother for details concerning her father's murder or even wondered if his killer had been caught. It hurt too much to think about him, so she closed the door to all memories of her father. It was as though he never existed.
Charlotte's birthdays continued to mount up. At age twenty-one, she came into her inheritance. Surprisingly, no eligible bachelors presented themselves as suitors, despite her considerable fortune being a temptation during the Great Depression. She was unaware that her mother, fearing an unscrupulous scoundrel would take advantage of her child, had instructed the servants to turn all male callers away. By the time the U.S. entered the war in Europe after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the heiress had given up hope of ever getting married. Resigned to remaining single, she occupied her time with creating miniatures and helping war-related charities.
It became a habit during those awful years to stay up until all hours of the night writing letters to servicemen and women in Europe and in the Pacific. She also sent them regular care packages and Christmas gifts at the holidays. Special attention was given to those who were injured and sent to military hospitals.
"You're at it again, I see," Stella commented when she found her daughter still awake at two in the morning, with a stack of letters on her desk. "I don't know what you find to discuss with complete strangers. Do you write about the war?"
"That's the one subject I try to avoid. That and politics. I prefer to stick to topics like music, sports, movies. There's one young man I write to who is a die-hard Yankee fan. I send him newspaper clippings from the sports pages."
"Well, hopefully this awful war will be over soon, and life can get back to normal."
Normal. Was it normal for a young woman, soon to be thirty, to spend her days making dolls and tiny pieces of furniture? Charlotte hated to admit it, but she enjoyed corresponding with the men and women serving overseas. For far too long, her life had been routine. Suddenly, she felt as though she had a purpose.
* * *
On November 8, 1944, six months before V-E Day, Stella Wittenmyer suffered a fatal heart attack. Her sudden death left her thirty-two-year-old daughter alone in a huge house with no one but servants as company. To combat her grief, Charlotte escalated her letter-writing efforts. Then the war in Europe came to an end, followed three months later by the surrender of Japan.
I am lost now that I have no one to write to, she thought.
Although she still worked on her miniatures every day, it was not the same enjoyable hobby with her mother gone. Hers was a lonely existence, and from time to time, she wondered how her life might have been different had her father not been murdered.
I would no doubt be married and more than likely have children.
But was that what she wanted? Would she be happy living on Fifth Avenue? She imagined it would be better than living alone.
Then, just four months after peace was restored, Charlotte received a visit from Dr. Harcourt Overstreet, one of her wartime pen pals, who had recently mustered out of the Army.
"I had to pass through New Jersey on my way back home to Philadelphia, so I decided to take the opportunity to meet you while I was here," the young physician explained. "I wanted to thank you in person for all those wonderful letters and packages you sent to me and my patients over the years."
"There's no need to thank me. It was my pleasure. I suppose pleasure isn't the proper word for me to use."
She then invited the doctor to stay for dinner.
"I don't want to intrude."
"Oh, please. Since my mother died, I've eaten all my meals alone. It will be a treat for me to have company."
As they ate the delicious dinner the cook hastily prepared, Dr. Overstreet told his hostess of his plans for the future.
"Not long after I received my medical license, I became interested in forensic science—probably because my father was a policeman. After reading about the Leopold and Loeb case, I chose not to hang out my shingle and practice medicine. Instead, I became a medical examiner. Now that the war is over, however, I'm not sure if I want my old job back or not."
"I don't see why you wouldn't. It sounds like a fascinating profession."
"It is. That's the problem. There are incredible advancements being made in the field all the time. I think I'd like to be part of that."
"You want to get into research?"
"Yes. And teaching. I feel it's important to not only educate medical examiners about the ways of determining cause of death but also to instruct policemen on proper crime scene procedures and evidence collection. All too often, when police are called to the scene of a crime, they ignore and even unknowingly trample on or destroy valuable evidence that could lead to the case being solved."
Charlotte listened to Harcourt's career goals with rapt attention.
"I envy you," she said once the dinner dishes were taken away and dessert brought out. "You seem to have such passion for what you do. I wish I could feel that way about something."
"Have you ever considered furthering your education or going into business? Forgive me for being so bold, but with your financial resources, you could pretty much do whatever you want."
"I do have a hobby that I enjoy."
After they finished eating the final course of their meal, Charlotte took her guest to the drawing room and showed him some of the miniatures she had created.
"These are works of art!" Harcourt exclaimed as he examined a detailed miniature reproduction of Thomas Jefferson's bedroom in Monticello. "You are obviously a very talented artist. Do you show your completed work at a gallery?"
"No. I display a few shadowboxes and rooms around the house, but most of them have been consigned to the attic."
As the evening wore on, the topic of their conversation turned to Dr. Overstreet's proposed plans for teaching a forensic science course. He mentioned to Charlotte some of the difficulties of clearly seeing valuable clues in photographs or pointing them out in drawings.
"I'm sure it would be much easier to illustrate my points if I could take my students to an actual crime scene, but that would risk contaminating the evidence."
"What if you had a three-dimension model, like one of my miniature rooms?"
"It would be an excellent tool to explain blood spatter patterns and how to determine the angle of entry of gunshot wounds."
As the same idea simultaneously occurred to both the heiress and the doctor, the two stared at each, their eyes glowing with passion—not for each other but for a shared dream. It was the start of a successful collaboration that would give Charlotte's life the purpose it had long lacked.
* * *
Over the next two decades, Harcourt Overstreet became one of the most respected names in the field of forensic science. Not only had he instituted new procedures of gathering and testing evidence, but he also appeared in the courtroom as an expert witness in some of the most sensational murder trials of the twentieth century. Despite the media attention his career brought him, he remained a humble man, dedicated to his profession. With Charlotte's financial backing, he held hundreds of seminars and training courses, using the miniature crime scenes as a teaching aid.
One evening as the fifty-eight-year-old department store heiress sat in her living room, sewing a small bathrobe for a doll that was to represent a drowning victim, she listened to her closest friend describe the horrific crime perpetrated at 10050 Cielo Drive in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles. It was the location where five people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate, had been brutally murdered by members of a "family" of hippies led by Charles Manson.
"I don't think I would want to do a miniature model of that crime scene," Charlotte admitted to her partner. "I much prefer less savage murders consisting of one or two victims."
Although there was nothing physical in their relationship, Charlotte and Harcourt enjoyed an extremely close friendship. Many a night they sat in her New Jersey living room, talking, listening to music or watching television. Yet in all the years they had known each other, Charlotte never told him about her father's murder; and the former medical examiner (who knew only that the department store magnate had been the victim of a homicide) never brought the subject up. Consequently, six months later, when she showed him her latest miniature murder scene, he did not realize he was looking at a scaled replica of the doorway and stoop of the Wittenmyers' Fifth Avenue mansion. Nor did he realize the victim doll, placed exactly as it appeared in the crime scene photos sent to Charlotte by the New York detective who had investigated the crime, represented Thurman Wittenmyer.
"What do you make of this scene?" she asked, as he examined the miniature setting.
"I'm assuming this man was shot."
"Yes. The police concluded he was followed by his assailant and killed while he was getting his keys out to enter the house."
As Harcourt leaned forward for a closer look, a frown appeared on his face.
"And the details here are correct?"
"Yes, of course. This is a faithful reproduction of the crime scene photos."
"Then I hope no arrest was ever made."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because the police are obviously wrong. This man was clearly killed by someone inside the house, not outside."
"That's impossible!" Charlotte cried.
"Look for yourself. There is no blood on the front door, but there is plenty of it on the steps and on the walkway. Based on that and the position of the corpse, which is lying faceup on its back, I'd say the door was open, and he was facing his killer when he was shot."
The color drained from Charlotte's face, and she was forced to sit down for fear of passing out.
"Are you all right?" Harcourt asked, worried by the paleness of his friend's complexion.
There was no reply. Instead, she leaned forward and with a violent swipe of her arm, sent the miniature crime scene crashing to the floor.
"What's wrong? Why did you do that after all the work you put into it?"
"I never want to see it again!" she screamed.
"That was your father's murder; wasn't it?"
She nodded her head, unable to speak.
"And no doubt the case has remained unsolved for more than forty years," he theorized, "because the police were looking in the wrong place. They ought to have investigated the people inside the house."
Over the years, through her close association with Harcourt, Charlotte developed a knowledge of crime-solving as good as, if not better than, most seasoned police detectives. That education and her own intelligence enabled her to solve her father's murder even though New York's finest had failed to do so.
"The murder occurred in the early morning hours, long after the servants had gone to bed," she announced in an emotionless monotone. "Besides, none of them had a reason for killing my father. He was good to them, and they all liked him. With the servants asleep in their third-floor rooms, that leaves only me and my mother on the lower two floors of the house."
"And you were—what?—fourteen or fifteen at the time?"
"Fifteen. I had gone to bed around ten, and I didn't wake up until I heard the commotion downstairs, sometime around seven in the morning, which was when the butler discovered my father's body."
"And you mother?" Harcourt asked as gently as he could so as not to upset his friend further.
Silent tears slid down Charlotte's face. As much as she did not want to admit it, the answer was obvious.
"I adored her. Not only was she my mother, but she was the closest friend I ever had. When she was alive, we were inseparable."
The renowned criminologist did not press the matter. What good would it do? Stella Wittenmyer had died back in 1944 and thus could never be brought to justice. Why sully her name now? Charlotte would suffer greatly should her mother's crime be brought to light.
"She did it for me, you know," the devastated daughter said after a period of silent reflection. "My father insisted I become a part of New York society, that I marry a man with money and prestige. My mother wanted to spare me that life. She unselfishly risked everything—her reputation, her freedom and quite possibly her own life—to save me from an existence she believed would make me miserable."
Harcourt saw it differently. He imagined Stella was a possessive mother who did not want to let go of her only child, a woman who was willing to sacrifice her husband and risk being arrested for his murder in order to hold on to her precious offspring.
And she succeeded, he thought. Even though she's been in the grave for nearly thirty years, she still has her hooks firmly in her daughter.
For Charlotte never married. She rarely left the New Jersey house Stella had provided for her and never stopped pursuing the hobby they had shared together. Even faced with irrefutable proof that her mother was a murderer, she remained a loyal, loving daughter.
When Harcourt Overstreet left her house that terrible evening in 1971, Charlotte Wittenmyer began the third and final chapter of her life. From the following day on, there were no more pleasant visits with the forensic science expert; the servants were instructed to turn him away whenever he appeared on her doorstep. Also, there were no more models of crime scenes. Although she still continued her hobby as a miniaturist, the rooms she crafted were free of blood stains and dead bodies. As she had done when she was fifteen, she buried deep in her subconscious mind all memories of her late father and lived the remainder of her days with the comfortable but somewhat false image of a kind, gentle, loving mother.
This story was inspired by Frances Glessner Lee's Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of nineteen dollhouse-like dioramas created for use during lectures on crime scene investigation.
Salem once dabbled in making shadow boxes. Unfortunately, they were all of black cats.
