Winfield

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RANDALL WINFIELD: LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF THE WOOLWORTHS By Monica Randall. Thomas Dunne/St. Martins, $26.95, 275 pages, illus.

"Quaint" is a word I've not often seen used to describe a book. Yet that is the first adjective that sprang to mind when I put down "Winfield: Living in the Shadow of the Woolworths." Odd . . . curious . . . fanciful . . . peculiar. Even the author's photo on the book jacket is somehow quaint. Monica Randall is posed carrying a feather fan wearing a turn-of-the-last-century beaded ball gown, in a room full of sheeted furniture.

Ms. Randall grew up on Long Island's North Shore, the so-called Gold Coast. Though not a member of one of the moneyed families who built huge houses there, she became fascinated by the ways of the very rich. By the 1950s and 1960s, many of the great North Shore mansions were deserted and being readied for the wrecker's ball, and so Ms. Randall and her sister took it upon themselves surreptitiously to remove some of the mansion's precious contents: mantels, overdoors, chandeliers, antique dresses -- whatever they could make off with.

Though the girls were aware that what they were doing was not exactly legal, they did not think of themselves as housebreakers or looters. They piously excused their clandestine activities as saving priceless objects from destruction. One of their favorite targets was Winfield, the massive marble monstrosity erected in Glen Cove by Frank W. Woolworth, the five-and-ten-cent-store tycoon. In its heyday Winfield required 70 gardeners just to tend the grounds.

It never occurred to Ms. Randall, during her burglary phase, that she would end up even briefly becoming the mistress (sort of) of Winfield. But that's what happened, and this book is her memoir of that curious period more than two dozen years ago. Ms. Randall may have been a spunky teenage thief but, by 1978, she had matured into a starry-eyed, old-fashioned girl who went all ga-ga in the presence of a handsome man.

His name -- or at least the name he went by at the time -- was Andre Von Brunner. He described himself as an "international businessman." Though what his business was she was either too frightened or too shy to ask. He acted and dressed like a rich man, but where did the money come from?

With his several shadowy partners Von Brunner had bought Winfield for reasons that were never clear, unless it was for a place for him to hide out. He described his business as dangerous. He needed a personal body guard, and indeed before long his bodyguard was murdered. Von Brunner admitted to having had five previous wives. But, despite these unpromising signs, Ms. Randall decided that Von Brunner was excellent husband material. After several dates, she writes (in her typically lush and fervid style), "All my defenses crumbled, and I willingly surrendered to him." They became engaged, or "plighted," as Ms. Randall quaintly puts it.

It may have seemed to her like a good fit. When she moved into Winfield with him, she began returning some of the furnishings she'd pinched from the place years before.

But there was trouble right from the start. She'd heard rumors that the house was haunted and, sure enough, things began to go bump in the night. There were rattlings in the walls, bangings on the floor, footsteps in the halls, sighing and moaning sounds in the woodwork. All this could have been caused by antique plumbing, but Ms. Randall was not so sure.