Sphinx

Sphinx

(From AWAD (A Word A Day). April 30, 2008)
 
This week's theme: words derived from the names of mythical creatures.
 
sphinx (sfingks) noun
 
   A mysterious, inscrutable person.
 
[After Sphinx, a winged monster in Greek mythology who had a woman's head and a lion's body. It killed anyone who was not able to answer its riddle. From Greek sphinx (literally, strangler), from sphingein (to bind tight), also the source of the word sphincter.]
 
-Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
 
  "Deborah Jeane Palfrey is unreadable, a sphinx, she covers her mouth
   when she whispers to her attorney to shield against lip readers."
   Monica Hesse; A Slash Of Scarlet in A Gray Court; Washington Post;
   Apr 11, 2008.
 
 
The above entry for ‘Sphinx’ appeared in the AWAD (A Word A Day) email on Wednesday, April 30. 2008. For those not familiar with AWAD, the word for the day is presented (usually based on a theme) along with its pronunciation, meaning, and origin. Next is an example of the word’s usage taken from a newspaper, periodical, or other modern source.
 
Aside from the interesting story surrounding the origin of the word ‘sphinx’, what struck me was the Washington Post quote about Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Known as the DC Madam, a federal court convicted Palfrey in April of money laundering, the conviction coming as the result of running an escort service for the purposes of prostitution, an escort service that catered to well-heeled Washington DC clients.
 
This story quickly took on a new aura and piquancy. The day after this email, on May 1, 2008, Deborah Jeane Palfrey took her own life in Florida. She was free awaiting her sentencing in July, and although she faced 55 years in prison, most expected a prison term of 5 or 6 years.
 
Pictures of Deborah during the trial usually showed an inscrutable face framing the bright red lipstick on her mouth, the “slash of scarlet in a gray court” reference made by the Washington Post above. News-clips showed her outside of court, walking with her mother, Blanche, by her side. Deborah had once served 18 months in prison for prostitution in the early 1990s, and a journalist quoted her as saying she would not allow herself to go back. Observers said Blanche was a steady supporter, and Deborah went to live at her mother’s residence in a Tarpon Springs, Florida mobile home community to rest and await sentencing. While there, she was reserved and private.
 
On May 1, Blanche awoke from a nap and walked about her house searching for her daughter. Looking out a window, she saw that the door of her shed was open and a three-wheel bicycle normally stored within was now parked outside. She walked to the shed and found Deborah dead inside, hanging by the neck from a rope tied to a beam in the roof.
 
More information about the incident emerged from the news media as the days went by. There was the tragic tape of the mother making the 911 call for help. When the dispatcher asked if the daughter was still hanging there, Blanche replied, “Yeah. I can’t get her. I’m 76 years old.”
 
Deborah left three suicide notes, all dated April 25.
 
She addressed one note to her mother, and in it, she despaired of a bleak future and visualized her life after incarceration, fearing “only to come out of prison in my late 50s a broken, penniless, and very much alone woman.”
 
The second note was addressed to her sister. Deborah said in that note she had “no other way out’, and asked her sister to “be strong for mom”.
 
A third note was reportedly left for rescue personnel and carried the instructions, “Do not revive.”
 
Murder conspiracies abound as pundits note her wealthy and socially elite clients had every reason to silence her for good. Yet I defer to the police and their verdict of suicide. It would have been hard for strangers to move through a mobile home park filled with seniors who looked out for one another, and killers would have to subdue her in the house where her mother napped without leaving a trace on the body or the premises. 
 
*****

Every morning during the last week of April, Deborah Jeane Palfrey looked at herself in the bathroom mirror at her mother’s home and answered the riddle posed by the sphinx that gazed back at her from the glass. On May 1, she could no longer answer the riddle, and the strangler demanded her payment.

She left three notes on her nightstand, and looked in at her sleeping mother. Deborah grabbed a length of nylon rope, quietly left the house, and walked to the storage shed. She opened the door and saw a three-wheel bicycle parked in the center of the small hut. Deborah rolled the bicycle outside and returned to the center of the room. She opened a stepladder, and with the rope in her hand, climbed toward the beam above her.