FIVE
On the subject of Viola Bell, Lizzie was utterly ashamed. What excuse could she make? She decided simply to give Viola the fifty dollars next time Jenny had a piano lesson, as recompense for her own appalling behavior. She couldn’t believe she’d hired a young girl to snoop for her; Lizzie wasn’t the sort to do such a thing.
About Jenny her thoughts were more tentative. If only Jenny seemed contented at the Ark, things could be left as they were. Above all, Lizzie must not pick her up only to set her down again. Viola had that quite right. Lizzie needed to be sure she could see it through before she even began.
And there was still the mother to consider. What if Lizzie adopted Jenny, grew to love her like a sister, and then her mother appeared and took her back? What if her mother was colored? How could Jenny go from white to colored with no preparation? Lizzie remembered the story Mrs. Wright had told—how Mrs. Pleasant had passed a tray at a party to which she’d been invited, pretending to be a servant so that no one would feel awkward about her being there. Jenny was already such a proud little girl. She wouldn’t know to do this, and Lizzie didn’t want her learning.
Lizzie meant to look in next on Mrs. Wright, but before she could do so, Minna Graham appeared in the doorway, clapping her hands. “Sam is here, Miss Hayes!” she said. “He wants to say hello to you!”
Sam had become a great favorite with the girls in the kitchen. He delivered Mrs. Pleasant’s baskets with elegance, sweeping his top hat from his head and holding it at his heart. He had a gift for making orphans feel like princesses. It was kinder even than the food he brought. Lizzie excused herself to go see him.
Three of the older girls were still washing up from lunch. An obstinate landscape of creamed potatoes crusted the pots and pans, and the burnt-hair smell of cooked cabbage hung heavily. The kitchen steamed like a greenhouse. Sam stood amidst the dirty dishes, making a pyramid of strawberries. “This here’s for you,” he told the girls in turn, whenever he came upon a perfect one, passing it over. “This one’s a jewel.” On the counter, packed in ice, were five large silver fish with popping eyes.
“How are your headaches, Miss Hayes?” he asked, and sympathized over the recent siege. “I’ll tell Mrs. Pleasant. She’s smart with leaves and pastes. Maybe she’ll have something new to try.”
“Mrs. Pleasant is so good to remember us.” Lizzie said the words around a duplicitous taste in her mouth. Such lovely fruit, such lovely fish. Just when Lizzie had thought to send a spy into the nest.
Sam said Mrs. Pleasant was right as right. Had one of her dizzy spells, her spasmodics as she called them, but bright as a penny now.
“And Mrs. Bell?”
Mrs. Bell was also fine. She didn’t always sleep so good, and sometimes she woke the household, screaming they were all being murdered in their beds, but this hadn’t happened for a couple of weeks and they were all enjoying the rest.
“And Miss Viola Bell?”
Sam flipped one of the sorrowful, pop-eyed fish over with a slap. He turned to Lizzie. “Now, there’s trouble,” he said. He shook his head slowly. “There’s a heap of trouble.”
Last night, he said, just last night, Miss Viola had been thrown from the house. She didn’t get on with Mrs. Bell, and Mrs. Bell was always suspecting Miss Viola snuck around in passageways and spied on people in their bedrooms, as if you couldn’t hear her coming a mile with that heavy foot of hers. But last night it was Mrs. Pleasant found her, snooping around in some papers where she’d no business being. The one thing Mrs. Pleasant couldn’t forgive was snooping.
Scarce an hour later Miss Viola was packed and gone, living at the home of the Boones now, colored friends of Mrs. Pleasant, since Mrs. Pleasant was not the sort to turn a girl out to the street no matter how angry she was. The servants had all been called together and everyone told she was never to be let back in and her name wasn’t Viola Bell anymore, but was Viola Smith, which it always had been, Mrs. Bell said, only they’d all been too nice about it.
Sam was sorrier than he could say, but there were those made better by suffering and those made worse. Miss Viola Bell, Miss Smith, that was, had always been the second, but maybe now she’d be the first. The Boones were nice folks and would be good to her.
In all the horrors of the past few days, this was the worst yet. It demanded an immediate price; Lizzie didn’t have to be a Methodist to see her duty, clear and terrible and unavoidable. She must go to the House of Mystery, where she’d sworn never to go again, and take the blame for Viola’s disgrace. She must do this at once. She could not allow Mrs. Pleasant to throw Viola out over something Lizzie had put her up to. She could not let Viola suffer through one more night in a strange bed.
She blamed her headache, for she wasn’t the sort to snoop and certainly wasn’t the sort to pay someone else to snoop when she was in her right mind. Maybe Mrs. Pleasant, who knew about her headaches, would understand. Maybe she wouldn’t forgive Lizzie, but would forgive Viola, which was all that mattered. Viola had never needed a mother more than she needed one now with Mr. Finney courting her, repenting day and night.
But Lizzie saw her duty more quickly than she did it. She sat in the parlor while working herself up, and by the time she’d finished, Sam was gone. She got her gloves and hat, and took the same walk she’d once made in the dark with little Jenny. She was glad it wasn’t dark. The sun was out, pale as a pearl. The air was damp, and the smell of eucalyptus leaves intense. Lizzie passed beneath, opened the gate, climbed the steps, and knocked with the roaring-lion knocker. She remembered how frightened she’d been the first time she’d done this. Her mind had been a jumble of voodoo curses and headless dolls. She was much more frightened now.
No one came in response to the first knock. She knocked again, with her hand this time. And again. She took off her glove and knocked again.
The door was finally opened, by a blind man in a green butler’s uniform. His hair was wild with gray curls, his nose a drunkard’s blue. His eyes, pale and filmy, remained fixed on a spot just above Lizzie’s right shoulder. No warmth came out through the opened doorway.
“Miss Hayes to see Mrs. Pleasant.” The dark entryway yawned before her. There in the corner was the grandfather clock, ticking loudly, and there in the back, on the newel post at the base of the spiral stairs, the black statue of the naked woman. You couldn’t see that she was naked from this distance, of course. You had to know the family.
“Not in. Are you a reporter?” His words slid up against one another; his accent was Scottish. His “you” was halfway to “ye.”
“No. Of course not. I know Mrs. Pleasant. I’ve been a guest here. And I must speak to her urgently.”
“Not in,” the butler repeated. “And not often in to uninvited callers even when she is in.” He began to close the door.
“Might I see Mrs. Bell?” she asked.
“Not in.”
“Sam, then. Might I speak with Sam?”
“Not in,” the butler said, shutting the door.
Maybe Mrs. Pleasant and Sam were out. But Mrs. Bell was always in. When Lizzie made up her mind to something, it was made up.
She went down the steps. She looked back to check that the butler wasn’t watching—instinct only; a moment later she remembered he was blind—and took the path that led around the enormous house to the back.
A white girl came in answer to her knock on the kitchen door. “I’m looking for Sam,” Lizzie said.
“He’s not here.”
“Or Mrs. Pleasant or Mrs. Bell. Mightn’t I speak with Mrs. Bell?”
The girl was uncertain. She stared at Lizzie, biting her lip. “I’m Miss Hayes,” Lizzie said encouragingly. “I’ve called here before. Mrs. Bell knows me. Just go ask her.”
“Try the front door.”
“No one answers.”
“Wait here,” the girl said finally.
She let Lizzie into the kitchen. Two men and a woman sat at the table. The men were colored, the woman was wh
ite. Someone had been smoking recently. Lizzie could smell it. The stove was out; the room was cold. No one looked at her. They leaned toward one another across the table, murmured a conversation she couldn’t hear. The woman laughed. The counters around the dry-sink were covered with dirty dishes, some so crusted Lizzie didn’t see how they could ever be scrubbed clean. Over the sink was a line hung with dishrags.
Disorder was meant to be a private thing. Lizzie pretended not to see it. She’d forced herself in here. There was no reason she should be made welcome.
The girl returned. “She’s in the drawing room. I’m to take you.”
The house was as dim as always, and as quiet. Muted sunlight came through the glass dome and landed on the coiling snake of a staircase; everything around it was dark. As they passed the library, Lizzie caught a glimpse of the blind butler sitting in a chair, helping himself to Mrs. Bell’s raspberry wine.
They reached the white-and-gold drawing room. “Miss Hayes,” the girl said, and then withdrew.
The curtains were pulled and one lamp lit. “Come, sit with me,” Mrs. Bell said, and Lizzie did so.
Mrs. Bell was in blue, her brown hair pinned into curls in the back, her skin dull with powder. She had an embroidery hoop in her lap, with a violet half-stitched into the cloth. Lizzie had seen and heard enough to know there was no point in pleading here on Viola’s behalf. Those apologies would have to wait for Mrs. Pleasant.
But she could ask about Malina Paillet—ask why Mrs. Bell had chosen to tell her that story; she could pin down the date as much as possible. Then she could go home and check her father’s business ledger. He didn’t enter personal information, but there might be something. More important, there might be nothing. This would help Lizzie set Malina completely aside as a sad story, but nothing to do with her. Lizzie turned her head so she wouldn’t see the stone statues of the begging women.
None of this went as she’d planned. Mrs. Bell opened with one of her startling conversational gambits; there was no recovery. “There are those wish to kill me,” she said, but calmly. “Those who’ve already tried. No one is to get through the door when Mrs. Pleasant is out. Yet in you waltz.”
“Your butler did attempt to stop me,” Lizzie confessed. “I was persistent.”
“Billy?” Mrs. Bell sighed impatiently. “I said it to Mrs. Pleasant, so now we’ve a blind man guarding the door. You think a killer won’t be persistent? A reporter? My mother? A woman come here once, claimed our Muriel had been kicked in the head by a horse. Near to dying. Slid upstairs, smooth as honey while we were all wringing our hands and carrying on. She was going through my desk when Muriel walked in, fit as ever could be.”
“How awful.”
“Reporters are lower than lice. I can’t offer you coffee. I can ring and ring, without anyone coming. When Mrs. P is out, the servants do as they please. Won’t even protect me.”
“Do you know when Mrs. Pleasant will be back? I really must talk with her.”
Mrs. Bell smiled slyly. The tips of her perfect teeth rested on her full bottom lip. “You better not. You better go before she comes. She don’t want surprises.”
“It’s too important.”
As always, Mrs. Bell picked up Lizzie’s hands. The room was cold and Mrs. Bell’s hands colder. Lizzie’s eyes were beginning to adjust to the dark. On the wall was a picture of two cherubs eating sponge cake. It was sweet and sentimental, something Lizzie’s mother would have liked. Here, it didn’t go with the statuary.
“All Mrs. Pleasant’s business is important,” Mrs. Bell said. “She’s out on important business now. The city would fall without her.”
“Do you remember telling me about one of her parties?” Lizzie began, but Mrs. Bell was still talking and didn’t stop to listen.
“I used to have such queer fancies as a child,” she said. “Voices in the wind and water. When I was three months old my mother undressed me and put me on a windowsill in an ice storm. She was a tiger-heart. Might still be looking for me, for all I know. She killed my two brothers.”
“I have a dead brother, too,” Lizzie offered. “He died when he was a baby.”
Mrs. Bell dismissed this. She released Lizzie’s hands, lifted the embroidery hoop, and began to pick at it with the needle. She worked a purple thread loose, which grew longer and longer while the half-formed violet disappeared. “If your mother didn’t kill him, then you don’t know what I’m saying.”
“But I used to have queer fancies about him,” Lizzie insisted. Used to, as if she didn’t still, nearly every day. Who was she to think Mrs. Bell odd? She meant to be congenial, but Mrs. Bell didn’t like it.
“Do you ever think you’re not real?” Now it was a competition.
“Sometimes. Sometimes I’m reading a book and when it ends I believe in the characters more than myself. It doesn’t last very long, but I know the sensation.”
Mrs. Bell shook her head. “You don’t know anything. What I’m saying is, maybe I was supposed to die when I was three months old. That’s why I’ve made no mark. The servants don’t notice me. I’ve nothing that’s my own.”
“You have a husband and children,” Lizzie said. “I wish I had so much as you.”
“All I have is six hundred acres in upper New York.”
A feeling had been growing over Lizzie during this exchange. It rose from the unvarying at-homes of Mrs. Putnam, the endless circling of Mrs. Wright’s memories, but it was strongest with Mrs. Bell in the House of Mystery. These were women under glass. Time had stopped.
Lizzie remembered again, but claustrophobically, her father’s story of Dr. Toland’s dead wife in her glass-topped coffin. What a good idea, in case you weren’t quite dead yet, to leave a window through which you could get someone’s attention. “We don’t have to be the same person our whole lives,” Lizzie said desperately, and then the clock in the hallway struck and the spell was broken.
Mrs. Bell seemed to come to herself, set the embroidery down, patted her hair. “You can probably catch Mrs. Pleasant at the mission,” she suggested politely. “She’s got another charity case out that way, some family she’s feeding. But she likes the mission, she’ll probably stop in after. That woman does love a graveyard. She has one of her own, you know. You can imagine how convenient that’s been over the years.”
They heard the front door open, boots stamping, the voice of a young man calling out. “Mother! Mother!”
Mrs. Bell was on her feet, moving more quickly than Lizzie had thought her capable, and speaking more loudly. “You don’t be coming here, Fred! Billy! Billy! Fred’s trying to get in!”
Clearly, Lizzie’s interview with her had come to an end.
SIX
according to some, Mr. Bell and Mrs. Pleasant were very much in love. They built the House of Mystery to live in together after her husband (and daughter) had died of diseases caused by excessive drink. They mixed assets freely and, after his marriage to Teresa, deeded properties over to her as well. The Bell and Pleasant finances were a Gordian knot no lawyer was ever able to loosen, though for more than thirty years countless numbers of them tried.
In this version of the household, Thomas Bell’s marriage to Teresa was something he was tricked into while drunk, “bibulous” being the adjective most frequently assigned him. During the various estate cases, servants testified that the Octavia Street house was a divided one, quite literally. Mrs. Bell was not to enter Mr. Bell’s half. He would not enter hers. Nor would he ever speak to her. Any communication was to go through Mrs. Pleasant. Mrs. Pleasant and Mrs. Bell, however, were conceded to be very fond of each other.
Yet there were those eight children (two of them dead). Not a one of them hers, Teresa said. Mr. Bell had paid her fifty thousand dollars a child, so Mrs. Pleasant had produced one whenever the women were short of cash.
Thomas Bell died in 1892. Suffering from a flu, he rose in the night, lost his way, and fell into the well of the spiral staircase. “Where am I?” the servants said the
y heard him cry out.
Mrs. Bell was in Glen Ellen at the time, on the Beltane ranch owned by Mrs. Pleasant. Teresa recorded the death in her diary: “Oct. 16 telegraph from S.F. 10:30 about Mr. Bell. Took two Gal Red Wine to Officer for [word indecipherable] Mrs. Bell [a nephew’s wife] and Mrs. Gordon go to town. Telegraph to Mammy 25ck [name indecipherable] 1 gal wine J Bergman 1 gal wine 2 o’clock Mr. Bell died.”
On the day after his death, Mrs. Bell shipped two barrels of apples and one package of cheesecloth, paid some bills, and had some horses shod.
The will was contested by Fred, the oldest boy. He claimed that his mother, the executrix, was incompetent, because she was under the sway of her housekeeper. The court eventually agreed. Judge Coffey ruled that Mrs. Bell and Mrs. Pleasant’s relationship was an inappropriate one for a white woman and a colored woman to have. Mrs. Pleasant’s influence in the Bell household was unnatural, and illegal as well.
Ironically, the friendship had worsened by this time. In 1902, after a noisy row during which the police were called, Mrs. Bell had Mrs. Pleasant evicted. “She passed out the door after her two trunks snarling like a mad dog,” Mrs. Bell wrote in her diary. While Mrs. Pleasant said, “I am glad, very glad to go.”
That same year, Mrs. Pleasant published the first chapter of her memoirs. Included was an analysis of her palm—the palmist H. Jerome Fosselli said she showed a “marvelous ability to read motives”—and also the startling assertion that she had never been a slave. She was born in 1814 in Philadelphia. Her father was an importer of silks, a native Kanaka named Louis Alexander Williams. Her mother was a free “full blooded Louisiana negress.”
A dispute with the editor prevented the promised second installment. Mrs. Pleasant died in 1903.
Teresa Bell died in 1923, leaving an estate whose estimated value was $938,000. Before her death, she’d accused Mary Ellen Pleasant of having murdered an employee named Sam Whittington many years before, and also of killing Thomas Bell by pushing him over the stairs, possibly with Fred Bell’s help. She’d accused Fred of murdering two wives. She’d accused Marie Bell’s husband, Arthur Holman, of murdering Marie. She’d accused her mother of murdering her brothers. Her estate, which left nothing to either Clingans or Bells, was immediately contested by both families on grounds of insanity.
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