by Lia Matera
And the dying woman’s screams told Ella what she’d done about it.
“Where are … the children?” Mrs. K had asked, and she’d replied, “Mr. Kingston came and took them.”
Mrs. K knew her husband was dead. What else could her shrieks mean?
Mrs. K had struck what she’d thought was a death blow to him, and then she’d fetched the wagon men, or sent Charles to do it. Ella had thought Mr. K bribed the men to take Charles. She’d thought so because a rich man could buy any service from poor men. But it was the wealth that mattered, not the gender. The wagon men would show as little worry about taking the missus’s orders as her husband’s, so long as the price was right. Where was the risk in hauling away a body, even one that wasn’t completely dead, for a woman whose neighbors were named Roosevelt and Taft and Harding?
Ella nearly stumbled as she raced down the grand staircase.
She remembered the divot on the third floor landing. A strongbox full of coins, dropped so its corner hit first, would cut into wood, some coins spilling out. Cook had found a few, Ella another.
Her skin crawled when she realized the reddish stain in the divot must be Mr. Kingston’s blood. Had Mrs. K struck him with the metal box, thrown it at him? Given it to Charles afterward to buy his silence? Charles would have dashed from her third floor suite to the servants’ stair. In a hurry to leave with his blood money—enough to buy whores ten nights a month—he must have let the box slip.
Before Ella reached the front door, she caught sight of herself in the entryway mirror. She had never seen herself in an expensive suit before, in a blouse with Belgian lace at the collar. She had never carried a fine wool coat over her arm. But she hated every stitch of it. Every perfect seam and fine designer flourish seemed to cry, “Where are … the children?”
“I sneaked out and brought back the flu,” she said to her reflection in the mirror. She looked like any young Italian girl, curly haired and dark-eyed, not like somebody who’d killed nearly everyone in her household. “The children. Cook and Maid. I brought the plague through the gate, and it killed them.” She’d killed Mr. K, too, in a way. Mrs. K wouldn’t have lost her reason, wouldn’t have attacked him, if she’d known the truth. If she’d known it was Ella, not he, who’d brought home the infection.
And now, Ella had compounded this terrible thing. She had let the sick woman know her babies were dead. “Where are … the children?” “Mr. Kingston came and took them.”
She heard more wailing upstairs, crazed and tortured. It was the sound of a woman who’d killed someone close to her. It was all Ella could do not to scream, too, and for the same reason.
With shaking hands, she reached up and undid the clasp of the locket that held the children’s picture. She had killed John and Muriel and Annie’s parents. She didn’t deserve to wear their image around her neck.
Ella kissed the locket before leaving it on the table under the mirror.
Champawat
Champawat continues the story of “The Children.” It was first published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Sept/Oct 2012. It placed third in the vote for the 2012 EQMM Readers Award.
Part One
Ella jerked awake. Her forehead, pressed against the train window, was cold with sweat. For two days, she’d been having the same nightmare. She was lying on the snow-dusted sidewalk, looking up at the Kingstons’ windows. She kept trying to shout to them, to defy them with her survival. They were sure she’d finish dying before the wagon came. Why sit listening for the clatter of horseshoes? Even on their street of fine rowhouses, it might be dawn before the sheet-wrapped bodies were collected. The wagons filled faster every night, more and more of them rattling out of Washington to mass graves in Virginia. There were no coffins left and no plots in the cemeteries. Funerals, like all public gatherings, were banned by order of the mayor. They’d furled Ella into bed linens from the mending pile, hadn’t they? She was only a servant, after all.
For six hundred miles, Ella tried to stop reliving that night. She tried to focus on the scenery—forest and flatland glittering under frost, Pittsburgh, Akron, Cleveland spiked with girders of new buildings. But on every platform of every train station, some paper boy, cotton mask over his nose and mouth, waved the latest edition. Two hundred newly dead in one city, a thousand in the next, then four thousand, five thousand. The Philadelphia Inquirer screamed 50,000 Sick of Spanish Flu, 12,000 Perish.
Now the train was pulling into Chicago, where Ella would transfer to another terminal. People around her were getting up and gathering their things. But she had only what she wore, a travelling suit and coat from Mrs. Kingston’s tallboy, and the contents of her pockets. So she stayed in her seat, watching the station’s bricks and arches come into view.
She noticed three men standing on the frozen mud beside the tracks. They were a few steps from a platform that eventually disappeared into the terminal tunnel. They were well-dressed and hatless, puffs of breath visible as they talked. When her window passed closer to them, she felt a shiver of paranoia. They stood with chests out and heads high, every gesture self-pleased and full of swagger. In her experience, when men looked like they owned the whole world, they had badges and guns to justify it. Were these law men? She twisted in her seat, looking for—and seeing, she thought—the bulge of shoulder holsters under their jackets. Was railroad security preparing to come aboard? They’d been rousting draft-dodgers and Reds since the war began. And Ella had no papers. The Kingstons had burned her things in case sickness clung to them.
She’d gone to them two years ago with little enough—a few dresses and books, her precious letters from Nicky. But she’d left with nothing. Nothing of her own but guilt: she’d brought home the flu that killed them all. Muriel Kingston, only six years old. Eight-year old John. Baby Annie. The cook, the maid—kind women who risked their health to nurse her after she survived that night outside.
Her hand slid into the pocket of her—that is, Mrs. Kingston’s—suit jacket. She’d needed money to get back home, to rent a small apartment there and recover in body if not in spirit. Her fingers closed over the cold facets of diamonds and rubies, the smooth gold of their settings. It wasn’t as if Mrs. Kingston would ever wear her jewelry again.
That wouldn’t matter to the police. If Ella couldn’t show identification, they’d search her. Every day headlines screamed that Bolsheviks from Russia were here to foment revolution. Not long ago, a girl Ella’s age—just nineteen—was pulled from a Chicago train, her carpetbag filled with dynamite. Aliens under suspicion were put straight onto boats “home” even if, like Ella, they’d arrived as babes in arms. And if she gave a false (not foreign-sounding) surname, her pocketful of rings and brooches might mean years at hard labor. Who’d believe they rightfully belonged to a young woman without protectors or even luggage?
She grabbed her coat from the seat beside her and hurried toward the back. She kept her eyes on the windows, on the three men at platform’s end. The train was moving at a crawl now. She was able to keep pace, keep watching, by pushing through one compartment after another.
The train came to a full stop as she reached the last passenger car. Dodging the elbows of people straightening their hats and cotton masks, she took a window seat. She angled for a better look at the men outside. There was a glint of nickel on the lapel of the tallest. He was ginger-haired and broad-shouldered. When he turned to point to the back of the train, she saw he wore a large six-pointed star. A U.S. Marshal.
Ella felt as if the flu, having noticed her edging toward health, suddenly yanked her back. Her face went hot, her stomach jumped, it was a struggle to breathe. The marshal waved toward the front of the train. The other men nodded, one climbing to the platform while the other started over muddy sleet to the mail cars.
Seeing the aisle was clear now, she hurried to a tiny bathroom. She closed the door and leaned against it. Whatever or whomever the marshals were lo
oking for, if they searched her, she was ruined. Hands shaking, she spread toilet tissue in the small sink and emptied her pocket into it. She broke one hairpin and twisted another prying open gold prongs. She released two large diamonds and an emerald from their settings. Other pieces were smaller and more common—teardrop ruby earrings, a fire opal stick-pin, pearl studs. She pulled a thread in the hem of her (or rather, Mrs. Kingston’s) blouse and worked the gems and jewelry into it. Her hands shook as she pulled the tissue around the larger more distinctive settings. Then, ignoring a sign asking people not to flush while in the station, she sent the small bundle through the Hopper toilet’s opening to the tracks. When her foot came off the lever, she heard footsteps stop at the other side of the door.
She froze, feeling hunted. She remembered stories Nicky used to love. When he was in his early teens and she was a little girl, he spent hours telling her about tigers. Newspapers then were full of articles about man-eaters, how they stalked villagers by following from a distance of ten or twenty feet, blending invisibly into the jungle. Their huge feet, Nicky said, were as silent as clouds across the sky.
When she opened the door, she found herself face to face with the marshal who’d gestured his men to go forward and back. His ginger hair was exactly the shade of tiger fur. He blocked the aisle between her and the seat where (she realized) she’d left her coat.
She drew herself to her full height, such as it was, striving for the look of chilly indignation Mrs. Kingston used to wear in public. But it was a challenge even to appear calm. U.S. Marshals were the enforcement arm of the Justice Department, the anti-sedition police who rounded up aliens like Ella, draft dodgers like Nicky, and anarchists like their friends.
This one wasn’t wearing his star anymore. And there was no bulge, nor anything in the way he held his arm, to hint at a holstered gun. Did he hand it off to his deputies before boarding? To pretend he was a passenger?
“Sorry to disturb you,” he said. “I hope you’re well? There’ve been quite a few cases of the flu between Washington and Chicago.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“No, just … a good Samaritan, if you need one, Miss. Are you getting off here, waiting for a porter to help with your luggage?”
“No.” She realized her tickets—nearly ninety dollars worth—were in her coat. Had he seen them there, had he looked through her pockets? She’d have to be careful not to lie (but not to name a town, either) if he asked her destination.
“If you’re catching the transfer train to Grand Central or North Western, it’s been delayed. A porter just told me. They’ve left the dining car open for anyone who wants to wait here.”
“I see.” Mrs. Kingston’s tone would have ordered him to step aside, but Ella couldn’t duplicate it. She wasn’t in the habit of being obeyed.
The man was giving her an appraising look instead of letting her pass. It was bolder than the looks men gave Mrs. K. Was it so apparent, even in clothes taken from a rich woman’s tallboy, that Ella was rabble?
“Say, though, I know you, don’t I?” The marshal smiled, showing good teeth and a single dimple. “Did you board in Washington?”
She thought again of the tickets in her coat pocket. “You, too?” If he said yes, perhaps she’d see a tic or squint and know it when he lied again.
“Actually, I think I saw you walking past a friend’s house there.” He gave her another head-to-toe look. “Or rather, the little girl who lives there saw the children who were with you. I don’t remember their names, but I heard about them in some detail—prowess at jump rope, if they’d tried ice cream inside of cones yet. That sort of thing. My friend’s daughter is at the age where she thinks whatever interests her must interest everyone.”
“Maybe we’re all that age,” Ella said.
The man laughed. “Yes, I am proving it at the moment, aren’t I? You were with a girl Mary’s size and a boy a little older, I think. I was more taken up in watching their … sister, are you?” He showed his dimple again.
If she didn’t know he was a marshal, she might believe he’d seen her walking with Muriel and John. Anyone might have spotted them on their frequent meanders to Rock Creek or the zoo.
But that wouldn’t include a marshal from Chicago. Her stomach knotted around the fact. What did it mean?
“Children and dogs always notice each other, whatever else is going on,” Ella managed. She’d never again get dragged across a street by John or laugh at Muriel’s excited chatter. She’d never again pry baby Annie’s sticky fingers from her hair.
“Do you know my friends, the Palmers, on R Street?” he asked. Ella tried not to show her shock. The Kingstons lived a block from them. “They have a sweet girl, Mary. Well, a wild girl,” he spoke it like a compliment, “but I don’t doubt she’ll be sweet someday.”
Ella knew little Mary Palmer, all right. She’d done all she could, in timing the children’s outings, to make sure Muriel didn’t befriend the pie-faced daughter of the Alien Property Custodian. She hated the man who, with the war as his excuse, robbed immigrants of their factories and patents, handing them to political cronies.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t know anyone on that street.”
How did he come to bring up R Street at all? It couldn’t be a coincidence, and it might be a disaster.
The marshal didn’t move. He seemed to expect more. In a panic to say anything, she added, “I’m at school, I don’t get out much.”
“School in the District?”
Perhaps if she wasn’t cornered, she could think. Mrs. K would never have let a strange man trap her in the aisle of a train. But Ella didn’t know how to get past him without answering.
She nearly said Howard University because she’d strolled its campus once. Her olive skin and thick head of curls, some escaping the coil at her neckline, might let her pass for mixed race. But Mrs. Kingston’s expensive suit might not. It seemed less risky, in this finery, to say, “Georgetown.”
A hint of smugness on the marshal’s face made her realize she’d admitted to living, not just boarding a train, in Washington.
“Really? And what do you study?”
Would he quiz her to see if she was lying? Just in case, she said, “American history.”
Her studies were buttressed (sometimes corrected) at the Anarchist Hall. It was the immigrants’ social club and night school. They’d seen plays about the labor movement, the Constitution, abolition. They’d heard speakers like Luigi Galleani, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger. They’d discussed books and philosophy, they’d laughed and eaten and sung union songs. These days, though, it was as dangerous to wish for utopia as it was to call for insurrection. First the Hall was torched by vigilantes. (That’s when Nicky insisted she find a job far away.) Then the war started, and so did the arrests and deportations.
“American history? Good college for it,” he said.
“Yes.” Ella had read that Georgetown charged $600 tuition. That was more than she would ever earn in a year.
She jittered to step past this man, but she forced herself to stillness. There’s a tiger in India, Nicky once told her, in a place called Champawat. It will track villagers for mile after mile. Invisible in the jungle, barely rustling the leaves. Taking its time, only ten or twenty feet away, waiting to pounce. Unless a person runs. Tigers are like alley cats that way, Ella. You’ve seen how a cat will just watch a mouse … until it tries to get away. Then instinct makes it chase. And kill.
“History,” the man repeated. “Yes, that’s grand. You know who Mitchell Palmer is, then, my friend on R Street? He works for President Wilson, though not where the President first intended. He was first asked to be Secretary of War. Turned that down, though.”
What did it mean that he kept bringing up Palmer and R Street? Even if it was true this marshal had noticed her walking past, he’d have seen a girl in a cheap, usually mud-spattere
d, suit. On Sundays, Palmer’s neighbors might stroll to display the family in full regalia. But no one dressed as Ella was now, no rich woman like Mrs. K, ever staggered home from the river with a jar full of pollywogs and a sleeping child on piggyback.
No, he was trying to get confirmation that Ella lived there. That she was the person he was on this train to find.
Had a relative of Mrs. Kingston’s noticed the missing jewelry? Sent the police to check the train station, to see if any servant purchased a ticket?
If so, why not just ask Ella for identification, why not just detain and search her? His pretense was terrifying her.
“I’m a rude lout, though, to keep you standing.” He backed up to let her pass.
Her hand went of its own accord to her skirt, to the spot where the tucked-in hem of her blouse was threaded with the stolen jewels. She held them tight against herself while she skimmed past him. She found her wrapover and sat in that row by the window. She pulled the coat to the middle space and turned away to show she was done conversing.
To her chagrin, the man sank into the aisle seat. “Pardon me for saying so, but you look a bit peaked. Would you like some water? I can send a porter to get some.”
She shook her head.
“You’re not wearing a mask like so many on the train. You’ve had the flu already, I guess? Perhaps recently? It’s left you pale.”
“I’m all right,” she said.
“Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that you look— Only that after so long a train ride … But let me not remove one foot from my mouth to insert the other. I’ve had the flu myself. It got hold of me in Philly,” he said, “the week it took five thousand there. Did you lose anyone to it?”
She thought again of her fellow servants, of the children. She’d used Cook’s money to pay the wagon men to take away their bodies. Then she’d left Mrs. K alone in the house, bleeding through her tear ducts, her face the color of old liver. Ella had tried to make her comfortable. She’d done all she could to keep it from her, about Muriel and John and baby Annie. But when the dying woman realized the truth, there’d been no helping her.
