The Lady in Residence

by Allison Pittman

  “It is not my generosity, I assure you.”

  “Then, I suppose the owner?”

  “The owner is away on extended business, not expected to return until summer, at which time I am certain to lose my job. No, Mrs. Krause, it is not so much a matter of generosity as practicality. Better to keep you here than to have you in jail where you might speak with the press and sully the name of this property.”

  “I would never—”

  “Perhaps not, but I am unwilling to take that chance. Rest assured, if word of that ridiculous tale comes to life in print, you will have spent your last moments under our hospitality.”

  “I understand completely, Mr. Sylvan. I want the truth to come out, even if only to the two of us.”

  He lifted the left side of his moustache in response.

  “And,” I pursued, “I truly am grateful. I hope—I intend—to pay my debt one day.”

  “Again, it is not I you should thank. Had I any power in the situation, I would have had you taken down the street and jailed that very night. Such carryings on. Ghosts and shrieks.”

  “There is a ghost, Mr. Sylvan. Your own staff told me—”

  “Nonsense. Superstitious babble. All the more reason to bid you farewell, but you can thank your friend Detective Carmichael for your current accommodations.”

  “Detective Carmichael?”

  “He is nothing if not a persuasive man.”

  That persuasive man came to visit me that evening, the first I’d seen him since he knelt beside me by the fire. Though barely seven o’clock, it was dark. Two raps on my door, and I opened it to find one of the messenger boys with a note. I recognized the handwriting at once, inviting me to meet him in the Menger Bar and join him for supper. I say “invite,” though the tone left no doubt it was a summons written on a scrap torn from his notebook. I recognized the paper, the color of a not-quite-ripe peach.

  I was still dressed and respectable, but I lingered in my room a good fifteen minutes so he wouldn’t think he could expect me at the drop of a hat. There were quite a few patrons in the bar, and Bert gave me a nod in the direction of the booth in the back corner, where we sat that first evening.

  Carmichael stood as I approached. “Good evening, Mrs. Krause.”

  I returned his greeting and took a seat on the opposite bench. “This is a surprise.”

  “Not unwelcome?”

  “Not yet.” I noticed a train case on the seat next to him and a spot of coal dust on his collar. “You’ve come straight from the station?”

  “I have. And I’m starving. Stopped in here for a drink, and Bert offered to make up something for me.” He looked aside and began rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “And here it is.”

  Bert, looking for all the world like one of the dining room waiters with a towel draped over his forearm, approached with a steaming plate of chopped steak cooked with onions and peppers, and a stream of fried potatoes on the side.

  “My man,” Carmichael said. “You cooked this yourself?”

  “Sometimes they let me fire up the stove in the back,” he said with a modest smile.

  I absorbed the scent and the steam of the food with such obvious desire that Carmichael asked if I wanted a bite, going so far as to offer me his fork.

  “No, thank you,” I demurred. “I’ve already had a light supper.”

  “I can make you a small plate of your own,” Bert said. “Got some left on the stove.”

  My stomach guided my words. “Well, I wouldn’t want it to go to waste. You can put it on Mr. Carmichael’s tab, since he insists I join him here.”

  Carmichael politely left his food untouched while we waited for Bert to arrive with mine. We chatted about the train, the luxuries of such travel, and the drawbacks, though neither of us had ever traveled extensively any other way.

  “I wouldn’t have lasted five days on a wagon train,” he said, digging into his food as soon as I’d taken my first, savoring bite. “I don’t hunt, never built a fire without wasting a handful of matches, and I hate horses.”

  I laughed. “Nobody hates horses.”

  “I do. Big, stupid animals, and I cannot wait for the motorcar to run them all off the streets and back to the farms where they belong.”

  “You don’t see the motorcar as a passing fancy? Some kind of giant toy?”

  “Have you ever driven one?”

  I clutched at my blouse as if offended. “Never. Why, just riding in one is terrifying enough.”

  He took a bite of his food and chewed thoughtfully. “Not even when you were in Tennessee?”

  I stared at my plate, collecting my thoughts, my appetite not the least diminished. Still, I left my food untouched and looked straight into his eyes, meeting his challenge without response.

  “There is no marriage certificate filed in your name in Tennessee.”

  “No.” I held a forkful aloft. “I don’t suppose there is.” Then I filled my mouth with the savory taste of a small victory.

  “Which means your name is false, you were never married in Tennessee, or you were never married at all. Which is it, Mrs. Krause?”

  “How does any of this help solve the crime that was committed against me?”

  “It helps me establish whether there was any crime at all.”

  “You know there was.”

  “Forgive me, but three days going through records in Nashville makes it difficult to believe you.”

  I pointed to my band. “I was married.”

  “That answers two of my three theories.”

  “Why should I make your job easier?”

  “It’s not my job.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I resigned from the force weeks ago. In fact, the night of your adventure? That was my last night on duty.”

  “So why are you pestering me?”

  He laughed, a sound that began and ended with a great inhalation through his nose. “I was accepted to train with the Bureau of Investigation. I’m due in Washington at the first of May. So, now I’m just entertaining myself.”

  “Entertaining?”

  “I find you highly entertaining, Mrs. Krause. And it’s an interesting bit to investigate. I asked the police chief if I could keep at it until I left. Keep myself busy.”

  I could feel rage threatening to spoil my delicious supper and fought to express it through a superior disdain. “So, I am a hobby?”

  “I suppose you could say that. My favorite one at the moment.” Never would I have thought to describe Irvin Carmichael, a solid wall of a man, as boyish, yet there he was, with a grin that could only be described as playful. “I volunteered to work the case in an unofficial capacity. I have eyes on every local pawn shop, ready to answer back on anything matching your description of the missing pieces. Plus”—here his face settled into a more serious expression—“it gives me a reason to see you. To invite you to supper, to give you an update.”

  “You could do all of that without going to Tennessee.”

  “I’m working with two things, Hedda Krause. My heart and my head. My heart took me to have a conversation with every lowlife crook in this town and tell him to keep his eyes open. Because I want to help you. My head took me to Tennessee.”

  He spoke so simply, as if he hadn’t just declared some sort of love for me. I felt the same battle—my heart and my head, though I’d learned well how to discipline both. I stabbed my last potato and ate in silence.

  “I know there’s something, Hedda. I don’t have a single bit of authority right now. I’m just a man.”

  “And what do you want from me?”

  “Answers.”

  “You won’t get any. I don’t talk about my past.”

  He moved his plate to the edge of the table, mine too, and stacked our forks on top of both. A good son, he was, raised in a family and expected to do his part. With the dishes cleared between us, he reached across the table and took my hands in his. My first instinct was to pull away, but he held the
m strong. I glanced over at Bert, who offered a small smile of approval before refilling a glass for a patron at the bar. So I gave myself over, and for a stretch of time I could never measure, he held my hands, softly, his thumb stroking the hollow between my thumb and my wrist. Neither of us spoke. It was the same touch I shared with Bert months ago, the first night I heard Sallie White’s voice. Then it had soothed me. Lulled me. Carmichael ignited just the opposite.

  “Do you talk about your future, Hedda?”

  Any other man, the smattering of suitors and admirers I’d enjoyed since my widowhood, would have received a flirtatious challenge, but my tongue remained still. I could hear my heart beating, the rush of my pulse in my ears.

  “All right then.” He took his hands away, and I could have chased them across the table. “Before I go, I have a gift for you.” He reached into the train case on the seat beside him and took out a book. “I realize I never answered your question about whether or not I read. I do, as a matter of fact. But I never cared for Little Dorrit. Too convoluted and sentimental. This is my favorite Dickens.”

  I read the title stamped into the cover. “Great Expectations.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “I have not.” The cover was a rich brown leather. A quality book, an expensive book. “I never went to school, Mr. Carmichael. I taught myself to read when I was twelve.”

  “It’s a good story,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Lots of secrets and revenge.”

  My coquette returned. “Do you think I am a woman of secrets?”

  “I do.”

  “And revenge?”

  “I hope not.”

  Bert came to collect our dishes and the dollar Carmichael tucked under them.

  “I kissed him once,” I said as he walked away. “The first night Sallie came to me, and I was so frightened. He kissed me.” I touched my lips. “Does that bother you?”

  “No.”

  It was such a swift and solid answer that I believed him completely.

  Days later, Carmichael kissed me. It was a moonless night after a long walk during which we talked about Billy the Kid (his boyhood hero) and whether justice is ever truly served without an arrest and a trial and a jury before an execution.

  “Sallie White’s murder saw no justice at all,” I said. “She died right here, you know. Rather, she was killed here. It took days for her to die.”

  He took off his gloves, put them in his pocket, and laid his warm palms against my cold cheeks, his thumbs pressed against my temples.

  “If I could work one bit of magic, my sweet Hedda, it would be to take the thoughts and the stories of that woman out of your mind. She was a poor soul who died a wretched death. But here you are, with warm blood running through you and a full life stretched ahead.”

  His face was so close to mine and the light so dim that the freckles merged. I could smell his last cigarette on his breath, and then I was tasting it as his mouth found mine.

  Make no mistake, I had kissed many men in my life, most of them little more than vile intrusions. Carmichael’s kiss scattered them all and left me feeling much like a girl experiencing her first. I did not respond immediately, only allowed his lips to make the slightest movement against mine. His hold was tenuous, his hands little more than poised along my face. My own hung limp and heavy at my side. I don’t believe I fully felt his touch, his kiss, until the moment came when he meant to take it away. His lips once more motionless against mine, the cold air on my skin where his strong, warm palm had been. And so I gripped his elbow, holding his arm in place, and went to my toes, chasing up his kiss, and in that tiniest of moments, everything broke between us. He caught me around my waist. I wrapped my arms around his neck. (Later he would laugh about the similarity of circumference in the two.) He lifted me off my feet and spun until I felt the Menger’s wall at my back and the wall of himself crushed against me. For a morbid second I thought of Henry Wheeler and Sallie White. How he had held her in almost this same place. But where Henry held Sallie’s throat, Carmichael held my heart. We breathed life into each other.

  We were inseparable from that point, as inseparable as our situation would allow. Sometimes he squired me around the city, taking me into this restaurant or that, where we would be given a jovial greeting in lieu of a check. My favorite times were when we visited a humble home of one of the many people he had helped over time and were fed a meal straight from the stove: mashed beans wrapped in soft tortillas, or stews infused with magical spices. Here, to my surprise, this freckle-faced Scot would rattle off entire conversations in Spanish, reassuring me that most of it was a commentary on my beauty and style.

  One day he rented an automobile, and we drove out east of the city. It was a sharp, cold day, far too cold for a drive, but we marshaled on, turning onto a property once Carmichael sighted a dilapidated barn not far off.

  He brought the car to a stop in the untended field, and chilly as the day was, I got out of the automobile, if only for a chance to clear my head and stretch my legs, not wanting him to know about the fear that unnerved me despite his calm, capable hands. Once outside, he produced from his satchel one of those small Brownie box cameras and suggested we commemorate the day. I posed eagerly for him, leaning against the car for some silly pictures, and finally wheedled and whined enough for him to pose exactly once for me. When my cheeks were nearly numb with cold, I climbed inside the car again, this time behind the wheel, to pose as if I were driving, but finally had to admit I was chilled to the bone. He came to the open door; my teeth chattered against his kiss.

  “There’s a perfectly fine barn over there,” he said against my ear. “We can go inside. Warm up a bit.”

  I mentioned the missing slats and damaged roof. “It won’t be much warmer in there.”

  But he kissed me, and as the warmth of the sunlight did its job now that we were stopped and still, his intent became clear. I pushed back, planting my palms on his massive shoulders. “Mr. Carmichael, surely you don’t think I’m the kind of lady you can toss down on a haystack, do you?”

  He said nothing, only handed me down. No sooner had my boots touched the hard-packed earth, than he swept me up in his arms, carrying me the scant distance to an entrance around the side, where a door was partially open. He nudged it with his shoulder and carried me across the threshold.

  Inside, the barn smelled surprisingly sweet, and as my eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness, an even sweeter tableau took shape. Rather than being covered with straw and debris and rusted tools, the floor was swept clean—as clean as a barn floor can get—and patterned with stripes of sunlight. Off in a corner, a quilt stretched on the floor along with two cushions, and a picnic hamper.

  “When did you do this?” I giggled, yes—giggled, like a girl—and stepped in a wide, slow circle, taking in this ghost of a building as if it held the splendor of the Menger herself. “Is a farmer going to come in wielding a pitchfork to chase us off his land?”

  “I will always protect you, Hedda.” His voice filled the space, mending the walls and the roof and all the broken places. “You will always be safe with me.”

  Later, much later, the car returned to its garage, we walked the final blocks home, my arm tucked in his, something to which we had become very much accustomed. He asked me again if I liked—if I truly enjoyed—his famous beef paste sandwiches, and I assured him that of all the beef paste sandwiches I had ever eaten in my life, his were the most delicious.

  When we arrived at the ornate door of the hotel, we stopped. Suddenly, to walk inside as I’d been doing all of these months felt like an act so unnatural as to be ludicrous. For Carmichael and I to part from each other after an entire day spent drifting between quiet and conversation, never having more than an arm’s length of space between us, seemed like a new layer of cruelty.

  He took my hand and brought it to his lips, a gesture that would appear quaint and subdued to any passerby. But his eyes burned into mine, and when he spoke, his words carried no such
innocence.

  “I live not a quarter of a mile from here, Hedda.”

  “I cannot, Irvin. You must understand that.”

  He dropped my hand, took a cigarette out of his pocket, and lit it with a match struck against the wall. His face glowed in the flame’s light and the cigarette bobbed as he spoke. “I’m going to be gone for a few days.”

  Instantly, I was cold. Ice cold, the heat of the day forgotten. “You don’t have to.”

  “Why? Because you’ll tell me the truth here? Tonight? Introduce me to the woman I’m in love with?” At some point, he’d gripped my arm, dropping it the moment I winced at the pain. “God forgive me, Hedda. I’m sorry.”

  My throat burned with tears. “Don’t say that.”

  “Don’t say what? That I love you? Believe me, Hedda—if that’s even your name—I wish I didn’t. But God help me, I do.”

  Twice in a minute he’d called on God—for help and for forgiveness. How I hated that I’d brought him to that place.

  “Then don’t go.” I felt the tears on my cheeks, and I gripped him, though he shrugged me off before my fingers could find their purchase.

  He blew a puff of smoke over my head. “What am I going to find?”

  I stood, anchored. “You’ve already made it a point of not believing me. Go and see what you’ll learn for yourself.”

  Without another word, without waiting for him to open the door, I strode inside. The usually welcoming warmth of the lobby seemed stifling, its ornate beauty like an overeaten sweet. Even though the hour was late, Mr. Sylvan stood behind the desk, and given the straightforward stride he made in my direction, I knew he had been waiting for my return.

  In just a few minutes hence, I would behold myself in the mirror above my bureau. My hair tousled, my cheeks and nose red from cold, my lips swollen from a thousand kisses, my dress wrinkled beyond decency. My eyes empty of hope. But before that, the two of us well out of earshot of the hotel’s less pitiful guests, Mr. Sylvan leaned close.

  “Had you delayed one half hour more, Mrs. Krause, you would have returned to find your belongings on the sidewalk waiting for you. I will not have you flaunt your affairs at the expense of this establishment. Our generosity to you is beyond compare, and I promise you this: I might not roust you out like the bum that you are, but walk out of these doors again, and I will bar you from coming back.”