by Rhys Bowen
I could tell that Gus didn’t know how to begin.
“Mabel,” I said. “We were so sorry to learn about your parents. What an awful thing to have lived through. It’s no wonder you are having bad dreams. I did too, after my house burned down.”
She turned to look at me, trying to sum up whether my words were genuine.
“Your house burned down too?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Did anyone die? Anyone not get out?”
“Our little servant girl,” I said. “She died protecting my son. It still haunts me. I think I know a little how you feel.”
She sat in silence for a while and then said, “I can’t believe they are gone. I just didn’t believe it when Aunt Minnie told me. I mean, not my papa. How could it be? He was so big and strong. I keep expecting to hear the front door slam and his big voice yelling, ‘Where’s my Princess Mabel?’”
She looked down at her sheet, smoothing it with a tiny white hand. “I keep asking myself how I could get out when he didn’t.”
“You don’t remember getting out?” Gus said. “Maybe there was a fire escape outside your window and not outside theirs?”
She shook her head. “It was the other way around. The fire escape was outside their window, not mine. And I don’t remember anything at all. Not the fire. Not getting out. Nothing, until I woke up and these faces were over me and someone said ‘She’s alive. God be praised.’”
“So how do you think you got out?” Gus asked.
“I’ve no idea. Unless I walked in my sleep.”
“Do you walk in your sleep sometimes?” Gus asked.
“Sometimes. I used to more when I was little. But how could I not have woken up if there was a fire and flames all around me?”
“Mabel, is it possible that you walked in your sleep and…” I started to say, then shut up again. “No, never mind. It’s not important.” I had been going to ask whether she might have knocked over her parents’ oil lamp by accident, or even lit a match, tried to light a fire, and all without knowing it. But I realized as I said it that this was a burden I couldn’t lay on her. She was already carrying enough guilt because she had lived and they had not.
There was another awkward silence that seemed to go on forever.
“Tell me about your mother, Mabel,” Sid said. “You must miss her dreadfully.”
Mabel pressed her lips together and I could tell she was willing herself not to cry. “Mama was so soft and gentle. She always used to braid my hair for me. Aunt Minnie never does it right and she jerks my head with the hairbrush. Mama never did. And she let me come into her room and sleep on the daybed when I had bad dreams.”
“Have you always had bad dreams?” Gus asked.
“I’ve had them sometimes, you know, the way one does. But not like this. These are so vivid and horrible, and when I wake up I don’t know whether I’m awake or asleep, or what is real and what is not.”
“Can you tell me about any of them?” Gus asked.
“It’s hard.” Mabel looked flustered now. “They are so real at the time, but when I try to remember, it’s all so unclear.”
“Tell me about the first one,” Gus said gently. “What is the one thing you remember—the one thing that made you afraid?”
“The snake,” Mabel said firmly. “There is always the snake.”
“You dream of a snake?”
“A giant snake,” Mabel said. “So big that it fills the room and looms over me.”
“What does this snake look like?” Gus asked.
Mabel shuddered. “It’s shiny and it has eyes like slits and it rises up over me, and…”
“Is it red?” Gus asked.
Mabel shook her head. “It’s all black, and I see these eyes looking down at me, and it bends nearer and nearer and…” She stopped, shuddering. “I don’t want to go on,” she said. “It’s too horrible.”
“Does the snake try to bite you?” Gus asked.
“I said I don’t want to go on,” Mabel said, more firmly now.
“I know this is upsetting for you, Mabel, but I am trying to help. So tell me, is the snake always in the nightmares?” Gus asked.
Mabel frowned. Then she said, “I think so. Yes, but I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I can see his eyes. They are just slits, but they glint when he looks at me, as if he is pleased.”
“I would like to help you,” Gus said, “but I can’t unless you describe the dreams in detail to me.”
“No.” She was shaking her head violently. “No. I don’t want to remember.”
“I’m afraid the nightmares will continue until we can decipher what they mean,” Gus said gently. “Usually once we unlock the symbols in such dreams, they go away. You want that, don’t you? You want to be free of them.”
“Yes, but I can’t…”
“I have an idea,” Gus said. “Why don’t you write down what you remember of the dreams, at your leisure, when we’re not here? When you have another dream, write it down as soon as you wake up, when it’s still real and vivid to you. Because, you see, we now think that our dreams are symbols. So any small detail that you can remember may be the key.”
“The key to what?” Mabel asked.
“To what happened on the night of the fire.”
“We know what happened,” Mabel said. “There was a fire. My parents got burned up. I escaped and they didn’t.”
Gus stood up. “We should go now,” she said. “But I’d like to come back again, if I may, to see what you’ve remembered and written down. It might be very helpful, Mabel. I suspect you’ll go on having the dreams until we can figure out what they mean.”
We were about to leave when we heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. Mrs. Hamilton came in, looking rather flustered. “Mabel, dear, you have another visitor,” she said. “I tried to tell him that you weren’t well enough to receive visitors today, but…”
And a big, blond-haired man wearing the New York police uniform pushed past her into the room. He looked absurdly young to be a policeman, like a chubby, overgrown schoolboy.
“Hello, Mabel,” he said. “I’m back again for another little chat. Wanting to see if you’ve anything more to tell me. If your memory has returned.”
He looked around, suddenly taking in the three of us. “Hello, what have we got here?” he said. “Having a little party, are you? And your aunt saying you were too weak to receive visitors.” He smirked. I took an instant dislike to him.
“I think she meant outsiders,” Sid said, glancing across at Mrs. Hamilton. “That doesn’t apply to family and friends.” She went across to him, extending her hand. “I am Elena Goldfarb. Mrs. Hamilton was at Vassar with us. We are old, old friends.”
“Lieutenant Yeats,” the blond man said. “New York police. And I’m glad to see that Mabel is now well enough to receive old, old friends of the family. Being among old friends may well have jogged her memory, eh, Mabel?” He looked from one of us to the next. “So has she decided to confide in any of you what happened on the night of the fire?”
“Lieutenant Yeats,” Mrs. Hamilton said severely. “How many more times do I have to tell you that the child remembers nothing?”
“Conveniently for her, so it would seem,” he said. “So your memory hasn’t returned yet, Mabel? You still don’t know how you came to be lying on the ground, apparently asleep, while your house was burning?”
“I told you, I don’t know.” Mabel’s voice trembled. “Why don’t you believe me? Why do you keep coming back like this? Make him go away, Aunt Minnie.”
“You only upset her,” Mrs. Hamilton said angrily. “After all that she’s been through, do you want her mind to snap completely?”
Gus stepped out between the policeman and the girl. “Officer Yeats,” she said. “I am Augusta Walcott, a friend of the family. I have also just returned from Vienna where I have been studying the problems of the mind with Professor Freud. I can tell you quite categorically that it would not be a
t all unusual for someone to experience complete amnesia after such a traumatic event. If you want Mabel to remember what happened that night, I suggest you let her recover in complete peace and tranquility. In her own time, she may be able to tell us more. But she certainly won’t if she’s being bullied and threatened.”
“Listen,” Yeats said. “I can have her taken down to the Tombs and kept there until her memory returns, if I like.”
“On what charge?” It was my turn to step forward now.
“A charge of arson, ma’am. Setting fire to a house with the intention of doing away with her parents.”
“And what proof do you have of this, other than the fact that she escaped and they didn’t?” I tried to control my anger.
“I don’t need proof,” he said. “Let’s just call it a gut instinct. Oh, and the fact that everyone else in the house, even the ones who escaped, had blackened clothing and faces and singed hair. And Mabel showed no sign of having been in a fire at all. So this leads me to believe that she got out before the fire started. The question then would be why? And how did she know there was going to be a fire?”
I glanced across at Mabel, who was looking away, her eyes screwed tightly shut. I took a deep breath. “I don’t think we should be discussing this in front of the child. We are only causing her more distress. Miss Goldfarb has just told you that she has been studying with leading alienists in Vienna. If anyone can break through the girl’s amnesia, she can. Why don’t we give her time to do her work, and then we might know the truth, rather than stabbing at it in the dark?”
He heard my Irish accent and frowned. “And are you another old friend of the family?”
“Actually no,” I said. “I am an old friend of these two ladies, who invited me to come with them today. They thought I might be useful because my husband is a colleague of yours in the police force.”
“Oh, yes?” There was that hint of a smirk again.
“Captain Sullivan,” I said, and I noticed with great satisfaction that his smirk vanished.
* * *
“What an obnoxious man,” Sid said as we rode home in a cab. “It was all I could do not to hit him.”
“I felt the same way,” I said. “I was so delighted to tell him that my husband was his superior in the police department.”
“That probably saved that child’s bacon,” Sid said. “You heard what that policeman said. He was all ready to haul Mabel off to the Tombs. Such barbaric behavior. One wonders how someone like that ever got promoted to lieutenant.”
“I’m afraid the police department rather rewards aggressive bullying,” I said. “Daniel is one of the exceptions, but then you should see him when he’s dealing with a gang member. He’s quite frightening. I hardly recognize him as my husband.”
“Yes, but Daniel would never bully a frightened child,” Gus said. “The poor little thing is so fragile to start with.”
“Of course he does have a point,” Sid said.
We looked at her sharply.
“Well, if you were in his shoes, you would have to wonder, wouldn’t you? Why was she the only one who showed no signs of having been in the fire?” When we didn’t answer, she continued, “You think she has buried the horror of that night deep in her subconscious, don’t you, Gus? But if she got out before the fire, would she have experienced any horror? She would never have seen her parents burned.”
“Unless something had happened to her parents first,” I said slowly. They both turned to me. “I suppose we have to consider that it’s just possible she did kill her parents, then set their room on fire, exiting down the fire escape outside their window.” I shook my head quickly. “I don’t want to believe that, and I find it hard to believe, but we do need to find out what made her leave the house unscathed by the fire.”
“But she loved her parents,” Gus said. “You could tell from the way she talked about them. Her father called her his Princess Mabel. Her mother braided her hair. She is devastated by their death.”
“What if it was a horrible accident, and she’s dealing with deep-seated guilt?” Sid said. “What if she went into their room and by mistake knocked over a lamp? Then the flames went up between her and the door, so she escaped the only way she could, down the fire escape?”
“Which still doesn’t explain why she didn’t wake her parents and let them escape too,” I said. “If she’d knocked over the lamp she’d have screamed. They’d have awakened. All would have escaped safely, even if the fire couldn’t be extinguished.” I paused, letting them digest this. “No, there’s something not right here. There was a reason her parents burned in their beds. I think it’s possible they were killed first.”
“By Mabel?” Gus asked.
“I hope not, unless she’s got some kind of demonic possession or evil other self, like one reads about in books.”
“Dual personalities are apparently a documented phenomenon,” Gus said.
“So were you able to make anything of her dream, Gus?” Sid asked. “A black snake that filled the room.”
“I’m afraid I’m in the dark about that,” Gus said. “Unless the nameless monster we all have in our dreams takes on the form of a snake for her, and just symbolizes danger.”
“Why did you ask her if the snake was red?” Sid asked.
“Because I thought she might be using it as a symbol for the fire—tongues of red reaching out for her, rising to fill the room. But she was quite definite that it was black. And it had frightening slit eyes that looked down at her.”
“I noticed something interesting,” I interjected. “She said ‘his’ eyes. She talked of the snake as ‘it’ to begin with, but then she made it masculine.”
“That is interesting,” Gus said. “Let’s hope she is able to write down more details of future nightmares. I feel very strongly that they may unlock the mystery for us.”
“Professor Freud would probably say that the snake was a symbol of masculinity,” Sid commented. “That dreaming of a snake was normal at the time of puberty.”
“He probably would say that,” Gus agreed. “But Mabel wouldn’t be terrified by it unless she had reason to fear her awakening sexuality. And we know she’s been sheltered.”
“There is always her father,” Sid said.
There was a sudden silence in the cab, and the rhythmic clip-clop of the horse’s hoofs sounded unnaturally loud.
“You don’t think her father tried to…” I said, not able to finish the sentence.
“It does happen,” Gus replied.
“So he tried to interfere with her and she killed him?” Even as I said the words I dismissed them in my own mind. Mabel had loved her father; that much was evident. There had been no hesitation when she spoke of either of her parents. It struck me that we were looking for an unknown factor, but at this moment I had no idea what it was.
Fourteen
By the time we reached home my ribs were aching from the constant jolting over cobbles. My mother-in-law took one look at me and ordered me up to bed.
“I told you it was too soon for you to be running around,” she said. “The only thing that can heal ribs is rest. Now, you go and lie down and I’ll bring you up some of the soup I’ve just made.”
For once I allowed myself to be bossed like this.
“Where is Liam?” I asked as I hauled myself up the stairs. “Has he been good?”
“Like a little angel. He’s just fallen asleep, but Bridie’s been amusing him all morning, and you should hear him laughing and cooing. It delights the heart to hear such sounds. He needs company, now that he’s growing up. It’s time you gave him a little brother or sister and stopped running around with those women across the street.”
“He’s only a year old,” I said.
“That’s right. Eighteen months between babies is ideal, that’s what they always used to say, and you’re already running a bit late on that.”
I almost asked why she was giving me advice on going forth and being fruitful when she
had only managed to produce one child herself. But I remembered Daniel had said it was a sore subject for her, and she didn’t like to talk about it.
“Your friends across the street,” she said, following me into the bedroom and peering out of the window. “No doubt they are still into championing votes for women and that kind of thing.”
“Yes, they are,” I replied.
She sniffed, then gave me a long hard stare. “I’m wondering if your friendship with them may not be the best thing for your husband’s career.”
“What on earth has our friendship got to do with Daniel?” I demanded.
“If he were to run for office some day, such a friendship could well be held against him.”
“But Sid and Gus are wonderful people. They are kind, and caring, and amusing, and cultured. You couldn’t want for better friends,” I said, trying to check my rising anger.
She patted my hand. “You’ve led a sheltered life, my dear, and you probably don’t realize the full implications, but such friendships are not natural. When I was young, romantic friendships among young women were accepted, even encouraged. But that was only until a suitable match could be made. Two women living together like that … it’s just not right. What will your children think, when they are old enough to notice?”
“They’ll think that Auntie Sid and Auntie Gus seem to have a lot of fun at their house,” I said. “Which is what I think too. And if they choose not to marry, that’s up to them.” I sat on the bed and started to unbutton my shirtwaist. “You mentioned something about soup?” I added, closing the conversation.
I got up after a long nap and had tea in the kitchen. Sid and Gus were not mentioned again. I knew that Daniel was not thrilled about my association with them, but this was one area where I chose to ignore all criticism. Sid and Gus were my dear friends, and that was all that mattered.
Being Friday, Mother Sullivan cooked cod with a white sauce for dinner, and miraculously Daniel arrived home in time to join us. It seemed that having his mother here was a good influence on him.
