by Rhys Bowen
“Oh, no,” I protested, feeling myself blushing. “I used to have a small detective agency before I married, that’s all.”
“And presumably had to give it up the moment you said, ‘I do,’” one of them commented. “How typical.”
“Well, in my case it was a necessity,” I said. “My husband is a senior detective with the New York police. It would not have been acceptable to have a wife in the same line of business. They would think I was interfering in his cases.”
“Which I’m sure you were,” one of the other women said, producing general laughter.
“On occasion,” I agreed.
“So are you staying near here?” I was asked.
“She’s staying at Greenbriars,” Sid said. “You know, that estate we can see from our windows?”
Two of the women had moved over to make room for me on the sofa. I sat and was handed a cup of hot wine punch. The warmth of the punch, the warmth of the fire, and the warmth of the reception sent a glow through me. I felt the tensions in my body ease away.
“Greenbriars?” The tall, rather severe-looking one called Josephine said, frowning as she stared out past us across the room as if she was thinking. “Isn’t that the Van Aiken place?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“And she’s finding it rather gloomy and tense from what one gathers,” Sid said.
“Just today because the hostess has been unwell,” I said hastily. I glanced around uneasily to see if Miss Lind was within hearing distance. I didn’t want her to think that I had been running down her family’s hospitality.
“Well, no wonder it’s gloomy and tense,” Josephine went on.
“Why do you say that?” Gus asked.
“Well, that was where it happened, wasn’t it?” Josephine said. “Greenbriars. Don’t you remember? Everyone was talking about it. And it was at Christmas too.”
“Oh, yes,” the chubby one—Annie, I believe—agreed. “Of course. The Van Aiken child. I’d forgotten all about it.”
“A child?” I asked. “The Van Aikens had a child?”
Josephine nodded and I noticed that the group of women had drawn closer together, as one does when sharing a secret. “A little girl.” Josephine had lowered her voice. “She wandered out into the snow right before Christmas and was never seen again.”
“How awful!” Gus exclaimed. “Yes, I remember reading about it now. She was never found, was she?”
“Never.” Josephine shook her head.
“She wandered out into the snow from her own house?” I asked. “How old was she?”
“Two or three, wasn’t she? A small child, anyway,” one of the group chimed in.
“How could a small child be allowed to wander out into the snow without supervision?” I asked. “Surely she had a nursemaid in a household like that.”
“I know no details,” Josephine said. “Perhaps there was a ransom note we knew nothing about.”
“Do they think she was abducted then?” I asked. “It wasn’t just a case of getting lost in the woods and freezing to death?”
“Her body was never found,” one of them said.
“How long ago was this?” I asked.
“It must have been about ten years,” Josephine said. “Yes, that’s right. It would have been ’96 because I was in my senior year at Vassar. I was home in Philadelphia for the holidays and my mother read it out from the newspaper. I remember being furious because the rest of my family treated it like any other item of news and brushed it aside for more important things like holiday parties. But it made a big impact on me, because it was in my neck of the woods. I could picture that estate.”
“Ten years ago. Such a lot has happened in that time, hasn’t it?” Annie said wistfully. “Look at all of us and how we have moved on with our lives. Teachers, writers, suffragists…”
“Did they never have more children?” The woman sitting beside me on the sofa turned to me.
I shook my head. “No more children.”
“How sad.”
There was a silence while we thought about this. The other women might have experienced the collective sadness of our sex for the loss of a child. To me it was overwhelming. It pierced me to the heart. I had lost a child, but it was a baby I never held in my arms, never saw smile at me, who never snuggled up to me, or ran to me on sturdy little legs. Winnie’s child had done all these things. No wonder she seemed so sad and remote. No wonder she had taken to her bed on the anniversary of her child’s disappearance. I couldn’t imagine how she could bear the sadness.
Then, of course, I found myself wondering whether the child might still be alive. Had there been a ransom note? Had the police followed up on it? Who might have kidnapped her? I’m afraid one never stops being a detective.
The others had moved on, already laughing again at a comment one of them had made. I glanced across at Florence Lind. Maybe she knew more. I would have to work out how to ask questions carefully without opening old wounds. And something else struck me: Cedric Van Aiken had not appeared to be upset by the anniversary of the disappearance of his only child. Or perhaps he was only putting on a good show in front of the guests.
Ten
The party was a merry one. We ate, drank, and sang Christmas carols around the piano. It was late when Miss Lind came to me and said that she was ready to go home. Her poor old bones needed their bed, she explained. I was ready to go too. I had gone through the motions of the evening. I had attempted to join in the gaiety. I had sung lustily with the others—“We Wish You a Merry Christmas”; “tidings of comfort and joy”—but the image of that child in the snow swam before my eyes and wouldn’t leave.
Sid and Gus hugged me. “You must come over and join us anytime you like,” Sid said. “I don’t think we’d better pay a call on you, given the circumstances. But if the gloom gets too depressing, then you know where we are. Send a message to us with one of the servants and we’ll walk out to meet you.”
“I’d like that,” I said. “But I better not abandon Daniel. He wasn’t exactly thrilled about my coming here tonight.”
“Naturally. We’re a bunch of rabble-rousing women. Quite dangerous,” Sid said with a laugh.
“I’m afraid that’s exactly what he did think. He’s a good man in many ways, but still a typical man. He thinks a woman’s place is in the home, not in the voting booth!”
“Well, you know where to find us,” Gus said. “And we’d dearly love to see our darlings. Are they all right?”
“Oh, yes. Liam is having a grand old time exploring the house and Bridie has found a new friend in Ivy, Mrs. Sullivan’s new maid or companion. She’s fresh from the orphanage. She seems a bright little girl, but the poor thing is quite overwhelmed by the size of Greenbriars. I suppose it’s understandable after a life in an orphanage.”
“No doubt Daniel’s mother will soon stop thinking of her as a servant and start educating her for society the way she did with Bridie,” Sid commented dryly.
“No doubt.” I laughed.
“Give Liam and Bridie our love then,” they said. “Oh, and let us know what you find out about the child that disappeared. Knowing you, you won’t rest until you get to the bottom of it.”
Which showed how well they knew me!
We thanked our hostess, left with a basket of food and wine as a present from a neighbor to Greenbriars, and rode home in the sleigh. Miss Lind sighed with contentment as we left the music, still spilling from the house, behind. “That is what a Christmas should be like,” she said. “It was splendid, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” I agreed. “I met so many interesting women.”
“And it was good to—to see old friends,” she added.
I took in the hesitancy and turned to look at her. “You were about to say, ‘It was good to get away,’ weren’t you?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact that’s what I was thinking,” she confessed. “It’s my first Christmas at Greenbriars and I hoped I could instill some ho
liday spirit. Maybe it was a foolish whim of a sentimental old woman.”
I had to laugh at this. “There is nothing sentimental about you,” I said. “You were described to me as formidable and that fits you to a T.”
“My problem is that I want to be the proverbial fairy godmother and make everything right for everybody.”
I decided this was as good a moment as any to delve into the tragedy. I took a deep breath. “I heard tonight about the child who vanished,” I said. “I hadn’t known before. I was shocked. And I felt embarrassed that we had come to intrude upon their mourning.”
“Of course, you weren’t in the country when it happened,” she said. “You couldn’t have known. And I’m afraid it was I who insisted upon inviting you to join us. I supposed, maybe wrongly, that the presence of a young family would help to make the holiday season merry again. Clearly Winnie has not gotten over it yet—may never get over it.”
We turned from the driveway onto the narrow road. The only lights were those that hung from our sleigh and we moved with just the swish of the runners and the muffled thud of the horses’ hooves through a night of complete stillness.
“Poor Winnie. I can’t imagine what anguish she has gone through all these years,” I said. “And poor Cedric too.”
“He seems to have weathered it better than his wife,” she said dryly. “But then it wasn’t a son.”
“What an awful thing to say,” I exclaimed. “Do you really think he didn’t mind the loss of a daughter?”
“Obviously not as much. And presumably he thought they could have more children, which hasn’t turned out to be the case.”
Once I had opened this discussion I could not stop it. “I heard only the barest of facts about the child’s disappearance,” I said. “She vanished in the snow, they said. Is there more to it?”
“I was far away in Boston at the time,” she said. “Winnie’s father had made it clear he did not welcome my suffragist influence on his daughters. I was certainly not invited for Christmas.”
“Did you ever see the little girl?” I asked.
“I did. I came to her christening when she was a baby and I paid a flying visit when I was passing through New York. I think the last time I saw her was that summer. She was an enchanting little thing. Big dark eyes and very advanced for her age. Chatted away with me and she was only two years old. I remember she told me the stories of all the tiles they had around the fireplace. That was before Cedric did all his rebuilding and tore down those rooms.” She paused. “Yes. The last time I saw her. When I heard about the tragedy, I wrote, offering to come and be of assistance and solace, but I was turned down. And after that Winnie wrote to me from time to time, but she was never the best of letter writers and I was not in one place for long. And on the occasions I’ve seen her since then she has made a concerted effort to seem bright and gay to me, and has never brought up the subject once.”
“I can understand that,” I agreed. “It must be incredibly painful to stir up that memory. But it was true that the child simply vanished? How can that be?”
“This is what I heard,” Miss Lind said, glancing up at the driver to make sure he couldn’t overhear us. “There was a party for the servants that evening. They were all in the ballroom, helping to decorate it for a bigger party for the Van Aikens’ friends the next evening. The child’s nursemaid had put her to bed and then came down to join in the fun. It wasn’t until the next morning that she discovered the girl was not in her bed. She thought at first that the girl had gone to her mother’s bed, as she was allowed to do sometimes when she had a bad dream. So the nursemaid was horrified when Winnie appeared with no sign of her daughter.
“The house was searched and then they looked outside. Tiny footprints led across the grounds until they reached the brook that flows across the estate. You no doubt saw it yesterday when you went for your sleigh ride. In harsh winters it freezes over and that was the case that year. But it appeared the child had hesitated to cross the frozen stream. Her footsteps ended there, going neither to either side nor back to the house. As they said, she had simply vanished.”
“Just a minute.” I tried to make sense of what I was hearing. “You said her footprints—was she barefoot in the snow? How could she have walked so far? How could she not have frozen to death in that cold?”
“She was not barefoot. It appeared that she was wearing shoes, and her winter cape was missing.”
“She got up from her bed and dressed herself in her outer garments?” I asked incredulously. “How could she do that? How old was she?”
“She had just turned three. A precocious little thing, but as to dressing herself—well, I’ve often wondered the same thing. But if someone came to take her away, wouldn’t his or her footprints be beside the child’s? And almost certainly he would have carried her.”
“Was the nursemaid suspected?” I asked.
“She was. But she was in such a state of grief and torment that nobody could believe she might have had a part in a kidnapping.”
“Was it true that no ransom note was ever received?”
“If one was sent, then I was not privy to it,” she said.
My brain was working fast now. “Is it possible that she did step onto the frozen stream and her footprints did not show up on the ice? Or”—I took this thought one stage further—“she walked along the stream, the ice gave way, and she was swept downstream and drowned.”
“But then her body would have been found, wouldn’t it? They searched the grounds and the surrounding area most thoroughly. Volunteers from all over the area came to walk the woods, looking for her. Their first thought was that she had just wandered off and lost her way. They didn’t notify the police for two days, hoping to find her.”
“And the family had no suspicion of anyone who might have wanted to kidnap their daughter?”
We had reached the imposing gateway to Greenbriars and turned onto the drive.
“There was only one strange thing,” Miss Lind said. “One of the gardeners went missing around the same time. His body was found in a snowdrift close to the Hudson when the snow finally melted several weeks later. But he was a man known to like his drink and it was presumed that he had a little too much celebrating the holiday, lost his way home, and froze to death. It snowed heavily the night after the child went missing and the body would have been soon covered up. Anyway the verdict was given as death by misadventure.”
“But it might be possible that he had a part in kidnapping the child and handing her over to someone—who then wanted him conveniently out of the way.”
“It might,” she agreed. “But we come back to the same thing, don’t we? Why would someone take her and not send a ransom note?”
“I can think of several reasons,” I said. “One would be for revenge, to get even. Or another that a deranged person wanted the child for his own reasons.”
We were huddled close together in the sleigh for warmth. I felt her shudder beside me. “Don’t,” she said. “That thought has haunted my worst nightmares for years.”
“And presumably Winnie’s too,” I said.
As we came to a halt at the front door I considered this idea. But there was a stumbling block to all of this: How could any stranger, with ill intent, have made the child walk, of her own volition, out of the house that night?
Eleven
The household was silent as we let ourselves in. As I closed the heavy front door behind us the thought struck me that no child of three could ever have let herself out of the house this way. Someone had opened the door for her and then she had walked across the snow quite alone and vanished. It made no sense at all.
No lights shone in the sitting rooms and we crept up the stairs like a pair of naughty schoolgirls. As I reached my bedroom I heard the grandfather clock in the foyer chiming midnight.
“Holy Mother of God!” I muttered to myself. I had no idea we had been out so late. It just shows that time really does fly when you are enjoying yourse
lf without a care in the world. And then it struck me. I had enjoyed myself. For a little while I had been young Molly Murphy, without the worries of a husband and family to burden me. Maybe I was gradually emerging from my cocoon of depression. Life would go on and get better. I had a healthy son, and unlike Winnie Van Aiken, I would have more children one day.
The dim light from an electric bulb far down the hallway shone into my room as I opened the door cautiously. I half expected to see Daniel sitting up waiting for me and glaring. But he was already in bed and snoring gently. The light fell onto my son’s face, looking so angelic with his tousled dark curls. He was clutching his favorite stuffed dog. I stood staring at him for a long moment, my heart overflowing with love for him. When I went to close the door I saw that I’d be in complete darkness. The heavy drapes had been drawn and the room felt almost too warm after the frigid sleigh ride. I left the door open a sliver so that I could see enough to undress without bumping into something and waking my family. I took the pins from my hair and shook it out over my shoulders, remembering how good it had felt when I was young and not required to put up my hair or wear a hat whenever I went out. I slipped into my nightgown and then eased myself into the bed beside Daniel. He grunted in his sleep as I snuggled up to him, and he wrapped an arm around me. I lay there, feeling the warmth of his closeness but still jittery from what I had been told. A child had disappeared from this house years ago and now I remembered that Aunt Clara had warned I should not leave Liam alone. “Just as long as he doesn’t go outside,” she had said. “Children can wander off so easily.”
I knew she was an old lady whose mind was clearly failing, but did she know something about a danger that was still present?
* * *
“What time did you come home?” Daniel greeted me the next morning as he pulled back the drapes, letting in slanted sunlight. “I didn’t come up to bed until after eleven and you still weren’t back. I began to worry about you.”
“So much that you were sound asleep when I crept in a little later,” I teased. “And there was nothing to worry about. The house was practically next door.”
