The Killing Room

by John Manning

  And through it all, whenever they passed in the hall, Beatrice would pass Howard little notes. I know you love me, she wrote. I know you will marry me when I bear you a son.

  When the time came late the following spring, a midwife from the village was summoned by Clem. The family sat in the parlor, listening to Beatrice’s screams from below. But they said not a word, uttered not a single comment-not even when they heard the cries of the newborn. Finally the midwife came upstairs to give the master of the house the news that his servant girl had given birth to a boy. His name was Malcolm. Desmond Young paid the woman, and she left without another word between them.

  But in the months that followed, the careful façade they’d all been maintaining crumbled.

  The child simply looked too much like Howard. He had the same blond hair, the same cleft to his baby chin. Howard’s mother even removed the baby photograph of her son from the mantelpiece, so uncanny was the resemblance to the child downstairs in the servants’ quarters. As the summer progressed, the resemblance only became more apparent. It was the eyes that clinched it. As Beatrice performed her chores, the infant strapped to her back like an Indian papoose, family members had to look away. It was as if Howard himself were staring at them from the child’s eyes.

  Finally someone had to say something.

  “I suspect,” Desmond Young intoned one day toward the end of the summer, calling Howard once again into his study, “if I asked Beatrice to show me the child’s foot he’d have a similar crescent birthmark to the one you have yourself.”

  Howard could no longer deny such an obvious reality. The child was his. Everyone knew it. He remained silent, his chin on his chest, standing in front of his father’s desk.

  “You will have to marry her, you know,” Mr. Young said.

  Douglas’s eyes darted up to his father. “You mean…you’d accept her as my wife?”

  “What choice do I have?” The older man let out an impatient sigh. “The child will grow up, announcing his paternity simply by walking into a room. The girl will have all the ammunition she needs if she decides to blackmail you-or me-simply by showing people her son.”

  “But if I marry her-”

  Desmond Young frowned. “It is not a case of ‘if.’ You will marry her, Howard. But you will have forfeited your place in this family.”

  “What do you mean?” Howard asked. Desperation was surging up his throat.

  “I will find you a house in Bangor,” his father told him. “But that is where my largesse will end. You will need to get a job to support the family you have made for yourself. I know jobs are difficult to come by these days. There’s a Depression out there for people less fortunate than us. You’ll have to find your way best you can.”

  “You mean…you’re disinheriting me?”

  “That is precisely what I mean.”

  “Please, no, Papa. I have such plans. I have great ambition…”

  His father scowled. “You should have thought of that before you started sniffing around the scullery.”

  “Please, Papa! Don’t do this!”

  But pleading was useless. His father ordered him out of the study. Howard walked down the corridor, stunned. He tried to force his brain to work, to find a way out of this terrible predicament.

  I’ve got to make Beatrice go away, he thought to himself.

  He pulled open the doorway to the basement and headed down the stairs into the servants’ quarters.

  He spotted Beatrice heading into her room with the child. He watched through the open door as she laid him in his crib. He’d never so much as held the child. He had kept his distance. Beatrice had fallen quiet around him. The notes had ended. She had either accepted the situation or was simply biding her time, waiting until the moment was right to make her demands of him.

  But he had come to make a demand of her.

  “Beatrice,” he said, standing in her doorway.

  “Howard!” she said, her eyes lighting up at the sight of him. She still loved him. He could see that.

  He entered the room, closing the door behind him. What they had to discuss was private. Very private.

  “I have missed you so much,” she told him. “But I have tried to be discreet.”

  “It is no longer a tenable situation,” he said brusquely. “My father knows the truth. And he has insisted I marry you.”

  Beatrice’s face beamed her joy. “Oh, my darling!” She threw open her arms and moved toward him as if to embrace him, but Howard pushed her away.

  “I cannot marry you,” he said. “I would be throwing away my entire future. My father plans to disinherit me.”

  “Oh, but I don’t care about money,” she said. “I will make you a wonderful wife. I love you so, Howard. And Malcolm needs you. He needs a father.”

  Howard fumed. “No! Don’t you see? We would be paupers! The entire world is spiraling down in a depression. There are no jobs! I would lose my place in the family inheritance. I wouldn’t be able to go to Yale as my brother Douglas did! I’m just eighteen years old, Beatrice! I can’t just throw away my life!”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “What of my life? More importantly, what about the life of your son?”

  “I am making you the same offer I made before. Promise me you’ll go away and take the child with you. I will send you money. I will make sure you are provided for. But you must write a letter to my father promising you will never, ever, come back into our lives. You will keep the secret of Malcolm’s paternity for all of your life, including from him.”

  “You’re asking me to never tell my son his father’s name?”

  “That is exactly what I am asking. You must understand my situation here. It is the only choice we have.”

  Beatrice’s expression hardened. “No. It is not the only choice. You could marry me.” She folded her arms across her chest and stood her ground. “I am not leaving this house except as your wife.”

  In that instant, Howard knew she would never go away. She would never leave him in peace. He felt the rage boiling up inside him. He wanted to strike her-but just then there was a rapping at the door.

  “No one can know I’m here,” Howard said, hurrying to hide behind the large armoire on the far side of the room.

  Beatrice opened the door. It was Clem. Peering around the side of the armoire, Howard could see the handyman clearly, though he was certain the dumb brute couldn’t see him. Clem stood there in the doorway in his ragged, grass-stained overalls, his pitchfork in his hands.

  “Beatrice,” Clem said, “I heard you cryin’ again today and I got to thinkin’…”

  “Oh, Clem,” she said, “I don’t have time to talk with you now.”

  “But I was thinkin’ we oughta get hitched…”

  She laughed. “Clem, you’ve asked me that before. You’re very kind. But I’ve told you. I can’t marry you.”

  “Well, you’re so sad all the time, you know, carryin’ that baby around. If you was my wife I could take care of ya…”

  Little Malcolm had started to fuss in his crib. Beatrice bent over and lifted him in her arms. Bouncing him gently, she looked over at Clem and once again told him no, she could never marry him.

  “Why not?” Clem asked.

  “Because I’m going to marry someone else,” she said, her voice raised just enough so that Howard knew she was speaking to him. He seethed.

  “Who?” Clem demanded. “Who are you goin’ to marry?”

  Howard noticed movement in the hallway behind Clem. Another groundsman, Harry Noons, had come in, and was washing his hands at the sink near the servants’ entrance. Howard flattened himself against the wall just to doubly ensure he wouldn’t be seen.

  “Who?” Clem asked again, his voice rising. “Who you goin’ to marry?”

  Beatrice laughed. “I’m going to marry a man who can offer me much more than you can, Clem.”

  “I know I may be a simple man,” Clem said, angry himself now, “but I would do right by ya. I’d trea
t ya right.”

  Beatrice laughed. “I am going to marry a man who is far your superior, Clem. A great man! Far greater than you!”

  Howard could see Clem’s face twist in rage. “Fine, then!” the handyman shouted. “Then you can just stay the way you are, and you can keep your little bastard!”

  Beatrice reached over and slapped Clem across the face. Harry Noons saw it all, and hurried up the stairs.

  And suddenly the solution to his dilemma was clear to Howard.

  It came to him so easily. He didn’t even have to think it through. It was right there, fully plotted, in the forefront of his mind.

  “Clem,” he said, stepping out from behind the armoire. “How dare you use such language in front of a lady?”

  The groundsman jumped when he saw Howard, dropping his pitchfork on the floor. “I’m sorry, Mr. Howard. I’m very sorry. I just-”

  “I should fire you on the spot,” Howard said.

  He knew the threat of termination would cause great distress for the simple man. Jobs were scarce. Clem wasn’t eager to stand in breadlines like so many others.

  “No, please, Mr. Howard,” he begged, “don’t fire me!”

  Howard frowned. “Go wait for me in my father’s workshop at the other end of the basement. Under no circumstances are you to leave there. I’ll be in to speak with you presently.”

  Clem scurried off into the dark shadows of the basement.

  Beatrice was placing the baby back down in his crib. “So you’ve decided to play the gallant knight, have you?” she asked, smiling at Howard when she turned back to look at him. Her smugness was infuriating. “So perhaps my hope is justified that you will make me your wife.”

  “I would suggest,” Howard said, bending down and taking Clem’s pitchfork in his hands, “that you abandon hope, Beatrice.”

  And with that, he charged at her with the pitchfork, his anger and desperation summoning almost superhuman strength. He plunged its long, sharp, metal tines into her soft chest, piercing the breasts he had once so tenderly caressed, puncturing her heart and her lungs, easily impaling her against the plaster wall.

  Beatrice had time to scream only one, but it was a long and terrible wail. Her dark eyes were open wide in shock and accusation. Blood poured down from her wounds, instantly staining her white dress and pooling on the floor.

  Howard wasted no time. Rushing out of the room and back up the stairs into the foyer, he felt certain that no matter the commotion, the simpleminded, terrified Clem would not leave the workshop. It would be disobeying a direct order. Once into the foyer, Howard quickly turned around, heading back down the stairs, just as his brothers came running from elsewhere in the house.

  “What was that scream?” his brother Douglas asked.

  “I don’t know,” Howard said. “It came from the basement.”

  They hurried down the stairs just as Harry Noons came rushing in from the servants’ entrance. They peered into Beatrice’s room and let out a collective gasp.

  “Clem!” Harry Noons babbled. “I saw him here just seconds ago-they was arguin’-she slapped him across the face!”

  “We’ll search the grounds,” Douglas said, taking charge as always. Howard felt a vicious delight in tricking him.

  “Dear God,” Desmond Young uttered when he, too, came down the stairs and saw Beatrice’s bloody body. His eyes flickered over to Howard.

  “Noons says he saw her arguing with Clem just minutes ago,” Howard said.

  “Ayuh, I did,” Noons agreed. “She struck him. That’s when I left. He musta killed her right afterward.”

  Howard’s brothers were already hurrying out the back stairs in search of Clem. Desmond Young turned to Howard.

  “Why don’t you search the basement for him?” he suggested. “He might be hiding down here somewhere, don’t you think?”

  Their eyes held. Howard had the distinct impression that his father knew, or at least suspected, the truth, and was colluding with him.

  “Yes,” Howard said. “I’ll search the basement.”

  His father nodded, then, with Noons, headed outside.

  Once he was alone in the basement, Howard walked over to his father’s workshop. Opening the door, he saw Clem cowering inside.

  Howard took a deep breath. “How could you do such a thing, Clem?” he asked quietly, shaking his head.

  “Do what, Mr. Howard?”

  “Come with me.”

  The handyman followed him back to Beatrice’s room, where Howard showed him the carnage. Beatrice’s body hung limply from the wall. An enormous glistening puddle of blood had collected on the floor.

  “Beatrice!” Clem cried.

  “You killed her,” Howard said calmly.

  “No!”

  “Yes, you did.” He looked Clem fiercely in the eyes. “I found you, remember? I threatened to fire you!”

  “Yes, but…”

  “She slapped you, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t-”

  “You got angry! Very angry!”

  Clem’s face went white.

  “Didn’t you, Clem? She slapped you, and you got very angry!”

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  “And then you killed her! With your pitchfork! Look! Look at it sticking out of her!”

  “No…”

  Howard moved in, his eyes wild. “I saw you do it, Clem! I saw you!”

  “You…you did?”

  “Indeed. I saw you drive that pitchfork right through her body.”

  “I…didn’t mean to kill her… I don’t remember…”

  “You’re a simpleton. Aren’t you, Clem? A simpleton!”

  Clem had begun to cry. He nodded his head.

  “Your puny brain can’t remember what you did,” Howard told him. “You’ve blocked the horror of it from your mind.”

  “I…killed Beatrice?”

  “Yes,” Howard told him. “And now I must call the sheriff!” He began walking toward the stairs.

  “Mr. Howard, they’ll put me in jail. They’ll hang me!”

  Howard stopped walking, turning around to glare at Clem. “Yes, Clem, they will.”

  “But my ma…who would support her then? I take care of my ma, you know. I’m all she’s got. What will happen to my ma?”

  Howard did indeed know that Clem took care of his sick, elderly mother. He cocked his head to one side and raised his eyebrows at Clem. “They’ll put her in the poorhouse, I suppose. Pity, really. The poorhouse is a sickly den of thieves and degenerates. Pity how your poor mother will have to suffer for what you did.”

  “Please, Mr. Howard, you gotta help me!”

  Howard seemed to consider his request. “Well, I don’t know… I should just go upstairs and call the sheriff.”

  “No, please don’t!”

  “Well, if I’m going to help you, Clem, then you will need to help me.”

  The poor simple man was nodding absurdly. “Yes, yes, sure, anything!”

  “I want you to break the baby’s neck.”

  Clem’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head.

  “You want me to…?”

  “You heard me.” Howard was surprised at how easy it was to ask such a thing. But in truth, it was that baby that had caused his terrible dilemma. That baby who stood between him and the kind of life he deserved. To ask for its removal was not so difficult. “I want you to kill Beatrice’s baby.”

  “But…”

  “Don’t argue with me, Clem,” Howard said. “I’ll just turn around and go call the sheriff. You’ll be hanged, and your mother will die a terrible death in the poorhouse.”

  Clem was crying again. “But why?”

  “Really, Clem, you ask the most inane questions. Do you want that child to grow up motherless? We’d have to put it in the poorhouse, too. And babies fare even worse in the poorhouse than do old ladies.”

  “Oh…” Clem said, hanging his head.

  “You would be doing the child a great service, Clem. Sn
apping its neck means its death will be quick and painless. It’s the least you can do for killing its mother.”

  “Really?” Clem asked, his simple eyes wide.

  “Yes, Clem. It’s quite easy. Just go over to the crib and snap its little neck.”

  The dumb brute took a step toward the crib.

  “Then remain here once it’s done,” Howard instructed him. “Remain standing there with the child in your arms. I’ll be right back to take care of everything.”

  “Yes, Mr. Howard.”

  Howard hurried out of the room. His heart had hardened considerably in the last hour, and yet still he could not bear to see what Clem was about to do. The child was his own flesh and blood, after all. He contented himself that death would be quick. Whether it was painless or not as he’d assured Clem, he wasn’t so sure. But there was logic in what he had told the simpleton. The bastard child was indeed better off dead.

  Whether Clem would actually do the deed or not, Howard wasn’t so sure. He was simple, easily swayed, but he had a conscience. In the end, it didn’t really matter, Howard thought. Yes, it would be better to have the child out of the way. But if it lived, he’d deal with that. They’d find a home for it somewhere far away, where its resemblance to Howard would never be noticed. In the end, all that really mattered was Clem. And for this part of the plot, Howard needed a witness.

  Upstairs in the foyer, he found one. His sister Margaret.

  “The rest of them haven’t come back yet,” she reported, wringing her hands. “They haven’t found Clem.”

  “Well, I have,” Howard said. “I just saw him sneak into the basement.”

  “Oh!” Margaret held a lace handkerchief up to her face. “He’s returning to the scene of the crime! All the mystery magazines say murderers always do that.”

  “Did Papa take his gun?” Howard asked.

  “He and Douglas took the rifles from the parlor,” Margaret replied.

  Howard nodded. “So his revolver is still in his desk in the study.”

  “Oh, yes, it must be, Howard! Get it! Or Clem could come up here and kill us all!”