Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 138, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 821 & 822, September/October 2011
Dear Readers,
In the fall of 1941, this magazine made its debut. Could EQMM’s founders have dreamt then that their concept for a publication would prove so on the mark that EQMM would survive seven decades of changes in American culture, education, and reading habits? I tend to think not; editor Ellery Queen was clear in his letter to readers in the first issue that this was an untested venture whose future would depend entirely on how enthusiastic reader response proved.
Word about Queen’s outstanding publication spread fast, even reaching such elite literary circles as that of Dorothy Parker, who became a regular reader and is said to have remarked that EQMM could only be improved by coming out more frequently. I imagine that there was not only pleasure but a little surprise in the editorial offices over how rapidly the new magazine caught on and continued to grow.
Over the years, with changes in society, the fortunes of American fiction magazines have waxed and waned, but EQMM is one of a very few such magazines fortunate enough to have been able to count on the extraordinary loyalty of its longtime subscribers to see it through temporary dips in the short-fiction market.
We’re in the midst now of a publishing revolution; electronic publishing is booming and EQMM is one of the magazines in the forefront of this brave new world, with high rankings for Amazon’s Kindle and the several other electronic readers on the market. Digital publishing is bringing EQMM to a whole new set of readers, whom we welcome with as much pleasure as Ellery Queen must have felt over his first subscribers. But we treasure equally those readers who’ve been with us through our many decades in print.
I’m betting that we still have at least a few readers on our rolls who received that first issue in 1941. This special September/October 70th Anniversary issue is dedicated to you, and to all of our other longtime subscribers. (Write and tell us who you are!)
With appreciation from all of us at EQMM,
Janet Hutchings
The Children
by Lia Matera
Multiple Edgar nominee and Shamus Award winner Lia Matera is the author of two series of legal mysteries set in California, where she herself is a member of the bar. (See the Willa Jansson and Laura Di Palma mysteries.) But for this short story she ventures far from the contemporary San Francisco of much of her work and gives readers a harrowing glimpse of Washington D.C. during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, when the very prevalence of death could serve to disguise a crime.
Ella awakened facedown on the concrete. She spat out grit that swirled in the night wind, then rolled painfully to her side. The Kingstons’ windows were dark, but the glare of arc lights on their jack frost hurt her eyes. She dropped her gaze to an iron fence that ran like a line of spears from the Corinthian porch to the next rowhouse. She struggled to free her arm from the sheet wrapped around her, but the effort made her lungs boil with coughs. Earlier, she’d come to with her nose mashed and her mouth covered, struggling to breathe through the filthy linen. She remembered twisting and slithering toward the gate, frantic to expose her face. Now, if she could pull herself through and tumble down the steps to the basement-level service entrance, the wagon wouldn’t see her when it passed. It wouldn’t matter then if she blacked out again; there the drivers wouldn’t mistake her stupor for death and toss her onto a pile of corpses stacked like cordwood. Maybe she could hang on till Cook came out for the milk. None of the servants knew that Charles, Cook’s bad-tempered husband, had dragged Ella to the curb like garbage. He’d waited till long past midnight, and if he’d wakened Cook afterward, it would have been to take his vulgar pleasure, not to tell her what he’d done.
Charles had been glad to get rid of Ella tonight, she knew that. When the Kingstons brought home baby Annie, they’d wanted the house kept warmer at night. Charles always slept through extra stokings of the furnace, so Mr. Kingston forced him out of his wife’s warm bed and onto a cot in the basement. To keep him from sneaking back to the attic room and passing out there, Mrs. Kingston sent Ella, till then on a feather mattress in the nursery, to take Charles’s place. “Problem solved.” As if the Kingstons knew anything about problems.
Most nights, Charles would slip upstairs after the two o’clock stoking and lie with his wife as if Ella weren’t in the bed at all, as if Cook didn’t weep with shame into her pillow, knowing Ella merely feigned sleep.
The men in this household were pigs. All but little John, eight years old and a master of silly limericks and botched riddles. Ella hoped he didn’t grow up to be like his father, who’d felt no compunction about accepting an “accommodation” from her in lieu of references.
The fact that this had been a good deal for Ella didn’t make his part of it right. He’d put his children into a stranger’s hands knowing nothing but what she’d told him herself. And she’d have said anything to escape a shirt factory that left women half blind and coughing up cotton dust.
The Kingstons should have let her die inside, no matter their terror (everybody’s terror) of the Spanish flu. At first, they’d put her in a comer of the basement, as far as possible from the potato bin and the new wringer washer. She didn’t know how long she’d lain on old blankets like a stray dog gasping for breath. She’d overheard Charles, his voice full of false concern, tell the Kingstons they’d best set her out for the wagon soon. She’d be dead before it arrived, and why risk having the sickness seep through the house till then? What if he should nod off and miss the moment? They couldn’t put her to the curb in the daytime. It wasn’t that sort of neighborhood — Cabinet members and Senators and a Supreme Court justice lived within a stone’s throw. But if they kept her inside, the stench would waft upstairs all day tomorrow, perhaps to baby Annie’s room, or to six-year-old Muriel’s or little John’s.
Mr. Kingston, a lawyer, had blown hot air around it. He’d said it was a shame there were no caskets for the dead anymore, nor anyplace to put them, with funeral parlors stacked floor to ceiling. “Cook says the mother’s dead and no father, that sort of family, so we’d have to bear the expense ourselves. But there’s just no possibility of a burial now.” Taking her to the hospital had been ruled out. “The Post says they’ve run out of everything — beds most of all. The sick are outside on the ground, both sides of the driveway and down the block. They can’t do a thing for them. Pity the vaccine was useless.” Mrs. Kingston wondered if taking Ella there would at least solve the problem of her disposal. “But how to get her there?” Mr. K. was slightly curt, as usual, with his wife. “It’s no use sending for the Packard, no one at the garage will fetch her. They’re not medics, can’t expect them to risk contagion.” He’d added, “And do we want our hospitals steam-shoveling holes out back, piling in thousands of bodies like they do in Philadelphia? Not that you can blame Philly — forty-six hundred dead there last week alone. But I think our method’s better, let wagons collect them off the streets and take them to rural Virginia.” They’d agreed it was a mark of excellent governance that they could toss an afflicted servant to the gutter like trash and think no more about her. As she walked out, Mrs. Kingston turned to say, “Charles, I’m terrified for the children. Is there someplace you can go for a few days after handling her... her body? I appreciate that you’ve stayed down here, away from all of us, since moving her. I’ll leave some coins for you on the washer, for lodging and food. Please don’t take the chance... don’t say goodbye to Cook. I’ll explain to her tomorrow.” Charles had said yes, missus. “And you have no guess how the disease came into the house? We kept you all inside, none of us has been out for days.” Charles said nothing. The servants knew Mr. K. slipped away once or twice a week, returning just before dawn. He’d been doing it for months. “I’ll have Maid put on gloves and a mask and send the rest of Nanny’s things down the laundry chute. You’ll get them burned before you go?”