Ella asked the operator to put her through to the Decatur. After several rings, the operator said, “No answer at the desk. It’s nearly midnight, you know.”
Ella thought of walking there, maybe with Muriel in her arms, and pounding on the lobby door or ringing buzzers until somehow she found Mr. K. But when she sat on the edge of the bed, she saw that it was already too late. She pulled the sheet over Muriel’s pretty little face.
She cried till she went numb from it. She was the only person on Earth who knew the children were dead. The wrongness of that was nearly as overwhelming as the fact. She thought of phoning the old uncle in Savannah, but she remembered the sour old man too well. He would arrive with his own servants, and he would insist Mr. K. turn Ella out immediately since he had no work for a nanny. There would be gossip if he kept a young girl here when he didn’t need her. And what, Ella wondered, would Mr. K. want in exchange for a reference?
She noticed his valise sitting in an undisturbed layer of dust in the corner between the wardrobe and the wall. If he’d gone away with just the clothes on his back, it must mean he kept a closetful at the Decatur. If so, who knew when he’d be back. He was an inattentive father and a bored husband. It might be days till unanswered phone calls elevated his worries over his carnal desires.
“I can’t just leave them,” she said aloud to no one. “I can’t leave them for the blowflies and the mice.”
She crossed to the window and saw that up the block, a sheet-wrapped body waited on the street for the wagon. She pulled a robe from Mr. K.’s tallboy, threading it on as she went downstairs. She sat with her back against the front door till she heard the horseshoes and metal wheels outside, then she stepped onto the porch. It didn’t even feel strange, in the increasing unreality of these days, to be outside wearing only Mr. K.’s robe over Cook’s nightdress. While someone a few doors down was collected off the curb, Ella admired the starry sky through bare branches. It was a fine tree-lined street, a fine view from this entrance, which she’d been allowed to use only if the children were with her. When the wagon approached, she gestured for the drivers to pull over.
“I have more for you,” she said. “I need you to come inside for them.”
“Cost you.” The nearest wagon man leered down at her full chest, accentuated by unconstraining nightclothes. “You’re supposed to put them out on the—”
“I’ll pay.” She thought of the coin in Maid’s apron. “Ten dollars.”
When he said, “Ten each,” Ella knew she hadn’t imagined hearing those words, the other night.
She sat at the bottom of the grand staircase, both hands over her mouth to keep herself from screaming, while the men brought down Maid and Cook, and then (she couldn’t watch) John and little Muriel.
When the men returned for their money, she gave them Maid’s coin and the one she’d found on the landing.
“Plenty of these here, eh?” one of them said. He looked as if he might push past Ella to look around and help himself. He had the face of a prizefighter, with a much-broken nose and deformed ears.
She said, “This is the last of them.”
“You should pay us more,” he said. “More work for us, tonight.”
“But no risk.”
He chuckled. Acknowledging, it seemed, that two nights ago he’d carried out a thrashing body. Did he feel no apprehension that she knew? Never mind the morals of it — why should he care about wealthy strangers? — he showed no worry about the law.
That was how she knew the sheet-wrapped bundle had been Charles. A rich man could have a servant carted away, dead or living. A rich man could give orders, legal or not, and (for money) be obeyed without question or anxiety. That was how the world worked.
Perhaps Mr. Kingston had come upon Charles stealing from Mrs. Kingston’s strongbox. Mr. K. might not fight to protect his wife, but her assets were dear to him.
“I see you’re all right now, eh?” It was the other man speaking, a small furtive-looking person, his posture a perpetual cringe. But his smile, ugly because of missing teeth, was friendly.
“What?” She shook herself out of her distraction.
“Two, three nights ago, I took away your sheet? Nice bit of embroidered edge. From the mending pile, I guess. Too fine for a servant’s bed. I sold it to a half-blind crone makes antimacassars.”
“You didn’t tell me ’bout that,” his partner said.
“Like you never picked a rag and said nothing to me?” He ducked to avoid a slap on the back of the head. “Doesn’t hurt to unwrap the package, grab a ring or cufflink — can’t take it with them, can they?”
“Tell ’em that in Chicago,” said the other. “Collect them in trolleycars, black cloth over the windows. Rows of passenger corpses — pretty sight, eh? A guard in the trolley and no pickings for nobody.”
Ella was glad to shut the door behind them. Soon, it would be daytime, and maybe Mr. K. would return.
She wished she could lie down, curl up, and try to sleep away the acid edge of her grief. But that wagon man was right. The dead couldn’t take it with them. And this might be Ella’s only chance, ever in her life, to get away clear. She knew Mr. K. wouldn’t pay her more than he owed for this month.
Maybe he wouldn’t miss some of his wife’s jewels, not when she had so many.
Ella went upstairs and into Mrs. Kingston’s room, pulling the chain on a small lamp near the door. It cast just enough light to show the missus sunk deep into her feather bed, French sheets braided around her fever-wet limbs, her face mottled like bad meat, her red hair a tangle.
Her eyelids fluttered open and, pausing to cough, she managed to say, “The baby? Did I dream...?”
“Yes,” Ella said. “Yes, missus, you’ve been having terrible nightmares.”
“My little John... Muriel? All right?”
“Yes.” Ella felt her stomach knot. “Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”
She felt a sudden cramp of hatred. She nearly shouted, You put me out onto the street, to die alone and bitten by rats. Why shouldn’t your last hours be hell, as you meant mine to be? Why shouldn’t I tell you your children are dead?
But she couldn’t. She could steal the woman’s things — it wasn’t as if Mrs. K. would ever again have occasion to use them. But the tranquility of her last moments, no.
She walked to Mrs. K.’s dresser, to her row of jewelry boxes. There was a large one of exotic hardwood, an inlaid music box from Germany, and a replica of her tallboy, painted with the same roses and ribbons. They were so full of jewelry it made Ella want to cry. How could one woman have so much? She picked through them, selecting pieces she thought would sell easily and for good money.
Then she opened the bombé dresser — more roses and ribbons — and slipped out of Cook’s old gown. She put on some of Mrs. K.’s silken underthings. They were lovely but the circumstances made her cringe inside them. Stifling another crying jag, she forced herself to the wardrobe, and she pulled on the first shirt and suit her hands encountered. She slipped on a pair of shoes that were too long and narrow, then returned to the dresser to pocket the jewelry she’d laid out.
She glanced at the bed, soft in the first light of day filtering through window sheers. The sick woman barely made a lump under the tangles and rumples of silk and linen and down.
Mrs. Kingston said, very feebly, “Nanny?”
Ella saw that her face had grown darker, almost purple in the thin light. An instinct of pity made her fill the nightstand basin with water from the jug. She dipped in one of a stack of cloths carefully ironed and folded beside it. As she ran it over Mrs. Kingston’s face, she thought of Maid, who’d done all the ironing. Up earlier than this every day to do a mountain of laundry — the children’s, Mr. and Mrs. Kingston’s, the other servants’. Back-breaking work even with the new wringer washer. Hours of stringing the backyard lines with sheets and towels and garments. Then the ironing, the folding. Charles would be up nearly as early to stoke the furnace, lay the fires, fetch and wash the car if an outing was planned. Cook’s list would be done by then, telling Ella what to buy at the market. Then Cook would make and knead the bread dough so it rose while the rest of the house awakened. Ella would return with the food so Cook could start on the first of the day’s four meals. Then Ella would go draw baths for the children, give the baby her bottle, comb out Muriel’s hair, fetch clean clothes for her and John, take them to the nursery table for milk and bread and fruit, and lay out the day’s lessons (if it was a weekend or holiday) while they ate. She never thought she’d want to turn the clock back to those days. She never knew how much the children meant to her. She was comfortable around them, she could almost be herself.