Someone had told Mrs. Kingston that her husband had a girl at the Decatur. Mrs. K. assumed, as Cook had, that Mr. K. had sneaked out sometime this week to be with her. She thought he’d broken the quarantine she’d imposed to protect her children. She thought he’d risked — and brought back — the influenza, the contagion killing more than even a world war. He had risked all the things, the only things, his wife cared about.
And the dying woman’s screams told Ella what she’d done about it.
“Where are... the children?” Mrs. K. had asked, and she’d replied, “Mr. Kingston came and took them.”
But Mrs. K. knew her husband was dead.
She’d struck what she’d thought was a death blow to him, and then she’d fetched the wagon men, or sent Charles to do it. Ella had thought Mr. K. bribed the men to take Charles. She’d thought so because a rich man could buy any service from poor men. But it was the wealth that mattered, not the gender. The wagon men would show as little worry about taking the missus’s orders as her husband’s, so long as the price was right. Where was the risk in hauling away a body, even one that wasn’t completely dead, for a woman whose neighbors were named Roosevelt and Taft and Harding?
Ella nearly stumbled as she raced down the grand staircase.
She remembered the divot on the third-floor landing. A strongbox full of coins, dropped so its corner hit first, would cut into wood, some coins spilling out. Cook had found a few, Ella another.
Her skin crawled when she realized the reddish stain in the divot must be Mr. Kingston’s blood. Had Mrs. K. struck him with the metal box, thrown it at him? Given it to Charles afterward to buy his silence? Charles would have dashed from her third-floor suite to the servants’ stair. In a hurry to leave with his blood money — enough to buy whores ten nights a month — he must have let the box slip.
Before Ella reached the front door, she caught sight of herself in the entryway mirror. She had never seen herself in an expensive suit before, in a blouse with Belgian lace at the collar. She had never carried a fine wool coat over her arm. But she hated every stitch of it. Every perfect seam and fine designer flourish seemed to cry, “Where are... the children?”
“I sneaked out and brought back the flu,” she said to her reflection in the mirror. She looked like any young Italian girl, curly haired and dark-eyed, not like somebody who’d killed nearly everyone in her household. “The children. Cook and Maid. I brought the plague through the gate, and it killed them.” She’d killed Mr. K., too, in a way. Mrs. K. wouldn’t have lost her reason, wouldn’t have attacked him, if she’d known the truth. If she’d known it was Ella, not he, who’d brought home the infection.
And now, Ella had compounded this terrible thing. She had let the sick woman know her babies were dead. “Where are... the children?” “Mr. Kingston came and took them.”
She heard more wailing upstairs, crazed and tortured. It was the sound of a woman who’d killed someone close to her. It was all Ella could do not to scream, too, and for the same reason.
With shaking hands, she reached up and undid the clasp of the locket that held the children’s picture. She had killed John and Muriel and Annie’s parents. She didn’t deserve to wear their image around her neck.
Ella kissed the locket before leaving it on the table under the mirror.
Witness Protection
by Brendan DuBois
Since Brendan DuBois debuted in EQMM’s Department of First Stories in 1986 with the story “Dark Corridor,” he has gone on to write just over 100 published stories. That’s about four per year, one of them, the EQMM story “The Necessary Brother,” a Shamus Award winner, and another a Barry winner. But the New Hampshire author doesn’t only write short stories. He’s also a well-known novelist whose latest entry in his Lewis Cole series was released in July by Minotaur books. See “Deadly Cove.”
The sniper rested underneath a thick stand of rhododendron on the top of a slight rise, keeping a view on the rows of gravestones below him, stretching out for hundreds of yards in every direction. He had gotten here four hours earlier, to pick a spot that would give him a good target-view of this portion of St. Michael’s Cemetery in Porter, New Hampshire. He was on his belly, resting on a mottled green tarpaulin. It was early September and the ground and air were cool. Fall was coming soon, and all of the leaves and such giving him cover would be thinning.
He shifted his weight. That would be all right. Today was a one-shot deal — hah, he had just made a joke — and he knew he would never come back to this place. To his right was his Remington Model 700P.308 bolt-action rifle, with a mounted Enfield telescopic sight. At his left was a small water bladder, with a hose running out whose end was clipped near his left shoulder. Whenever he got thirsty, he just had to move his head a bit and suck some fluid to keep him alert. There was also a small open green canvas equipment bag for later.
He wore a ghillie suit, a camouflaged suit invented years ago by Scottish gamesmen. It had a base of mesh, and carefully threaded through the mesh were leaves, grass, small branches, and bits of camouflage fabric. The sniper was quite confident that he could only be discovered if somebody decided to trim the rhododendron bush and tripped over him. In training exercises with a variety of police forces in this part of the state, not once had he ever been found while wearing the ghillie suit.
Movement, off to the right. A line of traffic was coming down one of the narrow cemetery lanes, and it slowed and stopped in good view before him. He noted a Porter police cruiser, a state police cruiser, a cruiser from the Wentworth County Sheriff’s Department, followed by two dark-blue Ford LTDs, an unmarked blue van, and, bringing up the rear, a light brown van belonging to the sheriff’s department as well.
He took a deep, calming breath. Relax. Picked up his rifle. Doors flew open and a number of cops and sheriff’s deputies came out from the cruisers, and then, from the large van, fourteen men and women. Some wore suits and fine dresses, others made do with sweatpants and jeans. An older man came out from the rear of one of the Ford LTDs, and two men and two women came out of the other.
He waited.
The van from the sheriff’s department hadn’t moved.
The cops and the civilians moved to one side, walking up to a large tombstone flanked by small pine trees. The group waited.
The doors finally opened at the van. Two sheriff’s deputies came out, and then opened the rear door. They stood in a way that blocked the view of the people by the large tombstone. There was a motion of arms and hands, and then the two deputies started walking, a grinning man striding between them. He had on a dark gray suit, white shirt, and blue tie. The shoes were polished black loafers. His hands and arms and legs were free. He looked happy to be walking out in the fresh air of this fine September day.
The sniper was happy, too. He looked through the telescopic sight and placed the crosshairs upon the man’s forehead.
Standing near her police cruiser, Officer Stephanie Sawyer watched the near van open up, and the jurors file out. Twelve regular jurors and two alternates. They joined the judge, the two defense attorneys, and the two prosecutors from the state attorney general’s office. Standing next to her was Walt Preston, a sergeant in the Porter police department and her training officer when she had come on the job last year. State police troopers and deputy sheriffs were also milling about.