A Sudden Passing

by Blythe Baker

Graham looked down at me for just a second—long enough for me to see the disappointment in his eyes—and then he obliged, leading her to the next room over where the furniture had been pushed aside to make room for dancing. This left me alone with Albion Rooker.

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Rooker said, stepping closer now that we were the only two remaining of what had, only minutes before, been a good-sized group.

  “Whatever for?” I asked.

  “For giving you the impression that I am nothing more than a grumpy old man,” he said, smiling and revealing a mouth of yellowed teeth. “Talking about the war, especially with younger men and women, upsets me. They are so short-sighted.”

  “I understand,” I said, though I didn’t really. I was one of the young women he was referring to.

  “Justice, especially justice served on such a large scale, cannot be carried out in a matter of years. Or with a simple slap on the wrist. It takes time, patience,” he said. “We all have to be willing to sacrifice in order to create the world we want. Do you understand?”

  “I think so,” I lied.

  “William spoke of Europe being stronger with a stable Germany, but a stable Germany is dangerous,” he said, his voice growing stronger with every word. I could see the anger blooming in him. Even his eyes seemed to become clearer. “If we are unwilling to be uncomfortable for the sake of a better world, then what are we willing to be uncomfortable for? Then what can a better world really mean to us?”

  I did not know what to say, and Mr. Rooker seemed to understand this. He sank down into his bones again, the fire fading from his eyes. “Forgive me, I have lost control of my tongue again.”

  “It is quite all right,” I said, offering him a kind smile.

  He returned it and sighed. “I lost both of my boys to the war. And losing my family that way, it makes it difficult to sit by while the people responsible go unpunished.”

  Now I truly didn’t know what to say. But I knew what I felt.

  Hadn’t I experienced that exact feeling? That was why I’d gone back to Simla, why I’d put myself in harm’s way—to bring justice where it seemed there wouldn’t be any. I wanted to know who had killed the Beckinghams, and I wanted them to receive punishment. Mr. Rooker was seeking the same.

  “And the idea that the war was long ago only reminds me that they are gone,” he said sadly. “And every day, they are fading from people’s minds.”

  “I understand,” I said, reaching out to touch his elbow. The touch was light, but he seemed to wobble under it. “I know what it means to lose family in a terrible way. To want justice.”

  Mr. Rooker looked up at me as though seeing me for the first time, and then his face lit up with recognition. “Of course. Rose Beckingham. Sarah spoke to me about your past, and I remember reading of the bombing that killed your family. I was sad to hear of it.”

  “Thank you.” My smile was tight, but genuine.

  Our conversation shifted from the heavy topics of death and war to the architecture of the house and the year it was constructed. I did very little talking, instead letting Mr. Rooker tell me what he believed was important. He struck me as a lonely man. Why else would an elderly man throw such a lavish party? He was remarking on the artist who painted the murals on the ceiling, bent backwards for months to create the motifs around all the moldings, when Aunt Sarah and Graham returned. Her face was flushed from the exertion, but Graham looked just as unruffled as when he’d left.

  “Now that your party has returned,” Mr. Rooker said, turning and grabbing my hand, bending as low as his old bones would allow. “I am going to find a corner to sit down and watch the rest of the evening unfold. Lovely to meet you, Rose Beckingham.”

  “Is Mr. Rooker leaving so soon?” Graham asked.

  “He probably needs to rest. His health has been failing for some time,” Aunt Sarah said, releasing Graham’s arm to me and almost twining us together. “And I am too old to keep up with a skilled dancer like Mr. Collins, so I pass him off to you, Rose.”

  Graham smiled and nodded to my aunt. “You kept pace with me as well as any young woman could.”

  “I’m sure Rose would like to prove that statement false,” she said, pushing us towards the dance floor. “Dance and be merry, you two. I’m going to rest.”

  There was no arguing with Aunt Sarah, and before I knew it, we were in the middle of the dance floor, kicking up our heels to the jazz band playing on a small stage in the corner. Aunt Sarah was right when she called Graham a skilled dancer, and it seemed his boasting before hadn’t been so far off. As a servant in the Beckingham household for most of my youth, the only time I had to dance was when the real Rose Beckingham would ask me to help her practice her steps in preparation for an upcoming social event. I relied heavily on those practice sessions to keep up with Graham and look the part, but based on the smile on his face and the flush in his cheeks, I was doing a fine job.

  Finally, the music slowed down and Graham pulled me close, both of us puffing to try and catch our breath.

  “What did you and Mr. Rooker discuss?” he asked after several minutes of quiet swaying.

  “It was a normal introductory conversation,” I said. I didn’t know why, but it felt rude to reveal the loss of Mr. Rooker’s sons to Graham. I was sure their deaths were public knowledge, but it didn’t feel like my information to share.

  “Did you discuss your past?”

  “Yes, but how did you know?” I asked, looking up at him. His blond mustache twitched down in a frown.

  “There was a sadness in your face when we walked up. I guessed that was the reason.”

  His answer took me by surprise. Clearly, Graham knew me better than I understood if he could read my face so well. There was something comforting and unnerving about that thought.

  “You guessed correctly,” I said. “He heard of their deaths in the paper and recognized my name.”

  Graham studied me for a minute, and then pulled me closer, hiding his face from me. “I wish I could have known them all. I wish I could have seen you all together.”

  Had Graham actually met the Beckinghams, he would have known me as Nellie Dennet, if he had bothered to know me at all. I would have been on the periphery of his conversations with Rose. If she had taken a fancy to him, then I would have endured endless hours of her describing his long face, white blond hair, and broad shoulders. I certainly wouldn’t have been dancing with him in a mansion in New York City.

  “I wish so, too.”

  9

  Much to Catherine’s annoyance, I spent very little time with her and Charles for the rest of the party. I had come to New York to help my cousin uncover the mystery of her fiancé’s strange behavior, but the city was proving more intoxicating than I expected. Graham and I spent a large portion of the evening dancing, and when we stopped to rest, we sipped punch and allowed Aunt Sarah to introduce us to everyone who passed by where we stood. It was a long and lovely evening, filled with laughter and dancing, unlike any night I’d ever had.

  As such, I did not wake up at my normal time the next morning. My body was weary from travel, exploring the city with Graham and Alice, and dancing all night. So, when I did finally open my eyes, I decided staying in bed longer was worth missing breakfast. And I had just dozed off again when three soft knocks sounded on my door.

  Too lazy to get up, I called to the knocker. “Come in.”

  Aunt Sarah poked her head around the door. “I hope I haven’t woken you. You are usually awake by now.”

  “I was already awake,” I lied. “Can I help you with something?”

  She crossed the room and perched on the end of my bed, her hands folded in her lap as though she was hiding something there. “I only wished to speak to you alone for a moment. I love your cousins dearly, but they are nosy girls. Especially Alice. I find her lurking just outside of doorways far too often to ever have a private conversation within my own walls again.”

  I laughed. “She does not like to be left out of an
ything.”

  “No, certainly not,” Aunt Sarah agreed with a smile. Then, her face fell and she twisted towards me, one knee tucked up on my comforter. “I have something for you, Rose, and I hope it will not upset you.”

  I sat up, my curiosity piqued, and Aunt Sarah unfolded her hands and revealed a square of paper in her palm. After a moment of hesitation, she gave it to me. The square was worn around the edges from time, and I realized it was a newspaper clipping. The ink was starting to transfer and blur, but a few words stuck out to me. Bombing. Extremist. One survivor. Beckingham.

  “I saved it,” she said softly. “Not really knowing why until you arrived here. I just think you should know that their deaths were felt all over the world. Even across oceans. Your parents were beloved.”

  “Thank you,” I said, tears welling in my eyes for reasons no one would understand.

  “Oh dear, I have upset you,” she said.

  I reached out and took her hand. “You haven’t. Truly. Thank you for welcoming me into your home and family. I appreciate this very much.”

  She squeezed my hand back and, sensing I needed time alone, made her exit.

  When she left, I cried like I hadn’t cried in ten years. Not for the Beckinghams or the bombings, but for my own parents. For the people who were murdered in their home and, aside from a few articles about the savagery of the crimes, whose deaths went unnoted. I would have liked to have something related to their deaths. To their lives. Something that showed anyone aside from me cared that they were dead and gone.

  The motivation that had evaded me all morning surged through me at once, and I rolled out of bed and into a neutral-colored skirt, blouse and sweater—simple clothes that would go unnoticed on the street. Then, I slipped from my room and from the mansion without notice.

  I didn’t have to pay attention to where I was going as I walked. I knew where I was. Even though I hadn’t been in the city for years, I could see the map of it in my head, and I followed the streets until they became more and more familiar. Until suddenly, I wasn’t surrounded by mansions and luxurious shopping, but squat brick buildings with laundry hanging from the windows. Instead of fashionable clothes and fine fabrics, men and women walked past in simple cottons the color of the earth.

  Five Points was radically different from Fifth Avenue, but as I walked, I saw it was also radically different from the Five Points of my youth. In the ten years I’d been gone, many of the tenements had been torn down, and government buildings had replaced them. The old roosts of criminals and gang members were now occupied by businessmen and government officials.

  As a child in Five Points, I’d spent my youth looking over my shoulder, wondering when and where we would be robbed or assaulted. But now, children played games in the streets, giggling and rushing out of the way of oncoming cars, while their parents watched them from apartment windows. Five Points had become—if not safe—safer, at least.

  I turned the corner, passing by a corner store where a man bought cigarettes while lighting a new one from his pocket, and walked down two more blocks before I stopped and looked across the street.

  The building had been torn down, but I recognized the land. I recognized the slope of the city, the look of Manhattan behind it. My childhood home.

  There was a bench bolted to the curb, and I sat down, staring up at the unfamiliar building that stood like a stranger where my home had once been. I’d imagined coming back to Five Points and sitting on the stairs I’d sat on with my brother. I’d imagined running into the same group of kids who used to play together, not out of friendship, but necessity because the streets could be so mean. Of course, that had been unrealistic. Things had changed. Me most of all. I was no longer Nellie Dennet, but Rose Beckingham, the daughter of a British official. An orphan—though I’d been an orphan regardless of my name.

  I hadn’t read the newspaper clipping after Aunt Sarah gave it to me because it felt like a betrayal. Of myself, of my real parents. But now, sitting in the place where they had lived and died, I felt ready to let go. I pulled out the clipping and began to read.

  The article relayed the events of the bombing that I knew more intimately than anyone, and then it devoted a section to the victims. The names of the servants who were in the car, Mrs. Beckingham’s name and the organizations she did charitable work for, and then the largest section to Mr. Beckingham and his career.

  I knew all of the information already, so I skimmed, disappointed that the reading of the article hadn’t felt like a more monumental release of the emotions from my past. But then, my eye caught on something.

  Mr. Beckingham played a significant role in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and many point to it as a defining moment in his career, when he made the move from a climber of the political ladder to a man who had scaled its heights.

  I had already been living with and working for the Beckinghams at this point, but I was a young girl and the comings and goings of Mr. Beckingham were not a concern of mine. So, I did not recall his involvement in the Paris Peace Conference. And truly, even a week before, the information would have meant very little to me. But since meeting Charles Cresswell, the conference in Paris had begun to stand out as something of note. The conference and the decisions made there had even been a conversation at the party the night before.

  What was I to make of this?

  People had been moving past me on the sidewalk the entire time, but one shadow, lurking just behind my shoulder, caught my attention, and I startled and turned to see a man standing near the curb. He wore a black derby hat, his chin tipped low so I could not see his eyes, and carried a long cane. One I knew, from experience, had a blade hidden in the end.

  Even before I saw the thin black mustache, one side tipped into a smile, I knew who the man was.

  In a mix of astonishment and relief, I walked towards him. “Monsieur Prideaux.”

  He looked up at me, not at all surprised at my presence, and smiled. “My dearest Rose.”

  10

  He looked less tan than he had in Morocco, but still had the swarthy air of a well-travelled man. His clothes were meticulous as ever, freshly-pressed, and he removed his hat, tucked it beneath his arm, and ran a hand through his dark hair.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, stopping on the sidewalk several paces away. I’d been moving towards him like a woman possessed, but the hypnosis broke when he said my name.

  “Is that any way to greet an old friend?” he teased, his French accent thick. I’d become richly acquainted with it during our time together, but after a month away, it sounded stronger. “Especially a friend you abandoned in the middle of the night.”

  “Forgive me,” I said, doing my best to smile, to keep the reunion lighthearted. “I actually left early in the morning.”

  He nodded, his smile becoming sharper. “Thank you for the correction. That does make all the difference.”

  We would discuss my sudden departure from Morocco, but not now. Not when Achilles Prideaux was standing on the street where I used to live in New York City. “You did not answer my question.”

  He sighed. “I am in New York on a case.”

  I blinked, waiting for him to continue, but it seemed as though he thought that answer sufficed. It did not. “What are you doing here?”

  “Ahh.” He tipped his head back as though suddenly understanding my meaning. He turned towards the building that stood where my family’s home once had. “You know, the public library keeps a lot of newspapers. Even though I did not know the exact date of your parents’ deaths, it did not take me long to find the article that discussed their murders. And within that article, I found your old address.”

  My heart thudded inside my chest like a bass drum. “Why would you want that?”

  Achilles shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe it was the detective inside of me always searching for answers. Or maybe, I hoped I’d find you here.”

  “Did you know I was in the city, as well?” I asked, taking a small
but noticeable step backwards. “Is that why you came here? To find me?”

  “I hope you won’t be offended when I tell you not to flatter yourself,” he said, a smug smile on his lips. “My business in the city has nothing to do with you. However, I did hear from a trustworthy connection that you had left Bombay on a ship headed for America. It did not seem so unlikely that you would end up in the place where your story began.”

  I believed him. Though part of me was still uneasy at the sight of Achilles, a fixture of my new life, in a place so firmly rooted in my old life, I did not believe he was there for any nefarious purpose.

  “That does not explain why you came here,” I said. “What business could you have at Nellie Dennet’s old apartment?”

  Achilles looked at me for a long moment, and I could feel him stripping away Rose Beckingham, looking beneath the surface to where Nellie Dennet had been hidden away for so long. He was the only person who knew me as Nellie, who knew my secrets, and in that moment, I was keenly aware of the kind of power it gave him over me.

  Finally, after a long moment, he shook his head and smiled. “Maybe you could answer a few of my questions now.”

  I nodded and walked back to the bench I’d been sitting at. I felt suddenly unsteady on my feet. Achilles sat beside me, stretching out his legs in front of him, his hands folded one on top of the other on the crook of his cane.

  “Why did you leave?”

  The haughtiness was gone from his voice. The question, short and simple, revealed a great deal of vulnerability, and I looked away from him, staring down the street. “I was in Morocco to assist you, Achilles. I wanted to be free from the role I was playing, not take on another, behaving like some dutiful wife.”

  “I never treated you that way,” he said sharply, seeming almost embarrassed by the suggestion.

  “No,” I agreed. “Though, with time, I believe you would have.”

  He said nothing, and I felt bad at the idea that I had offended or hurt him. Our complicated past aside, I had no desire to wound him.