Kitty stands near a table by the back stairs and waves me over. When I approach, she squints up at me and her face brightens. “You’re here.”
I roll my gloves, click open my purse, and drop them in. “Yes.”
“Yes. Yes, you are.” She holds her hand out to me, and her grip is tight when I take it. “I’m Kitty Swain.”
Her skin is dry, calloused along the pad. I want to hold it longer, for it feels so much like Alice’s, rough, overtended with soap, nails red at the bed from biting.
Then she pulls a chair out for me. Drops in the one across. “I didn’t expect you. Not really. No one listens to me, so . . .” She ducks her head to her shoulder. “But you are here.”
“Why did you write me, Miss Swain?”
“Kitty.”
“Kitty.”
She sits back. Fidgets with her hands. Cuts a glance to the barkeep, then back to me. “I’m in the kitchen. Most times. Others, I get sent to clean or whatever is needed. Mrs. Brighton says I am very good at doing what is asked.” She purses her lips, as if someone had just forced a lemon in her mouth, then shakes her head. “But sometimes what I’m asked to do and what I should do are at odds. And that pricks at my conscience.”
“What were you asked to do?”
I see the black flecks in Miss Swain’s eyes, the rim of red on an earlobe. She spreads her hands on the table and leans forward like a doll hinged at the hips. “It’s what I was asked not to do.”
“Which was?”
“I promised I wouldn’t say, but I can’t promise a lie.”
“Kitty—”
“I saw her fall.”
I pull in a breath. “What?”
She drops her gaze to the tabletop. “I like to walk the paths at night. Before matron does evening reading. No one saying, ‘Kitty, do this, Kitty, do that.’ Just me and the stars and the quiet.”
“What did you see?”
“No one goes on the roof. But that night, I saw a shape, and I thought, There’s someone up there, standing right on the edge. It’s Alice. And I thought, No that’s not right. It can’t be Alice. But it was. And I said, ‘What are you doing up there?’” She points, as if the roof of the asylum is just beyond my shoulder, her eyes narrowed on some figure only she can see. “She looked behind as if someone else was there and talking to her, and then she was over the edge . . .” She hugs her arms to her chest and rocks. “Her arms spun round like windmills, and I laughed. I shouldn’t have, it was terrible, but that’s what I thought then. How silly, as if she’d catch the air and it would all stop.”
My heart knocks against my chest. “You saw her fall.”
“The sound when she landed. It was . . . I still hear it.” She blinks and stares. “I ran up quick as I could. She was so still . . . I sat down right by her and held her hand. She liked her hand held, it gave her . . . Mrs. Brighton came running, and then so many others. But I kept hold of her hand all the time until they took her away.”
“Was she still alive? When you found her.”
“She made such horrible noises. Such—” A sob rasps out of her. She drags a handkerchief from the waist of her dress and holds it over her face. “She was my friend.”
My hand trembles as I touch her wrist and wait for her to gather herself. She folds the linen in fourths and smooths it on the table.
“Kitty,” I say. “How did she get up there?”
Kitty looks up. “I don’t know.” She bites hard on her lip.
“Did she pick the lock?”
“There’s a metal plate on the third-floor doors. On the inside. You can’t pick your way out of that. It has to be unlocked from the outside.”
My mouth opens and shuts.
“You can’t get out of those rooms.” She reaches to me.
“You’re telling me—”
“Mrs. Abbott, I don’t know what happened. She was in a terrible state, but I can’t see it, not jumping like that. No. We always said to each other, One can hope. Someone else had to be up there.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Her hand trembles. She dabs a napkin to her lips. But she doesn’t stop talking, and the saliva smears and glistens on her chin. “She wasn’t herself that last week. They had to tie her down to stop her screaming sometimes. I was only allowed a visit once.”
A jagged chill scratches its way under my skin. I cannot move. My arms and legs are lead heavy. I fear the floorboards will crack under the weight. “What did they do to her?”
“What didn’t they?” Kitty looks at me askance. “Trying all sorts of ways to keep her . . . contained. That’s what Mrs. Brighton says. But she took Beatrice’s passing hard.”
“Beatrice?”
“Beatrice Beecham. She was on the same floor as Alice, they liked to sew together. And then she went to the ice treatment and didn’t come back. Apoplexy. That’s what Dr. Mayhew said, and that you can’t ever know when one will come. And Alice beat her head against the wall until her skin split, and Mrs. Brighton and one of the wardens took her to the third floor.”
My legs shake as I stand and lurch away from the table. “I need to see Dr.—”
“Don’t tell him I came here. I’ll lose my job. I can’t lose my job.”
I push my way through the room, past knees and elbows. A lunch pail kicked to the side. I wipe at my eyes and stumble toward the livery.
Kitty follows, matching me stride for stride. Not touching me nor stopping me. She follows me into the shade of the livery entrance, slows with me. Steps behind me as I stumble to an alley and bend to the wall and am sick.
She hands me her handkerchief to wipe my mouth. Turns her head to look away as I spit up sour saliva. I press my palms and forehead to the sun-hot brick. Rake in breaths. Swallow back bile. My skin chills and I shiver. Then I blow out one long breath and step back. “Who had the key to that door?”
“Miss Clough. She’s the third-floor matron. But she swears it wasn’t her. She’s a good one, Miss Clough.”
“I want to see her.” I grab her arm and pull her close. “You take me to see her.”
“They won’t let you in.”
“You get me in to see this Miss Clough, then.”
“You’re hurting me, Mrs. Abbott.” Her eyes go wide, as if she’s spotted something just beyond us on the street. “Please, Mrs. Abbott. It’s my morning off, I need to get back before they know.”
“Did someone kill my sister?” I flash to Alice’s hand in mine, so lifeless, the nails ragged and worn. “Help me. Please.”
I loosen my grip. Kitty rubs her wrist and pulls at the cuff of her shirt. Then she steps back and digs into her handbag. “Here.” She shoves a package at me, solid edges like a book, wrapped in brown paper and twine. “This was Alice’s. I kept them for her. I have to go.”
“This Miss Clough—”
“It’ll have to be at night. When there’s just the small staff. I’ll send you word.” She reaches to me, then stops. “Oh!” Then she jerks away and jogs farther down the alley to the river. She slows, looking back to me. “We both need solace, Mrs. Abbott. I think we both do.”
I step out of the alley. The light is a sullen yellow. The wind gusts and pummels my bonnet against my cheek. I grip the parcel tight and wait for the passing of a milk van. The mule’s ribs poke its skin and mud-cracked hair. I cross the street, lifting my skirts to avoid the dirt and oil and horse dung. I don’t know where I’m going.
Someone killed my sister.
Chapter Seventeen
The Phoenix Hotel lobby is cool. No one pays attention to me. The bench I sit on is curved, tufted with green velvet much used and sheened. The desk clerk has pulled over a small table, has gone to the trouble of bringing me a spritzer of soda water, and I nod at him and take a sip. The spritzer is flat. I pretend it isn’t. I pretend instead I am just a woman sitting in a hotel lobby because the weather threatens rain and thunderstorms. I am the widow people give wide berth or too much sympathy. I watc
h the comings and goings of the people up the stairs, boots and button-up shoes, carpetbags and leather carrying cases. The bell ringing for the bellhop. The room keys jangled and delivered. Comings and goings.
I’ve set the package on the table. The twine is knotted twice. It won’t unknot, so I pull the string to the edge and shrug it off to the seat. A book. Thin, the cover a cheap, blue cotton. The pages crinkle along their edges, as if left in the rain.
Open the book. The words won’t bite.
I flip quickly. There’s no rhyme or reason to the lines of words and the spattering of sketches. Nothing dated. Alice’s handwriting is precise, as it always is—she worked hard at it all those years ago when I taught her. Nothing misspelled, and she was proud of that, studied the word lists I gave her from my old textbooks. My learning of sums and the French Revolution, embroidery and beginning French, passed on to her in the corner of her room we’d turned into a study.
She’s come again. I can’t look at her teeth. They’re big as the windows. Marion would call her Mary Mule.
“Oh, Alice.” I run my thumb along the paper and the indent of the pencil marks.
Kitty’s eyes are green glass. Sometimes I want to shatter them. On and on there’s always hope. When?
A sketch, then, in pencil. A view of the trees from the women’s porch. I recognize the smokestack poking above the leaves. She’s drawn in creatures hanging and grinning from branches. Knob kneed. Long nailed. Some with hair aflame.
Today ice. Toes still numb. Lemon cake.
Another sketch: A widow with a veil so long it pools at her feet. She holds a single lily and stands over a grave small enough for a babe.
A page torn out. The ragged edges traced with curlicues. It is Kitty in profile, clear cheeked and smiling. She is almost pretty, and somehow Alice has caught the light from the window.
I will be a good girl.
Box. Mrs. B said not so long this time, but she was wrong. 1,786 seconds. I counted. Sent complaint to Dr. M.
My breath stops at the image on the next page: A girl on a chair, thick leathers. Ankles to chair legs, wrists to the arms. Chest belted tight. Head trapped inside a square box, a lock on the side. A cat lying on top with its paws slung over the edge and its eyes staring direct into mine.
My hand quivers as I hold it to my mouth. The leather straps. The bruises.
“What did they do to you?”
Kitty angry at me. Why can’t you behave.
He watches. Everywhere. He’s everywhere. His eyes are like marbles. Mrs. B says I’m a tall taler.
Lemon cake. Mrs. B showing off. Ladies sing like cats but terribly righteous. Smell like verbena and shoe polish.
An empty page.
Another picture. A cat. Or not a cat. Parts of a cat and none make a whole. Whiskers in a line as if they’d been plucked and set to a table. A haunch of fur and then muscle, then the bones of the foot, each claw separately drawn. One ear mangled. Along the edge: HARPER R.I.P.
Kitty agrees. We’ll be better and then we can meet in real life and have creams and cakes.
Not wanted.
Beatrice is dead. She was strapped under the ice and they all laughed when she had a fit.
Mrs. B says STOP MAKING THINGS UP. I made it up in my head, she says, and that I’m too bad a girl and she said, “You tried to murder that little boy.”
LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE
Beatrice Beecham lies under the earth, one too many soaks in the water. Say a prayer for the dead and drownd and tell her visitors she died of the plague.
LIE
I know the truth. It’s scratched on my eyes and I won’t ever ever stop seeing any of it. I was there. I saw. He laughs and hums as we freeze and drown. Our calm time.
I am very cold. He watches me—says I am worth nothing but the dollars he’s been given.
I think soon I’ll die
Complaint to Constable. Kitty to take.
BOXthedemonsfoundthewayinscratchscratchscratch Dr. M says the 3rd FLOOR & Kitty cries that’s the end then
Where is my trunk it was here it’s not here?
Tomorrow. It is murder
I want to go home
Nothing after. Blank page to blank page until the last. And another handwriting, not neat. Kitty’s.
Alice Louise Snow. R.I.P.
She was my friend.
I close the book. But the image of Alice in the chair, head locked into a square box, is burnt in my vision, and no matter if I close my eyes or stare at the brass doors across the lobby, I see it. See her.
“She was afraid of the dark,” I whisper.
A man laughs in the bar, his head tilted back, mouth open, big teeth. He slaps his stomach and then the bar top.
“She was afraid of the dark.”
“Mind if I steal this?” I look up at a man in brown twill. He picks up the facing chair and swings it toward a group of young men across the way.
I don’t answer, but pull on my gloves and bonnet, pick up the book, then grip the table and force myself to stand, to walk to the lobby.
The police station jangles with voices. People mill around to wait out the summer storm. I have to bend close to the desk officer to be heard. He cocks his ear toward me and rolls a pencil back and forth on the desk.
“I wish to see the constable.”
“He’s not here. He’s engaged elsewhere.” He twists the pencil a different direction and rolls it under his palm.
“Then I will wait.”
“He won’t be in until very late tomorrow. He’s gone to Keene.”
There’s a boom of thunder. Laughter bubbles and bursts. The pencil is shifted again, ready to be rolled. The man looks past me to the next in line.
I grit my teeth and slap my hand to his. “I want to make a complaint.”
Snow & Son Brassworks is silent. No hum and whir, no windows rattling and molds thumping and the constant outflow of candlesticks and chandeliers. Bullets and belt buckles.
My parasol is for sun, not the rain now bloating the clouds.
I shake the lock. Stare down the street for any sign of Lionel. Any sign the business has a life at all. Any chance I can ride out the weather here and return home with him.
But there’s no Lionel. I cup my hand to the glass to peer inside. Machinery and wood boxes stacked haphazardly between casting machines. The belts hang loose from the ceiling. My eyes track the stairs to Lionel’s glassed-in office. The door is ajar but the room is dark.
A shout from the woolen mill startles me. All around, workers cross from the woolen mills to the depot. Hand carts piled high with packed parcels.
The sky tints green yellow, and a gust picks up the cotton dust from a delivery door. It swirls and eddies and coats my vest and skirts. Then the door is pulled shut, as are the others along the street.
“No stage going out this afternoon. That sky’s waiting to take a punch.” The liveryman rests his elbows on the wood counter, narrows an eye, and peers past my shoulder. “You’ll need to wait for the seven-thirty coach. It might be held up in Concord. Can’t be certain about that.”
The ties of my bonnet flap as a gust blows through the building. I grab the brim. Behind me, the horses shift and stamp in their stalls.
“I won’t take the horses out in this,” he says.
“No, of course not.”
“You might wish to take a room for the night.”
But I don’t have money enough for a hotel.
He tugs at his mustard coat, then reaches for the shutter and closes me out.
The rain comes heavy now, sheets that turn to steam against the brick and stone. I stop under an awning. The water pours from the corners, spattering the dirt and churning it to mud.
School Street. Houses tucked behind gardens. The rain pounds the flowers and tumbles over the black iron railings. There’s a hiss of light. I jump at the immediate crack of thunder and leapfrog across the street, skirts lifted, shoes and boots soaked enough that it doesn’t matter
if I avoid the puddles or wade right through them. Another flash and crack. I take my handkerchief from my shirtwaist to wipe my face, though it is as sodden as the rest of me, then rap on the dark-blue door of a familiar plain cottage.
Mr. Hargreaves answers, looking out at me in surprise.
“Mrs. Abbott.”
“I’m afraid I am adrift.”
“We are delighted you changed your mind.” Mr. Hargreaves shifts forward on the settee and offers me a cup and saucer of tea. He smiles, and tips his head. “Ada is quite beside herself.”
I look at Ada—or what I can make out of her between the peacock-feather vase and the multiple busts of Caesar and Shakespeare and Bacon on a litter of stands in the front parlor. She is slim shouldered and quiet, currently feeding seeds to a pair of goldfinches in an ornate wicker cage. She sits on a stool between the birdcage and an upright piano. The rest of the furniture is laden with student workbooks and tomes of various natures.
They have painted the walls. No longer the light peach that held in the sun—for didn’t the cottage want always for light? Now it is an aggressive puce. The settee itself is much the same tone, the curtains and their tassels a sickly mint, and all of it seems to pall. It is 3:00 p.m. The wall clock clangs the time. “You have put your mark on the cottage,” I say.
“Do you like it?” Ada’s gaze is that of a teacher; she won’t give up the attention until I’ve answered the question and she is content with the response.
The calico dress she has lent me is too tight at the neck, pinches my armpits. The cotton petticoat is too short in length. But they are dry, and it’s the first time in so long I’ve worn anything with color. It’s almost too much, this weave of bright-orange flowers and green threads. “I like it very much.”
The answer suits. Her lips play at the corners, and she relaxes in the seat. “We thought, why not?” She gives a shrug. “Why not?”
“It’s inexplicable,” Mr. Hargreaves says.
“What is?” I ask.
“You. Of all the people I thought I would never see—though I do think of you and Benjamin often—it would be you. On the street.” He crosses his feet at the ankles. Shakes his head, then wipes the corner of his lip with his knuckle. “All so terribly grim, though. Poor Alice.”
After Alice Fell: A Novel Page 13