by Sean Munger
She was relieved that Julian had not wanted to make love tonight. They hadn’t been physical since the end of their honeymoon. It hadn’t seemed appropriate to engage in conjugal relations either in Lucretia’s house or Cornelius’s place in Newport; Anine was at first expecting that Julian would be eager to resume having sex with her now that they were home, but both tonight and the night before he hadn’t seemed interested. She was glad of it. Being constantly nervous and on-edge—about the nightmares, about the memory of discovering Bradbury—sapped her of any hint of desire.
Julian fell asleep quickly, as he nearly always did. Within minutes his breaths were very even and hollow-sounding, almost a snore but not quite. Anine willed herself to relax. She was surprised how much tension she’d been unconsciously holding in her joints.
Except for the ticking of the clock and Julian’s breathing the room was deathly silent. The house’s walls were so thick that they blocked out all sound from the streets around them. The bedroom’s beautiful furnishings were all so new and alien to Anine that she still didn’t feel like it was home. She hoped she would get used to it.
What’s that? With a sudden jerk she raised her head off the pillow. It felt like some time had passed and she thought she had been asleep, but there was no telling how long. Something had awakened her, but as she listened in the darkness she could hear only Julian’s breaths and the relentless ticking of the mantel clock. Her muscles were tense again. She relaxed them. “Ingenting där,” she whispered. Nothing there.
But a moment later she heard it again. It was the creak of floorboards, moving in the hallway outside the bedroom door. It moved from right to left.
Anine was at once startled and annoyed. She knew it had to be Mrs. O’Haney, but why would she be moving around in the middle of the night, especially around their bedroom?
As she turned over, fluffing the pillow, Anine heard the creak of footsteps on floorboards again, this time moving right to left. She heard something else too: soft giggling. From behind the thick oaken door of the bedroom it was barely audible, not something one could have heard without listening intently, but Anine definitely heard it.
All right. Enough. Anine swung out of bed, reaching for the dressing-gown she’d left on one of the posts. “She ought to respect our sleeping hours,” she whispered. Mrs. O’Haney was not starting out her term of employment well. Her references were glowing; she’d been a ladies’ maid for twenty-seven years, or so Beasley had told her. He was the one who had hired her.
She grasped the doorknob tightly but pulled the door open very gently, hoping not to wake Julian. Out in the hallway there was only slightly more light than in the bedroom. In the dimness the thick green carpet of the entryway—wall-to-wall and brand new, still smelling of wet wool—appeared inky black. Anine saw no lights on anywhere, up here or down below, and there was no trace of Mrs. O’Haney. There was no sound, only silence.
She must have gone back to bed. Well, good.
Anine closed the bedroom door and returned to bed. As she crawled under the covers Julian snorted, stirred and muttered groggily, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Thought I heard something.”
She slept.
In the morning when they woke Julian rang the bell cord. Anine heard him do it but she was conscious for only a few moments, and then drifted blissfully back toward heavy sleep.
She was awakened by Julian’s gruff voice: “Where the hell is she?” Anine opened her eyes and raised her head off the pillow. It was morning, and sunlight slanted through the chinks in the shutters over the bedroom windows.
“What’s that?” said Anine.
“I rang for the maid three times.” Julian sat up in bed, and then stabbed both hands toward the ceiling in a monstrous stretch. “I think she’s lazy,” he said, barely intelligible through his yawn. He reached over and snatched the bell cord again, pulling it sharply.
She did not come.
“God damn it,” Julian hissed as he put on his dressing gown. “First morning on the job and she’s already botched it.”
“I heard her moving around last night.”
“Did you? Isn’t that just like the Irish. Up all night, sleep ’til noon. Maybe we should let her go and hire a white woman instead.”
He opened the bedroom door, stepped through it and slammed it behind him. Anine, still very groggy, was nearly back to sleep in a matter of seconds.
The bedroom door came open again after what seemed like only an instant, but must have been several minutes. Julian stood in the doorway. “She’s dead,” he announced, his voice flat.
Anine squinted her eyes, then opened them. What he’d said took a few seconds to sink in. “What did you say?”
“Mrs. O’Haney. She’s dead.”
Mrs. Hennessy was not yet in and Julian had not yet hired his manservant, so he had to summon the doctor himself. Anine stood outside the door of the maid’s quarters in the garret, continually wiping her sweaty hands on the folds of her dress. Mrs. Hennessey, who arrived in the midst of the doctor’s investigation, stood nearby, occasionally daubing her eyes with a handkerchief. Through the doorway Anine could see Mrs. O’Haney’s face. It was the color of ashes and the lumps of her body stuck up under the gingham spread that covered the narrow bed. Julian stood, arms folded across his chest, in the corner of the maid’s room.
“Natural causes,” the doctor pronounced, folding up his black bag. “It seems to have happened in her sleep. She didn’t suffer.” He looked up at Julian. “Do you know how old she was?”
“Not precisely. Sixty, maybe?”
Anine was still in shock. “She seemed fine last night,” she told the doctor. “I thought I heard her walk by my door in the middle of the night. She even laughed.”
“Laughed?” said Julian, surprised.
“I’ll have to notify the coroner,” said the doctor, passing Anine as he stepped out of the room. “Someone from the city will come and remove her. It shouldn’t take more than an hour or so.”
“Yes, the coroner is already familiar with this house,” Anine replied, looking into the doctor’s eyes.
The man paused. Under his mustache his mouth quivered for an instant, but he said nothing.
“Thank you, doctor,” Julian said, following him.
Anine embraced Mrs. Hennessy who cried quietly. “We have to find her family,” said the cook, between sniffles. “I only had two conversations with her. She didn’t mention a husband, but…” Her voice trailed off.
Another death. The second servant in a month who has to be carried out of the place. It occurred to her that if word of this latest horror got around—as surely it would—the domestics of New York City would collectively brand this house as cursed. She still needed a ladies’ maid, and Julian his valet; but that, of course, was secondary. Anine felt for the old Irishwoman and her family, if she had one. As she had for Bradbury she intended to write a letter of condolence and to pay Mrs. O’Haney’s next of kin in full for her brief time of service. That was the least she could do.
Supper that night was dreary and muted. Over roast beef, mushroom-celery soup and a rather middling claret Anine and Julian said little to one another. In the emptiness of the gigantic dining room the clank and ting of silverware against china sounded jarring and loud. It had been a warm day but a fire glowed dully between the andirons. The house felt desperately empty.
“You’re sure you heard her walking around?” said Julian, apropos of nothing.
So he was thinking about her too. Anine took a sip from her wine glass. “Yes. Her footsteps woke me.”
Julian grunted. “You sleep so lightly that the sound of a mouse breathing could wake you.”
“I did hear her laughing.”
He seemed bothered by this. “What reason would she have to be laughing outside our bedroom door in the middle of the night?”
“I have no idea, Julian. We knew nothing about the woman.”
“Well, it’s certainly queer.”
That it was. Anine did not eat much more. Soon Mrs. Hennessey came to take away the plates and it seemed only minutes later that she was announcing she was leaving for the evening. In the drawing room with Julian, who sat reading a volume of Sherman’s Civil War memoirs, Anine tried to pass the time with the Walter Scott novel that Lucretia had let her keep, but the time stretched curiously long and the feeling of the house’s emptiness was almost suffocating.
“Well, let’s turn in,” said Julian after snapping shut the book. Anine’s stomach sank. How can he expect to sleep after all of this? After yet another body was carried out of here today? But she gave no protest and soon joined him.
Tick…tick…tick…tick… Each stroke of the mantel clock seemed in the inky stillness of the bedroom like the crash of a cymbal. In strange contrast to its monstrous ticking the clock’s chime on the hour was quite muted, like the ting of a spoon against a glass. Not long ago it had chimed two and Anine hadn’t slept a wink. She thought of the silence that must have pervaded the house during the summer months while Bradbury’s body hung undiscovered from the balustrade.
She imagined the moment of his death. Did he cry out? Did his neck snap audibly when the rope jerked taut? The next sound would have been a gentle creaking of the rope against the railing as his body swayed, dangling like the pendulum of that noisy clock (TICK…TICK…TICK…) until it finally came to rest. After that the house was silent. If Julian and the police inspector were right Bradbury hanged himself on June 4. The next sound to break the deathful silence was the sound of Julian rapping on the door with his walking stick, two and a half months later. For ten weeks this house had been completely and ominously silent.
For some reason Anine was more horrified by the thought of that long unbroken silence than she was by the imagination of the suicide itself.
TICK! TICK! TICK!
Then Anine heard something else: a creaking noise, like footsteps on the floorboards, under the thick new forest-green carpet outside the bedroom door.
Her body jerked taut but she didn’t sit up. No—I can’t have heard that! I imagined it! The sound lasted for only a split-second and indeed she’d only half-heard it. It reminded her of the ominous rustling noise amongst the leaves in her dream of Ola returning from the grave even though the sound she’d just heard did not resemble it. She listened intently, counting the ticks of the clock. After twenty-five when there was no recurrence of the sound she decided firmly that she had imagined it. She turned over, fluffing the pillow. Next to her Julian made a somniloquistic grunt.
TICK…TICK…TICK (creak)…
Then she heard the giggle—the same one she had heard the night before.
“Julian!” Anine cried, grabbing him. He was awake instantly, his body giving a savage jerk that nearly flung her off the bed. “Someone’s here! Someone’s in the house!”
Instantly he launched himself off the bed and bolted for the bureau. She heard a drawer open and him fumbling about in the dark, and then she froze at the cold metal click of the gun that she hadn’t known until this moment that he possessed. “Stay here,” he said. “Don’t make any sound.”
He paused for just a moment before the bedroom door, then flung it open and bolted into the hallway. His voice boomed through the hallway and the stairs: “Who are you? I’m going to shoot you!”
Anine quivered, clutching the bedclothes around her. The ticking of the clock now suddenly seemed much softer than it had before.
She head Julian’s forceful footfalls up and down the hallway and then down the stairs. “Who’s here?” The next time she heard his voice it sounded much less commanding. “Is anyone here?” After a while she saw through the ajar bedroom door the very faint hint of orange light from below—he lit a lamp—and she heard him call out in various other parts of the house. But there was no answer.
He returned to the bedroom. In one hand was a glass oil lamp, probably the one from the hall table. In the other was the revolver. Julian set both on the table next to his side of the bed, and he sat down, facing away from Anine.
“What did you hear?” he asked.
“The same thing as last night. Footsteps outside the bedroom—the boards in the floor creaking under the carpet. Then someone giggling.”
His body was very still. He stared at the wall. At last he said, “Anine, there’s no one here. The front door is locked. No one can get in.”
“I heard it, Julian. I know I did.”
After a long pause he leaned forward, pulled up the glass lamp cover, and blew out the wick. “You imagined it,” he declared, and swung into bed.
“No, I didn’t. I’m sure I heard it.”
“You thought you heard it.”
“It was the same thing as last night. That means when I heard it last night it couldn’t have been Mrs. O’Haney.”
“You imagined it last night too,” he sighed. Then he emitted a strange sound, kind of like a grunt. “I knew it.”
Within two minutes he was asleep. Anine lay there in the darkness, now feeling more terrified and bewildered than ever.
I didn’t imagine it. I heard it. Not just tonight, but last night too.
The ticking of the clock was loud again, a cymbal crash every second.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
She didn’t sleep. In the deathful silence between each deafening tick she waited in terror that she would again hear the creaking and the spectral giggling from behind the bedroom door.
Anine knew very little about the world of domestic servants but she observed very quickly that her surmise about it being difficult to hire a replacement for Mrs. O’Haney was correct. The notice began running in the Times two days after the Irishwoman’s death. On that day only one potential applicant came to call at the house, a thoroughly unsuitable woman called Polly Mace with terrible manners and no references. The day after that no one came at all. Anine hated to heap extra duties upon Mrs. Hennessy but there was simply no choice. She bore up cheerfully, washing clothes and cleaning the water-closet, but on the second afternoon that no applicants answered the ad Mrs. Hennessy unwittingly confirmed what Anine suspected.
“Most of the Fifth Avenue maids have heard of the troubles in this house,” said the cook. “First the caretaker, then Mrs. O’Haney. They’re scared. If you pardon me, ma’am, the only women you’ll find to take the job are the coloreds.”
At dinner that night Anine asked Julian how he was progressing at finding a valet. He’d run a second notice in the Times advertising the position, but he was interviewing candidates at his office and they did not come to the house. “I’ve had quite a lot of applicants,” he said. “Of course, few of them have much experience in serving a gentleman.”
“Almost no one has come about the ladies’ maid job. Mrs. Hennessey says it’s because they’re afraid of the house. I can’t say I blame them.”
Julian grunted. “Naturally the women are a more superstitious lot. There should be a line around the block. Any domestic should be honored to work so close to Fifth Avenue.”
The coloreds. Something about Mrs. Hennessey’s remark bothered Anine and she wasn’t sure what it was. In the morning Anine made a point to rise late, and she had not yet had her breakfast by the time Julian left the house for his office. As she hoped, his copy of the Times was still on the dining room table. While Mrs. Hennessey served breakfast Anine turned to the advertisements on the back pages. She quickly found the one Julian had placed:
SITUATION OFFERED. LADIES’ MAID. Live-in. Must have good City references.
Experience essential. Apply in person, 11 West 38th Street,
Manhattan. WHITES ONLY.
After breakfast Anine took a card and a fountain pen and wrote out the text of the advertisement, omitting Whites Only. Then
she put on one of her many new outfits, a blue strolling dress with a jersey bodice—it had a matching hat—and asked Mrs. Hennessey to call her a carriage. “I’m going uptown to the newspaper office,” she announced. “You are not to say a word of this to Mr. Atherton when he returns home.”
Mrs. Hennessey looked slightly taken aback, but she nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” She went outside to summon a carriage.
Over breakfast the next morning Anine was slightly apprehensive that Julian would notice the advertisement had been revised, but if he saw it he said nothing of it. His only comment on the Times was about politics. “The Republicans have sealed their own doom by nominating Garfield. Hancock will make short work of him in November. I trust Father will be at sixes and sevens with a Democrat back in the executive mansion, but he has to learn that it’s not 1865 anymore. The war is behind us.”
Barely an hour after Julian departed for his office on Broad Street the knocker on the front door sounded and Anine opened it onto a black woman, about forty, in a plain black dress and carrying a single rumpled carpetbag. Her eyes were very dark and her face had a careworn quality about it.
“I’m here about the ladies’ maid job,” said the woman bluntly. “Is it still open?”
Chapter Five
The Spöke
Anine showed the woman into the parlor. The place was much different now than it had been on the terrible day they moved in. The velvet drapes were deep forest green, matching the carpet; the surface of the piano, a brand-new Chickering imported from Boston, shimmered like a mirror. The painting of Mrs. Quain had been replaced by a streetscape depicting St. James’s Park. On her honeymoon Anine saw the picture hanging in a gallery in London and bought it on the spot. Only the bookshelves were bare; Anine hadn’t yet gotten around to ordering books.
“I’m Mrs. Atherton,” she said. “Thank you for coming. Please forgive the empty shelves in this room. We just moved in not long ago.”
“My name is Clea Wicks.” The woman thrust an envelope into Anine’s hand. “My references.”