Winter Sisters

by Robin Oliveira

  “About what happened,” Mary said, trying to encourage her.

  “He said if we told, then something—” A strand of hair blew across her face and she absentmindedly hooked a pinky finger around it and dragged it behind her ears. Before, Emma had been a chatterbox, a lively, bubbling font of intelligence and mischief. Now she couldn’t even finish a sentence.

  “He said that something terrible would happen to Claire, didn’t he?” Mary prompted.

  Emma pressed her lips together and nodded grimly, her eyes glazed with fear.

  Mary reached over and cradled Emma’s pointed chin in one hand. “You’re safe now, do you hear me? Nothing will happen to Claire, not here.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “You’re safe now.” If need be, Mary would say this every hour, every day, for the rest of her life, so that Emma would believe it, too. “You’re safe.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “What he’s like,” Emma said.

  Although Mary knew what had happened to Emma in broad terms, she did not yet know the whole of what she had suffered. However, from Emma’s obvious terror she had a suspicion of how they might have survived such a man. “I think I might know, darling. I think he told you that if you did whatever he wanted, he would leave Claire alone. Is that it?”

  Emma looked at her, astonished.

  Mary pulled Emma close and touched her lips to the top of Emma’s head, not wanting to hold her too tightly, not wanting to scare her more. In the garden Elizabeth was pulling her violin from its case. She and Claire were perched on the blanket, Claire leaning against Elizabeth’s shoulder, one knee bent, while Elizabeth coated the bow with rosin. A hint of pinesap wafted across the garden.

  “You don’t understand. I did something terrible,” Emma said.

  “No, Emma,” Mary said. “You did nothing wrong.”

  “But I did.”

  “None of what happened to you and Claire was your fault.”

  “But I killed him.”

  Mary drew back. “What? Killed who?”

  “The good one. I hit him with a shovel.”

  “With a shovel?”

  “He came downstairs when the bells were ringing and I was scared that he wouldn’t let us go. I remembered Mama saying that bells like that meant fire or flood. So I picked up the shovel and hit him hard and he fell down and Claire and I ran up the stairs.”

  The words spilled out of Emma. It was the most she had said since she’d come back. But it still took a minute before Mary understood. At the hospital, she had assumed that something sharp in the water had injured Harley. But a shovel, wielded by Emma?

  “Is that how you got away?”

  Emma nodded.

  How had the girl ever delivered such a devastating blow? “But, darling, you didn’t kill him. You hurt him a little, but he’s alive.” Mary wouldn’t mention now—or perhaps, ever—that she and William had treated Harley. “You didn’t kill him,” she said again.

  “I didn’t?”

  “No.”

  Emma’s eyes widened. “Then I’m not bad?”

  “No, Emma. You’re not bad. You’re the bravest girl I have ever met. You saved Claire and you saved yourself. Hitting him was the right thing to do.”

  “But he was the good one.”

  Here it was again. Good man, bad man. Mary had been on alert since Farrell’s observation the day before. Had there really been two men? Across the garden, Elizabeth lifted her bow, and the first sweet note of something beautiful lifted into the air.

  “Why do you say he was the good one?” Mary said.

  “He gave us food. Once, he combed our hair.”

  “But did the good man—the one you hit with the shovel—ever hurt you?”

  Emma shook her head.

  “He didn’t—touch you—the way the other man—the bad man—did?” Mary said.

  Emma shook her head again, adamant.

  There were a thousand questions Mary wanted to ask—who was the other man, what did he look like, do you know his name—but to push the girl now would be to suggest that she didn’t believe her. And they hadn’t heard yet from Farrell. What if Darlene hadn’t been telling the truth? What if Harley wasn’t the man after all? And two men harming Emma seemed easier to believe than one who stood by and let another assault her.

  Emma was yawning. This would be Emma’s pattern, Mary thought. She would give up a few details, and then collapse. She seemed to have acquired an extraordinary capacity for sleep, as if she had not slept the entire six weeks she had been gone.

  Vera stuck her head out the back door. “Someone to see you at the door.”

  “A patient?”

  “Says he’s the precinct captain—Mantel? I made him stay outside on the veranda.” When Vera was upset, her accent grew heavier, and it was heavy now. She turned and beamed at Emma. “How is our Emma today? Does she want hot chocolate?”

  “I want to sleep.”

  “Vera, warn Lizzie to keep Claire outside, would you please? Come on, Emma. I’ll take you upstairs.” Mary led Emma up the back stairway to the lying-in room, the little girl’s hand clutching hers with a lassitude that spoke both of exhaustion and indifference. Emma’s eyes were already closing as Mary covered her with a light quilt and said, “I’m going outside to talk to the policeman. If you need me, you can go to the window and call for me, all right?” But she wasn’t certain that Emma had even heard her.

  Downstairs, in the foyer, Mary could hear William in his exam room broaching the necessity of surgery with his patient and the patient’s anxious questions, the strain of pain and shock evident in the high, trembling pitch of his voice. William’s even tones seemed to calm him, and their voices dropped to a low murmur. Outside, Mary found Mantel, pacing. He wore his greatcoat though this morning the air had lost all hint of winter. He doffed his policeman’s cap and said, “Mrs. Stipp,” without any hint of hostility.

  “Dr. Stipp.” She shut the door and stood before it to signal that she would not be inviting him inside.

  “Forgive me. Doctor. I came to apologize to you. I acknowledge that you were right all along. Those girls were alive, just as you thought. If it’s any comfort, I thought you’d want to know that we’ve found the man who took them—with your help. It was Mr. James Harley who got your girls. Ironically, the man you stitched at the hospital.” He seemed to have added the last to share the blame, as if Mary were somehow complicit in his failure to locate Emma and Claire, but his manner remained subdued, with no sign of the bluster he had displayed in their previous interactions.

  “Why didn’t Officer Farrell come to tell us himself? We waited for him last night.”

  “It was late when he got it all taken care of. I gave him the day off today. A man’s got to sleep sometime, doesn’t he? Plus, given how I behaved before, I owed you this courtesy.”

  Mary gave no indication that she accepted his apologies. She didn’t. He’d behaved abominably and she wasn’t about to forgive him. “Did Mr. Farrell mention to you that Emma and Claire say that there were two men involved?”

  “He did. He also told me Harley needed a doctor. I arranged for Albert Van der Veer to go see him. The jail doctor isn’t worth his salt. So neither you nor your husband should go near the man now. He is no longer your patient.”

  “Do you know that the girls say that Mr. Harley didn’t touch them?”

  “Well, their imaginations—”

  Mary held up her hand. She was tired of everyone saying that Emma had to have imagined something she was so adamant about. Mary was even tired of her own doubts. “If you speak to me again as if I or Emma don’t know what we’re talking about, I’ll report you to the mayor, which is what I should have done the second you dropped your search. You ought to have gone door to door to save those chi
ldren.”

  “Your impression of my powers of search and seizure are prodigious, madam, but I assure you I do not possess the right to ransack Albany, no matter what you think. No regulation allows for such a blanket action. Something like that requires evidence of a crime committed. There was no sign of a struggle, no sightings of Emma and Claire that indicated anything other than that a tragedy had occurred, much like the hundreds of other tragedies across the Northeast as a result of that blizzard.”

  “Tragedies?” William had appeared behind her, having escorted his patient to the door. The man wore a sling positioning his bandaged hand high across his chest. Dazedly, he stumbled past the policeman and wandered off toward the horsecar stop a half block away, where he sank onto the slatted bench to await the next car.

  “How do you do, Dr. Stipp,” Mantel said to William, after turning to watch the man go. “Your wife seems to be worried I won’t be doing the work to hunt down whoever is responsible for what happened to those girls. But I will, you can count on it. And I assure you that we’ll be asking Mr. Harley if he had a friend. But he’s in no shape to talk just now. Albert Van der Veer went to see him in jail and he reported the man is feverish. Right now, I’d like to talk to your girls, to see if they can describe the man who kidnapped them—if that’s what happened.”

  “It is what happened,” Mary said. “You just said Harley took them.”

  “Right. Yes. Well. Everything’s alleged until proven in court. I’m just being careful here. Now, can I talk to the girls?”

  “Absolutely not. Not yet,” Mary said. “Emma can barely stay awake, and Claire is—young. She calls Harley the good man and the second one the bad man. Actually, both of them do.”

  “Can you tell me anything? How are the girls feeling?”

  “How do you think they’re feeling, Captain? I examined them both. The evidence is unmistakable. Emma was raped. But Claire was not. She was spared.”

  “Spared?”

  “Completely.”

  Mantel whistled through his teeth. “I wonder what that’s about?”

  “Don’t be obtuse. You know exactly what that’s about,” Mary said, unleashing her full anger. He was pretending to know very little, his previous cavalier reference to the matter seemingly expunged from his memory. It was infuriating. “It’s just as you said before. Claire is not of age. But Emma is. Whoever raped her knew that and acted accordingly.”

  Squinting against a sudden shaft of light streaming under the portico, Mantel registered Mary’s statement with a vague, grim nod. On the street, the horsecar plodded past and slowed to a stop. They all turned to observe William’s patient ascend the open stairs, his gait far steadier than before.

  “Well,” Mantel said when the car started up again. “The district attorney will probably file charges against Harley soon. He’ll need to talk to the girls within a few days, too, so get ready. And he’ll be asking you what you want to do. Have you talked about that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if this goes to trial, Emma and Claire will need to testify. Have you thought about that?”

  Mary exchanged a look with William. They’d been too busy taking care of the girls to consider the possibility of a trial and what it might mean for Emma.

  “Well, I’ll be leaving you for now,” Mantel said, replacing his cap. “But one last warning. This story is fair game for the newspapers. Get ready. Like I told Farrell, it’s not every day two children come back to life.”

  With that, the brawny man tipped his hat and clattered down the steps, making an ignoble, hasty retreat down the slate walkway and across the street to the uneven sidewalk that ran outside the park fence. As he turned into the park, he passed Harold and Amelia returning from church. Harold dropped Amelia in front. She strode up the walkway, brandishing a copy of the Argus, its headlines blaring that the “Winter Sisters” had been found alive, that James Harley had been arrested for their kidnapping and ravishment, and that the girls were so crazed by their ordeal that they had been interred in a sanitarium.

  “How can it be announced in the newspapers already?” Amelia said, sinking breathless onto the veranda swing. “How does the reporter even know? Especially what happened to Emma? We told no one. And a sanitarium?”

  William and Mary stared at one another. It seemed impossible that the sympathetic Farrell would leak the news before they gave him permission.

  Only later that afternoon, when they received Viola’s letter with its generous offer of shelter and help for Emma and Claire, did they learn that Captain Mantel, astonishingly, had stopped first at the Van der Veers to inform them of James Harley’s arrest before coming to tell them.

  Who else, they wondered, had he told?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  A letter for Elizabeth from Jakob arrived early the next morning, Friday, April 25, via a Van der Veer footman before any of them had even breakfasted. Jakob had never come to claim her for the walk he had promised her, and she expected that this cream-colored envelope with its clear flowing script was an apology.

  She took the envelope upstairs to her room and tore it open.

  Midnight

  Thursday, April 24

  Dear Elizabeth,

  I apologize profusely for not coming to call on you this week. I intended to come to see you today, however the entirety of my attention became embroiled elsewhere and I confess that I forgot our engagement until this late hour, so I am writing you now with my sincerest and most heartfelt apologies.

  And I fear that after I tell you what occupied my attention so completely, you may never want me to call ever again.

  I would prefer to tell you the news I am about to relay in person, however I do not wish to disturb Emma and Claire O’Donnell. Yes. I know now what caused you so much distress the last time we saw one another. Early this morning Captain Mantel came to inform my father of all the news. It is this event that diverted my attentions. My father has induced me to represent Mr. James Harley, therefore today became consumed by a visit to the county jail and then a bail hearing. You may perhaps learn tomorrow that the judge has refused Mr. Harley bail. He is to be held pending charges. The district attorney will soon decide whether or not to file, I expect within the next forty-eight hours.

  I realize my involvement in the case will come as a shock. What I pledge to you and your family is that if Mr. Harley does go to trial, I vow to take enormous care with Emma and Claire in court. My own shock upon learning of the crimes committed against them cannot in any measure approximate yours, but I assure you that my heart is with you and your family, even as I pay duty to mine. I will understand if you wish to never see me again, though I am heartbroken at the prospect of losing your regard.

  I remain yours most sincerely,

  Jakob Van der Veer

  Elizabeth laid the letter open on the bed beside her and looked out the window and across the park. She could not see the Van der Veer mansion, and for that she was glad. Even if the park’s saplings had not already been budding, the distance was too far, though since meeting Jakob, she had often fancied that she could just make out the mansion’s distinctive height. After a few moments, she retrieved the letter and went downstairs into the kitchen, where to Vera’s surprise she pried the burner off the cookstove and shoved the letter into the fire.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  In the next several days, speculation in the newspapers about Emma and Claire and James Harley echoed a rising hysteria in the city, to be expected perhaps in a place still reeling from the effects of the flood. The Stipps heard nothing from the district attorney. They spent their time at home, tending to the girls, seeing their patients, trying to ignore the clusters of the curious who gathered on the sidewalk across the street, their heads tilted together in gossip, occasionally pointing toward the house. On Sunday, they did not go to church. It was not until Monday that they received a r
equest for an interview from Lansing Hotaling, the district attorney. He arrived at the Stipp house on Tuesday morning, after sending a second note to arrange the time of the appointment. He specifically needed to question Emma, he wrote, to precisely understand the case. It was imperative that he speak with her before she forgot any details. He would not question Claire, he wrote, for she was far too young and unreliable by the standards of the court to provide crucial testimony.

  Mary and William met him at the door. Hotaling was about thirty years of age and nearly seven feet tall. He had to duck under the door lintel. When viewed from the side, his long frame resembled a question mark, bringing to mind Washington Irving’s lanky Ichabod Crane. Juggling a sheaf of papers and a carrying case, he shook William’s hand with a large, damp grip. His wrinkled frock coat was expertly tailored but bunched at his elbows, and several brown stains marred the yellow silk of its turned cuffs. Though he wore a wedding ring and his trousers were neatly pressed, the overall impression was of a man who needed someone to take care of him.

  He took a seat on a chair in the parlor and arranged his papers on the low table marred with the nicks and gouges of years of waiting patients and their restless children. Clasping his large hands in an attitude of prayer, he began, “You have only to read recent newspaper articles to ascertain that if we go to trial, this case will pose difficulties for everyone involved.”

  “Have you filed charges yet?” William asked.

  “No. And I’m not certain whether or not I will. Emma’s responses today will give me a good sense of whether or not I can even bring a case, and what sort of case I can bring. Kidnapping is straightforward enough. I’ll probe that issue with her first. What is in question is the other charge, which has obviously, in breach of the rules, already been leaked to the press.”

  “We think Captain Mantel may have been responsible for that,” William said.

  “The police captain? I’ll note that. Now, if indeed Emma is a victim of indecencies—”

  “She is,” Mary said. “Without equivocation. I can readily detail the injuries I found on exam that directly point to—”