In the Garden of Spite

by Camilla Bruce

  “He is sitting at the bar with Elizabeth Smith, bragging that he has some sway over you, that he can make you bend your knee and give him whatever he wants. His words, ma’am, not mine.”

  “And what is it he thinks he knows?”

  The old man shrugged. “He didn’t say specifically, but he tells all who want to hear that he knows some secret of yours. He says he can make you give him as much money as he likes.”

  “Lamphere is a liar, you know that. I’ve been trying to get rid of him for some time, but he doesn’t want to leave the farm. I was thinking of speaking to the sheriff about him.”

  “Yes, I figured you’d had some dispute.”

  “Whatever could he have on me? A lonely widow with three small children—”

  “He said it had something to do with the way you make money.” His face lit up as if he just recalled.

  “What money? I have nothing but the farm and the land—”

  “Of course, but Lamphere insists there’s a second source of income, one that won’t stand the light of day . . . I’m sorry, Mrs. Gunness, I’m just telling it like it is.”

  “And I’m glad that you do. It won’t do at all having that madman telling lies about me.”

  “We have to look out for each other.” The man was still clutching his cap.

  “It’s good to have good neighbors.”

  “Anytime, Mrs. Gunness.” He placed the cap back on his head. “My wife would never forgive me if I didn’t tell you.”

  “Of course. She knows how vulnerable a woman’s reputation is, especially if she lives alone.”

  “You should get rid of him, Mrs. Gunness.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  I was fuming with fury when he had left. Of course Lamphere would betray me—he always did betray me. I had not forgotten the slight when he failed to purchase that insurance for me, had not forgotten how that drunken fool rejected my suggestion of marriage in effect. Now he was telling tales, suggesting that he knew some dark secret—it would not do at all.

  I changed my clothes and pinned my hair, got the buggy out, and set out for La Porte. I was going to place another advertisement, looking for a farmhand this time. If Lamphere thought he could keep Belle Gunness shivering and on her knees, he’d better think again. I would not stand for it—could not stand for it.

  I told him as much when he finally arrived that night, drunk off his feet and reeking of perfume. He had been staying with Lizzie Smith, an old whore he had been slumming with from time to time, just as fond of liquor as he was.

  “You can get your things and go.” I stood before him by the kitchen table, holding the cleaver to make my point. It would look strange if he disappeared just after saying those things, but no one would blame me for chasing him off. It was what any decent woman would do.

  Lamphere poured himself more drink; he had been in my pantry without asking. “I don’t think you get to decide that, Belle. I decide from now on.”

  “Is that what you believe? Have you seen nothing?”

  “I have and I do. I know what you are. People would like to know too.”

  He was brazen and very stupid. “What makes you think you will live through the night?”

  Lamphere laughed. It was a slick, ugly sound. “Well, I will have you know that I’ve made some arrangements in the event of my disappearance . . . I keep a safe deposit box at the bank, and now I’ve left the bone that the pig dug up in there, and some other bones too that I found behind the barn. I’ve left a note with them telling people where to look to find more, and named the one who planted them there as well. My family will find it for sure should I go missing. The sheriff might not like me much, but my father used to be a justice of the peace, so he will listen to my mother.”

  I planted the cleaver on the table’s worn surface while shock and anger coursed through me. “What do you want, Lamphere?”

  “For things to be as they were. I want to move back inside again, and then we can talk about marriage some more.”

  “You let that opportunity slip, Ray.”

  “Good thing I did or I’d be dead in the ground.”

  “You can still end up like that. Don’t think some measly bones can scare me.”

  He smiled then—smiled! “You don’t mean that. You’re not stupid.”

  “Get out!” I pulled the cleaver loose and lifted it in the air. “Get out or there’ll be no morning for you! I’ll take my chances with the law!”

  He did go, but no farther than the barn.

  He was a problem then, a big one. I did not like problems at all.

  * * *

  —

  I did not care for my children as I ought to in those days. They often ran wild in the house and tore through the cupboards in search of sweets. I forgot which day of the week it was, and my girls lost days of school. Though I had always taken great pride in their neatness, their clothes were often stained and wrinkled. The troubles with Lamphere seeped into everything and left me in a poor state. I still gathered the children around me at night, though, to tell stories, play games, and share some warmth. Sometimes I fell asleep before they did, as I was so tired of it all.

  One of these nights, when Lamphere was still in the barn, Myrtle and Lucy leaned on me as I sat up in the bed, while little Philip, freshly bathed, was sleeping with his head on my chest. He smelled of soap and milk, and his soft cheek was warm against my collarbone. Myrtle draped a quilt over us all with much ceremony.

  “Tell about when you were little,” she said when she had settled.

  “Something scary!” Lucy shuddered against me with delight.

  “Not too scary,” Myrtle argued.

  “A fairy tale, then?” I asked.

  The girls’ silence was all the answer I needed. “This happened many years ago in Selbu,” I started as I always did. “There was a very strange old man living on a farm. He had a very big head and long arms—and he had been on that farm forever, it seemed. No one knew how old he was.”

  “Couldn’t they ask him?” Philip had woken up and lifted his sleepy gaze to meet mine.

  “No, they couldn’t, because people didn’t keep track of their age as well as we do now, and besides, this man, whose name was Paul—”

  “Like Grandfather,” Myrtle remarked.

  “Just that. Well, he wasn’t like other people, this Paul—he was a bit simple. He never worked a day of his life, but he ate like ten men his size. Still the farmer, whose name was Andor, did not show him out, because he thought that Paul was a changeling.”

  “Why did he think that?” Lucy’s toes dug into my thigh.

  “Because one time, when he was tired of Paul, he meant to strike him, but then he heard a voice that bellowed from the mountain: ‘Take care, Andor, Paul belongs to me!’” The children giggled and squirmed around me.

  “As it was, a girl whose name was Mali, who was a daughter on the farm many years before, had stayed alone on the summer farm, high up in the mountains. After she came back, her mother could see that she was with child, but Mali refused to give her the name of the father no matter how much she begged. Then one night, the farmer’s wife woke up to hear footsteps upstairs where poor Mali lay, and in the morning, the girl was gone, but Paul was there, just a baby, all alone.”

  “Where did she go?” asked Lucy.

  “Wait till the end and maybe you’ll know,” I said, and tousled her hair. “Paul stayed on the farm for years and years, though he could never do anything more useful than carrying an armload of firewood. When he had gotten older than anyone could remember, he suddenly stopped eating one day. No matter what they brought him, he didn’t want any food. The farmer’s wife went to him then and asked him how he could live without, and the changeling answered: ‘Oh, I eat well enough. My mother and father are here every night, and they bring food to me . . .’ The farmer
’s wife laughed, and said he couldn’t possibly have parents alive, being as old as he was, but Paul answered: ‘I have both mother and father, and I’m not so very old either.’

  “The changeling lived for another two years, with no food or drink but some milk and some water. When he finally withered away and died, the servants said they had seen two people, old and bent, a man and a woman, crossing the yard to the house where he lay, just that very same morning. They figured it was Paul’s parents. They also said that before he died, they could often see lights glimmering in the mountain, but after he died, they never saw it again—and that was the story about the changeling.”

  The children lay quiet for a moment, thinking about what they had just heard. Then Lucy said, “What is a changeling, Mama?”

  “Well, in this story it was a child half troll and half human, but it usually means a child that the trolls or the hulder people have traded.”

  “Traded for what?” Asked Lucy.

  “They take a human child and leave one of their own behind. The children left in the cradle are always difficult and ugly. My father used to call me a changeling whenever he was displeased with me.”

  “What happens to the children?” asked Myrtle. “The ones they take, I mean.”

  “Oh, they go into the mountain to live among the trolls.”

  “Aren’t they afraid?”

  “They are just babies when they are taken, and grow up with a troll for a mother. They don’t remember anything else.” I suddenly started sweating; the quilt was much too warm. “Perhaps the troll mother loves them just as well as their real mother would—perhaps she even loves them better.”

  “I didn’t think trolls could love at all,” Myrtle argued. “In another story you said they have no hearts.”

  “Trolls can be cruel, that is true, but never to their children. I think the changelings are lucky to live with the troll mother who gives them good food to eat and nice beds to sleep in. Perhaps their real mothers couldn’t give them that. Perhaps they would have eaten only cold potatoes, herring, and gruel if the troll mother hadn’t taken them away. Trolls are rich, you know.”

  “Just like you are, Mama,” said Lucy.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Just like me.”

  * * *

  —

  Lamphere was not much at the farm after our row, but when he came, he was rude and threatening. He still wanted to come back inside, still wanted to be let into my bed. Sometimes he wanted money for another bender. I kept worrying that the children would see him, reeking of drink, screaming and shouting. I did not know if it was true that he kept that box at the bank, but I could not risk it either. He had not lied when he told me his family had some standing. If they raised the alarm, there would surely be consequences—of a kind I did not want. I could not make up my mind about what to do. I could give in, of course, and let him have all he wanted—for a while—but just the thought of his smugness if he had his way made me feel cold with shame. I could kill him and brave that box, but it jeopardized the enterprise, and I could not have that either.

  In the end, I figured the best thing to do was to sow doubt about the messenger himself. Ray was a drunk, so people already distrusted him, but if I could make them think he was truly deranged, no one would believe the story in that safe deposit box. They would think it the yarn of a madman for sure, left with the bones of a sow.

  When the new hand, Maxon, arrived, his first task was to clean out Ray’s belongings from the barn. I dug a pit and burned it all, as I had told him I would do if he did not remove it.

  He was livid when he found out and asked me what plans I had for the new farmhand, if I was to marry him too. I told him Maxon had a room inside and he could make what he wanted of that.

  In truth, I had no taste for Maxon. I had no taste for company at all just then. Asle Helgelien, Andrew’s brother, had sent me a note asking for his brother’s whereabouts. He had found letters from me to Andrew, and his brother had not written to him in weeks. I wrote back in early March and told him Andrew had been to see me in January but had left to go to New York to look for another brother. I said he had mentioned going to Norway after but had planned to come back to me after the trip. What else could I say? Mr. Helgelien had read my letters and knew very well what plans we had made.

  Then one morning, as I came out to help Maxon with the animals, I saw a dark-clad man running across the fields. It did not look like Ray, but I figured it could just as well have been, and on March 12, I filed a complaint against him, charging him with trespass. He denied ever having been on my property but was not believed as I had often told people about it. The whore Lizzie Smith paid his fine.

  In late March, after countless sleepless nights, I went back to the police to file an affidavit to declare Lamphere insane. He was trespassing daily, I told them; he refused to leave me and mine alone. In truth, I had not seen the man for weeks, but that did nothing to ease my worry. It was almost worse not seeing him at all; then I knew nothing of where he was or what he said to whom. I would feel better if he was deemed insane—no one would believe him then.

  Dr. Bowell would not have it, though. He refused the declaration, and that was not what I had expected. I had believed it would be easy to have him deemed mad. I was furious with Bowell but could not air my complaints, remembering only too well the inquest after Peter died, so instead I filed another trespassing charge to gather ammunition for another try. This did not turn out as I had planned either.

  * * *

  —

  “Your husband died under mysterious circumstances, isn’t that so, Mrs. Gunness?” Lamphere’s lawyer, Mr. Worden, was a soft-looking man in a gaudy suit with blond hair that looked much like a mop of feathers. He was a slick fish who meant to undercut my attempt at smearing Ray by smearing me instead.

  “He was hit by the sausage grinder.” I clutched the handkerchief in my hand. I had known ever since I took the stand that this would not be easy. The way that lawyer looked at me with something like disdain—his blue eyes glittering with cunning—I did not like him at all.

  “Oh, Mrs. Gunness,” Worden said. “I was not talking about your latest husband. I was talking about the one before that.”

  “Who? Mr. Sorensen?” I was sweating in my corset; every item of clothing on my body felt too tight. I had not expected to be questioned like this—had not expected this ambush!

  “Well, yes, did you have any other husbands we don’t know about?” Worden answered, and the gathered erupted in laughter.

  “No . . . no . . . of course not.” I dabbed at the crook of my eyes with the cotton square while my heart raced as well as my mind. “My husband, Mr. Sorensen, that is, died of a defective heart. It was hardly mysterious.”

  “But the insurance companies in Chicago found his death mysterious enough to have you questioned, wasn’t it so?”

  “I did talk to them,” I admitted, “but they believed it when I told them the truth.”

  “Your brother-in-law had the body exhumed, didn’t he? He did not believe that his brother died from illness.” Worden was prancing before me.

  “He was mad with grief—he did not think straight.” I shifted in my seat and added some more tears. On the bench before me was Myrtle, primed and ready to support my claim. I took some comfort in looking at her, my sweet and gentle girl. Oh, how I hated Worden just then for saying such things in front of my daughter. I watched his plump lips with terror, fearing what he would say next. “I don’t see what any of this has to do with Mr. Lamphere,” I said. “Mr. Lamphere is not dead, just a nuisance.”

  “Well.” Mr. Worden paused on the floor before me. “If you say Ray was there and Ray says he wasn’t, it’s interesting to look at who has a history of lying.”

  “I have never lied about anything.” My voice was loud and indignant.

  “Some people think you have.” He smirke
d. “Let’s look at it this way, Mrs. Gunness: if you had been a woman of impeccable reputation, I would have taken your word for anything, but you are not. You have lost two husbands under strange circumstances and been questioned more than once about those deaths—and fires too—no less than three of them in Chicago, among them one at the store that you owned.”

  “I have been very unlucky,” I said. Before me, I could see Ray sitting by a table, looking down. On the bench behind him were his mother and sister; both of them looked at me with scorn. It was they who had paid for that horrid lawyer.

  “Have you truly been so unlucky, or are you a maker of your own luck?” Worden looked straight at me, defiant and rude.

  “I am not here to be interrogated by you.” I looked straight back at him—who did he think I was? I was not so easily frightened, least of all by a small-town lawyer like him. “I am here to make a complaint about trespassing—again—and I expect to be believed—again!”

  “Why is that? Because you have always been believed before?”

  “My husbands—”

  “Died in strange ways—”

  “They looked into that, and they found nothing because there was nothing to find, Mr. Worden.” I lifted my chin sky high.

  “Then why are you crying, Mrs. Gunness?” His voice mellowed to a soft hiss.

  “Because you keep bringing up my dead husbands!”

  “Do you truly mourn them so terribly?” A mocking smile played on his lips.

  “Indeed I do, Mr. Worden.” My bad jaw flared to life. “But it has nothing to do with Mr. Lamphere.”

  Thankfully, the judge agreed with me—or he did not like the sight of a crying widow. He leaned forth in his chair and said, “Let’s talk about Mr. Lamphere, Mr. Worden.”

  The lawyer did not ask more of those unpleasant questions, but the whole affair had rattled me deep. The trial reminded me that my devil’s luck might not last forever, and that it was a good thing I had let my enterprise go. On the other hand, I figured that taking care of things in my own way was surely much easier than going through all these questionings and trials.