by Michelle Cox
With this agreement satisfactorily negotiated between them, their business relationship now seemed to hover on the brink of being something more, just as it had been something more of a friendship between Alcott and Bennett as the years had gone on. On more than one occasion since his father’s death, Clive found himself turning to the calm, steady Bennett for advice. He reminded Clive of his father at times, but Bennett was more grounded, more practical than his father—the son of an English lord—had ever been. Many times, Clive had to shake himself a bit to remember that Bennett was indeed not his father, such as when he occasionally stopped at the house for a late-night drink, usually under the guise of needing Clive to sign some documents or other. They would sit across from each other in his father’s—now Clive’s—study in the leather armchairs in front of the fireplace, just as Clive and his father had so often done. Bennett could easily have sent whatever documents he needed signed via courier, or request that Clive stop in at the office, if nothing else but to keep up appearances with the staff. So Clive felt it very keenly that Bennett made an effort to come in person, as if Bennett somehow knew he might need to privately talk.
It was during one such evening, about a month after Henrietta’s . . . mishap . . . that Bennett casually asked if Clive had any detective cases yet come his way. When Clive responded that he had not, Bennett suggested that perhaps he try to unearth one—and that he should make sure it was one in which he could involve Henrietta.
“I don’t think she’s quite up to something like that at the moment,” Clive responded, peering intently at the fire.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Bennett answered. “Seems to me that’s exactly what she needs. Take her mind off things.” He glanced sideways at Clive.
“Ah,” Clive said, turning it over slowly in his mind. It wasn’t a bad idea, really. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? “Yes,” he said, sitting up in his chair. “I see what you mean.” He looked over at Bennett, feeling very grateful all of a sudden.
“Merely a thought,” Bennett said quietly.
Clive packed some tobacco into his pipe, wondering how he could find a case, a real case. He couldn’t just rustle one up out of thin air. Nor was he going to sniff around the Winnetka Police Station looking for crumbs, not with that idiot Callahan in charge. Clive had more than once suspected that there was something fishy there. No one could be as unaware and naïve as Callahan claimed to be and still sit as the chief of police, even if it was a sleepy little village twenty miles north of Chicago. And there had been a brief moment during the investigation of his father’s murder when Clive thought he saw something telling, something more knowing beneath Callahan’s bumbling exterior, a chink in his armor, as it were. But it was only a feeling, nothing he could prove. It was enough to cause a certain suspicion on Clive’s part, however, though he had no wish to deal with him at present. Well, he thought, taking a deep puff of his pipe as Bennett poured himself another brandy, at least he now had an idea of how he might help Henrietta.
Weeks had gone by, however, and nothing had surfaced, causing Clive to wonder if he really should formally advertise his services in the local paper. It was a thought he loathed for various reasons, one of them being the chance that his mother might see it, when he had inadvertently heard that Frank Davis was back at the station. After the Neptune affair, Clive was sure an understanding of sorts existed now between them. Indeed, he and Henrietta had visited him in the hospital on more than one occasion, Henrietta noticing that no other family or friends ever seemed to be there, an observation that Clive duly stored away for later use. Surely Davis, Clive had thought with more excitement than he knew he should feel, would have a lead, something he—or rather, they, he should say—could sink their teeth into.
The Trophy Room, where Davis had suggested they meet, was filthy and had an overpowering smell of mold (or was it sewer?) to it. Why the hell this was Davis’s preferred drinking establishment, Clive didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. It occurred to him as he walked in and looked around for Davis that perhaps Davis had chosen this place on purpose to rattle him, as the Howards’ wealth was frequently the butt of his rather dry, sarcastic humor. Well, Clive thought, it would take more than this to throw him. He had been in his share of seedy, rotten, sweaty establishments in the city, and before that it had been the horror of the trenches in the war.
He spotted Davis at a low table in the back. As he approached, he noted that Davis looked as scruffy and disheveled as usual, his near-death experience apparently having done little to change his habits, at least outwardly. Davis was slouched forward over his pint of beer but held out his hand to Clive, who took it. Clive tossed his hat on the table and rested his hands on his hips. “So how are you?” he asked gruffly.
“Been better.”
“What are you drinking?” Clive asked, nodding at Davis’s nearly empty pint.
“Pabst.”
Clive looked around for a waitress but could see none.
“Butler’s off duty,” Davis said as he leaned back slowly and lit a cigarette. “’fraid you’ll have to get your own.”
“Piss off, Davis.” Clive retreated toward the thick, grimy bar stained with water marks and deep gouges. His choice of drink was single malt, but after a quick perusal of the paltry stock lined up behind the bar, he ordered a Pabst, too.
“Charming place,” Clive muttered as he placed two glasses of beer on the table in front of Davis and pulled out a chair. He slid one of the glasses toward Davis and took up the other. “Cheers,” he said and took a long drink.
“Not quite the Drake, but it serves its purpose,” Davis said wryly, exhaling a large cloud of smoke.
“So do you have anything for me, or not?” Clive asked, having already spoken to Davis on the telephone earlier in the week, saying that he was eager for a case, but not mentioning exactly why.
“Not much,” Davis shrugged. “You know the chief. ‘There isn’t any crime in Winnetka.’”
“Well, you must have something, or you wouldn’t have called me out here.”
“It’s pretty flimsy,” Davis said, finishing his first beer and shoving the empty glass aside. “You won’t like it.”
“Try me.”
“Suit yourself.” A grin crept across Davis’s face. “Got a case of some psychic. A spiritualist, she calls herself,” Davis said as he inhaled deeply and looked at Clive as if to gauge his reaction.
Clive sighed. “Go on,” he said wearily.
“Not much to tell. Two days ago, a man shows up at the station, a Mr. Tobin, I think he said. Claims his wife’s been ‘hypnotized’ by this spiritualist and wants us to investigate.”
“This is hardly a matter for the police.”
“But you’re not the police, are you?” Davis said, slouching over his beer again, one eye involuntarily squinting shut, perhaps from the pain of leaning over.
“Come on, Davis. Give me something better than this.”
“I don’t have anything better than this, Howard,” he exhaled. “Look, there aren’t that many real cases to begin with, and I can’t go giving them all to you under the table, can I? I’d be helping myself right out of a job.”
“All right, all right,” Clive said, waving his hand at him, as if to stop the sob story. He rubbed his brow and tried to think. A spiritualist case? This smelled rotten. He had been hoping for something open and shut, like a stolen car or something. Was it really wise to involve Henrietta in such a . . . what would you call it . . . vaporous type of case? Something told him it wasn’t a good idea, but what choice did he have? If he and Henrietta were to really operate a detective agency, it naturally followed that it was going to be fraught with danger and nastiness, which is why he had always been less than enthused about the whole thing in the first place. It was never going to be some sort of gay scavenger hunt that Henrietta always seemed to think it would be. Detective work, by its nature, involved the uglier sides of humanity: theft, murder, rape, kidnapping, blackmail, and every othe
r kind of vice.
Why couldn’t Henrietta be happy strolling about the grounds of Highbury and entertaining his mother’s bridge club? he groaned to himself, but he made himself stop before he got too far down that line of thought. He could have had any number of women who would have been content to sit at home and knit, but it had been Henrietta’s spunk, he reminded himself, that had originally attracted him. Her sense of adventure coupled with her naiveté had been irresistible. They still were, actually, though she was sadly lacking in both at the moment.
“Okay,” he sighed again. “What do you got on it?”
“Not much,” Davis responded with an annoying grin. “This Mr. Tobin says he found his wife packing up all her jewelry—not that it’s worth much, he claims. When he questioned her, she says that she’s giving it to this quack—as a gift, she says. Tobin says she’s been acting all funny lately. Like she’s in a trance or somethin’, going around the house mumblin’, so Tobin’s convinced it’s this spiritualist that she’s been going to see. Claims she must have hypnotized her. Too scared to go see this charlatan himself, he claims, lest he get hypnotized, too, he says, so he wants us to check it out.”
“What was the chief’s response?” Clive asked, fingering his glass.
Davis just raised an eyebrow, suggesting Clive should already know the answer to that.
“Okay, so the basic shell game type of thing. Only with a bit more song and dance to it. Got it. Give me the address to this Tobin,” he grumbled. “And where do I find this ‘spiritualist’?”
“Apparently, she’s set up shop in that one-room schoolhouse out on Willow Road. You know the one?”
“Yeah,” Clive said, fishing for a piece of paper in his inside jacket pocket. “Out by Crow Island? She got a name?”
“Calls herself Madame Pavlovsky.”
Clive rolled his eyes and reluctantly wrote down this information and Tobin’s address. Quickly he downed his beer and stood up, the chair scraping behind him on the sticky floor. “How’s your wound?” he asked, nodding at Davis’s abdomen.
“Coming along.”
“Good to hear,” Clive said, putting his hat on firmly.
“Don’t forget—you owe me a whiskey,” Davis said, referencing Clive’s offer to him in the hospital as a debt of thanks.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Clive said absently. “You’ll have to come over some time to Highbury so we can thank you properly.” He winced at the thought of how irritating that would be to arrange with his mother.
“Should I use the servants’ entrance?” Davis asked, gingerly leaning back.
“Fuck off, Davis. I’ll get back to you when I know something,” Clive said and walked out, leaving Davis sitting at the low table, a sly grin on his face.
Chapter 3
Henrietta folded up the letters, slipping them back in their envelopes. She set them to the side and looked into the mirror of her vanity, patting her hair one more time. She needed to snap out of it.
She chose a lipstick in a faint shade of peach to match her salmon-colored Zimmerman crinkled crepe and gingerly applied it. Turning her head from side to side to observe herself, she decided she was satisfied and stood up.
She had no desire to go and pay a visit to Ma in Palmer Square, but Elsie had been very insistent on the telephone. Saying she had something very important to discuss with her. Henrietta couldn’t imagine what it could possibly be, except something to do with their grandfather’s bullying efforts at marrying Elsie off. She hoped this wasn’t it; she was not up for a fight at the moment.
Henrietta knew she was being ridiculous and cowardly, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She couldn’t shake the dreary malaise that had come upon her since . . . since, well, since she had lost the baby. It’s not that she was a stranger to grief. She had naturally been sad and cried for weeks when her father killed himself, but somehow that grief had been different. This was more acute and aching, as if a part of her had died as well. In both instances, however, she felt the need to hide her grief, to push it down inside of her. The shameful nature of her father’s death, the taking of his own life, had prevented them from mourning publicly. And Ma’s bitter rage prevented them from mourning privately at home, as she forbade them to ever speak of Pa again.
But this little death was somehow shameful, too, Henrietta felt. She could not shake the deep sense of failure that threatened to swallow her up. The failure she had previously felt at not being able to get pregnant was nothing compared to the feeling of having finally achieved it and then failing to carry it through. Oh, why had she told so many people? Now everyone knew about her failure, and while they were very encouraging and sympathetic, of course, none more so than Clive himself—somehow this made it worse. Everyone either looked at her with pity, she was sure, or patted her on the hand, saying, “Not to worry, dear! There’ll be another!” as if that somehow should make her feel better. And the fact that it didn’t, made her feel worse yet again.
She had been so happy, so proud when she had realized she was pregnant. But she suspected too many times now, perhaps that had been the key. She had been too proud, and this is what had happened. And surely Ma, of all people, would not hesitate to remind her of this.
She let out a deep sigh. She had no wish to face Ma later this morning, but she would have to get it over at some point. No doubt Ma would have something choice to say, something like, “I told you so” or “That’s what you get for marrying outside your place!”
Well, there was nothing for it. She had to face the world again, and not just at Antonia’s ludicrous committees at the club. More importantly, though, she had to make herself try to care again. She could see that Clive was suffering, too, at her despondency, and if nothing else, she knew she needed to be stronger for him. Many women miscarried, the doctor had told her, and went on to have many children.
Clive had anxiously asked the doctor before he had left that awful day what should be done. What treatment could they give her? The doctor had said that no treatment was necessary; just to have her rest for a good week, not to excite herself.
Mary, the cook, however, had taken it upon herself to concoct various “teas” that she sent up to Henrietta with Edna, saying that these were old remedies that were sure to “put the color back in her cheeks.” The gesture had touched Henrietta in a way that sometimes only grief can, so that when she was eventually allowed to leave her room, she made it a point to go down to the kitchens to thank Mary personally. It meant even more when Mary related to her that many of the “teas” had been old Helen’s recipes from the days when she had been the head cook at Highbury. It was yet another connection to Helen, the old servant who had died on the grounds last summer, and whose photograph of herself and her little family Henrietta kept on her little desk in her and Clive’s private sitting room.
Gathering up her gloves, Henrietta decided at the last moment to place the letters she had just received this morning in her handbag, too. There was one from Herbie, of course, who wrote faithfully each week from New Hampshire where he, Eddie, and Jimmy were at boarding school at Philips Exeter, and one from Mrs. Hennessey. She knew that Herbie wrote to Ma, too, but if the conversation later became too labored or sparse, as she predicted it would, then perhaps she could offer to read them aloud to pass the time. No doubt Elsie’s little “trouble,” whatever it was, would take little time to clear up.
Henrietta had tried on the telephone to persuade Elsie to come and visit her at Highbury to impart her news, but Elsie had said she couldn’t spare the extra time it would take to get to Highbury and back, nor did she wish to make poor Karl drive her all that way. Henrietta had been wont to retort that this was in fact his job, but she had refrained. She had then graciously offered to visit her at Mundelein instead, but Elsie had declined that option as well, saying that there wasn’t really any truly private place in which for them to talk. The front parlor of Philomena Hall was open to anybody to use, she said, so there was no real assurance of privacy, and
her dormitory room, she added, was also not a likely option, as who knew if her roommate, Melody, would be in or not. If she was, she would most probably have a whole gaggle of friends surrounding her. And, Elsie went on, her voice crackling over the telephone line, if she were to politely ask Melody to vacate the room for even a short time, Elsie was sure to be mercilessly subjected to a whole torrent of questions from a delighted Melody, always eager for any kind of news or gossip, which, Elsie said, she did not think she could face just at the moment—a feeling Henrietta could certainly understand.
So, in the end, Henrietta had sighed and agreed to meet Elsie at the Palmer Square house, disappointed not only because it meant having to interact with Ma but also because Henrietta rather liked Mundelein, truth be told, and enjoyed being there. Like Elsie, she found it to be a peaceful, interesting sort of place and more than once had thought that she wouldn’t have minded being a student there herself.
“Good morning, madame,” said Karl upon opening the thick front doors of the Palmer Square house to her. He was the man servant her grandfather had hired to act as both butler and chauffer for the Von Harmons. To Henrietta’s eyes, he appeared older and sleepier than even two months ago when the boys had still been at home. Now with just Ma and little Doris and Donny to serve, as it were, Henrietta thought he might have regained some energy, but instead he seemed to have lost some, as if lack of use was positively rusting him.
“This way, madame,” Karl said after he had taken her hat and coat, and he obediently led her to the front parlor. As they walked the short distance, Henrietta smoothed her dress and was surprised to hear what she thought was a man’s voice coming from the parlor, as well as that of Ma and Elsie. Could Eugene be home? she wondered nervously, her stomach sinking. Was that what Elsie had wished to tell her? And what new disaster did that spell? But before she could follow that line of thought to some predictably dismal conclusion, they arrived at the parlor.