A Child Lost

by Michelle Cox

  “Any messages, Billings?”

  “Yes, sir. Two telephone messages, sir. I’ve laid them in your study. There is one for you, and one for Madame as well,” he said, nodding at Henrietta.

  “Very good,” Clive answered briskly, rubbing his hands from the cold. “Is my mother at home?”

  “Yes, sir. She is upstairs in the long gallery with Mr. Bennett.”

  “Upstairs with Bennett? Whatever for?”

  “I really couldn’t say, sir. ‘Perusing the art before dinner,’ I think is what Mrs. Howard said.”

  Perusing the art? Since when did his mother care about art? His father had forever been trying to interest her in it, especially as they possessed so many priceless works, but he had failed to ever spark in her any real appreciation for it besides how it might elevate them in the eyes of their peers. “Is Bennett staying for dinner?” he asked Billings.

  “It would seem, sir,” Billings said emotionlessly.

  Clive wondered why Bennett was showing up so regularly these days and dreaded having to later confer on more issues regarding the firm. He had a feeling Bennett was here to implore him to make an appearance downtown; it had been a while. Still, he could have requested his presence via telephone, could he not? Perhaps he had more documents for him to sign, Clive guessed with a sigh, trying not to be irritated.

  “I see. Well, we’ll be in the study,” he informed Billings and, looking over at Henrietta, inclined his head toward the direction of the study.

  “Very good, sir.”

  The study was deliciously warm and inviting as the two made their way in. The fire had been recently tended, Clive noted with approval, and several lamps in the corners had been left on, presumably in anticipation of their arrival. Clive felt himself relax a little and poured two sherries. He handed one to Henrietta, who had eased herself onto the sofa, and then sat down beside her.

  “Clive,” she began, “you’ve said so little. Why? Do you . . . do you not believe what Madame Pavlovsky told us?”

  Clive did not respond, but merely sat looking at her, one arm stretched across the back of the sofa.

  “You don’t, do you?” she asked incredulously. “But how can you possibly explain her knowing all of those things? About my brother and sister? About me . . . about me losing the baby?” she asked with what uncomfortably sounded like desperation. “And what about your father?”

  Clive sighed and took a drink of his sherry, reflecting that he should have poured himself a brandy. All the way home, he let her go on about their encounter with Madame Pavlovsky, not wanting to reveal his skepticism for fear of how she would take it. He had been trying to think of a way to gently expose this woman to be the fraud that she so obviously was, but he loathed to, as Henrietta seemed to derive so much comfort from her words. He hated the unavoidable task before him of telling her that it was a false comfort. But that was the trick of these charlatans, wasn’t it? Clive knew. To play on people’s emotions, to get them where they were vulnerable. And what better way to get to people than through their ‘dearly departed?’ Clive knew a huckster when he saw one. And yet, a tiny part of him did wonder how she had known about Linley . . . the rest he could explain away. But that one detail was harder . . . she must have done her homework. But how would she possibly have known they were coming in order to research? That was hard to explain away as well.

  Clive sighed. “Darling, we have to look at this rationally. As detectives,” he reminded her.

  “I am!”

  “No, you’re not, darling. The truth is that she read you, and she’s very good at guessing.”

  “How could she have possibly guessed all those things, Clive?” Henrietta asked irritably.

  He had hoped to avoid this, but he saw there was no other way than to be brutally honest. “Henrietta,” he began tentatively. “You fed her the information. Think about it. She tells us that she communicates with the dead and then vaguely says that she sees children . . .”

  “Aha!”

  “But that’s just a good guess. Every family has at least one child who has died. You yourself gave her the information she needed by asking if they were siblings and even suggested they were a boy and girl.”

  Henrietta took a sip of her sherry, apparently thinking this through. “But how do you explain her knowing that I lost a baby?” she asked finally. “Remember she said, ‘Losing a child isn’t being ill’?”

  “Another good guess. You distressfully asked her if she saw a baby. So she guessed you had lost a baby.”

  “That’s a bit of a stretch, Clive, admit it.”

  “Well, like I said, she’s good at guessing.”

  “Well . . . what about mentioning your father?” she asked pertly.

  “The Howards are obviously well known,” Clive said with what he hoped was a nonchalant shrug. “She could easily know that he had recently died.”

  “And her mention of Castle Linley?”

  “She could have somehow researched that. A book on heraldry and English estates—something like that. Or she could have asked one of the servants.”

  “Really, Clive,” she exclaimed, letting out a deep breath. “What utter nonsense. You can’t believe she would go to all that effort. For what? And she couldn’t have known who we were—or that we were coming.”

  “A con will go a long way for a sting, Henrietta.”

  “A sting? For what purpose? What can she possibly gain by telling you that your father loves you?”

  “My trust?” he responded, an eyebrow arched.

  Henrietta shot him an icy look, and he knew he had upset her. He rubbed his forehead. It was hard to explain this woman’s knowledge of Linley, but he refused to give in to such nonsense. It could still have somehow been a guess, he tried to convince himself, remembering that these types of charlatans relied on fear and superstition to ply their trade. There must be a rational explanation, he knew, and he was determined to figure it out.

  “And what about her telling us that our work at the hospital or the infirmary isn’t done?” Henrietta went on. “Could she be referring to Anna, seeing as she’s at an orphanage and apparently the only loose thread? Maybe the infirmary is a reference to her illness?” she suggested.

  Clive thought of several negative things he wanted to say in response to these questions, but after a moment’s consideration, decided to simply remain silent.

  “Or could she have meant Dunning?” Henrietta went on. “Something we missed maybe?”

  Clive sighed. Not this again. “Darling, I’m sure there are many unrighted wrongs at Dunning, but it is not our job to uncover them all. We’ve been through this.”

  “But what’s to become of that little girl, Clive?” she asked, momentarily confusing him by the shifting of subjects. “The poor thing’s lost her mother, no father to speak of, and apparently epileptic. It’s awful, Clive. She needs proper medical care, not to be stuck in . . . in some sort of orphanage or asylum because of it . . . somewhere like Dunning. That’s cruel.” Her voice caught a bit.

  Clive let out a deep breath. Of course, he felt sorry for this girl, but there were thousands more out there, just like her. In some ways, he knew she was lucky to be in some sort of institution; he had seen too many children living on the street. He had been like Henrietta when he first began police work after returning from the war. He had wanted to right all the wrongs, stop the suffering and the poverty and the pain he saw in the streets. But the emotional toll had been great, and the chief finally had to have a word with him. They couldn’t save them all, he told Clive kindly over a whiskey. Their job was to catch the criminals, stop them from hurting more innocent people. They weren’t running a charity, he told Clive sternly, and ended their session by suggesting that Clive choose between being a detective and a social worker. Both of them were needed, he pointed out, but not at his station.

  So Clive had chosen detective work and learned to harden his heart a little. The chief was right. He needed to see things objectively
and not let pity get in the way. But then he had met Henrietta, and his cold heart, nearly frozen from both the war and his subsequent detective work, began to thaw until it had melted completely, making him feel more alive than he ever had—as well as uncomfortably vulnerable. Again, he wondered how running a detective agency was really going to work. They were already stumbling, and this was an easy case. Well, the Madame Pavlovsky case was anyway. In his mind, Liesel Klinkhammer’s death was not a case at all, though there was something niggling there, he had to privately admit. He just didn’t know what, and he dared not tell Henrietta. She needed no encouragement to see things where there were none. It was better to treat this poor woman’s death as a charity case—as his chief would have called it—and let it lie.

  “Surely we can help her somehow,” Henrietta was saying. “It can’t be left up to Gunther. I feel sorry for him, too. He was trying to do the right thing, and now he’s caught up in this mess, with no one or nothing to help him, besides Elsie, I suppose, which isn’t saying much. She’s already overwhelmed. Surely we could at least pay for the girl to be examined by a reputable doctor?”

  Clive rubbed his chin. “Yes, I suppose we could do that,” he said. Upon meeting Gunther the other day, Clive found that he liked him more than he thought he would, though it was a trifle hard to get past the fact that he was German. He wondered how old he was . . . he seemed too young to have fought in the war. His initial impression of him, however, had been good despite the circumstances; he appeared to be an intelligent sort, solid. He wondered about Elsie’s interest and hoped that she wasn’t forming an attachment. Gunther didn’t seem the lecherous type, but still . . . there would be no end of problems if Elsie developed feelings for him. “We have to be careful, darling,” he said now to Henrietta.

  “Careful? Of what?”

  “Careful of getting too emotionally attached to our cases,” he said gently. “It’s wise advice the chief once gave me. Our job is to catch criminals, not to help the victims. That’s a different sort of thing altogether.”

  “Honestly, Clive! I don’t see why not. What a curmudgeon you’re being. And this isn’t a case, so you keep reminding me. Please.”

  She looked up at him with her big blue eyes, and he felt a rush of love for her. How could he deny her anything, especially something so easily in his power to grant?

  “All right. You win,” he said with a small wink. He drained his sherry and moved toward the desk to refill his glass. “I’ll make some inquiries. But no guarantees,” he added, noticing the phone messages Billings had mentioned, lying neatly on the right-hand side of the blotter. He picked up the one addressed to him and opened it. “I’m not sure there’s much we can do for the girl,” he said absently as he began to read and then tossed it back onto the desk. “Doubtless, Gunther has some plan of his own,” Clive went on, looking at Henrietta now. “Maybe he’ll go back to Germany.”

  “Go back to Germany! That’s ridiculous.”

  “Here, this is yours I believe,” he said, handing her the folded message with “Mrs. Clive Howard” scrawled across the front in Billings’s tiny, neat handwriting. He watched as she opened it and quickly read it.

  “Anything of interest?” he asked, taking another drink.

  “It’s from Lucy. She wants me to telephone her back as soon as I can,” Henrietta said with a frown.

  “Ah.”

  “And yours?”

  “Our missing Mr. Tobin rang,” he said. “I’ll telephone him back after dinner. Perhaps he will agree to meet with us. Hopefully, Mrs. Tobin will also be on hand and we can get to the bottom of this whole mess.”

  Henrietta did not respond but merely took a drink as she looked at him. She was thinking something, he could tell.

  “I think you’re afraid, Clive,” she said, finally. “Afraid that Madame Pavlovsky is not really a fraud. That she’s real.”

  Clive tried not to audibly sigh. “Hardly, darling,” he said, trying instead to force out a chuckle. “There are much scarier adversaries out there than the likes of Madame Pavlovsky.”

  “Scarier than someone who can talk to the dead?” she countered.

  “We can all ‘talk to the dead,’ Henrietta. It doesn’t take much effort. I myself talk to my father every day.”

  “You know what I mean, Clive.”

  Now he really did sigh. How had they gotten back to square one?

  “There’s something about her . . .” Henrietta went on as she rose, presumably to dress for dinner; it was getting late. “Something I just can’t explain.”

  The next morning found Henrietta seated in the back of the Rolls with Fritz at the wheel. She and Clive had breakfasted early, as they were to be separated for the rest of the day. Clive, as he had guessed, had been asked last night by Bennett if he might possibly attend a shareholders’ meeting the following day at 9:00 a.m. sharp. Clive had reluctantly agreed, of course, but not without commenting that it was damned little notice. Bennett had apologized for that, saying that it was indeed a last-minute announcement and that he would be happy to make his excuses for him if he were otherwise engaged. But Clive had given in, then, telling Henrietta that he felt too guilty to deny Bennett, as he had spent so little time there of late and that Bennett was indeed shouldering much of the burden of running the firm.

  “It’s just as well,” she had replied and then told him of the call she returned to Lucy, in which Lucy asked if she might be able to meet up with Rose to return her little pistol to her, sooner than later, she had added, which worried Henrietta. She asked Lucy for more details, but Lucy said that she didn’t want to say more in case people were listening in on the party line.

  So Clive had assigned Fritz and the Rolls to Henrietta, while he himself dusted off his father’s Mercedes-Benz Roadster, surprised that it still started after all these months lying dormant in the stables. He was quite happy, he said, to drive himself for a change to the Linley Standard headquarters on LaSalle, and judged that the Roadster fit the part more than the Alfa.

  —

  Having given Clive a very long kiss in the foyer despite Billings standing at attention, Henrietta had slipped into the Rolls and instructed Fritz to drive her to Poor Pete’s on Mozart and Wabansia. This is where the Hennessey’s corner bar was located, the place she began working at thirteen, just after her father had killed himself. She had started cleaning floors there and gradually worked her way up to being a waitress and then to a 26 girl, the Hennesseys becoming almost like another set of parents to her over the years. It was, in fact, Mr. Hennessey who had walked her down the aisle at her wedding, much to Oldrich Exley’s fury.

  On the telephone call last night to Lucy, Henrietta had first suggested that she drive directly to the Melody Mill, where the girls all worked, to deliver the gun to Rose, but Lucy had informed her that Rose was no longer working there. Surprised, Henrietta asked why, but Lucy didn’t answer and instead mysteriously suggested that Rose herself might explain it all. Not knowing where else to meet, Henrietta had offered Poor Pete’s as an alternate, especially as she was long overdue for a visit to the Hennesseys anyway. She had been putting it off for too long, she knew, for purely selfish reasons.

  While Henrietta was still on her honeymoon, Elsie had written to her to say that she heard word that the Hennessy’s daughter, Winifred, was pregnant with her first child—who promised to be the Hennessey’s first grandchild—as far as they knew, anyway. The Hennessey’s son Tommy had moved out west somewhere years ago and was estranged from them now, and who knew what he had been up to? Mrs. Hennessey had often joked. Maybe he was married with children as well, she had once or twice suggested hopefully, but Mr. Hennessy always knocked this notion back, saying that Tommy had always been on the wild side and frequently in trouble with the law. “He isn’t the marryin’ kind, my dear,” Mr. Hennessey would say, and all seemed to agree that an image of peaceful domesticity did not seem to fit their middle son. More than likely, Mr. Hennessey had more than once suggested, if
any child had been issued from Tommy’s loins, it was probably unknown to him and a bastard at that. The Hennessey’s oldest child, Billy, whom Henrietta knew had secretly been their favorite, had been killed in the war, before he even had a chance to catch the eye of a girl, much less walk down the aisle with her.

  That left only Winifred, a teacher out east who was reputed, by Mr. and Mrs. Hennessey themselves, to have a somewhat chilly disposition, as the only possible source of a grandchild. She and her husband, Roger, had been married these fifteen years, but no child had thus far been forthcoming from their union, and the Hennesseys had all but given up hope. So it was with much surprise—and almost glee—when Mr. and Mrs. Hennessey received the news of Winifred’s expectant state.

  Mrs. Hennessey herself had then written to Henrietta to tell the good news, though Henrietta had already read about it in one of Elsie’s letters. Of course, Henrietta was happy for the Hennesseys and for Winifred, whom she had never met, but it had been more than a little bit trying to hear about while she had been doubting her own ability to get pregnant. And now . . . now that she had lost the baby it was harder still, and she knew it was the reason she was avoiding visiting the Hennesseys or communicating with them much at all of late. She expected it to be just too painful to have to listen to Mrs. Hennessey go on and on about prams and diapers and little fingers and toes. On the other hand, Henrietta knew that she was being a little unfair, as she had of course told no one outside of her immediate family about her loss, so it was not Mrs. Hennessey’s fault that she was so ebullient and public about sharing her daughter’s news.

  But now Henrietta was determined to put all of that grief and self-pity behind her as well as any selfishness she felt toward the Hennesseys in particular, so that when she was on the telephone with Lucy, it had occurred to her that Poor Pete’s might be the perfect place to meet, thereby killing two birds with one stone. She would meet with Rose and return her gun, as well as visit with Mrs. Hennessey and allow the good woman to talk as much as she liked about the baby who had been born just a month ago, a little girl Winifred had apparently named Prudence Fern, or so Mrs. Hennessey’s letter had announced.