A Child Lost

by Michelle Cox

  She shot him a sly smile as if perfectly aware of his current state of torture. Mercifully, however, she answered him. “It’s a letter to Herbie, if you must know,” she said crisply. “He’s very ill again. I think he might not be cut out for boarding school. We might have to implore Grandfather to bring him home. And then there’s Elsie. I telephoned her, but she wasn’t in. I’m terribly worried—”

  “Shhh!” Clive hushed her. “This is just what I mean. You’re much too worried about others. You’ve had enough of worry. We both have,” he said, putting his arms back around her. “As it is, I’ve had an idea. One that I came up here to expressly tell you, in fact—”

  “Yes, I’m sure it’s a good one, darling, whatever it is, but we can’t ignore the situation.”

  “What situation?” he asked, puzzled.

  “The situation with Anna of course. Elsie tells me that—”

  “Darling,” he sighed, “we’ve been through all of this before. Anna is not my concern right now. You are my concern.”

  Henrietta stared up at him with her big blue eyes. “I think she’s in love with him, you know,” she said absently, totally throwing him off.

  “What? Who?”

  “Elsie. I think she’s in love with Gunther.”

  Clive let out a little groan, allowing himself a moment to actually consider what she just said. A kraut as a brother-in-law is not what he needed just now, though he had to admit Gunther seemed a decent enough fellow. He dreaded the uproar it would cause with the Exleys. But all that could wait! “Darling, I’m trying very hard to tell you something.”

  “I’m sorry, dearest. Yes, go ahead,” she said penitently.

  “I want us to go away.”

  “Go away? Where?”

  “Back to England for a bit and then maybe on to Europe,” he said carefully. “We need to finish our honeymoon. You made me promise that I would bring you back to the fairy bower. And so I will. I mean to keep my promise.”

  “Clive! That was just a tease!” she said with a little laugh. “You can’t really be serious! We can’t leave now. We’ve only just got home!”

  “I’m perfectly in earnest,” he said, searching her eyes for . . . for something. “Why shouldn’t we go? What’s holding us here?”

  She looked at him incredulously, as if he were the unbalanced one. “Darling,” she said, placing a hand on his chest, “there are many things here that require our attention. Besides Anna and Elsie!” she said quickly before he could interrupt her. “There’s Highbury itself, your mother, of course—we can’t just leave her! And what about Julia and the boys? You yourself have suggested many times that we should try to involve ourselves more with her and Randolph, if only to get her away from him. And what about the firm? What will poor Bennett say?”

  “He can handle it. And my mother can handle Highbury, I dare say. Or Billings can, anyway.”

  She was still staring at him, unconvinced.

  “Darling, this may be our only chance in a long time,” he went on eagerly. “If God should bless us with children, it will be a long time before we will be able to go. And anyway, I feel we need to get away from here. Away from all these trappings and the sad things that have happened of late.”

  “So we’re just going to run away?”

  “Yes. Let’s,” he said, cupping her face in his hands. “Henrietta, you mean the world to me, and I mean to make you happy, all the days of my life.” He kissed her forehead. “If you really wish to remain, then so be it. I will be ruled by you. I only want to please you, to make you happy,” he whispered, Catherine’s words doggedly coming to his mind again. He bent and kissed her tenderly and long and could not help allowing his hands to roam down her back to her buttocks, where they rested, pulling her into him. She correspondingly wrapped her arms around his neck again, not breaking their kiss, and delicately ran her fingers through his hair, which caused him to stiffen.

  He released her, then, before things got out of hand, and he was surprised that she was breathing heavily, too. Did nothing stop her?

  “All right. You win,” she said, looking up at him with a smile that oddly reminded him of how she looked the night they had met at the Promenade. “When do we leave?”

  Chapter 26

  Mrs. Goodman sat in her chair in Ward 3C, peering only occasionally up at Nurse Harding, who blustered about as usual. Mrs. Goodman wore a large black hat on her head and held a book in her hand. She had found it the night that woman had descended to Agharta in the tunnel of the Atlanteans. The woman had not returned, so she must have made it, and Mrs. Goodman felt a burst of happiness and not a little pride that the woman had escaped, though she herself had never been successful. She was, as it happened, losing her desire to leave, to find her way to the center of the earth and to the race of kinder beings. She didn’t think she was up for the journey any longer, nor did she think she would again survive the punishment should she fail. No—it was better to make the best of it here, she sadly decided.

  Mrs. Goodman had taken the book back to her room and hid it under her dirty pillow. Occasionally, when the nurse changed her sheets, which luckily only occurred if she wet them, which wasn’t often, she carried it about with her or hid it in her dress. Initially, she had just liked to look at the pictures, but as time went on, she found she was able to read some of the words as well. She had forgotten that she knew how to read. Some of it made sense to her, and some of it didn’t. There was one passage she liked more than the others, and this one she read over and over. It reminded her of something, but she couldn’t think what. It had become her favorite:

  To Any Reader

  As from the house your mother sees

  You playing round the garden trees,

  So you may see, if you will look

  Through the windows of this book,

  Another child, far, far away,

  And in another garden, play.

  But do not think you can at all,

  By knocking on the window, call

  That child to hear you. He intent

  Is all on his play-business bent.

  He does not hear; he will not look,

  Nor yet be lured out of this book.

  For, long ago, the truth to say,

  He has grown up and gone away,

  And it is but a child of air

  That lingers in the garden there.

  She closed the book, then, and went to the room that held her bed so that she could lie down and close her eyes and try to remember . . . exactly what, she did not know.

  Epilogue

  Sergei slithered into the room where Madame Pavlovsky sat, gently caressing her crystal ball, freed for the moment from its elaborate stand.

  “So Howard’s gone?” he asked in a raspy voice. “Why did you let him go?”

  “Do not have worry,” Madame Pavlovsky said absently, a smile curling her lips as she gazed at the ball. “He will be back.”

  Notes and Acknowledgements

  As I have written before in various other places, the character of Henrietta Von Harmon is based upon a real woman and her adventures in the 1930s and ‘40s Chicago. Though most of the other characters and places in the early books of the series are fictional, some of them, such as The Green Mill, The Aragon, St. Sylvester Church, Palmer Square, and Humboldt Park are, like Henrietta, very real. In the fourth book of the series, A Veil Removed, I added my alma mater, Mundelein College, to the list, but instead of merely mentioning it in passing or assigning it a paltry scene or two, as I had done with the others, I decided to boldly use it as a setting for almost half of the book.

  Likewise, in this most recent addition to the series, A Child Lost, I again used Mundelein as a backdrop for some of the chapters, but I decided to add even more actual locales to the story, namely, Mundelein Seminary, The Bohemian Home for Orphans and the Aged, and, sadly, Dunning Asylum. The problem with using real, historic places in a novel, however, is that whilst researching, the author very often unearths a treasur
e trove of stories and facts attached to them, and the desire to share all of those interesting tidbits is overwhelming in the extreme. I suspect it might be easier to simply continue to use fictional settings, as one can then avoid the temptation to dump all of these extra morsels of fact into an otherwise sufficiently lean and agile plot. The danger of bloat is very real once you go digging.

  My response to this situation was to cleverly take this seemingly unwanted space at the end of the book to share just a few of the extraneous bits that didn’t make it into the story proper. Only the most ardent readers will have made it all the way back here, and if you are one, then you will undoubtedly welcome the added information, as you’ve apparently come looking for something in the first place.

  As already stated, Dunning Asylum, or the Chicago State Hospital, as it was officially named, was unfortunately a very real place and was commonly referred to as “a tomb for the living.” Generations of Chicago parents really did threaten naughty children that they would be “sent to Dunning” if they didn’t behave. Dunning began as a poor farm in 1851 and was located some twelve miles northwest of what was then the Chicago city limits. As many of the poor, even in those days, were suffering from some sort of mental affliction, it soon became populated with the city’s mentally ill. Very quickly, what was supposed to be an idyllic refuge in the country for honest work and peace became an overcrowded, chaotic asylum rife with abuse in the face of little or no oversight. More and more people were brought to the asylum, so much so that in 1882, the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad extended its track by three extra miles so that a train could run almost right up to the facility itself. The “crazy train,” as it came to be called, loaded with supplies and stuffed with the “insane,” would run from downtown Chicago directly to the asylum, where the new patients were easily herded inside. The fact that the remains of over 38,000 bodies have so far been unearthed from the cemeteries or mass graves surrounding the now demolished facility points to what was the ultimate fate for most of those poor people boarding the train.

  While it is true that by 1936, when A Child Lost opens, Dunning had already gone through several serious reforms, it was still not a very pleasant place in which to end up. Forced electric shock and hosing, as well as severe overcrowding, were but a few of the abuses that still existed. In writing A Child Lost, I struggled with how much of the depravity I had uncovered should really be included in a Henrietta and Clive novel. I wanted to depict Dunning as bleak as possible without getting too dark, which would constitute a step outside the scope of the series. I hope I succeeded in walking that fine line.

  The University of St. Mary of the Lake, otherwise known as Mundelein Seminary, is also a very real place and is now the largest Catholic seminary in the United States. What is more interesting, however, at least to me, is that somewhere on what is now the seminary’s grounds once stood a business school, which was started by an eccentric salesman by the name of Arthur Sheldon. Sheldon called his school AREA, which stood for “Ability, Reliability, Endurance, and Action.” He was so charismatic that he persuaded the town to change its name to AREA to match, which the town elders seemed to have no problem doing, as they had already gone through a whole list of names for their town over the years, beginning with Mechanics Grove, and then Holcomb, and finally Rockefeller. When Sheldon’s school eventually folded after only about ten years, the Catholic Church, under the direction of Cardinal Mundelein, bought the school and the 600 acres upon which it sat and began construction of a seminary. Later, the town voted to again change its name, this time to Mundelein, which pleased the cardinal so much that he donated a fire truck to the town, their first.

  Again, it was tempting to somehow throw all of this into a conversation between Henrietta and Clive on their drive to the seminary in search of a missing woman, but I refrained. If you are yourself perchance an author, you will read the final version of that chapter, which has only the briefest reference to all of the above, and feel my pain.

  Lastly, The Bohemian Home for Orphans and the Aged was also a real place and one which I had the fortune to work at before it, too, closed down. It began as a 43-acre farm in Bensenville, Illinois, but was later transferred to Crawford Ave (now Pulaski) on the city’s northwest side in 1901. It was common around the turn of the century for independent ethnic groups, private charities and religious groups to found their own hospitals, schools, asylums, orphanages, or shelters in an effort to firstly take care of their own, and, as time went on, other unfortunates as well. The Czech’s were no different, and one of their many contributions to the city of Chicago was the construction of the Bohemian National Cemetery and the nearby Bohemian Home for Orphans and the Aged. Like all orphanages in the city at that time, some of the children living there were true orphans, having lost their parents, but many of them had living parents, usually just a single parent, who could no longer afford to care for them. These children were placed in orphanages until the parent’s financial situation improved, but in some cases, they were adopted by other families.

  By the time I was an employee of the Bohemian Home in the early 1990’s, there were of course no orphans running about the place. In fact, that part of the facility had since been converted into apartments for the staff, which mostly consisted of Czech, Polish and Filipino immigrants. There were many stories still floating around, however, of days long gone, many of which I managed to hastily jot down. Most of these stories came from the residents themselves, many of whom were of Czech origin and could remember coming to the Bohemian Home every year as children and playing on the grounds with the orphans during the Home’s annual picnic, which was open to the general public. These stories now form the basis for my blog, “Novel Notes of Local Lore,” which features a different “forgotten Chicago resident’s” story each week. You can check them out here: http://michellecoxauthor.com/blog/ if you’d like more reading material. Also, watch for some of these stories to appear in future novels! Likewise, I have often thought that the Bohemian Home would be an excellent setting for a spinoff series. It might be just the place, for example, for Elsie and Gunther to set up shop…

  And now I suppose I should get on with the acknowledgements, as I really am now in danger of running out of space.

  Firstly, it is my great pleasure and privilege to again thank my publisher at She Writes Press, Brooke Warner, for not only taking a chance on me, but for providing a women’s-only space within the publishing industry. Brooke is a force to be reckoned with, and she is absolutely changing the world around her. I consider myself lucky to be in her orbit. Thank you, Brooke, for continuing to champion women’s voices.

  I’d also like to thank Lauren Wise for not only being my project manager but for being my trusted editor once again. I cannot thank you enough, Lauren, for everything you do to keep the series running smoothly. Every single day, you go above and beyond. Your enthusiasm is contagious!

  Thanks as well to the many other industry professionals who always have time to answer my questions and offer advice, namely Liane Paonessa, Tabitha Bailey, Yolanda Facio, and Michelle Fisher, among many others. Your support and guidance over the years has meant, and continues to mean, so much to me. Thanks, too, to all of the libraries across the country, and the world, actually, who continue to carry and suggest my books to new readers, and to all the indie booksellers that champion my books, especially Janet Elliot of This Old Book in Grayslake, Il. and Suzy Takacs of The Book Cellar, in Chicago. In am particularly indebted to both of you!

  And this time around, I’d really like to thank ALL OF YOU! I’m so very grateful to each of you for reading or listening to the book, writing reviews, following me on social media, and/or for dropping me a line to let me know how much you are enjoying the series. This has given me immense joy, and it is why I continue to write, actually. You cannot know what your support and encouraging words have meant to me. It makes the months and months and months of writing and editing all worth it in the end. So thank you! Please keep rea
ding!

  Lastly, of course, I thank my family, who continue to either help or go without, without complaining. Apparently frozen pizza is an acceptable, even welcome, dinner substitute. Who knew? Thanks to each of you for helping to hold down the fort when I need to spend my evenings working or my days traveling. I especially want to thank my husband, Phil, for your unwavering support, and more importantly, your love. You are still my sweetest song, and I am truly blessed.

  About the Author

  © Cliento Photography

  Michelle Cox is the author of the multiple award-winning Henrietta and Inspector Howard series as well as “Novel Notes of Local Lore,” a weekly blog dedicated to Chicago’s forgotten residents. She suspects she may have once lived in the 1930s and, having yet to discover a handy time machine lying around, has resorted to writing about the era as a way of getting herself back there. Coincidentally, her books have been praised by Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and many others, so she might be on to something. Unbeknownst to most, Michelle hoards board games she doesn’t have time to play and is, not surprisingly, addicted to period dramas and big band music. Also marmalade.

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  SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS

  She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.

  A Girl Like You: A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel by Michelle Cox $16.95, 978-1-63152-016-7

  When the floor matron at the dance hall where Henrietta works as a taxi dancer turns up dead, aloof Inspector Clive Howard appears on the scene—and convinces Henrietta to go undercover for him, plunging her into Chicago’s gritty underworld.