The House of Closed Doors (17 page)

TWENTY

M
y scream was answered by a hoarse shout of fear. Voices rang out, and footsteps thudded along the corridor. I heard the spring bolt squeak back into its socket and saw the door move about an inch. Then it stuck, and voices‌—‌men’s voices‌—‌cursed at it volubly. A few seconds later a miraculous grating sound announced my salvation.

I staggered, on legs that had turned to jelly, over to the door and encountered a half dozen open-mouthed faces. One of them had only three teeth.

“Blackie!” I gasped, and almost fell into the man’s arms. One of the other men set up a high keening, and it took two orderlies to silence him.

Blackie set me back on my feet and patted my shoulder in an avuncular way. “You nearly scared us to death, Miss Nell. Jimmy here thinks you’re little Jo’s ghost, I reckon. Jimmy,” he said, turning toward the doughy man, who now had tears running down his moon-shaped face, “You know Miss Nell. She don’t look nothin’ like Jo, so hush now. Why d’you slam the door, anyhow?” he asked the man.

Jimmy smeared snot and tears around his face with his sleeve as he explained that he didn’t want to see the padded rooms open; it scared him to think of the padded rooms. He saw what he saw. He didn’t like this place. He didn’t want to be a painter any more.

“We won’t get any more work out of him,” one of the orderlies agreed. “I’ll take him back to the Men’s House and see if I can find a replacement.” He took Jimmy gently but firmly by the arm and steered him toward the wing door, talking to him all the while in a low, reassuring voice.

Blackie had recovered his usual air of placid amusement, and the drooping corners of his mouth turned up as he looked at me. “Tryin’ to see if little Jo got stuck in there all on her lonesome, were you? If she did, I’ll eat my hat,” and he gestured toward the greasy object perched on his head. A chill ran through my bones. So Blackie, too, thought it was murder.

“Enough of that, Blackthorn,” one of the orderlies said in a peremptory tone. “We’ve got work to do; no use speculating. The superintendent said it was an accident.”

Blackie wheezed a short laugh in my direction and shambled off toward the cans of paint at the other end of the corridor. The orderlies looked at me, and I forced an unconcerned smile.

“Silly of me to be so curious, wasn’t it? I’ve had quite a fright. I only came here to check on the window casements, to make sure I was sewing the‌—‌the right sort of tabs on the curtains.”

The orderlies said nothing.

“And I’m quite done,” I added. “I must return to my workroom now. To sew the curtains.” And as steadily as I could, I headed for the door.

Blackie looked at me as I left, an expression full of meaning on his seamed face. I raised my eyebrows at him, and a look of angelic unconcern spread over his countenance.

I was sure that man knew something.

W
ell, at least I had learned some things. I had learned that it was impossible to shut the door from the inside and that it only got stuck when it had been pushed hard from the
outside
. It seemed very unlikely that Jo had accidentally shut herself in. And how did she get into the insane wing in the first place? Who had the keys? Logically, this was the next question.

I walked on unsteady legs down to the workroom, where I found Lizzie rocking a squalling Sarah. I apologized, took my daughter in my arms, and prepared myself to nurse her.

Sarah was fussy throughout the procedure and took a long time to settle down afterwards. “What is ailing her?” I asked Lizzie. “You don’t think she’s sick, do you?”

Lizzie’s careworn face crinkled into a rare smile. “I think she’s growing, that’s all. You’ll just have to nurse her more often for a while.” The smile disappeared, and she stepped closer to me. “Your stepfather wants her adopted, didn’t you say?” she asked quietly. “Don’t let them push you into giving her pap or goat’s milk too soon. They do that sometimes, to make the baby wean faster, when they’re looking for a couple to take it.”

I looked at Lizzie in blank astonishment. “Do you think they’re already looking for someone?”

“Mrs. Lombardi, now, she likes the mother and baby to stay together,” Lizzie said. “But the governors, they’re different. Grateful, rich couples are good benefactors, and the sooner the baby goes to live with them, the better. They reckon that a baby that stays with an unrespectable mother gets bad habits.”

Considering my recent decision that I would keep Sarah, this was unwelcome news indeed. As I changed Sarah’s diaper, I tried to formulate a plan of action. My first instinct was simply to take my baby and flee. The weather was getting warmer, and if I set off in the early morning, I could probably make it to the lake port of Waukegan by nightfall. And then what? Without money, what was I supposed to do?

No. I could risk my own life but not Sarah’s. I would need help, and the first person to ask would be Mrs. Lombardi. I had heard that she had helped Tilly‌—‌who, surprisingly, wanted to keep her son‌—‌find a place in a charitable house in Pennsylvania. Perhaps I could beg Mrs. Lombardi to help me find a solution; although, how could I elude my stepfather’s wishes and still see my mother? It was beyond me.

When I arrived at Mrs. Lombardi’s office, I was surprised to see that she was on her knees on the rug by her desk. She was praying fervently and did not hear me arrive at her open door. She rose swiftly to her feet and hastily snatched her cloak from the coat-stand by her window, twisting it around her neck in one swift movement as she turned to the door. Her face held traces of tears, and her expression betrayed deep distress.

I forgot my own troubles. “What is the matter?” I asked, laying my hand on her arm as she reached the doorway. She had not seen me up to that point.

She seemed to snap back to where she was, and her hand tightened suddenly around my wrist.

“I must leave,” she said. She lowered her voice to the merest breath. “I should not be telling this to an inmate‌—‌Nell, can you be discreet?”

“You know I can.”

“Very well. Mr. Ostrander tried to hang himself not much more than an hour ago. His maid heard kicking sounds from his bedroom and found him hanging from the belt of his dressing-gown, which he had tied to the bracket of his curtains. The stitching in the belt gave way, otherwise he would have died.”

I took a step back. “Mr. Ostrander? I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I. Let us pray this has nothing to do with the discovery of Jo and her baby.”

And she was gone, leaving me puzzled. What had she meant? Then the full impact of her words hit me.

Could Mr. Ostrander have been the baby’s father? Or the murderer? Or both?

I
stayed in the workroom for the rest of the day, cranking the handle of the sewing machine furiously to calm my turbulent brain and help with the thinking process. My future and that of my baby gnawed at my mind, but I tried to put off those thoughts until I had a chance of an interview with Mrs. Lombardi. The question of Mr. Ostrander’s guilt was now my foremost preoccupation.

It just
seemed
wrong. Mr. Ostrander, with his formal, stiff manner, his mania for efficiency, and his desire to retain control of any situation‌—‌somehow, I could not see him in the grip of a helpless lust. He, the father of Jo’s baby?

The light was fading, and I lit the lamp and decided to sew just one more pillowcase before stopping work. Sarah gurgled contentedly in her crib after her third feeding of the afternoon; I was becoming quite exhausted with nursing her, but I was determined to follow Lizzie’s advice.

A noise at the door made me whip my head round in surprise. I relaxed when I saw Blackie, but as he sidled into the room, I detected that there was something different about him. His eyes were brighter than normal, and a faint flush decorated his weather-beaten cheeks. He held himself taller and looked at me with something approaching insolence.

“Have you been drinking?” I asked.

“Just a nip.” Blackie seated himself on an unoccupied table, a relaxed grin on his face.

“Where did you get alcohol?”

Blackie raised a finger to his lips in a gesture of secrecy. “There’s ways and means when the craving overcomes me. Just a little, mind; enough to cover the bottom of the bottle. If I drink more, I’ll want to make a night of it; and if I do that, they’ll find me out.” He nodded, as if to reassure me. “Don’t you worry, Miss Nell. I’m quite as safe drinking as sober. Just a little bit more expansive, you might say.” And he was better spoken when he had been drinking, I noticed. I felt sure there was more to Blackie than met the eye.

Tess chose that moment to walk into the room and looked at Blackie in mute surprise. I motioned her over to where I was standing.

“Did you have something to say to me?” I asked, facing Blackie. I felt a little afraid of him in this condition, and I was glad Tess was with me.

“Just thought you might be wondering about Mr. Ostrander.” Blackie shuffled into a more comfortable position on the tabletop.

“How on earth did you know about that?” I felt a jolt of astonishment. He put his finger to his lips again.

“Word gets around,” he explained. “Thinking that Ostrander might be the father of Jo’s baby, perhaps? You’d be wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“Student of human nature, aren’t I?” Blackie said. “Ostrander’s not the marrying kind, nor the fornicating kind either‌—‌with women.”

I stared hard at Blackie, trying to work out if he meant what I thought he meant. Tess was looking at me with her eyebrows raised, and it embarrassed me to think that she understood something that I, sheltered from childhood, did not. Somehow, in my ignorance, I believed Blackie without hesitation.

“Besides,” his eyes brightened even more as he seemed to relive a memory, “he wasn’t the one sniffing round little Jo at the opportune moment.”

I jerked my head upwards. “You know, don’t you,” I said, and I could hear the hardness in my voice. “You have a duty to tell, Blackie, to give that girl and her baby justice.”

“Oh yes, oh yes,” he nodded in agreement. “But see, I won’t get nothin’ for telling ’cept a whole load of trouble for not telling before, see? And I ain’t the one to get a fellow man into trouble. But if you was to make sure I got a reward …” His voice had become wheedling, as if he were slipping back into a role.

“He wants booze.” Tess’s voice was flat.

Blackie launched into one of his wheezing laughs, which became a cough. His eyes watering, he beamed at the two of us, his three teeth shining yellow in the lamplight.

“Tell you the story for a nip,” he said. “For a bottle of whiskey, mind, I’ll give you a name.”

“You just told me you didn’t want a whole bottle!”

“I’d hide it,” he said. “For the day I really need it. Till I take that first nip, see, I can hold off. I just hums and makes the little demon go away. Then I’m good for a while, until the craving really catches me. But I’ve always wanted to keep a whole bottle hidden somewhere, for my day of need. An ambition, like. A little something to look forward to.”

I didn’t really understand; but then, I didn’t drink. Tess and I looked at each other.

Tess was the first to speak. “I know where I can get a bottle of beer,” she said.

Blackie’s eyes lit up. “And where’s that, then?”

“Do you think I’d tell you? You think you’re clever and know all the things that happen here. I know some things that happen here too. Things you don’t know.”

Blackie gave Tess a sour look. “Beer’s horse piss, begging your pardon, Miss Nell. But I’ll give you a little taste of the story for a full bottle.”

“You need to leave,” I said. I didn’t want to play this game, even if it meant acquiring useful information.

To my surprise, Blackie immediately slid off the table and headed for the door. As he opened it, he turned round.

“Bottle of whiskey, and you’ll know who the father of Jo’s baby was. Leastways, the probable father. Little Jo got around.”

He left, treading with a swagger I did not usually hear in his step. Tess looked at me.

“No, Tess.” I answered what was in her eyes. “I don’t think this is right.”