“Oh my, you don’t say? Anna La Fever’s boy. Sorrow upon sorrow, isn’t it?” The voice was lowered, though not sufficiently that Niles couldn’t overhear. “What with the disappearance.” An appropriate emphasis.
“Ayuh. Though if you ask me, I haven’t heard of any month-old babies just getting up and disappearing of their own accord. I’d say it’s purely a case of kidnapping. The Lindbergh thing all over again. You’d of thought that Hauptmann person would’ve taught some folks a lesson.”
Niles flipped a page. They were speaking about Holland and the baby.
“Well,” Mrs. Fenstermacher said, “I talked with Mrs. Blessing after church Sunday and she said Constable Blessing says—”
“Pooh, Mr. Blessing. Mr. Blessing’s a codger, dear. No kind of a constable for a growing town like this. Should of retired by now. Won’t solve this affair, be assured. What it wants is suspects, and suspects is what they haven’t got. Over a week and nary a clue. Mark me, nobody’ll see that child alive again. See you got out your coat, Ruth.”
Niles stole a glance at the third lady, inspecting a piece of china. “Well, it’s got so nippy over the weekend.”
“Don’t drop that, m’dear, it’s Copenhagen.”
“Lord,” the lady went on, “I feel so sorry for those folks.” Niles looked away before she caught him. “Ethel Landis says her children absolutely cross the street when they go by the house. You’d think the place was haunted, the way some’re carrying on. And all them reporters hanging about.”
“I thought they’d all been pulled off the story,” Miss Josceline-Marie whispered in a surprised tone. The ladies drew their heads together over the cash register.
“Noo,” said the lady, “that man from the Courant’s still around, and I saw the one wears the mackintosh, the one came up from New York.”
“Well, if they come around here, I could give them a story,” Miss Josceline-Marie said, trying unsuccessfully to keep her voice down. “Up to and including some things most people don’t even know about.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, Winnie stopping in so often at the—” The look she tossed in the direction of Sweeney’s Liquor Store next door was freighted with innuendo.
“Goodness,” Mrs. Fenstermacher said, “that’s no news. Everybody knows George and Valeria enjoy their liquor.”
“All the Perrys enjoy their liquor,” said the third lady.
“That’s it exactly. Everyone knows George only drinks bourbon. Valeria too. But I got it out of Harry Sweeney that it wasn’t any bourbon Winnie was picking up practically every time you blinked. It was rye. And I guess we know who’s partial to rye in that house.”
“Was,” Mrs. Fenstermacher said knowingly.
The bells jingled again and Rose Halligan from the Five and Ten came traipsing in on her high heels. “’Day, Rose,” the proprietress greeted her. “C’m’ere, m’dear. Listen, didn’t Harry next door come right out and tell me that was Fleischman’s rye the Perrys’ maid was getting?”
“Welp, yes—” Rose began.
“There. What’d I tell you. The place is awash with spirits.”
“Not any more it isn’t,” Mrs. Fenstermacher could not contain herself. “Or hadn’t you heard?”
No, they hadn’t. Well, Fred—Fenstermacher, that was—had gotten it straight from George on his way to the Rose Rock bottling works this morning. Took her away in a closed car, you know where. No! No, not there, to a nursing home. Miss Josceline-Marie thought that was only right, and said so. But why, at long last?
Mrs. Fenstermacher wasn’t sure. “She got violent, I heard. Fred said George said she just went completely out of control and got violent.”
“And—?”
“And that’s all George said. That’s enough, isn’t it? My heavens, Alexandra Perry—violent?”
“Pooh, if they took folks away for getting violent, they’d have to take away half the town.”
“Well, at least they’ve gotten her away before the dinner,” Mrs. Fenstermacher said.
“What dinner?” asked Rose.
“You don’t mean to say!” Miss Josceline-Marie was astounded. “Do you mean to stand there and tell me George Perry is going to hold the dinner?”
“What dinner?” Rose insisted.
“The Perrys have this memorial thing every year for the Board of Selectmen,” Miss Josceline-Marie explained.
“Memorial thing?” Rose looked blank.
“In memory of old Mr. Perry,” put in Mrs. Fenstermacher; Fred Fenstermacher was one of the town selectmen.
“Granddaddy Perry, that’d be. His will provided that every year money was to be given to the Town Fund for Children.”
“Fred says none of the Board wants to go but—”
“But?”
“But—” Mrs. Fenstermacher was flummoxed. “But it’s been decided.”
“Well, if you ask me, that dinner’s no more than an excuse for them gentlemen to get drunk.” She took four or five steps down the aisle and called over to the magazine rack. “Niles, was there something particular you are looking for?
“No’m. Just looking.”
“We don’t like our young people thumbing the magazines, please,” she said. He replaced his comic book and started for the door. “Don’t you want that?” she cried after him.
“That’s okay—thanks.”
“Well—!” The jingling bells cut off the rest of her sentence and Niles stood on the street looking right and left for the black-coated figure. No, she didn’t seem to be around. Over in front of the church was a line of cars. Music sounded from inside. He crossed the green and approached. Two of Mr. Foley’s assistants, flowers in their buttonholes, were murmuring to each other in the vestibule. When their backs were turned Niles slipped in through the open door and hid in a far pew. Around him, shadows. Before him, the rigid backs of mourners. A woman weeping. In the pulpit, droning, Mr. Tuthill . . . blasted buds, blighted hopes, Everlasting Life. Casket, candles, flowers, the familiar appurtenances. A rendition from the organ loft by Professor Lapineaux.
Niles turned slightly, his face catching the rainbow of light streaming through the stained glass window where he beheld in all her glory the Angel of the Brighter Day: her wings so white, so lofty, her raiment pristine and flowing, her countenance radiant, peaceful, serene, her figure bending, one graceful hand offering him the lily.
For a while he dreamed in the shadows, his attention now on the Angel, now on the funeral proceedings. When those concerned had left to bear the casket to the cemetery, Niles remained cloistered in the pew, listening as the Professor’s organ continued—practicing selections for Sunday, Niles suspected—and he went on gazing at the Angel. Rock of Ages, cleft for meee. One of Ada’s favorites. It always gave him a feeling of hope. But not today. Hope? What hope was there? The baby was gone.
And where was it?
It had been raining still when the search for the missing Eugenia first began. Then, the wind driving the storm away to the east, Mr. Blessing had come in answer to the frantic summons; he in turn roused deputies who strode about scouring the house, the passages, the storage spaces, the closets, any place where the child might have been hidden; spread outside, their flashlight beams crisscrossing the lawn, shining behind shrubs, down the drive to the pump, into the arbor, the barn, everywhere. Though in those early hours of the disappearance no one had yet mentioned the dread word “kidnapped.” But Niles knew. Certainly he did, knew exactly what had happened.
With his own flashlight he had crept along the hall, through the back passages, into the storeroom next to Torrie and Rider’s room. Holland would be there, Niles was certain. Only he wasn’t. Down the back stairs, out to the kitchen. The hayloft, the cupola, the cold-cellar, the apple cellar: no Holland. The trapdoor was closed, and when he pulled it up he found the room dark and solitary and empty; the cattail snow lay undisturbed, the kerosene lamp hung cold and unlighted on the nail above the ladder.
Down t
he road to the icehouse, along the riverbank to the landing, back up through the wet meadow to the house, bare legs stinging from the grass. Deputies in the hall revealed their bafflement. In the parlor, on the davenport, Ada sat, her face bewildered as she stared at Constable Blessing making notes.
“You were asleep then, you say, Mrs. Vedrenya?”
“Yes. I have dat damn toothache and I took some laudanum earlier—”
“Earlier?”
“After supper. But it don’t seem to help much, so I take one of dem pain pills—”
“What kind of pills?”
“The bottle don’t say. Some codeine compound. The doctor, he get dem for my pain.” In her nervousness she was forgetting her English. She held up her swollen fingers.
“Where’d you get them?”
“Holland get dem for me.”
“Holland?”
“No, I mean Niles.” She seemed flustered.
Niles spoke up. “I got the pills for Ada, Mr. Blessing. The prescription is from Dr. Brainard. At the Pequot Drugstore.”
“Umm.” Mr. Blessing rubbed his day’s growth of beard thoughtfully, then addressed Ada again. “You took the pills and went straight to bed?”
“One pill. Niles bring me one pill with root beer.”
“Is that correct, Niles?”
“Yes sir,” he replied earnestly. “It was so hot, I brought root beer to everyone. With lemon.”
“Everyone?”
“Yes sir. For my mother, and Ada, and for Aunt Vee.”
“I see. Mrs. Vedrenya, what did you do after you took the pill?”
“I go to lie down and I must have fall asleep.”
“Why did you leave the windows open? Didn’t you realize a storm was coming?”
“I closed the windows,” Niles said. “All of them, except in here. Aunt Vee was listening to the radio and she said she’d shut them if it started raining—but she didn’t think it would.”
“Then what?” He turned back to Ada.
“As I have said, I was laying down. I t’ink, I shall go to sleep if I do not get up, but I could not. The tooth pain stopped. I am asleep. The next thing, Niles is shaking me. He says to wake up, Eugenia is gone.”
“What time was that?”
“I don’t know.”
“It must have been after eleven,” Niles pointed out, “because I remember I had the Maxwell House Coffee program on my crystal set and it was just going off the air when the rain started.”
“Where was Mrs. Perry?”
“In the parlor, I thought.”
“What do you mean, you thought? Wasn’t she?”
“No, she was not.” Ada was speaking. “It turned out she had walked up to Packard Lane to get some oil of cloves for me. For dat dam tooth. She stopped with friends during the rain.”
“Where is Mrs. Perry now?”
Aunt Valeria had been on the phone, trying to get through to Torrie and Rider. The lines were down. After futile attempts she went upstairs to sit with Alexandra until Winnie got home from her sister’s.
“I’d like a few words with your aunt,” Mr. Blessing told Niles. He went upstairs and spoke with a near-hysterical Aunt Vee. When she had gone down to the parlor Niles went along the gallery and back to his own room. He was shivering, his teeth chattered from the cold and excitement; suddenly he felt burdened by fatigue. The search had continued on all night and now, raising one of the windows, he looked at a sky already tinged with a pearly glow, the meadow glistening with dew. Leaning on the window sill, he thought how the cloudless sky promised a beautiful day.
But the baby . . . where was it?
Ask Holland. Holland knew.
But Holland wasn’t telling.
And since then all the days had been beautiful, beautiful and sorrowful and infinitely changed. Now Torrie remained hidden in her room and, close to her side, Rider, alternating between hope and despair. Now Uncle George was drinking more; he and Aunt Valeria could be heard behind their door, talking stridently. Now people came and went, tramping up and down stairs, questioning, recording, photographing, disturbing the already-disturbed household. People waking up hollering from nightmares. Now Winnie went from one room to another, trying to care for all, trying to smile, to be brave, to have faith, to keep the news from Alexandra . . .
But Mother knew, somehow.
Somehow she had learned—or sensed—the truth.
Poor Mother; it was terrible. They could scarcely keep her in her wheelchair: day and night she could be heard rolling angrily around her room in an agony of frustration, banging into things, knocking them over. She smashed her vanity mirror, then broke her tortoise-shell comb, then took scissors to her embroidered slippers. And then, two nights ago, when Niles had lain down—unfortunately on Holland’s bed—listening to the crystal set, staring at the face in the ceiling, he had not heard the door open or the creak of the wheels, because of the earphones. When he looked up he saw his mother’s face leaning above him. Oh, that face! Dead white, eyes ringed with black, the scarlet mouth opening, closing—it chilled him to think of it. Poor deluded Mother; how could he make her understand that he was Niles. For Holland he accepted the furious rain of blows on his face, the silent curses heaped upon him. A natural enough error: she had taken him for his twin lying in his own bed. And now she was gone, put away from harm, and the house was more sorrowful than ever.
He tried to smile back at the Angel in the church window. What was it? Something she reminded him of—no, something he wanted to be reminded of . . . something he had forgotten . . .
A chuckle. Holland, close by in the pew, was sitting watching him.
“You can’t remember, can you?”
Cripes! How he read his mind.
“Remember what?”
“You know.” The enigmatic smile. Another chuckle, low, crafty like Achilles.
“What’s so funny now?”
“I was just thinking.”
“What?”
“You had another nightmare last night, didn’t you? Yes you did. You pulled the sheets out all around your mattress. Something scared you.”
Niles stiffened. “I was dreaming about the baby.”
“What about the baby?”
Professor Lapineaux had left the organ loft. In a moment he would be coming to close up. Niles whispered hurriedly: “I was in this big house, and I kept getting lost. No matter where I turned I couldn’t find my way. I walked for a long time, I walked and walked and then I heard it.”
“What?” Holland’s face was all colors, blue and red and yellow and green, a kaleidoscope of hues from the stained glass.
“The baby. Torrie’s baby. Crying, crying like it would break your heart, and I wanted to find it and bring it back to Torrie—”
“And that’s when you woke up screaming. You’re crazy, Niles.”
“Holland?”
“What?”
“Where is it?”
“The baby?” Holland shrugged. “How should I know?”
“Yes you do.”
“I said I don’t. What else must I tell you?”
Niles could feel the muscles in his jaw working. “Holland, give it back.”
“What, Niles?”
“The baby! Give it back—it isn’t yours, it’s Torrie’s. It’s her baby. You’ve got to give it back!” On and on and on, the entreaty becoming a litany, and Professor Lapineaux, watching from the shadows, shaking his head at the poor child, talking to himself.
“Ask the elves?” Niles was astonished at the airy remark. A threat was what was needed to shake some sense into him. “Holland, if you don’t give it back—I’ll tell.”
A long, protracted silence. Then Holland said softly, “You’ll tell what?”
“Everything. Everything!”
“You won’t.”
“I will!” he muttered through clenched teeth, gripping the turnings of the pew in front of him. He swore aloud and the Professor, taken aback by the language, stepped forward to
bring the boy out into the daylight.
4
She was across the street when he stepped from the vestibule onto the portico. Professor Lapineaux left him at the door and Niles skipped behind a pillar, then sneaked off down the sidewalk, tree to tree, confident he was unseen. Passing the wrought-iron gates, he went beyond the cemetery to the cornfield; he paused to take in the sweeping prospect. Stalks lay over the tired earth between bearded furrows. The westering sun glazed the russets, browns, and ochres of the field with a warm, coppery sheen, casting luminous shadows. Shocks of bound corn stood guarding the adjacent cemetery dead. The scarecrow, limp and tattered on a pole, straw-stuffed, strawfaced, looked back at him across the furrows.
From some vague distance came the annoyed caw of a crow; wind lightly stirred the papery corn; it seemed to whisper his name. Niles . . . Niles . . . His shoulders tensed. Niles . . . Dry, garrulous tongues, whispering . . . what? To remind him of—what? Of that which he had forgotten, that thing which the Angel had wanted to remind him of. What was it? What was wrong with his brain, why couldn’t he remember? Ah well, it would come. A revelation, perhaps; but it would come. In one split second, like a lightning flash, it would be discovered, for after all, he had been born with the caul, hadn’t he? Wasn’t he half Russian? It would come.
Some lengths away, the burial was in progress. The mourners clustered around Arnie La Fever’s open grave while Mr. Tuthill intoned the Twenty-third Psalm, as inevitably he did. Leaves, burnished red and gold, rustled above the narrow hole. Somewhere a bird sang. But of that group none seemed to mark the odd contrast between the entrancing birdsong and the pastor’s doleful cadences. Niles observed how silently a stem detached itself from a twig: giving up its life—bright leaf, falling . . . falling . . . The leaf spiraled down to rest upon the lid of the casket. It looked like a hand, offering benediction.
Then he saw her again, at the edge of the field, beneath an umbrella-shaped tree, waiting, one hand on the thin trunk, her face shadowed, and it was as though she were shielding herself against the sun with a giant flaming parasol, her coat and hat and gloves all black under the fiery leaves. She crossed the turf, stepped over the furrows, and came along into the dead cornfield, her head nodding slightly, the faint, hopeful smile pulsing on her mouth.