Quiet Dell: A Novel (30 page)

—
The Clarksburg Exponent,
September 1, 1931

She has not phoned him, and he cannot reach her except by telegram. He could phone the Gore, of course, but he must observe propriety, and not presume or make demands. He reads her every dispatch, the words going to the heart of him as he tries to breathe above them.

He is in no position to assert his will or his desires. She is an independent woman not bound by convention. His life now appears to him as barren convention, nothing but convention, for she has stood close to him, like a fire.

They declared themselves here, in his office.

It bound him more deeply than the marriage vows he’s respected until now, though his marriage is one of fact rather than experience, love, even habit. He only provided, and was alone.

She was alone, like a flame burning in a dark field. He walked through the field, toward the glow; he entered a heat that drew him deeper into the roar of his own pulse.

His dreams taunt him. He must speak with her.

He must bring the Eichers home, and he values Emily’s counsel most. Cremation is the only recourse, in Pittsburgh, and transport by rail back to Chicago and Park Ridge. The Broadway Limited stops in Pittsburgh en route from New York to Chicago. Their final burial in St. Luke’s cemetery, across the park from his home, does not concern him; the Lutheran minister is planning the service,
involving the children’s Sunday School class, and the neighborhood taken up with the tragedy.

The cremation is the true ceremony, in William’s mind, a purification to take them away from the earth that enclosed them past all help, past his help. He wants to be present, with Emily, in the small chapel he imagines.

The bodies are taken from that ground, where the children lay together, ten feet from their mother. Had she realized, for some moments or instants? He cannot think of such suffering, and only hopes it was true she died a week before them, else why forge her name on a note?

Sitting at his desk, he feels, like a blow to the chest, a certainty that Powers had asked for the note and she had gently refused. She knew her accounts did not contain a thousand dollars; perhaps she tearfully confessed her true circumstance and the confession immediately preceded her death. They’d agreed to marry in their letters, apparently, before ever meeting; Powers had planned to kill the family all along, and built the garage for that purpose. She died, at least, not knowing that he would take the children, that no one would stop him.

He sees Grethe Eicher before him; she’s her mother’s height, and Hart is nearly as tall. They are not “tots” or “infant children,” as the newspapers daily proclaim.

He is certain the boy struggled.

Hart Eicher, in line at the teller’s window, looks at William Malone, watchful, suspicious. He is not intimidated by a bank president who claims friendship with his mother. If the man is such a friend, why doesn’t he pay off the Cedar Street mortgage, before Anna Eicher begins corresponding with suitors through the American Friendship Society? His personal funds might have saved their lives rather than paid for their burial.

You did not know, Emily tells him.

He imagines the Lutheran church, with four caskets lined up in a row, a devastating thought. It is some comfort, to mingle their
ashes in two caskets—the mother with her youngest child and brother with sister. It is the only comfort.

He must speak with Emily. Phones ring in the outer office; he has said to hold his calls. His direct line is open.

Last evening his wife’s confessor, Father Flynn, had stopped by unannounced, to thank William on behalf of the community; this thing preoccupied everyone. Perhaps that was God’s plan, Flynn said, for in life we are in death.

He is fifty-one. His father died young in a hunting accident, or that was the story the family told. William was three. An only child, he was carefully instructed in the use of firearms, and hunted from the age of twelve with his grandfathers. Close friends, they had married their son and daughter and helped raise their grandson; William and his mother lived on one estate or the other. She decided not to remarry after the accident; it would have complicated a clear legacy, for his grandfathers loved him as a son. One of them, each summer, took William and his mother to the Continent; they schooled him in business, art, ethics. Both lived into vibrant old age.

He might have twenty years with Emily, thirty years: a lifetime, for some. Or his wife could outlive them both, he thinks ruefully. His grandmothers had died in their forties, and neither husband had remarried. He’d married late, the object of his mother’s nurture and intelligent interest. She’d not approved of Catherine, but supported his choice, and died within five years of the marriage, before Catherine’s disease took hold.

Accident, illness, happenstance. He cannot lose Emily. Her profession imposes risk, surely. Mayor McKee, in frequent conference with editors at the
Tribune,
showed William the morgue photographs entered as evidence in the case.

The morgue looked like a cave; Emily had entered it with Asta Eicher, with the children. She’d stood near them with a
Tribune
photographer, one Eric Lindstrom. A gentleman, William was told, a respected journalist. She’s not alone, he tells himself, and that is good.

His telegram will have arrived hours ago.

Extraordinary, all that has happened.

He thinks, I must speak with her.

His line rings, and he picks up immediately.

“William?” she says.

It was ten o’clock of a beautiful morning. Emily waited in Eric’s car with her suitcases, her grip, her valise, and the dog. Eric was driving back to Chicago with their typewriters and files of case coverage. Clarksburg’s fulsome ash and maple trees cast moving shadows on the yellow-brick pavement, the sidewalks, the stone outbuilding to the back of Romine Funeral Home. The house itself towered above. To the left, three blocks across, Emily could see the rear wing of the Gore Hotel. Though it was early, an assemblage had gathered to witness the beginning of the journey: the mortician, in business attire and a formal, cutaway jacket; boys in suits, short pants, and knickers, men simply looking on; photographers, waiting. All of them, men. Women did not gather to witness such events.

“Emily,” Eric was saying. “You’re sure you don’t want me to take Duty, so that you don’t have the dog, in addition to all else?”

She wanted to say that the dog was the only family left the Eichers, and Duty must stay with them, but she only looked at Eric fondly. “I’ve just walked him. He will be fine, three hours to Pittsburgh.”

“And on the train?”

“Surely there are stops along the way. We shall dash off, and dash back.” She reached over to smooth Eric’s collar. “Eric,” she said, “there is Iowa. I must go there for some days, immediately
after the service for the family. To find where he came from, who he is. I have a lead who contacted William, after it was published that he is funding—”

“This,” Eric finished. “He is funding this.” He took her hand. “I will come with you. The
Tribune
will send us both, and rent a good, unfashionable car the farmers will recognize as sensible. I’m along as photographer, exclusively.”

“Have you been to Iowa, Eric?”

“Never. I hear it’s flat in every way, and terrible, I’m sure.”

“No, Iowa is beautiful. My grandparents’ farm was near Fairbank. It is still there. We shall stop by. Farm people understand those sorts of visits.”

They sat without speaking. The group on the sidewalk milled slowly about. The sky was bright blue. Tall trees stirred, their frothy shadows moving on the brick street.

The mortician stepped forward to open the back doors of the hearse.

“Ah, look,” said Emily. “Here they are.”

They got out of the car and stood beside the hearse. Eric took photographs but Emily only waited, with Duty. Two men came bearing each pine coffin, for they were not heavy. And what was inside? Delicate, unimaginable forms, wrapped in white muslin.

The men moved deliberately, sliding the boxes carefully in; they fit, just, for they were measured to order.

She stood near the coffins, to say good-bye. Lightly, she touched the wood of each, and saw the small brass labels, each held with a single rivet, on which words were inked: Asta Eicher/Annabel Eicher. Grethe Eicher/Hart Eicher.

No one standing here had ever seen them, yet she felt she knew them. Would the feeling fade in time, or was she bound to them, as to her family who were gone?

Eric took her arm and she stepped back. The mortician fastened the doors of the hearse.

Eric had transferred her luggage, and Emily shook hands with the mortician. The men bearing the coffins would drive. She was in
the hearse as though transported, and Eric was leaning in, talking to her, but she did not catch the words. Duty was leaping back and forth, from the deep floor to the narrow seat, and she caught him up, for the hearse was in motion, driving away. She could see the resting coffins in the back, through the long glass panel behind her, and the drivers in front, through a smaller window. The hearse windows were darkly tinted and the world outside was tinctured and fluid, like a photograph developing in solution. It seemed the world she’d come from, walked through, survived, for a time. She felt death sitting next to her, invisible, pleasantly self-involved, like a companion traveler on any public journey.

•   •   •

The Beinhauer Crematorium was a stone structure with the arched doorway of a church. Deep in the apselike entrance, the walkway echoed with footfalls. The staff appeared the moment the Romine hearse arrived. Four men in dark suits carried the caskets inside. Another approached Emily, helping her from the car as she bade good-bye to the Romine employees. The man escorting her was clearly in charge.

He introduced himself as “owner of the Beinhauer establishment” and took her hand. “Miss Thornhill, I thank you for accompanying the family. This has been a tragedy. Please let me show you to my office, and then to the chapel and garden. Many of our clients wait there as their loved ones receive services.”

Emily nodded, and took his arm, allowing Duty to follow with them on the leash. They must stop in the office. She, the responsible party, must sign forms. A decision was necessary, the man was saying; William Malone had not specified directions on a matter of some import. The man stayed near her, speaking softly; he smelled of oranges, as though he’d just torn one apart with his fingers.

She sat in an overstuffed chair drawn up before his desk. To both sides of its ample Victorian surface, crystal bowls brimmed with orange potpourri: cloves, dried orange peel and rose petals, bits of cinnamon stick.

“Miss Thornhill, Mr. Malone specified that the remains leave Beinhauer, as they are now contained: mother and daughter in one casket, and brother and sister in the other, after cremation.”

“Yes,” Emily agreed.

“But I must ask, in the matter of the cremation itself, shall each body be cremated separately, and enclosed in a box”—he placed upon the desk a small hinged box of dark wood—“or an urn, of which there are many designs”—he indicated a shelf behind him. “Or shall the bodies be cremated together, two by two, if the ashes are to be mingled for burial?” He waited.

“I see what you are asking,” Emily said.

“I telephoned Mr. Malone earlier today with the question. He said to follow your instructions. Forms directing the procedure must be signed before we proceed.”

“I think the bodies must be cremated in pairs, Mrs. Eicher with Annabel, and Hart with Grethe.” Emily reached for Duty and settled him in her lap. “The thinking is that the family be united and no longer alone. They were separated—by force. A mother and her children. You understand.”

“I do, Miss Thornhill. I have the necessary forms prepared.” He took a small stack of papers from his desk and moved them toward her. “Then there is the matter of the receptacle, for each pair of remains.” The small hinged box sat before him.

“You have only this one box, then?”

“This box is usual, and most economical. My concern is whether it will hold two, or both . . . the young lady was fourteen, and the young man, twelve years of age—”

Emily held Duty in check. He had put his paws on the desk and seemed prepared to leap onto it. “Of course, I see. Do you have a larger box?”

“We have this model.” He turned to open a cabinet behind him. “It is meant to resemble a ship’s box and is often used for military funerals.” The box was walnut, and twice as large, the top fashioned in the carved lines of a sailing schooner. The sails were embedded mother-of-pearl.

It was the size of her own jewelry box at home, Emily reflected. “May I . . . hold it a moment?” she asked. She opened the proffered box, and Duty nosed inside. “May we use this box, in particular? Forgive me, but this dog was Hart Eicher’s dog, and I think this box . . . is rather masculine and appropriate, if any such object is ever appropriate.” Grethe would not mind, thought Emily.