A Child Lost Read online

  Gunther sighed. “As if by miracle, she had none on the ship or during time with me here. I . . . I thought maybe they were over. That this condition has somehow gone away. That she is cured. Something like that. I know it was idiocy to think this.” He exhaled loudly again, pausing to think. “I did not tell Sister Bernard or people at orphanage about . . . about Anna’s illness because I have fear. Maybe this is wrong, but I decided to . . . what is the word? Zocken? Gamble? I prayed that all would be okay, but no. It was not to be. Since she has been at orphanage these fits have come back. She has had two. The people at the orphanage—a couple, a man and wife—have much understanding and kindness. They wish to help, they say, but they tell me they cannot keep a child who has fits. They say she should be sent to special institution for feebleminded children in different part of state.” Gunther put his hand over his eyes again. “Ach, Elsie,” he mumbled. “What am I to do? I must find Fraulein Klinkhammer.”

  Elsie did not see how finding the fraulein at this point would solve anything, but she didn’t want to add to his distress. What difference would it make if they found her? She was a perfect stranger to Anna. And even if Fraulein Klinkhammer really had been acting on some sort of maternal feeling by trying to find a better life for her and eventually her child, which was unlikely—even the usually generous Elsie allowed herself to admit—she was probably not any closer to being able to provide for Anna than she had been when she originally fled Germany after Heinrich.

  “Is that why she’s here with you now? Because she can’t go back to the orphanage?”

  “No, it is because . . . because sometimes I bring her back. For a visit. I thought maybe it would help her, but all it does is confuse her more, I am thinking.”

  “Why does she call you ‘Papa’?” Elsie asked tentatively.

  Gunther sighed. “I do not know. When she was very little, just learning to talk, I called myself Onkle to her, but it did not stick. It was probably one of the lodgers who thought it is amusing to teach her to call me ‘Papa.’ Anyway, she just does. And now I do not have heart to tell her. Constantly, she asks for my mother, her Oma. She does not understand she is dead,” he said hoarsely, so much so that Elsie thought her own heart might break.

  Carefully, she pulled out one of her hands, nearly numb, from under Anna and reached out across the table to take Gunther’s hand in hers.

  He looked up at her, surprised.

  “Gunther, I will help you,” she said steadily. “We’ll find a way.”

  “No,” he said, sitting up straight and pulling his hand free. “It is not for you to worry about. And I would not take you from your studies. You have much worries of your own. I know this, Elsie.” He paused. “But I thank you.”

  “I would like to help you,” Elsie insisted, her face warm from the fact that he had pulled away his hand. “I have very few to . . . to care for. I can study and help you to find this Fraulein Klinkhammer.”

  “But how? You have not much time between your class and your family. Aunt Agatha and all of these. Lloyd Aston,” he said with a sad grin.

  “I’ll think of something. I’m . . . I’m very resourceful, you know.”

  “I do know.”

  They stared at each other for several moments, during which time Elsie was tempted to say aloud the words she believed he already knew—but she just couldn’t. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words died in her throat. It was not the time for it, or to be thinking of herself, she reasoned.

  “Besides this habitual or sanctifying grace there is also actual grace,” Sr. Raphael was reading aloud. “Actual grace is that grace which empowers us to perform actions and operations proportionate to our ultimate end, the vision of God in his proper essence. By its means we build up within us the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, the cardinal virtues of prudence—justice, fortitude, and temperance—and the moral virtues. Since all of these are the fruit of grace, they are called infused virtues.”

  Sr. Raphael stopped reading from the book she held in front of her, her spectacles nearly at the end of her nose, and perused the class. “I think that’s all the time we have, girls,” she said, glancing at the brown wall clock. “You’ll have to read the rest of Reverend Lapierre’s chapter on Aquinas’s interpretation of grace on your own. I had hoped to have time to discuss, but never mind. Instead, I want you to write a paper for Thursday on one of the cardinal virtues.”

  Elsie gave a small internal groan. She hadn’t been listening. Again. Since visiting Gunther in his hut, she had become nearly obsessed with helping him. At one point, she ventured to ask her roommate, Melody, if she had ever heard of a Liesel Klinkhammer. Disappointedly, she had not—which was significant considering Melody claimed to know almost everyone at Mundelein and “loads” of girls, not to mention boys, at the neighboring Loyola as well. Melody had of course begged to know who this Liesel was, but Elsie put her off by telling her it was “the daughter of a friend of her mother’s who had maybe worked here at one point.”

  “Criminy! Why didn’t you say!” Melody had laughed. “I don’t know all the staff! Pops would not approve of me fraternizing with ‘the help,’ as he calls them. He’s terribly bourgeois, you know, though he doesn’t even realize it. For God’s sake, his father was a miner! It’s perfectly obnoxious. Anyway, why don’t you ask Gunther? He’s German, too, I think. Maybe he’s heard of her.”

  At this suggestion, Elsie had merely bit back a smile and said that she would.

  Since their conversation, Gunther, she knew, had taken Anna back to the orphanage, where the girl so far had not experienced any more fits, at least that Elsie knew of. But it was only a matter of time, Elsie felt sure, as did Gunther, before another one might occur. Elsie also ventured over to Loyola’s library, something she had not previously worked up the courage to do, and unearthed several books on the subject of mental diseases, just as Gunther had done back at the university in Heidelberg. It made for slow, painful reading in the evenings, but she had been rewarded with a couple of nuggets of information—the saddest being that there really was apparently no known cure for epilepsy, corroborating what Gunther’s colleague in Germany had told him. She had hoped that maybe American doctors had perhaps devised some sort of new, innovative treatment, but no.

  Despite her initial opinion that finding Liesel Klinkhammer would not help much with the bigger problem of what to do about Anna, Elsie had since given in to Gunther’s insistence that they continue the search for her, perhaps because there seemed precious few other options. Maybe something could be resolved by finding her, Elsie convinced herself. If nothing else, it was at least a place to start. More than once though, she had wondered if Anna should at least be taken to a doctor in town and examined. She had suggested this to Gunther, but he had no money to pay for a doctor, he said, and refused—no, was offended—when she had offered even to loan him the money, much less give it to him. So they resorted to finding the fraulein. Sr. Bernard had not been of any help, and it did not seem a matter for the police. But how to find a missing person? Or worse yet, a person who maybe did not want to be found? Elsie wondered.

  As she gathered up her things from Sr. Raphael’s class, Elsie, again thinking about how they could find Fraulein Klinkhammer, bemoaned the fact that her mental abilities were not of a more practical, common-sense nature. Like Henrietta’s, she thought glumly. As she pondered this, a stray thought suddenly occurred to her—one which she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of before! It was obvious what they should do.

  She was interrupted in this new exciting thought, however, by the tap of a pencil on her arm. Startled, she looked over to see Melody, happily in this same theology class, pointing with her pencil in a very superior type of way, with raised eyebrows, at the hearts Elsie had unconsciously drawn in the margin of her paper.

  Melody gave her an exaggerated wink and whispered loudly, “I knew it! I knew you had a secret love! Oh, do tell!” she urged. “Honestly, Elsie, it’s horribly unfai
r if you don’t. Haven’t I waited long enough? Surely I’ve earned your trust by now!”

  Elsie tried not to audibly sigh. Melody was forever trying to get a confession of love out of her and was relentless in her attempts to “set her up” with various promising Loyola boys, each of whom, Melody declared, was more “perfect” for her than the next, which in and of itself was astonishing, really. Who would have imagined that there were apparently so many “perfect” men out there for her?

  Elsie had thus far been successful in thwarting both the confession and most of the attempted dates, not wanting to explain that she was already the subject of the very same attempts by her scheming Grandfather Oldrich Exley and his somewhat unwilling accomplice, Aunt Agatha. Nor did she wish to reveal any of her other “secrets,” for that matter, such as her recent desire to become a nun or her sordid past with Stanley and Lieutenant Barnes-Smith. And she most definitely did not want to confess, nor discuss, the real object of her tender feelings, which were something very different than any of the fleeting, immature ones that had come before. She had no wish to explain, nor was she really able to, even to herself. All she knew was that Gunther and his woes were all that mattered to her now. And her studies, of course. Where everything else was gray and shallow, this was real and alive and filled with color. It was almost blinding, actually. Gunther needed her, and that alone was intoxicating—not to mention his mutual love of literature, his tenderness with Anna, and dare she admit? . . . his handsome face and his very blue eyes.

  “Well, it’s a very long story,” Elsie said, moving hurriedly toward the door.

  “Even better!” Melody gushed, following closely behind her. “Oh, I do so love long stories. Especially long love stories!”

  “Later then,” Elsie suggested. She was eager to find a place alone so that she could think about her new idea; the one that had just come to her a few minutes ago, which was, of course, that she, or, well, they—she and Gunther, that is—should ask Henrietta and Clive to help them find Liesel Klinkhammer! After all, isn’t that what Henrietta had told her at Christmas? That she and Clive were hoping to open a detective agency? Perhaps this could be their first case!

  The wheels in Elsie’s mind were turning furiously, and she made an excuse to Melody that she had to meet with Sr. Sylvester, her math tutor. If she had merely said that she was going to the library, Melody would have found a way to talk her out of it; Elsie had used that excuse already too many times.

  “Well, all right, then, Els. I’ll let you off for now,” Melody said sternly, “but don’t forget! You promised!” she added gaily as she set off in the direction of Philomena Hall. Elsie, in turn, made her way toward Gunther’s hut, hoping he was there so that she could lay out her idea. She felt sure Clive could find Liesel; after all, hadn’t he once been a brilliant detective? And it might be good, Elsie speculated, for Henrietta, too, as she hadn’t been herself since she had lost the baby.

  Chapter 2

  Clive shifted the Alpha Romeo into gear and turned it back toward Highbury. He had just left a private meeting, loosely termed, with Detective Frank Davis, the Winnetka police officer who had valiantly helped Clive—and Henrietta—to kill their nemesis, one Lawrence Susan, a.k.a. Neptune. Davis had been shot and wounded in the altercation, and for a while it had seemed touch and go. Only a few days ago, Clive learned that Davis had finally been discharged from the hospital and had since returned to work at the station—unfortunately, however, still under the direction of the incompetent Captain Callahan.

  Davis had agreed to meet at his usual haunt in town, the Trophy Room, at Clive’s request. Obviously, it was not up to his usual standard, but Clive needed to do something. Henrietta had not been herself since she had lost the baby, and he was desperate to distract her. He had been disappointed, too, by the loss of the child, and he grieved for it in his own way, but his true despair, his true distress, was regarding Henrietta’s pervasive sorrow.

  He had never seen her cry—sob—the way she had the morning it all happened. It was terrible to witness, and his heart ached for her, even now. She had since put on a brave face, but overall, she was still listless and dull. She positively moped about the house and seemed uninterested in anyone or anything around her. She would go with Antonia to the club if asked, but Clive could see she didn’t care about it. Not that she ever had, really, but up until this current melancholy juncture in time, she had at least put her best foot forward—especially when it came to impressing his mother and trying to fit in.

  He didn’t understand this need in women, he thought, as he pulled into Highbury’s long lane—this desire to bring forth life. Of course, he enjoyed children, to a certain extent, and he guiltily knew he was supposed to produce an heir, lest his vile brother-in-law, Randolph Cunningham, inherit the Howard fortune. But as Clive saw it, perhaps this wouldn’t be such a bad thing. The fortune would consequently trickle down eventually to Randolph’s sons—Clive’s nephews, Howard and Randolph, Jr.—who, though only little still, did not seem to be so far taking after Randolph in his cruel boorishness. But then he would inevitably hear his father’s voice in his head, saying, “Ah, but it’s not the same as your own flesh and blood, is it, my boy?”

  Clive sighed. He supposed not. Another errant thought occurred to him from time to time, an almost laughable one, really, that perhaps he could alter his will to leave the whole of the estate to his cousin, Wallace, in Derbyshire, England. But Wallace already had Linley Castle to contend with, which he wanted to turn into some sort of boys’ school or home for shell-shocked soldiers, or some such thing, once his father, Clive’s Uncle Montague, finally died. Lord Linley had recently been brought very low, not only by the news of his brother, Alcott’s, sudden death, but by the discovery that Wallace, his only remaining son after the decimation of the Great War, had secretly married a penniless French nurse and had not one, but now two sons by her. Wallace’s failure to marry into money spelled certain ruin for the Linley estate, and Montague Howard had not ever quite recovered from the blow. He was mostly an invalid at this point, Wallace wrote in his occasional letters to Clive, for which Wallace claimed he felt immense guilt and responsibility. But what could he do? he had written more than once; he had to follow his principles and his heart.

  —

  But there was more to it for women, Clive knew, than merely producing a legacy. It was some biological yearning to reproduce and nurture that wasn’t the same as it was for men, he surmised, though he admitted that he barely understood it. He had sought his mother’s advice after Henrietta’s unfortunate womanly trouble—a miscarriage, they were calling it in hushed tones. But could it even be called a miscarriage? he had asked his mother, for which he was promptly scolded.

  “But she couldn’t have been more than a month along, Mother,” he argued quietly. “Could she have been mistaken that she was even pregnant at all?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Clive! Of course, she would know if she were pregnant or not,” Antonia hissed over tea one morning not long after it had happened. “If you take my advice, which you probably won’t,” she sniffed, “you’ll proceed with caution. Be tender and understanding. Henrietta is made of sterner stuff than first appearances; she’ll come round, I should imagine. Provided you’re not a brute,” she added.

  Not a brute? Clive had said to himself, hoping that she didn’t mean what he thought she meant. “No, Mother, I haven’t been ‘a brute,’ of course,” he said testily. “What do you take me for?”

  “Well, in my experience, darling, all men are the same.”

  In truth, he had been very tender with Henrietta, trying his best to comfort and console her. But he kept discovering her crying in the darkest part of the night, lying balled up beside him in their massive four-poster bed. Cut to the quick by this, he would quietly say her name or rub her shoulder, which only served to produce a tearful apology from her, as if the whole thing had been her fault. The first time this had happened, he merely held her, hushing and soothi
ng her as best he could. The next time, however, he had tried levity, saying, “Don’t be ridiculous, darling, of course it’s not your fault,” the result of which was shockingly a fresh crop of tears. Frankly, any attempt at consoling her usually resulted in such. He had tried telling her that it didn’t matter, that there would be more chances, that he was sure they would have tons of children—too many, more than likely, he had tried to say with a grin—but none of these comments seemed to bring her any comfort. In fact, it seemed to make things worse.

  Naturally, in due time he had tried to make love to her, thinking that she would respond, if not out of the sheer pleasure they both derived from their previous nights of passion but as a way to potentially create another baby. He had always been able to please her before, to skillfully bring her to a climax, with her always crying out or even groaning with pleasure as he loved her. And my God, it wasn’t difficult to do; she never failed to arouse him. But she would have none of it now, which confused him. Never had she rejected his advances, except once on their honeymoon when they had argued. Now, he wasn’t sure how to proceed. He had told her on their wedding night that he would never force himself on her, but it had been more than a month and still she held herself from him. He was beginning to worry about what the future might hold. What was he to do?

  Real advice had finally come to him in the form of a suggestion from Bennett, his father’s right-hand man, and indeed, Alcott’s confidant and friend, at the firm, Linley Standard. Since his father’s death and the discovery of his killers, Clive and Bennett had come to an arrangement of sorts regarding the running of the firm, which, though not secret, strictly speaking, was, on the other hand, not one they bandied about, even to Antonia. The agreement was simply that Clive would fulfill the role of Chairman of the Board in name only, as had been the case with his father. Like Alcott, Clive would be merely a figurehead, which would allow for the brilliant Sidney Bennett to employ his astute business acumen in running the company, as he had done for all these years, leaving Clive free to pursue private detective work.