The House of Closed Doors (16 page)

T
he news of the bodies flew around the Women’s House on swift wings. Tess and I became objects of celebrity and curiosity. The more feeble-minded wanted clarification: was Jo really dead? Why was she here in the House and not gone away? I tried to respond to each woman according to her understanding, but the morning was a difficult one.

By the time I had answered the question, “Where is Jo now?” for what seemed like the fiftieth time, my head was pounding. I frowned in irritation when I heard a familiar wheezing laugh behind me.

“Blackie,” I said without turning round, “It is not at all funny. The poor thing is really dead.”

“Ain’t laughin’ at the poor little mite and her baby, God rest their souls,” explained Blackie. “It’s human nature that amuses me. That Jo were like a fly in a kitchen for the menfolk around here‌—‌she kep’ landing on ’em, see, and even the strongest man can’t always keep from swatting at that fly once in a while.”

“You didn’t like her like that, Blackie,” observed Tess matter-of-factly.

“You’re a clever little girl, Tessie,” said Blackie, showing his three teeth in a horrible grin. “That’s why they let me go all over the Women’s House; they know I ain’t a bit interested in that there. The devil caught me with whiskey, not women. You all could walk nekked down the room, and I’d swap you every one for a nip of firewater.” He wheezed again for a minute. “Little Jo, she tried her tricks on me once, but I told her to go play with her dolls. She said ‘Doll!’ and trundled off, quiet as you please.”

I was fascinated, but unfortunately at that moment Mr. Ostrander arrived. He looked as if he had not slept, and his normally neat clothing was askew.

“Blackthorn, back to the Men’s House,” he said, an edge of venom in his voice. “Don’t loiter round here talking with the women.”

Blackie tipped his greasy hat to the superintendent and shuffled his way toward the back of the house, humming softly. Tess and I turned quickly away to the workroom, but Mr. Ostrander was clearly not interested in us. He glanced toward Mrs. Lombardi’s door, took a deep breath, and marched inside. The door shut with a firm thud.

“Mr. Ostrander is really worried,” Tess said.

I nodded, gazing at Mrs. Lombardi’s door. Whatever part Mrs. Lombardi had played in Jo’s demise, I was sorry that she was facing Mr. Ostrander alone.

M
rs. Lombardi was too busy to talk to me the next day, and I shut myself into the workroom to get away from my newfound celebrity; Edie’s unpleasant temper acted like a watchdog to keep intruders out. We had received the bolts of cotton for the new rooms and had a great deal to do.

After a hard morning’s sewing, a plain meal, nursing Sarah, and attending to her needs, I was ready to sit down with some hemming for a couple of hours. Tess worked quietly beside me; she was less talkative now that she had more absorbing work to do.

At around two o’clock, Mrs. Lombardi poked her head around the door. Edie had taken over at the sewing machine and was making a great deal of noise, so Mrs. Lombardi beckoned me out of the room. I motioned to Edie that I was leaving Sarah with her‌—‌she slept very well when the machine was whirring‌—‌and slipped into Mrs. Lombardi’s office.

“I promised to tell you about Jo,” she said.

“I already heard something about her from Blackie,” I said. “Was she‌—‌did she bother the men?”

“Johanna Mauer was brought to the Farm when she was eleven years old.” Mrs. Lombardi rested her head against the wing of the chair. “I have been trying to find news of her family, but they left to try their luck in Canada, and since then I have heard nothing from them. They will be thinking that poor little Jo is alive and safe here at the Farm, and we have failed her.” She pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers.

“Why did they bring her to the Farm? Could they not afford to care for her?”

“No, they had sufficient money.” She took a deep breath. “Jo was a beautiful young woman; huge blue eyes and fine, shiny hair of that very pale shade of blonde that you sometimes see on small children. She loved pretty dresses, poor simple soul.”

“So what was the problem with her?” I asked, impatient to hear the nub of the matter.

“Men. Jo suffered from some kind of erotic mania. I remember the painful embarrassment on her father’s face as he tried to describe how he and his sons‌—‌her own father and brothers!‌—‌were constantly awakened to find her in their beds, making an assault on their bodies. They tried putting a lock on her room, but she would spend all night thumping on the door and screaming, and they loved her too dearly to imprison her.”

“She was lucky that they did not want to take advantage of her,” I said, remembering some of the tales I had heard in the refectory.

“They were very moral men.” Mrs. Lombardi frowned. “But some around them were not. Imagine, an eleven-year-old child! It is shameful that there are men who would even countenance such a thing. Of course, her approach to men was, well, very direct. I had to have one of our female staff sleep in the same room as Jo, with the key tied to her wrist.”

“And yet she still became pregnant.”

“She would take every opportunity to give us the slip by day and would head for the Men’s House or the farm buildings. The orderlies were given strict instructions to bring her straight back here if they found her, and the male inmates are frequently lectured about not touching the women. I believe Mr. Schoeffel has bromide administered at intervals to some of the less, ah, inhibited men.”

“But the father of her child must have been one of the inmates or orderlies,” I said. “Unless it was a man who visited the Farm; one of the carters, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Lombardi. “When her condition became apparent, I spent hours trying to identify the man‌—‌or the men‌—‌she might have been with, by dint of listing every inmate and orderly and asking her if it was he. It was an awful, wearisome process; Jo could barely speak.”

“So did she give you any clue?”

“Yes, we had a name of sorts: ‘Ly-lee.’ And I do not believe it was a resident of the Farm, because every time I gave her the name of an inmate or orderly she would shake her head and say, ‘Ly-lee.’ I believe she was trying to tell me, poor thing.”

A knock at the door interrupted us. Agnes burst into the room, an expression of disgust on her face.

“That Phebe has vomited on my floor again,” she burst out. “I simply can’t have her working for me. She don’t even have the sense to go outside when she can’t hold in the food she steals.”

“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Lombardi, rising swiftly from her chair. “Poor Phebe. And we must disinfect the floor thoroughly. I’m sorry, Nell,” she said, turning to me. “We will talk more of this later.” And she left the room swiftly, followed by Agnes, who trailed a strong smell of cooking behind her.

I raised my eyes to the ceiling, imagining the cold, silent cell two floors above. The rooms were now being converted, and I could not suppose that any clues that remained would be present for long. My next step was clear.

I would go back to the insane wing.

NINETEEN

T
he door was closed but not locked. I was greeted by a strong smell of paint; drop cloths and ladders littered the corridor. The lock plates had been taken off some of the doors, giving the place a less forbidding air.

The painters, an ad hoc team composed of orderlies and residents, were eating their breakfast in the Men’s House, and the wing was deserted. I wished I had brought a shawl, as it was still cold outside, and the large, barred window at the end of the corridor was open to let out the smell of the paint.

I walked reluctantly to the room where I had last stood looking down at the small, cold bodies that made me think of my father. The faintest outline of the stain by the door still showed on the boards, despite the scrubbing they had received. I squatted down to look; what, I wondered, did this stain tell me? Probably that Jo had died in this very room and had not been moved here. She had last been seen on October the seventh; the weather had taken a turn for the worse around the first week of October, as I remembered well.

By the time I had arrived at the Farm on the fourth of November, the temperature had been firmly below freezing both day and night, and it had not gone above freezing at all‌—‌and then only just‌—‌until very recently. I counted the months off in my head; five solid months of icy weather. So Jo and Benjamin could easily have frozen to death in the first week of October and lain silently there ever since.

I felt sure that murder had been committed. And yet if experienced officials were satisfied that Jo had foolishly shut herself in, had been unable to get out, and had died of the cold, who was I to dispute their wisdom? I felt myself hopelessly inadequate to my task.

I looked around the room. It was completely padded with a strong, brownish-white canvas but was otherwise bare. A narrow, barred window high up in the wall let in shreds of light through its thick frosted glass. A large lock plate with a keyhole was fixed on the corridor side of the door; there was no key in the lock. The outside of the door also sported a huge spring bolt.

I tried to remember whether that bolt had been engaged when Jimmy went to open it. I did not think so; it seemed to me that the door had not been quite closed, just stuck in the jamb. This might support the theory that Jo hid in the room by herself. There was only one way to find out.

I
stepped farther into the room, nerving myself to act. The padded walls seemed to press inward, and I imagined being in this place for hours, or even days. I nearly bolted back down the corridor, but this might be my last chance to perform the experiment before the room was altered.

I tried several times to shut the door from the inside. It was impossible to get any grip on the padding inside the door to pull the heavy, iron-bound thing shut from the inside. Then I tried grasping the metal lock plate, swinging the door toward me and jumping back, with the considerable risk of shutting my hand in the door. The hinges were well balanced and the door did swing so that it engaged partway into the jamb. I pushed against it; it was still easy to open. I tried the experiment several times, but although I was strong, I simply could not get the door to stick closed. I was glad of that, as I was not looking forward to trying to get out.

By this time my arms were shaking. I took myself off to a corner of the padded cell, as far away from the stain as possible, and sat down on the cold boards to try and work out in my mind if there were another way to shut the door. The hypothesis of an accidental closing of the door was beginning to look weak. I buried my head in my arms to shut out the oppressive cell and tried to think.

The door slammed shut. I heard the spring bolt shoot into place with a hard thud. I leaped to my feet and screamed like I had never screamed in my entire life.