16. An Unpleasant Discovery - 1927
The knock sounded on Charles Carter’s door on Tuesday afternoon, twenty-three hours after his daughter had disappeared.
His wife was crumpled on the couch, eyes red from crying, the lace-trimmed, monogrammed handkerchief he’d given her for her birthday clutched in one hand and Ella’s well-loved teddy bear in the other.
She gave no sign that she’d heard the knock, and as the maid was occupied elsewhere, Charles roused himself to answer it.
Each step toward the door was an effort, like wading through gelatin. Ella’s gray cat, Smoky, twined through his legs, and he half-wished the cat would trip him; a bruised elbow or grazed knee would be a welcome distraction from the pain raging inside him. “Yes?”
“Police,” came the authoritative voice from the other side. “Open up, Mr. Carter.”
Charles’s stomach lurched. As if it belonged to someone else, he watched his hand rise and turn the knob. On the other side stood a uniformed officer, his expression grim.
The next few minutes were an ugly blur in Charles’s memory. When he tried to reconstruct them, they came back in snippets.
Child who matches Ella’s description found outside St. Jerome’s Refuge for Girls, he could remember the officer saying, his eyes downcast. Took her in and called the police, but it was too late for her, poor thing. Frostbite. Need you to come to the morgue and identify the body. So very sorry.
He could remember these words, but not how he’d replied, or what he’d done next.
All he could recall was Elizabeth rising from the couch, the handkerchief falling from her hand and her voice soaring in a wounded animal’s howl.
No, he remembered her screaming. Can’t be true.
Mistake. Take it back. Go go go leave my house.
He remembered his pliant, decorous wife flying at the officer in a whirlwind of skirts, beating the man’s chest with her small fists. Trying to push the officer out the door, as if this would somehow rewind time itself, the words spooling back into his mouth like they’d never been uttered.
Surely he had apologized for Elizabeth’s behavior, most unbefitting a Carter.
Surely he had called for the maid to put her to bed, and assured the officer he would do what must be done.
But he couldn’t recall any of that. All he remembered as he stood in the freezing morgue, staring down at the small figure shrouded by a white sheet, was the stricken look on his wife’s face as she reached for his sleeve.
Don’t go, Charles, she’d pleaded. The rest of it lingered in the air between them, unspoken but undeniable: As long as you stay here, Ella is still alive.
The police officer, O’Shaughnessy, stood beside him.
Across from them both, on the other side of the body, lurked the morgue attendant.
He was a ghoulish man who looked like he’d been born to this occupation: dark-ringed, sunken eyes and a Frankenstein-like shamble.
As unpleasant as the ghoul might be, Charles didn’t mind.
He’d rather look at anything other than the tiny, motionless form beneath the sheet.
As long as the body was covered, he could believe it was not his daughter.
O’Shaughnessy was talking, and Charles forced himself to listen.
Found the body this mornin’ myself, he was saying in his thick Irish brogue.
It reminded Charles all too painfully of the way Bridget, Ella’s useless twit of a nanny, spoke.
The state of her—well, it’s no pleasant, but ye need to look.
Charles drew a deep breath, the bleach-scented air searing his lungs. And then he nodded, a jerky, forced motion, as if a puppeteer was yanking his strings from above.
Be strong, he told himself as the ghoul reached for the sheet. Elizabeth doesn’t need a coward. If this is the last act you can ever perform for your daughter, you’ll do it clear-eyed and steel-spined.
The ghoul’s pale, spindly fingers pulled the sheet back, inch by terrible inch.
As the child’s matted, curly yellow hair appeared, Charles’s chest hitched, remembering all the times Elizabeth had pinned a bow in their daughter’s curls before church.
All the times he’d smoothed them as Ella clambered into his lap, eager to show him a picture she’d drawn.
The man tugged the sheet lower still, baring the blue-white curve of the child’s forehead, the closed eyelids, the feathered lashes that rested atop the small girl’s cheeks.
A chill rippled over Charles. He must have made some small sound, because O’Shaughnessy shifted his weight, taking a menacing step toward the attendant.
“Don’t make a meal of it, eh?” he said, his hand falling to his baton. “Get on with it, man. Best to have this business done.”
The ghoul nodded, an odd expression crossing his face. It occurred to Charles that his snail’s pace might be due to his wish not to cause a grieving father pain. He had a moment of compassion for this man, whose job was a terrible one. And then the ghoul yanked the sheet all the way down.
Charles’s legs weakened. His vision darkened, filling with gray dots that swarmed and flickered. He braced himself on the edge of the table and forced himself to focus on her face.
Rounded cheeks, sunken slightly in death. A pointed, elfin chin. Blond curls that fell in a tumble to the child’s shoulders, bits of detritus tangled in them. A small, snub nose.
He gasped. Despite his iron control, a sob escaped his throat.
His knees buckled, and O’Shaughnessy gripped his arm to keep him upright. The man muttered under his breath, saying one of those heathen prayers to St. Something-or-Other. Bridget had often done the same.
Charles cleared his throat, once, then again. “She—” he managed, but no more words would come.
O’Shaughnessy’s grip on his arm tightened, and he left off praying. “Mr. Carter,” he said, “I’m very sorry. Is there someone I can call for you?”
Charles shook his head, pulling free. “There’s no need.” He reached out and touched the girl’s ice-cold face, saying a silent prayer of his own.
“Whoever this poor child might be, it’s not Ella,” he said to the officer and the ghoul, his voice strengthening as he spoke. “It’s not my daughter.”