THREE

 

DAY 2. THURSDAY, 9/21—3 A.M.

It wasn’t possible. Noah had never been more certain of anything. He could not have been responsible for the boy’s death. Willard Anschutz could not have perished from two drops of laudanum. Not after three hours. Not at all. Two drops of laudanum would not have killed a one-year-old let alone a five-year-old. There were any number of cases, certainly, of children dying from laudanum poisoning, but the doses had been exponentially greater.

Noah stared up at the ceiling over his bed. Over and over, he considered every moment he had spent with the child, reviewed each symptom. Had he blundered, misinterpreted some sign, failed to note an item of significance, made a hasty assumption? He could think of nothing. He had taken every precaution, followed proper procedure to the letter.

Why then could he not escape the face of the dead child dancing against the plaster? There were moments that the shimmering image was so real, it seemed the boy was about to speak. As the night had lengthened but stubbornly refused to yield to morning, Willard’s features had begun to meld into Isobel’s.

Two sets of dark eyes, one holding the innocence of youth, the other the innocence of trust. Whose were which? He had fixed Isobel’s face in his memory, immutable and eternal, yet suddenly he could not seem to remember her. Was this to be his punishment for the dead child?

Noah rose from the bed, his joints stiff, his eyelids aching. For a moment, he was light-headed, forced to grasp the bedpost until the feeling passed. When he regained his equilibrium, he walked to the door and turned the switch. The lightbulbs in the ceiling fixture glowed dimly, suffusing the bedroom in artificial twilight. The clock on the side table showed 4 o’clock. Noah padded to the chest of drawers at the wall opposite his bed and removed the framed photograph that sat alone on a lace doily. The photograph that would be guiltily consigned to a drawer, secreted under a sheaf of papers or a stack of appointment books after he was married to Maribeth.

He held the pewter frame delicately in his hands, as if too tight a grip might cause the memories that it held to slip away. Yes, of course. There she was. Isobel. He had not forgotten at all. Beautiful, ethereal, in her high lace collar, her rich chestnut hair piled full and luxurious, framing the face that he would love forever. The face that would no longer age.

One day, he would hold this photograph and be an old man looking at a young woman. Wondering how she would have looked had she lived. Was Mildred Anschutz at that moment staring at a photograph of her son, wondering the same? Would she spend her remaining days seeing a boy perpetually five years old? Had he created that grisly bond between them when he allowed Willard to die?

But he had not allowed Willard to die.

Had he?

Mrs. Anschutz knew that her son was lost even as Noah did. She had gone ashen, and for a moment, he thought she would faint. But Pug Anschutz’s wife does not swoon. Instead, she rushed to the bed, leaned down, and held one hand to either side of her son’s face. Then she began to rock slowly. A low moan escaped her, eerie, as if it emanated from all corners of the room at once.

Noah had stepped away, but he wanted to examine the boy, even then, to try to determine what had caused his death. He ached to request permission for an autopsy but knew that was out of the question. When Mrs. Anschutz finally looked up, he had instead said how sorry he was. He offered to summon a clergyman, notify the authorities, or see to the arrangements of having Willard’s body removed to a mortician’s. Anything that Mrs. Anschutz thought might be of help.

But she had just shaken her head, slowly, mechanically, as if physical movement had become disengaged from her core. She would see to everything, she said in a monotone. She had then softly asked Noah to leave.

He walked past Willard’s siblings and Molly, the maid, without a word. She was distraught, sobbing into a crumpled handkerchief. Noah considered for a moment whether to try to comfort the wretched young woman, but unwelcome as he now was, he simply had left her in the hall.

Noah replaced the picture frame on his dresser and picked up the envelope that was laying next it. He removed the blue pill and held it between his thumb and forefinger. Could this possibly have any bearing on the boy’s death? It seemed impossible. He wasn’t even certain why he’d asked for it. Some perverse curiosity about Frias, most likely. But Mildred Anschutz hadn’t been deceiving him when she claimed that her son had not taken the medication for two weeks. Of that Noah was convinced. Some people could lie and some could not. After a lifetime of feeling license to say what she pleased to whom she pleased, Mildred Anschutz would never have had need to cultivate such as subtle skill as mendacity.

Yet, something had killed Willard Anschutz. He replaced the tablet in the envelope and left it on the dresser. He padded back across the room and once more lay in bed. He would rest. Sleep was a lost cause.