“Endearing,” said Mrs. Smith.
“Just the kind of talented girl we want at the seminary.” Professor Smith had just a gleam of malice in his eyes. He knew where the girl was to go, and what talents she was to hone.
“You will get along fine with the other girls,” Mrs. Smith told her. “They’re all just as pretty and well behaved as yourself.”
I paraded my children in there too, so they could tell our neighbors about the professor: detail his thick gray beard and the lovely red color of his wife’s fancy dress. They each got to choose a cookie from the tray as a reward after reciting their names. They curtsied and bowed, wearing their Sunday best. Philip looked much like a little man in his long breeches and vest, and I felt a sudden burst of pride even if it was just a charade. Myrtle wore her dark hair in ringlets, and Lucy’s fair hair was gathered in a braid. The three of them were so rosy cheeked and well behaved that I caught myself wishing the professor were real. No one in their right mind could ever resist my children’s charm and good manners.
The dinner was roast and mashed potatoes. The peas were buttery, the gravy cooked with wine. I wanted Jennie’s last meal at my table to be special. Mrs. Smith told us about her three children and their big house with servants in California. The professor told us about his studies at Harvard and Yale. I served ice cream, Jennie’s favorite, and then I excused myself to put the children to bed. The party was already sluggish from the drops in their desserts by then.
When I came back down, my guests were in the parlor with Jennie, having coffee and thimble-sized glasses of sherry. I brought out a bottle of champagne from the pantry, and a celebratory cake lavish with whipped cream. I laid out five plates and cut the cake, then added a special filling to three of the slices, pushing my syringe in through layers of sponge and cherries. Two pieces were left plain on the table when I went to serve the first three. It certainly would not do to mix them up.
I steeled my heart then, when I served the cake, and told myself it was not done yet and I could still change my mind. It was just chloral in there, it would not hurt one bit. Would only make her sleep like a babe, dream of California perhaps. Dream of all the good things in store.
We ate the cake and drank the champagne. Jennie seemed a little wary; she lifted a forkful of cake to her nose as if to sniff it. Her lack of trust annoyed me, even if I knew she had reason to be suspicious this time. When I caught her gaze across the table, she gave me a quick, quivering smile and shoved the cake in between her lips.
“A little too much champagne, perhaps?” I asked when Mrs. Smith’s head drooped down on her chest. The professor was already sleeping, his mouth open as he leaned back on the sofa.
“You used a hefty dose,” said James. Jennie slept on the chair with the glass in her hand and champagne spilling down her blue dress.
“She cannot know what’s coming.”
“I will do it, Bella, don’t you worry about that.”
We carried the professor down first, as he was the biggest and most likely to wake up. He lay there on the oilcloth, gaping like a fish when I cut his throat with my doctor’s knife, swift and easy like that.
James killed Miss Burns by strangling her in her sleep. He did not even bring her down to the cellar but did it there on the sofa. Her face turned red and then blue, her tongue protruding from her painted lips. Then he carried her downstairs.
Lastly, there was Jennie, the girl I had kept for eighteen years. She was light as a feather when we brought her down the steps, to the room she had so wanted to see.
“Off to California, then?” James leaned against the table, toying with the knife.
“Make it swift,” I said, and he did.
She was just a lump of meat after that, just gristle and bones and tendons. I worked swiftly, taking them apart. One gunnysack for each of them: torso, arms, legs, head. Six pieces in all. Around me, the walls were lined with preserves Jennie had helped me make; the jars with her favorite kind of spread glistened like red jewels in the kerosene light. She always had such nimble fingers; her fruit was peeled and cut so fine you could barely see the knife’s track.
“Such a waste,” James mused, watching me work. “Here you’ve fed and raised the girl, and now it has come to naught.”
“The world is hardly just.” I sawed through Miss Burns’s left leg.
“She should not have been so nosy.”
“No, she most surely should not.”
“It is a shame, though. I know you cared for the girl.”
“And look where that brought me.” I placed the leg in the sack. “What will I do if it happens again? I cannot send all my children away.”
He did not answer; he had brought a bottle of whiskey downstairs and offered me a drink. “Well, at least she never saw it coming.”
“She died thinking it would be all right.”
“Not everyone gets that: a happy death.”
I finished packing up Miss Burns. The cellar had never been so bloody; gristle and fluids were everywhere.
We carried the sacks outside and wheelbarrowed them to the pit I had made ready. I wondered if I would miss Jennie at all, or if she would slip from me without a trace.
Down in the ground, as if nothing had happened.
James shoveled in dirt. “There were fifteen hundred dollars in that satchel, just as we agreed on.”
“As if I would send my daughter to work as a whore.” I grabbed another shovel and helped him out.
“Laura was very excited when I told her about the innocent girl living in the country. Old, rich men are partial to them.”
“Well, no old men will touch her now.”
“And she won’t say a word about your enterprise.”
“She shouldn’t have looked in the cellar.”
“Curiosity can kill even the finest of cats.” He paused to take a swig of the bottle.
“Nothing to do for it now. It’s done.”
* * *
—
The next morning, when the children came down, the professor and his wife, Jennie, and James were gone. I gave them eggs and told them just how lucky she was to go to California to study.
I put an advertisement in the local newspaper, too, to share the good news that Jennie Olson had gone to California to attend the Norwegian seminary. I told people about it so many times—how good the professor and his wife were to her, what nice accommodations she had there—that I sometimes forgot that it was not so, that Jennie was rotting in the ground with the rest.
When I thought of Jennie, it was in California I saw her. She was a thriving young woman managing on her own, learning and gaining a profession.
42.
Nellie