The Strange Case of Baby H (6 page)

“That
is
where you found her,” Father reminded Clara.

But Clara was not convinced. This young woman's pallid skin, with smudges like bruises across the pale cheeks, bore no resemblance to the baby's pink-cheeked complexion. The woman's close-set eyes were watery blue—nothing like the infant's wide, dark gaze. And besides, the baby was an orphan—wasn't she?

“There was the note,” Clara said slowly, tightening her grip on Baby H. “Why would you say the baby was an orphan if you were very much alive?” Clara shook her head. “You don't look a thing like her. And why would you dress your baby in boys' clothes and shave her head? It just doesn't make sense.” She took Mother's arm and turned toward the backyard. “So until you can prove to us who you are—forget it.”

The young woman in red flew after them, her voice rising in panic. “Oh, please! I must take her back or else—Oh, Lord, there will be terrible trouble! I mean—there's danger—Oh! You
must
give her to me!”

“Take her back where?” demanded Mother.

“Trouble from whom?” asked Father, wheeling his chair across the path.

“To her home! To her parents—” shrieked the hysterical woman. Then she covered her face with her hands and crouched low, wracked with sobs.

“So you're
not
the mother,” Clara declared. “I knew it.”

“I never said I was!
You
said it!” sobbed the woman. “I'm her nanny! Her nursemaid! And I need to get her home safely now—over to Oakland. There's very grave danger—you don't understand—”

They all started at a great boom in the distance as another house was destroyed by explosives.

“We're all in grave danger, that I do understand,” said Father. “But I must ask you to leave now. I don't think the ferries are running to Oakland—we've heard that the fire has consumed the wharf area. If you have no place to stay, you will find help at the park.”

“But the baby—” She reached out her arms toward Clara.

“Surely you can't think I'm going to believe you're my little Henrietta's nursemaid any more than I believe you're her mother?” Mother said coldly. “Now leave us immediately, as my husband asked you to. Or we shall summon the authorities!”

“The police?” The girl grew even paler. She backed away, but her eyes were blazing with anger and—Clara thought—fear. “All right, I'm going,” she shouted, walking out to the street. “But you'd better keep Helen safe for me! You keep her safe until I can come back for her, or you'll be sorry!” She ran down the street toward the park, her skirts a flash of red in the gray, smoky air.

Clara stared after her. Her heart was thumping hard.

“Helen?” asked Mother. “Did she say ‘Helen'?”

“She did,” replied Father.

Clara looked down at the baby's face. The tiny girl was quiet now, staring up at Clara with dark, puzzled eyes.

C
HAPTER
6

N
OISES IN THE
N
IGHT

Helen starts with H,” murmured Clara.

“So do Hester and Hannah and Hope … and Hepzibah!” Mother frowned at Clara. “It doesn't mean anything. I thank you, Clara, for helping to get rid of that pushy girl, but don't start thinking her story makes sense. She admitted she lied about being Henrietta's mother, and she's lying about being her nursemaid, mark my words. Henrietta is staying with us. I'm not letting her out of my sight for one single second.” Mother took the baby from Clara and marched up the steps to the front door. “Now there's work to do.” She went into the house and shut the door firmly.

“Father? What do you think?” Clara felt uneasy. The young woman had seemed so afraid. Not just scared of the earthquake and fire, but scared of something else. Something worse.

Something still to happen?

Father shook his head and spread his hands. “Mother knows best,” he said quietly, and Clara sighed. That had been Father's refrain ever since the accident. Mother hadn't wanted Gideon going on the steamship run; she thought he was too young for such hard work. Father had only laughed and said she babied him. Gideon was big, strong, and very nearly a man—and he wanted to go with Father. So they had gone off together on that last, disastrous voyage. Mother never said “I told you so,” but the accusation was in every glance at Father, in every movement.

Clara pushed Father's wheelchair into the backyard, thinking about the woman in the red dress. Who was she really—nanny, or something else? Had she left the baby on the doorstep—or had someone else? And why?

Clara left Father sitting with the lady lodgers and their children and went indoors after Mother. She spent the rest of the day beating plaster dust from rugs, making up beds with fresh linens, and sweeping broken crockery into trash bins. She arranged books onto shelves and repotted tumbled houseplants. And as she worked, the puzzle of Baby H receded. Instead, memories of Gideon played behind her eyes like pictures on a stereoscope: The two of them sitting here in the front parlor, doing their school-work at the table by the fireplace. The two of them running upstairs and sliding down the banister. The two of them riding the tram to Ocean Beach at Lands End. The two of them swimming at the Sutro Baths, that incredible crystal palace where pools were filled by the tides and swimmers slid down slides or dropped from trapezes or leapt from springboards into the water. She remembered the two of them poised on the high dive, listening to voices below shouting up to them—“The girl is too young! Bring her safely down the ladder at once!”—before Clara launched into her perfect swan dive, followed by Gideon, slicing through the cold deep water. Gideon had taught her well.

While Baby H napped in her wooden drawer, the lodgers ventured indoors to ask Mother whether they might risk sleeping in the house tonight. Mother said that only a few rooms had been cleaned, but unless another quake brought the house down on top of them, she did not mind who slept where.

Despite the dust still hanging in the air and the grit underfoot, Clara was glad to crawl into bed that night and lie between clean sheets. Sleeping on a soft mattress on the floor of her parents' room beat sleeping in a dusty bedroll outdoors on the grass, poked by roots. Baby H snoozed at Clara's side, tucked into the drawer. The lodgers, including Mrs. Grissinger and Mrs. Hansen and their children, bedded down throughout the house wherever they found a clean spot to lay their blankets.

Clara listened to the creaks and groans of the house and to the shouts in the distance. She pictured the people in the park, settling down in their tents. She wondered where Emmeline and her family were and hoped they were safe. She saw in her mind the dirty, haggard face of the young woman in the red dress, and she turned over and placed one hand protectively on the bundle of baby sleeping at her side. Finally, Clara slept too.

She dived off the rocks like a sleek gray seal, rippling through deep water toward the dark figure struggling beneath the surface—

Humphrey's low growl in her ear made her jump awake. “Wh-what is it, boy?” she whispered into the darkness. Had it been minutes or hours since she drifted off? Was there going to be another earthquake each time she had one of the swimming dreams? She looked around. In the dim room she could just make out the shapes of her sleeping parents and Baby H. She patted the floor next to her. “Lie down, Humph. Good boy.” She closed her eyes again, throwing her arm across Humphrey's broad back. The dog growled again, low in his throat.

Then it was only a second before she and the dog were both on their feet, listening at the closed door of the bedroom. There
was
something—some strange noise.

“Shh,” Clara shushed Humphrey. “Listen—”

Was one of the lodgers walking about in the parlor? But no one was sleeping in there. Clara gripped Humphrey's collar. Her parents slumbered on. Should she wake them? But Mother would panic and Father would be helpless and angry. Maybe she could alert Mr. Midgard and Mr. Stokes—but no! They weren't home … It was up to her to see what was wrong.

Clara started to tiptoe out the door with Humphrey right beside her, her fingers tight around his collar, but then she stopped, looking back into the bedroom. Her eyes fastened on the fireplace poker by the hearth.

Better than nothing
.

A scraping noise. A thump. Definitely coming from the parlor.

Heart thudding, Clara gripped the iron poker and headed down the hallway, Humphrey at her side. She waited in the hallway just inches from the open parlor door. Two more steps and she would be able to peek inside.

Craning her neck, she looked into the room. In the moonlight she could see the bookshelves, the potted aspidistra, the high-backed settee. But no one was there. She relaxed for a moment and loosened her hold on the dog's collar. Then her gaze swept toward the broken window, and she sucked in her breath.

There was an arm stretching itself in through a broken windowpane—an arm in a black sleeve groping for the window catch.

Clara froze.
It must be a looter!
she thought, and then raced forward into the room and slammed her iron poker down onto the arm. An agonized howl from the figure outside, Humphrey's frenzied barking, and Clara's shouts for help merged into a terrible ruckus that brought Mother and the lodgers racing into the parlor.

“Mother! Help!” shouted Clara. “Don't let him get away!”

“Stay back, Clara!” Mother spun Clara away from the window—but Clara saw that the man was already out in the street, clutching his arm and running fast. Then a second figure emerged from around the side of the house and scrambled after him, long skirt flapping.

“Two of them!” Clara exclaimed.

“Is anyone hurt?” Miss DuBois and Miss Chandler crept nervously into the room. Mrs. Grissinger and Mrs. Hansen followed. Mr. Granger and the Wheeler sisters peered into the room from the doorway.

“There was somebody outside—” began Clara, but Mother cut her off.

“Looters now on top of everything else—and you chasing them!” Her voice broke. “Oh, Clara, I couldn't bear for anything to happen to you.”

“Goodness, I do wish the menfolk were here,” said Miss DuBois, putting an arm around Mother's shoulders.

“I'm here,” protested Mr. Granger in his quavery voice.

“And
I'm
here.” Father rolled into the room in his wheelchair. He took in the sight of Clara standing with the poker and shook his head. “But you seem to have things well in hand, daughter.”

“A man was at the window!” Clara explained what had happened. “His arm—oh, Father!” She shuddered, remembering. “I didn't even think—I just slammed the poker down. Then two people ran off—”

“
Two
men? In which direction did they go?” asked Father quickly.

“Toward the park, I think,” said Clara. “But it was a man and a woman, Father. The woman came running around the side of the house. Perhaps she'd been hiding there!”

“I was awakened by a noise at the dining room window,” said Miss Chandler. “She may have been trying to climb inside.”

“Lady looters.” Father shook his head morosely. “Nothing will surprise me anymore.”

The baby's thin wail reached their ears.

Mother hurried into the hallway. “Poor little mite—wakes up and no one is there … I'm coming, Henrietta!” She called back over her shoulder to Clara, “You come along now back to sleep. I want you with me!”

“Baby H …” murmured Clara. A prickle of unease stirred across her mind like the breeze through the broken windows.

She turned to Father. “I want to check the backyard.”

“The rain barrels!” said Father with a frown. “No, dear, it could be dangerous. I shall go myself.”

Clara and Miss DuBois looked at each other dubiously.

Father rubbed his hands tiredly over his face. “I daresay by the time I've clattered down the ramp in my chair, the whole neighborhood will have heard me, and anyone siphoning our water or hiding in the bushes will have had time to flee. Well, that's what we want, isn't it? To make them run off?”

“We'll go together,” Clara suggested gently. “I'll bring the poker.”

Father sighed and snapped his fingers for Humphrey. “We'll take the dog.”

“Well, you're a brave pair, I'll say that for you,” said Miss DuBois.

Clara pushed Father's wheelchair down the hallway. As they passed the back bedroom, Mother opened the door, the baby in her arms. She stared out at them, aghast. “I want you safely in bed, Clara!” she hissed.

“Yes, ma'am,” Clara whispered back. “In just a minute.”

“The rain barrels,” explained Father.

They opened the back door, despite Mother's objections, and stood staring out into the backyard. The basket Mr. Granger had hung from the oak tree swung gently in the smoky breeze, illuminated by moonlight. The rain barrels appeared to be untouched.