March 1932

Four months before the deaths at Morning House

Max Ralston wasn't quite like his siblings.

What had worked so brilliantly with the older six children would not work with Max. He didn't climb up onto the piano stool with William's eagerness. He didn't sit on the floor for hours with a book like Victory, or pick up on languages like Unity. He didn't draw like Benjamin, or even rattle off his times tables like Edward. He couldn't swim like Clara.

And it wasn't just that he didn't excel—he was, well, difficult. The other children had never been permitted to leave their toys about, but Max's stick hobbyhorse could often be found on the lawn, or even sitting in the middle of the great hall. And his toys broke so often. The jack torn from his box. The arms pulled from the stuffed bear. The toy piano missing its keys. The heavy metal toy train that went flying between the rails of the third-floor balcony, only to scar the floor below.

Then there were the little injuries. He kicked Clara in the belly when she tried to brush his hair. When William played the piano, Max might smash the keys—or even William's fingers—with his tiny fists. He took Unity's book out of her hands and threw it in the fire. He dumped ink over Benjamin's drawings. He snuck up on Victory with a pair of scissors and snipped away a large lock of her hair. The only older sibling he tended to avoid was Edward, and that was probably because Edward once flicked him between the eyes with a spoon.

Little unpleasantnesses. Tantrums. Nothing Clara dwelled on until that day last summer, when she was floating in her secret spot under the boathouse floor. Someone came running in and plunged her hand into the cold water of one of the slips. It appeared a few feet in front of Clara's face, a strange visitor to her grotto. Another person came running in. Clara remained very still, allowing her toes to touch the slimy bottom to maintain her position under the dock.

"Mabel!" a voice cried. It was Annie, one of the maids. "What's he done to you?"

"Scalding hot tea," Mabel said through tears.

"Little monster. Little beast. Let me see your hand."

The hand was withdrawn.

"He did it on purpose," Mabel said, through tears. "I saw it in his eyes. He looked right at me and grabbed the teapot and poured it right over me."

"Beast. Evil little beast. And he's getting bigger. He's only going to get worse. It's why they can't have a pet, you know."

Max was why they couldn't have a pet? It was true that they had all come together over Christmas to make an official petition for a dog. This was denied, with apologies, because Faye was allergic. (Which seemed odd, when Clara thought back, because there were photographs of Faye from before her marriage to Father in which she was holding a small dog.) And then there was the cat Clara had saved from the boys on the street, the one they gave to their next-door neighbor. Clara had lobbied to keep him, but again there was a vague mention of allergies and a promise of an upgrade to her dancing studio. Max was the reason?

"He'll kill someone yet," Annie went on. "The others are all right, but God only knows how. Keep your hand under, there."

The hand was plunged back into the water, almost touching Clara's face.

"Scalding hot tea," the girl cried.

"The doctor will look at it. He'll take care of you, but don't bother trying to tell him the boy is responsible. The doctor lets it all go. High spirits, he says. High spirits is why they can't keep a nurse for longer than a month or two."

This tallied with Clara's experience. Nurses came and went. Clara and the other children never bothered to learn their names, they changed so often. That was typical of nurses, their father had explained. They specialized in certain ages, or they wanted to see somewhere new. Clara hadn't thought about it much because she didn't care. All six older siblings were away at school for much of the year, so it wasn't like she got to know any of them very well.

That would change. When they returned to New York City at the end of that summer and the nurse did not come with them, she watched. A new nurse appeared at their Fifth Avenue mansion. Her name was Miss Danforth. She had a thick Scottish brogue, bright red cheeks, and styled her hair in a tight bun. She also appeared physically capable of pushing a trolley car off its tracks. Clara liked her at once. She watched Miss Danforth work with Max in the few days she had at the Fifth Avenue house before they were shipped off to school. Max seemed suitably cowed by her. She was still there at Christmas, her bun still tight and high on her head, still knitting calmly while watching Max play. Fewer toys broke that Christmas season. Clara was impressed.

When the six came home for a week in the springtime, Miss Danforth was gone. Clara asked her father where she was.

"Home to Scotland," he said. "Family matters. This is Miss Ellis."

Clara decided to get to the bottom of this at once. She had six days at home, so there was no time to waste. She watched the servants for the first day. No one would talk to her directly about the matter. She would have to find a way in. Her bedroom in New York faced the back of the house and their small walled garden. If she sat in her window and looked straight down, however, she could watch the back entrance where deliveries were made and staff came out to smoke and chat. It was from this perch that she noticed a boy about her age delivering groceries and other supplies several times a day. He had an easy way about him, leaning casually against the wall that separated the garden from the servants' passage, talking and sharing cigarettes with the staff. Once he looked straight up at her, gave her a lopsided smile, and lifted his cap. He had big, bright eyes with a look in them that Clara could clearly pick up from three stories above. It gave her a little sizzle of excitement, and an idea.

That afternoon, she lingered in the front parlor, keeping an eye out the window onto the street. When she saw the boy approach, she hurried out with a brown paper package under her arm.

"I need your assistance," she said to him. "Could you leave the box and help me carry this down the block?"

She held up the package, sagging as if it was heavy. (It was just her dressing gown and weighed nothing at all.) The boy looked at the package, and at the folded ten-dollar bill Clara discreetly displayed between her fingers. Up close, Clara could see his luminous, laughing brown eyes and comically heavy eyebrows. His overalls were clean but wearing through in patches, and his right shoe came away from the sole, revealing more hole than sock underneath. He smelled of sweat, but Clara did not find it unpleasant—in fact, she preferred it to the scent of cloying lily of the valley soap that clung to her.

"You're upstairs girl," he said.

"Clara. What's your name?"

"Lenny."

"Well, Lenny, can you put it down and walk with me or not?"

"For that, I will, upstairs girl."

Lenny quickly deposited the box in the recessed area by one of the basement windows and relieved Clara of her feather-light package and ten dollars.

"So where are we taking this sack of rocks?"

"Just across the street."

The Ralston mansion faced Fifth Avenue and Central Park, just opposite the Arsenal and the zoo. They passed into the park and descended the stairs that led down to the zoo. Clara sat on a bench and Lenny sat next to her.

"So," he said. "If you've come to propose, know that I have other offers. But you just gave me more than I make in a week, so you're moving up the list."

"I need you to find out what happened to my little brother's last nurse," she said.

Lenny leaned back on his elbows and whistled.

"Didn't expect that. I thought you wanted cigarettes or something."

Clara would have loved a cigarette, but she would never dare while with her father. He could smell cigarette smoke at thirty paces. She only smoked at school.

"I'll take your money," he replied. "But why can't you ask someone yourself?"

"I did. They said she went home to Scotland for family reasons, but I don't believe it. And no one of the staff will tell me because I'm family. I need you to make conversation and find out whatever you can. That ten dollars is the first payment. Five more every time you can get me more information about what happened. I'll meet you here tomorrow morning after you make your first delivery. Nine o'clock. Deal?"

She took her dressing gown back from him. He tipped his cap.

"Pleasure," he said. "See you in the morning."

The next morning Lenny was leaning against the front of the Arsenal eating a doughnut. Clara eyed it hungrily.

"The nurse fell down the stairs," he said. "A bad fall. Cracked her skull. Someone found her at the bottom of the steps. Thought she was dead. The doc—your dad—got her to the hospital. Sounds like it was a close thing, you know?"

"But they didn't tell me that," she said. "Which means Max was probably involved."

"They said something about a little boy. Max. That was the name. No one saw her fall, but they all seem to think he pushed her."

Clara chewed a thoughtful cuticle while the zoo's sea lions barked in their nearby pool.

"I need you to find out everything they're saying about Max, or anything else you can find out about things they've seen and heard."

Every morning of the rest of that spring week, Clara left the house in the morning to take a walk through the park. She'd cross Fifth Avenue and take the stairs down toward the zoo. Lenny was there, sometimes a little late, but always with some new tidbit of information. In five-dollar increments, she pieced together what happened in the house when they were gone, or just out of their view.

Max, it seemed, had been treating the staff much like he treated his toys. It was common knowledge that Max would openly urinate on any staff member who displeased him. One nurse had the soles of her feet sliced to ribbons when Max left broken glass in her shoes, another found pins in her bread, a third woke to find him holding a pair of scissors above her eyes. And Lenny had things to say about Clara and her five siblings.

"Everyone thinks you guys eat weird," Lenny said. They were by now on familiar terms. He even brought warm jam doughnuts, which they ate overlooking the sea lion pool enclosure. "You're not supposed to have stuff like this."

Clara nodded as she stuffed jam doughnut into her mouth.

"Mostly, everyone thinks you older ones are okay," he continued, licking powdered sugar from his fingers. "They think your sisters are nice. They seem to like you too, but I get the sense that they can't work you out. The main problem is the little kid. I hate to say this to you, but I think there's something wrong with that brother of yours."

Clara chewed her doughnut and listened to the bark of the sea lions. Lenny was right. There was something wrong with that brother of hers.