Murder in a mill town (19 page)

Nell spread the scarf over Bridie’s chest, stilling when she noticed the monogram, embroidered in bronze-colored metallic thread: A pair of H’s framed in a square of vines.

Behind her, Will whispered, “Bloody hell.”

“Good afternoon, Dr. Hewitt,” greeted the doughy little desk clerk at the Revere House. “Ma’am,” he added, with a nod in Nell’s direction. He stole a look of dismay at Will’s attire, still damp and mud-smeared some four hours after his fall into that stream.

“Had a bit too much absinthe and took a spill,” Will explained. It was what he always said when he didn’t care to launch into tedious explanations. “May I have my key?”

“Of course.” The clerk smiled uncertainly as he fetched the key from a drawer, probably reflecting that the handsome, well-bred young surgeon who’d taken up residence in his hotel didn’t seem the type for absinthe. With a glance at Nell, he asked, “Shall we hold a key here for Mrs. Hewitt as well?”

Nell looked from the clerk to Will and back again. “I’m—“

“Thank you, yes.” Will curled an arm around Nell’s waist and led her toward the curved staircase in the corner of the lobby. “Come along, my pet. We don’t want to be late for Reverend Beals.”

On the way home from Salem, Will had brought up the subject of Duncan being paroled, suggesting they go directly to the man who’d first proposed it in the hope of talking sense to him. And, too, they had a few questions about Duncan’s relationship with Virgil in prison, as well as his fixation on Nell. Therefore, their first stop upon returning to Boston had been Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street, where Adam Beals was formally assigned. Nell had introduced Will to Father Beals, but the priest was too preoccupied with church duties to talk to them right then, and arranged to meet them for supper in the Revere House dining room in an hour. Naturally, Will wanted to change first.

“I can’t go to your room with you!” Nell protested as Will escorted her down a hallway lit with stained glass sconces.

“No one will look askance. They think you’re my wife.”

“Do they? Or do they think I’m actually...”

“A harlot in sheep’s clothing?” Will smiled as he guided her to a door labeled
2D
. “Does it really matter what they think, so long as you’re treated with a modicum of respect?”

“How can you even ask that? Of course it matters.”

He shook his head as he turned the key in the lock.  “Poor, earnest Cornelia—whatever am I going to do with you?” Opening the door, he said, “Welcome to my humble diggings.”

And quite humble they were, especially compared to those of his parents, given that they occupied but a single bed-sitting room. It was a large room, though, flooded with sunlight and handsomely appointed in shades of sage and tobacco, with a bank of windows affording an excellent view of Bowdoin Square.

“It’s actually quite nice,” she said, starting when he closed the door behind them. Never, since coming to work for the Hewitts, had she been alone with a man in his bedroom; it was a challenge to keep her uneasiness from showing.

“Would you care for a drink before dinner?”
Crossing to a desk in the corner, Will dropped his key onto a silver inkstand. He untied his cravat and tossed it onto the upholstered bench at the foot of his curtained bed, then shucked his coat and vest. “I’ve got a dry sherry you might like.”

“No, thank you.” Glancing around, she noticed, on one of the nightstands that flanked the bed, a vial of white powder, a syringe kit, a small apothecary’s scale, a bottle of clear liquid labeled
Alcohol
, another that probably contained a solution of morphine, and a cotton roll.

“Some tea?” Taking a seat on the bench, he pulled off his boots and socks and started unbuttoning his shirt. “I’ve no means to make it here, but I can send up for some.”

“N-no, I...I’m fine,” she said as he stood and stripped off his shirt, then undid the top button of his trousers. “What are you doing?”

“Getting changed,” he said, as if that were evident.

“Can’t you do it...” she looked around and located the open door of a bathroom “...in the W.C.?”

“My clothes are here.” He pointed to a black walnut wardrobe. “You’re awfully bashful for a nurse. Besides, you’ve seen me naked before.”

“I was never a real nurse, and as you—“

“Close enough.” He flicked open another button.

“Stop that! And as you are very well aware, the only reason I saw you naked was that you ambushed me.” It had happened last winter, in the bedroom of the colored actress Mathilde Cloutier, who’d been Will’s sometime mistress before opium had rendered such fleshly pursuits a thing of the past. He’d arisen from bed in Nell’s presence without a stitch on, for no better reason than to shock her.

“Every time I decide you’re not quite as conventional as you’d like the world to believe,” he said sadly, “you prove me quite wrong. Turn your back, then, if your modesty is so easily bruised.”

Nell spun around to face the fireplace, her arms crossed. “You seem to delight in making me uncomfortable.”

“You know why, don’t you?”

She raised her gaze from the logs stacked on the grate, only to discover that she could see him reflected in the glass over the steel engraving hanging above the marble mantle. He was standing in his drawers, kicking his trousers off. The bandage tied around his upper forearm—her handkerchief—was brown with dried blood. She closed her eyes. “Why?”

“It’s those blushes of yours. I can’t get enough of them.”

“That’s what your brother said, right before he...” She sighed, shook her head.

A long moment passed.

She opened her eyes, glanced up at the picture. Will was rubbing the back of his neck, his jaw with that rigid thrust to it that betrayed him as thoroughly as Nell’s blushes betrayed her.

He got dressed in silence.

*   *   *

“Well.” Father Beals—Adam, as he’d asked to be called—refolded the most recent of Duncan’s letters, slipped it back in its envelope, and placed it atop the tidy stack next to his dessert plate. He’d ordered apple pie à la mode, but the ice cream had melted into a puddle around the untouched pie during the time it had taken him to work his way through the correspondence Will had presented to him as their dinner plates were being cleared.

Nell had been shocked to see Will withdraw the letters from within the black frock coat he’d changed into. He hadn’t told her he’d taken them, no doubt because he knew she’d be outraged at his absconding with evidence that ought to have been left at the scene for the Salem Police to find.

“I should inform you before you read these,” Will had told Adam as he handed him the letters, “that Duncan is under some illusions regarding Nell and my brother Harry. Any suggestion of an illicit relationship between them is entirely without merit.”

Adam had glanced at Nell, then at Will, and then he’d proceeded to work his way through the letters, not paying any mind when Nell engaged Will in a whispered debate over the ethics and wisdom of having taken them.

“They mention not just Harry, but you,” he’d told her. “Do you really want people thinking you’re having an affair with him?”

“I’ll just explain that it isn’t like that.”

“Whom do you think they’d believe? A Hewitt or an Irish governess?”

“You didn’t do it to protect me,” she’d said. “You did it to protect Harry, but he’s not worth it.”

“Believe what you like, but I did it mostly for you. Letters or no letters, the police are bound to focus in on Harry straightaway—you made that point yourself. The letters make very little difference as to how he’ll be perceived in all this, but a great deal as regards you.”

She’d shaken her head. “I’m still not comfortable with it.”

“I’m not asking you to be comfortable. I’m just asking you to kindly drop the subject so that I can enjoy my coffee while it’s still hot...”

Adam stared at the stack of letters for a full minute after he finished reading the last one. “What can I say? Duncan...he’s an extremely charismatic individual. His relationship with Virgil Hines, well, that was really more a matter of hero worship than real friendship. Virgil used to run errands for Duncan, do him little favors...roll his cigarettes, give him his bread at supper, that sort of thing.”

“My brother Jamie used to roll Duncan’s cigarettes,” Nell said. “Duncan would do that—let someone with a weaker personality think they were the best of friends, when really Duncan was just using him.”

Adam had sighed. “Duncan wields a great deal of power among his fellow prisoners. He can get them to do anything. It just never occurred to me that he’d go so far as to enlist Virgil to act as his spy after he was paroled.”

Adam lifted his coffee cup and gazed into it, paused, and put it back down. He pushed the cup and saucer to where the waiter had first placed them, then did the same with his dessert plate. “I’ve been so complacent, so smugly certain that they tell me everything—especially Virgil. Just goes to show you—we believe what we want to believe. I was proud of my rapport with the prisoners, but there’s a reason pride is a sin.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Nell said. “Duncan probably threatened to beat Virgil senseless if he talked about their arrangement.”

Adam looked as if he wanted to say something. Instead, he picked up his coffee cup, took a careful sip.

“What is it?” Will asked.

“Nothing, just...” He set his cup down with a pained expression, turning it in its saucer so the handle was to the right. “This command Duncan exercises over the other inmates... He maintains it in part through, well, fear and coercion. He’ll lie, threaten vio
lence... And he
has
been known to use his fists to maintain his authority.”

“You told me he’d changed,” Nell said, “but he sounds like the same old Duncan to me.”

“He
has
changed—in some very fundamental ways. He attends Bible study, he’s learned how to read and write...”

Will said, “Those are superficial changes. If he’s still prone to violence...”

“They’re all prone to violence,” Adam said, as if he were stating something ridiculously obvious. “That’s why they’re in prison, most of them. These aren’t men who talk their differences out, Will. Sometimes bloodshed is all they understand. I’ve been working with Duncan, trying to teach him how to get a handle on that temper of his, how to think things through instead of lashing out.”

“If he hasn’t learned that lesson yet,” Will said, “do you really think you ought to be recommending him for parole?”

Adam frowned into his coffee cup. “I put a lot of thought into that decision. My thinking was that I could help him get a real job and provide guidance and counsel to facilitate his reentrance into society. I must tell you, though, over this past summer, I’ve had reason to question the wisdom of my recommendation.”

“Are you withdrawing it?” Nell asked hopefully.

“I’m thinking about postponing it, at least for another year or two, until he’s had time to work some things out.”

“What things?” Will asked.

Adam hesitated, looked at Nell, then back at Will. “I don’t know if I should really—“

“Is it something to do with me?” she asked.

Adam patted his hair, nudged it out of his eyes. “Duncan’s feelings in regard to you are...complicated. And those feelings absorb much of his thought and energy. He talks about you incessantly. On the one hand, he seems to care for you very deeply. Don’t forget, he spent years learning to read and write just so he could correspond with you.”

“He’s obsessed with her,” Will said shortly, “to an unhealthy degree. That’s not the same as caring.”

“I suppose one might call it obsession,” Adam conceded, “but is it really unhealthy to care so deeply about—“

“It doesn’t matter what it’s called,” Nell said. “Finish your point, if you would. Please,” she added, modulating her tone. “On the one hand he cares for me. And on the other?”

Adam took his napkin off his lap, refolded it, and laid it to the left of his plateful of pie and liquefied ice cream. “My reason for rethinking the parole issue has to do with certain statements Duncan has made over the past few months. Actually, knowing what I know now about the information he’s been receiving from Virgil all summer, I can understand the source of his...” He trailed off with a sigh.

“The source of his...?” Nell prompted.

“Well, anger. He, uh, he’s said some things that I’ve found...somewhat troubling. Not as matter of course, just every once in a while, when he gets going on the subject of you and Will’s brother.”

“Wait a minute,” Nell said. “You
knew
about that? Before you read these letters?”

He nodded. “Duncan had told me about it. I asked him how he’d found out, but he just said he had his ways. I didn’t press him. If a prisoner starts to feel as if I’m prying into matters he considers private, he’ll stop opening up to me—that’s been my theory, at any rate.”

“I take it he was upset about the situation,” Will said as he lit a cigarette.

“Oh, he was beside himself—distraught, frustrated...enraged, if you want to know the truth. There he was, locked up behind bars, and his rival was from one of the wealthiest, most influential families in Boston. He acted like a man facing the threat of a lifetime.”