Murder in a mill town (25 page)

He’s sending me home alone,
she thought. But then he collapsed the umbrella and ducked into the carriage, an old single brougham. He settled in next to her on the cracked leather seat and crossed his legs. With the dripping, folded-up umbrella held upright between, like a walking stick, and his hat on his lap, he laid his head back on the seat and closed his eyes.

Nell expected the vehicle to start moving. It didn’t. “Why isn’t—“

“He’s waiting for the rain to lighten up,” Will said without opening his eyes.

She nodded, although he couldn’t see her, and stared out the front window as it began to grow hazy.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” He said it so quietly that she wasn’t sure he’d really spoken until she turned and saw him looking at her, his head still resting on the seatback. The amber glow of the lamps on the front corners of the hack filtered through the rain-dappled windows, bathed his face in bubbly golden light. Only his eyes were in shadow.

She looked down at her hands. “I don’t know. No. I...I was afraid to.”

“I thought...” He turned away from her, his jaw outthrust. “Never mind.”

“Will—“

“No. I thought you and I... I thought you trusted me. I thought you knew me. I thought we...were friends.”

“I was afraid,” she repeated miserably.

“That I would tell all of Boston that
Miss
Nell Sweeney, the oh-so-proper little Irish governess, actually has a husband in prison? You
are
still married, I take it. You never got divorced?”

She shook her head. “Divorce isn’t recognized by the church.”

“But you were afraid if you told me, that I’d blab it to all of—”

“No, not...” She looked away, shook her head.

“Not what?”

“Not if you were sober.”

There came a pause as he digested that. “I haven’t been drunk on opium—or anything else—since last winter. I only take enough morphine to maintain a state of normality. You know that.”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t really believe it. You expect me to slip back into my old habits any day now.”

“No, I—”

“It’s all right, perhaps I shall. I’ve been feeling a bit restless lately. Perhaps it’s opium I’m starved for.”

“Will, don’t say that.”

He made no response, simply closed his eyes again. The rain continued to fall, not quite as heavily as at first, but at a steady rate, its reverberations making the small coach feel even smaller. The windows grew steamy, the air sultry; there were none of the usual street sounds from without, just the incessant rain.

Will lay so still that she might have thought he’d fallen asleep, except that he continued to hold that umbrella upright between them, his long fingers curved gracefully over the porcelain knob.

“You’re his wife.”

Nell turned to find his eyes open, although he still lay back against the seat.

“That’s why he’s still as possessive as he is,” Will said, “why he wrote you those letters, why he was so outraged when he thought you and Harry...” He shook his head. “Why he’s been following you round, because I’d bet my last nickel it’s him.”

“It’s him,” she said with certainty. “The height, the way he moved... I suppose I just hadn’t considered the possibility before because I thought he was locked up behind bars.”

“He’s still trying to keep you under his thumb. You’re married. In his eyes, why shouldn’t he?”

“We may be married,” she said, relieved that he was talking to her, if only about this, “but I haven’t been under his thumb since I was sixteen.”

“Did you marry that young?” he asked, then waved a dismissive hand. “No, forget it—it’s not important.”

“It is to me. And perhaps if you understood how it came about, how he and I—“

“All I care to understand right now is how to eliminate the problem of Duncan Sweeney so that I can get on with my life as it was before.”

He may as well have said
the problem of Nell Sweeney,
because that was surely what he meant. His ultra high stakes poker game was over; he was eager to be moving on. It was as if the glass dome that enveloped them had shattered, instantly dispelling their fragile rapport, that unacknowledged aura of familiarity and understanding, that aching sweetness that she’d come to treasure without even realizing it.

“Let’s look at this thing logically,” Will said. “Duncan— well, he’s unhinged, obviously.”

“I...suppose so,” Nell said.

“Think about it—he escaped from prison. He could have fled the country, started a new life somewhere far away, where he’d never be caught. Instead, he came here, where he must know they’re actively looking for him, so that he could monitor your every move—possibly with the aim of doing you great harm. Your Detective Cook does intend to catch him, by the way. He told me he’s going to alert the entire Boston police force to be on the lookout for him.”

Nell shook her head. “Duncan
must
be daft, to be taking such a risk.”

“Have you considered the possibility that he’s responsible for what happened to Bridie and Virgil?”

She looked at him.

“He escaped a week ago today,” Will said. “That would fall within the period in which the murders must have taken place. He loathed Bridie sight unseen, and he was furious with Harry for supposedly stealing you away from him. He might have thought he could kill Bridie and frame Harry for it, thus destroying his rival, and then concentrate his attention on you. He knew about Bridie’s blackmail scheme, and he also knew that Bridie was two-timing Harry with Virgil—both credible motives for murder. He got hold of Harry’s scarf—“

“How?”

Will lifted his shoulders. “Stole it from Harry’s office at the mill, got someone else to steal it... Who knows? Maybe Bridie really did take it, and Virgil told Duncan about it in one of his letters. Your visit to Duncan inspired him to put his plan into action immediately—that, and possibly the lack of a moon that night. He went to the White farm the next day and found Bridie—“

“The next day? Thursday? That would have been—” Nell counted it out on her fingers “—five days since she’d been fired.”

“Which was the last anyone in Charlestown saw of either one of them. I’m thinking they ran away together to set up housekeeping at the farm.”

“Bridie’s mother told me she would never just pick up and leave like that, not without telling her. She was convinced of it.”

“Mothers always are. In any event, Duncan went to the farm and found Bridie alone in the house, cooking.”

“Virgil was down at the stream,” said Nell, letting it unfold in her mind, “trying to catch something to go with those johnnycakes.”

“Duncan accosted Bridie, who tried to defend herself with the hot skillet. Perhaps she got a lick in, perhaps not. Perhaps he took it away from her and tried to use it against her. She did manage to get out of the house and run to the stream, probably screaming for Virgil.”

“She must have been a fast runner,” Nell said, thinking of Duncan’s long, sinewy legs.

“Women are often surprisingly fleet, especially barefooted, as Bridie was. Virgil would have been confused to find Duncan out of prison and attacking Bridie, but my guess is he would have tried to defend her—probably with the fishing pole, but it broke.”

“Virgil would have been no match for Duncan no matter how many stone-cutting muscles he’d acquired. And a fishing pole? I’ve seen Duncan, completely unarmed, take on two men with knives, and leave them bleeding in the dirt. It would have been over between him and Virgil in seconds.”

“Assuming Duncan didn’t balk at dispatching an old friend. Do you suppose Virgil simply slipped on those mossy rocks?”

“Either way, it was ultimately Duncan’s doing.” She took a deep breath. “And then he turned to Bridie.”

Nell shuddered, remembering those awful bruises between Bridie’s legs—the same kind she’d been left with herself after Duncan’s final savage attack on her. She thought about Bridie thrashing wildly, clutching at weeds and gravel and mud with her burned hands as Duncan held her head beneath the surface of that deceptively placid little stream.

“When he was done with her,” Will said, “he dragged her into the field and went back to the house. He hung the skillet back on its hook, gathered up the johnnycakes that were strewn about—except that one under the table, which he didn’t notice—and tossed them outside for the birds to finish off.”

“Cleaning up?” she said. “That would have been a first for Duncan.”

“I suppose he didn’t want to leave evidence of an altercation in the house. Perhaps he felt it would draw attention away from the scene he was trying to stage out in the field—that of Bridie being strangled with Harry’s scarf. Or perhaps he thought the skillet business would simply complicate matters. In any event, he grabbed the scarf off its hook—“

“Unless he already had it with him.”

“Right. And he went back out to the field and tied it round Bridie’s neck. He pushed her skirts up to make it look as if the rape and murder had taken place right there.”

“Or maybe just to compound her degradation,” said Nell, who was glad, after all, that she’d tidied Bridie up before the constables came. “And then he came to Boston and turned his attention to me.”

Will looked away, his fingers tightening on the porcelain knob.

“I’ll bet it was Duncan who beat up Harry,” she said.

“A little prelude to the murder charge?”

Nell nodded. “It wouldn’t have been enough, just getting him arrested—or even seeing him hang, if it came to that. That’s too remote, too civilized. I know him. He would have had to get his fists bloody to feel any real satisfaction.”

“You do know him,” Will said. “What do you think? Why is he shadowing you? Does he want to win you back or...?”

“Or do to me what he did to Bridie?” She shrugged. “Even if he just wants me back, he must know I won’t return to him voluntarily.”

“He could be following you around looking for an opportunity to abduct you.”

“Or kill me.” She shivered despite how humid it was inside the little coach. “He could have followed us here. He could be out there somewhere, watching us even now.”

“Yes, but we’re on to him now,” Will said. “Every constable in Boston will be looking for him—and sticking close to you. In a day or two, this will all be over.”

Had they had this conversation an hour ago—before the revelation about her marriage—Nell felt sure Will would have offered her something more in the way of comfort and reassurance, touched her hand...but no such gestures were forthcoming. To be treated by him with such cool civility stung more than it ought to have.

From outside came the clopping of hooves and rattling of wheels over the wet granite-block pavement as a carriage—another hack, Nell saw when she wiped the vapor off the window—pulled up to the curb in front of them. Will opened the window on his side, letting in a rush of cool, clean-washed night air. The rain had lessened considerably, a fact evidently not lost on their driver, who could be heard readjusting his Macintosh and fiddling with his reins.

A man carrying a black umbrella—the passenger from the hack in front of them—headed up the rain-shimmered front walk of City Hall at a swift trot. There was something familiar about they way he moved...that slight awkwardness...

“Adam!” Will called through the open window.

Adam turned, paused, jogged toward them. “Will... Nell.” He called to the driver of his hack, who was about to pull away, to wait for him, then came up close to the window, his face shadowed by the umbrella. “I went to the Revere House, but you weren’t there, and then I remembered you’d planned to meet with that detective tonight.”

“Is something wrong?” Nell asked.

“It’s Duncan. I was at the prison today—I’m there on Wednesdays, you know—and they told me he escaped. I wanted you to know as soon as possible.”

“Detective Cook told us,” Will said. “We think Duncan is the man who’s been following Nell. Cook is assigning some men to guard her, and the constables will be on the lookout for him.”

Adam nodded, slightly winded. “If only I’d known sooner. I didn’t see him Sunday, but I often don’t, so I didn’t think anything of it. When he didn’t show up for Bible study this afternoon, I thought he might be sick. I asked around and found out he’s been gone for a week—ever since the day you visited him, Nell. He bribed one of the guards to get him out of the building.”

“Did you talk to him that day,” she asked over Will’s shoulder, “after I left?”

“Oh, yes. He stayed after Bible study. He was beside himself, kept talking about you and Harry. He kept quoting Leviticus and Deuteronomy on the subject of adultery, saying you deserved to... Oh.” He looked at Nell, wincing because he’d spilled the beans about her marriage to Duncan.

“Will knows,” she assured him, to his obvious relief.

“Deuteronomy...” Will said. “That would be Chapter twenty-two.”

Adam blinked at him. “Yes,” he said, clearly surprised, as was Nell, that Will knew this.

“‘If a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband,’” Will quoted, “‘then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman. So shalt thou put away evil from Israel.’”