Murder in a mill town (29 page)

He grimaced, stilled, looked up at her with an expression of surprise. His hands dropped from her neck.

His back arched; his eyes rolled up. He jerked as if yanked by a string, mouth wide open as if begging for air.

That part of it lasted mere seconds. He stopped struggling and met Nell’s gaze, his expression slightly confused, his eyes as sweetly soulful as the first time she’d seen him.

Those eyes lost their focus as the air sighed from his lungs. He went utterly lax, his complexion taking on the waxy pallor of death almost instantly, a phenomenon she’d seen before.

He hadn’t made a sound from the moment the morphine entered his bloodstream.

Nell checked his carotid; nothing, of course.

The air left her own lungs. “Jesus,” she whispered, and crossed herself. “Thank you.”

She untied the rope from around her neck with palsied hands, becoming aware as she did of dull thumping sounds from the direction of the couch, along with muted grunts of effort from Will. He had no idea what had just transpired. He would have heard Adam gloating as he throttled her, then the sounds of a struggle. Did he think she was dead?

There came an explosive splintering of wood as she threw open the bed curtain and stepped out into the room.

Will, still wearing his gag, looked up from trying to free his bloodied hands from their ropes—having already freed his feet by kicking that arm off the couch—and met Nell’s gaze. He stared at her for one long, breathless moment, eyes wide, face sheened with sweat, then closed his eyes and slumped down, a ragged groan rising from his throat.

She went to him, not caring that she was in her underwear, her corset half undone, hair tangled down her back, bloodied and shivering like a rabbit. His folding lancet was on the table next to him, along with her gloves and hat. Using the lancet, she cut away his gag and the ropes that bound his hands.

“Nell, oh God...” He wrapped her in his arms, pulled her onto the couch, held her so tightly she could barely draw a breath. His eyes shone wetly; he was shaking from head to toe. “Thank God. Thank God...”

He buried his hands in her hair, rubbed his beard-roughened cheek against hers, both their faces damp with tears. It was quite some time before they drew apart.

“He had me completely hoodwinked,” said Duncan, sitting across the visiting room table from Nell the following afternoon. His face was heavily bruised, his forehead marred by a dreadful, scabbed-over gash amid livid contusions. The gag and straight waistcoat were gone, however, replaced by a striped prison uniform.

“Adam had us all hoodwinked,” she replied. “Himself included.”

“I never woulda told him all the stuff I told him, about you and me and what we used to do and all that...”

“I know.”

“I thought he could maybe help me win you back. Give me advice, and all. That’s why I got Virgil to find out where you were livin’ and what your life was like. I thought after I got paroled, maybe you and me...”

She looked at her gloved hands on the table. “We’ve gone on two different paths, Duncan. They don’t meet up.”

He looked away, a muscle in his jaw flinching. “Yeah, well, it don’t matter no more, anyway, ‘cause I’m in for the full thirty now. Warden says I can kiss that hocus pocus goodbye.”

“You knew that when you broke out of here,” she said. “You knew if you got caught it would ruin your chances for parole, but you did it anyway, for me. I...I can’t believe you did that.”

He shrugged his big shoulders. “I’m your husband, Nell. I’m supposed to take care of you. And I figure I owe it to you, after...you know.”

She didn’t know what to say to that.

“Look.” He leaned forward on the table, imploring her with his eyes—those painfully beautiful eyes—to look at her. “I know we can’t be together again, not for real. But in the eyes of the church, and in my eyes, we’re still man and wife. Nothing can ever change that.”

How could she argue with that? “Thank you, Duncan, for what you did. It was a very great sacrifice.”

He shook his head. “What an ass I am. I never shoulda told Father Beals all that, about Virgil and that Bridie girl, and that farm, and you and Harry Hewitt—”

“You know he and I aren’t really...”

“Yeah, I know that now. But Virgil and that girl are dead, and they wouldn’t be if I’d of been able to see through that loony priest. And then, after you left that day, the things he was sayin’ to me...like how you’d get your comeuppance real soon, and Harry Hewitt, too. He said I’d be free of you once and for all. He said you’d come to a bad end, just like Bridie and Virgil, which didn’t make no sense to me, ‘cause I didn’t know at the time that they were already...” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Poor ol’ Virge.”

“That was enough for you to break out of here and try to save me?” she asked.

“Nah, I started getting a funny feeling about things, and askin’ questions he didn’t want to answer. I think he started feelin’ like he shouldn’t of told me nothing. He said somethin’ about how Harry Hewitt was gonna end up hanging, so I got to thinking maybe Hewitt was gonna, you know, kill you, ’cause how else would I ever be free of you? It’s a Catholic marriage. There ain’t no divorce. And I’m thinking for some reason Father Beals knows what Hewitt means to do, but he ain’t gonna stop it.”

“You didn’t suspect him?”

“Not at first, not really. He
is
a priest, you know. Was.”

“Are you the one who beat up Harry Hewitt?”

Duncan whooped and slapped the table. “Damn, that was fun. Been eight long years since I’d bloodied my knuckles.”

“Did you do it because you thought he and I...?”

“Nah, I knew from talking to him there wasn’t nothin’ like that goin’ on. But he told me what he tried with you, and you can’t let a thing like that go by without drawin’ a little blood. Not if it’s your own wife.”

 Harry’s account of that dram shop conversation, Nell reflected, had excluded some pertinent details. Either he really had been too woolly from absinthe to recall them, or he’d deliberately omitted them out of embarrassment.

“The more I thought about it,” Duncan said, “the more I started thinking maybe Father Beals himself was the one who was aimin’ to do you in. Problem was, I couldn’t hardly go to the cops, what with them on the lookout for me, so I tried to keep an eye on you—and keep an eye out for Beals.”

“That’s why you were at City Hall that night.”

He nodded. “I hid behind a gatepost to watch you. When I saw you leavin’ with Beals, I knew I had to stop it. Only I didn’t count on that fella with those big fists on the end of them long arms.”

“William Hewitt,” she said. “Harry’s brother. A much more worthy person.”

Duncan studied her for a moment, hesitated, then said, “He’s the other one, ain’t he? The one you can talk to, the one you trust.”

Thinking Duncan had earned the truth, Nell said, “Yes.”

He looked down, nodded, ran his hand over his jaw. “Are you and him...?”

“No.”

He looked up, begging her with those translucent blue eyes to tell him the truth.

“No,” she said. “I can’t... I couldn’t...”

“Because of me?” He looked hopeful.

“I
am
a married woman,” she said carefully. “My employers may not know that, but I do. And as a governess, there are certain standards I’m expected to live by. If I were to enter into a...romantic relationship with a man, there could be no future in it, and I could never acknowledge it openly.” Of course, that had been the case with Dr. Greaves, yet she’d been his willing mistress for four years. Was it really unthinkable that she might be coaxed down the same path again?

Eager to redirect the conversation, she said, “I’ve been talking to Warden Whitcomb. It turns out he sent Adam a note about your escape the day after it happened. Adam assumed you’d flee the country. That’s what he would have wanted, because he knew you were on to him. But in case you
were
caught, he needed to plant the idea that you were violent, and a liar, and that you’d threatened to kill me. That way, no one would believe you if you told them what Adam himself was up to.”

“Piscopal bastard,” Duncan muttered.

“Naturally, he couldn’t tell us you’d escaped,” Nell said, “because then we’d try to find you, seeing as how you’d supposedly threatened me. But then Tuesday, when he found out I was being followed, he realized it must be you. So he told us about the escape the next day, as if he’d just heard about it, along with some tale about you spouting Leviticus and Deuteronomy.”

“It was him that used to get all worked up about adultery and all that,” Duncan said. “I ain’t the guy he made me out to be.”

“I know that. The warden told us you’ve never given him any real trouble.”

“I gave you plenty, though. If it wasn’t for me, Beals woulda never latched on to you.”

“You made up for it,” she said.

“You don’t have to worry about any more letters from me. I’ll
leave you alone from now on, but don’t ever think I’ve forgotten about you. It’ll always give me comfort, knowing my darlin’ Nell’s still mine and mine alone.”

*   *   *

Will was waiting for her in the prison courtyard in his new black phaeton, purchased, along with a pair of fine horses, just that morning. She’d teased him about it’s being the quintessential doctor’s buggy, and wondered out loud what it meant that he’d chosen to own rather than rent his means of transportation in and around Boston. He’d just lit a cigarette and changed the subject.

“How did it go?” he asked her as he helped her up into the carriage.

“I felt more kindly disposed toward him than I have since we first met. He says he’s going to leave me alone, but he also considers me very much his wife, for all time.”

Will frowned as he gathered the reins.

“Are you ill?” she asked. “You look even worse than when you first picked me up.”

“I didn’t sleep well last night.” He flicked the reins and drove the carriage through the front gate; with any luck, Nell would never have reason to come here again.

“So,” he asked when they were on their way, “how old
were
you when you married him?”

He was taking up where they’d left off in the hack the night before last, pursuing the subject he hadn’t wanted to pursue then, in the wake of the revelation of her marriage.

“I was sixteen,” she said. “I’ve told you how we met, I think. My brother Jamie introduced us when I was still at the county poor house in Barnstable.”

“Yes, I recall you telling me that.”

“He captivated me completely, right from the beginning. I’d never know a man like him. He was a firebrand, but with the most boyish smile. I knew he was he was just a small-time crook, like Jamie, but he told me he wanted to go straight, maybe build boats. He said he knew a shipbuilder in Wareham who’d hire him. Within a month, we were married.”

Now for the rest of it. She drew in a breath, let it out. “He taught me how to pick pockets.”

Will looked at her; she focused on the road ahead of them.

“I got good at it,” she said. “I had to—Duncan didn’t bring home that much from the jobs he pulled. I kept trying to get him to go to Wareham and talk to that shipbuilder. Finally he had enough of that, and he just exploded. It was the first time he hit me.”

Will’s hand tightened on the reins.

“Usually it happened when he was drunk, which got to be pretty often. He hated me picking pockets, even though he was the one who got me doing it, because I usually did it by bumping into men on the street. He didn’t like the way they looked at me, the things they sometimes said. He’d start fuming if he saw any man talking to me, even one of our own friends. He didn’t even like me being with the women we knew, because most of them were whores or as good as, and he thought they were a bad influence. He laid it all out—who I could talk to, when I had to be home, what I could wear, how I could act... Anything could set him off. He kept me so nervous I couldn’t eat. I was thin as a rail that second year with him, and I usually had at least one bruise somewhere.”

“Why didn’t you leave him?”

How could she explain it? Even she didn’t fully understand the person she was then, the person Duncan was. “He was always so contrite afterward. He said it wasn’t really me, it was because he felt like less than a man, letting his wife essentially support him. Of course, by then I knew not to bring up the shipbuilding. He said he needed one big job, something with a really good haul.”

“The jewelry shop.”

“I only found out about it the next day, when the cops were on his tail and he was frantically hiding the loot. I asked him where the blood on his shirt had come from, and he told me what he’d done to Mr. Ripley. I told him we were through, which was a big mistake. I should have just slipped away quietly after the cops got him, because I knew they’d catch up to him sooner or later. Telling him then...” She shook her head. “He just snapped. Once he started in on me, I knew he didn’t have it in him to hold back. I told him I was pregnant and I was afraid he’d hurt the baby. He thought I was just making it up to get him to stop.”