Murder in a mill town (30 page)

Will turned to face her, hesitated a moment as it sank in. “You weren’t?”

Nell tried to say, “No,” but her throat contracted around the word. She swallowed. “No, I’d just found out. But he thought I was lying to him, and that made him even madder. He kicked me. He used a knife on me. He...forced himself on me. He wanted it to hurt, and it did. I don’t know whether it was that, or being kicked in the stomach, but when I came to on the floor, he was gone—he was already in custody, as it turned out—and I was... I’d already started miscarrying.”

Will rasped something under his breath.

“It was an incomplete miscarriage,” she said, “but I didn’t realize it till days later, and by then I was half-dead from infection. My landlady took me to Dr. Greaves. He...performed the necessary procedures, and with a great deal of skill. I’m not sure just any doctor could have saved me at that point. But I was left...” This was the worst part, that for which she would never forgive Duncan. “I won’t ever be able to have children.”

There came a weighty silence. “How can you be sure? These situations aren’t always so cut and dried.”

“I know. All Dr. Greaves told me at the time was that I
might
end up barren. But I must be, because...” She hesitated. “You know that I stayed with Dr. Greaves, and that we became...”

“Yes.”

“We were intimate for three years, and I never conceived.”

“Surely you...took precautions. He was a doctor. He must have known about the various devices.”

“I wouldn’t have anything to do with them.”

“For religious reasons.”

“Yes.”

“You do realize the church’s rules were written not by God, but by men professing to speak for Him.”

“It’s the faith I was born into,” she said, “the faith of my fathers. I’m not about to start picking and choosing which rules to apply to myself. You may scoff, but it became important to me, after...Duncan, and picking pockets and all that, to put my old life behind me. To let God—or God’s representatives on earth—govern how I live, instead of someone like Duncan.”

“Is it so important to be told how to live?” he asked. “Have you so little faith in your own judgment of things?”

“After marrying Duncan? Oh, yes.”

“That’s why Gracie is so important to you,” he said. “Because you don’t think you you’ll ever have any children of your own.”

“In my mind, she
is
mine. If I were to lose her...well, I can’t imagine it. I’d literally rather die.”

He fell silent for a while. “It threw me, when I found out you were married, not just because... Well, mainly because you’d kept it from me. I think of us as being... Of you as being a confidante, someone I needn’t hold back with. Knowing you’d withheld something so important...”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I was an ass. I was thinking of my own bruised feelings, not of you and your...well, your
life
. As you say, Gracie is the only child you’ll ever have. In a choice between jeopardizing that and telling me all, there was only one sensible option.”

“I appreciate that, Will. Thank you.”

They drove in silence for miles. Lulled into drowsiness by the motion of the carriage and the comfortable seat, Nell was almost asleep when Will said, “Couldn’t you get an annulment?”

She looked at him. He kept his gaze on the road. He was dreadfully pallid.

“I petitioned the church years ago,” she said. “Dr. Greaves helped me. They wouldn’t grant it.”

“Divorce is utterly out of the question?”

“The only reason to do it would be to remarry, and if I did that, I’d be excommunicated. And your mother expects me to remain unmarried until Gracie is old enough not to need me about so much.”

He sighed and wiped his damp forehead with a tremulous hand.

“Did you miss a dose of morphine?” she asked.

He hesitated, then said, “I haven’t had any at all today.”

She waited for him to explain.

“I should have been able to defend you yesterday,” he said. “Instead, I lay there in an opium haze and left you to fend off a murderous madman by yourself. Of all the shameful things I’ve done in my life, that one ranks right up there at the top of the list.”

“So you’re... Are you giving it up altogether?”

“That’s right. As of this morning.”

Nell knew, from what he’d gone through last winter, that the most hellish aspects of his withdrawal would begin in a few hours. “Let me help you,” she said. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’m free all day, and all night if you need me. And then Sunday, after church. Or perhaps I can even get Sunday morning off—your mother will understand. I can see you through the worst of it.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want you to see me like that, raving and vomiting...”

“I
have
seen you like that, Will.”

“Yes, well, things have changed since then.”

“Have they?”

“I should bloody well hope so.”

*   *   *

It was almost midnight when Nell approached the desk clerk at the Revere House and asked for her key.

“Certainly, Mrs. Hewitt. Sleep well, then.”

Sleep? If she’d been able to sleep, she wouldn’t be here.

Unsurprisingly, there was no answer when she knocked on the door to Room 2D. She twisted the key in the lock, eased the door open.

The only light came from the fireplace. Will was curled up on top of his still-made bed in an open shirt and trousers, shuddering and sweating. He raised his head to look at her as she closed the door.

“Oh, Nell...” His head sank back onto the bed. “Why did you come?”

She fetched a bowl of water and a wash cloth from the bathroom, set them on the nightstand, and sat on the edge of the bed. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

“What?” he asked.

She dipped the cloth in the water, wrung it out, and stroked it gently over his face. “I missed you, too.”

###

Read on for EXCERPTS from more Nell Sweeney mysteries...

Other Electronic Books by Patricia Ryan

Nell Sweeney Historical Mysteries by Patricia Ryan writing as P.B. Ryan:

Still Life With Murder

Death on Beacon Hill

Murder on Black Friday

Murder in the North End

A Bucket of Ashes

Medieval Romances by Patricia Ryan:

Falcon’s Fire

Heaven’s Fire

Secret Thunder

Wild Wind

Silken Threads

The Sun and the Moon

A sneak peek from Chapter 8 of the first book in the series,

by Patricia Ryan writing as P.B. Ryan

Nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award

February 1868: an Opium Den in Boston

Will Hewitt tapped bits of black ash from the bowl into the stone box. “How did you know these places were called hop joints?”

Nell said, “That’s what Detective Cook called—”

“Who?”

“Detective Cook. He’s in charge of your case.”

“Oh, yes.” He shoved the tip of the knife in the little hole and twisted it around. “Big Irishman. Giant head. Smarter than he looks.”

“He took me to Flynn’s Boardinghouse to—”

Will looked up sharply. “He took you to Flynn’s?
Why?
”

“I led him to think your father had sent me to make sure you were really guilty. I wanted to hear what the witnesses had to say, maybe try to piece together what actually—”

“You have no business meddling in this,” he said, a sort of confounded anger vanquishing his good humor.

“I have no choice. Your mother is determined to find out what happened Saturday night, and I’m the only person she can turn to. I tried to get answers from you yesterday, if you recall, but you put me off completely.”

“I don’t recall, actually. The
yen
was coming on pretty fast. Was I rude?”

“Occasionally.”

“Good. You oughtn’t to pry into such things.” He whacked the pipe against the stone bowl again, so hard she was surprised it didn’t break.

“What did you fight about with Ernest Tulley?” she asked.

“Oh, do spare me, Miss Sweeney.”

“You chased him down the stairs, and kept pursuing him even after he hurled you through a window. Were you fighting over Kathleen Flynn?”

“Who?”

“Seamus Flynn’s daughter. He owns the boardinghouse.”

“Ah, her,” he said. “Yes, that’s it. Clashing horns over a female. Oldest story in the book.”

“No, but really—”

“Yes, indeed. It was the strangely beguiling Kathleen Flynn. Now will you kindly shut up and leave me to my gong?”

“Who was that other man in the back parlor with you?” she persisted. “The one who was drinking whiskey while you were smoking opium?”

He closed his eyes; the air left his lungs.

“Was he a friend?” she asked. “Or—”

“No. I barely— I didn’t know him. He just...wandered in there. We struck up a conversation.”

Ah—a semi-solid answer, at last. “You talked about Ernest Tulley,” she said. “You made some fairly strong statements. You must have made friends pretty quickly.”

“Gong and booze will do that to you.”

“You said something about making Tulley pay.”

“Did I? I must have been quite enamored of the enchanting Miss Flynn.”

“Are you protecting someone?”

“Do I seem the type to go to the gallows in someone else’s stead?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “What are you afraid of, Dr. Hewitt? That I’ll discover you really did it? Or that you didn’t?”

“If you’re hoping the opium has loosened my tongue to that degree, I’m afraid you’re in for a disappointment. It takes a good deal more than one bowl to deprive me of my wits.”

“How much
does
it take? More than twenty-five cents’ worth, presumably. As much as what’s in there?” She pointed to the little horn box.

“Good lord, that much smoked at one sitting would kill even me. No, that’s a supply to take with me. Suffice it to say the more I smoke, the more it affects me. A bowl or two at regular intervals, or a tincture of opium if there’s no gong to be found, will keep the shakes and aching at bay so that I can function fairly normally. More than that will gradually strip me of my senses, but in a most...seductive way. No one can appreciate the allure of the poppy until he has experienced it.”

“Do you usually smoke enough to affect your senses?”

“Nearly always. It takes quite some time, and a great deal of gong, but I find it’s the only way I can tolerate myself.”

“They say you killed Ernest Tulley in a frenzy of opium intoxication.”

“What do
you
think?”

She looked around at Will’s fellow pipe fiends, all of whom were in some stage of deep repose. “I should think it would be a miracle if someone under the influence of this drug could summon up the energy for a proper frenzy.”

“Then I suppose I must have killed him calmly, in cold blood,” Will said as he slid aside the tray that separated them. “I just followed him into the alley—or perhaps I cleverly lured him there, and then trapped him.” Bracing an arm on the other side of Nell, he leaned toward her, forcing her back against the wall. He was so close she could feel his breath on her face. “And then...” Steel flickered in the lamplight as he raised the knife to her throat.

Nell held his gaze, reeling inside as if she were looking down off the edge of a steep cliff at night. Evenly, quietly, she said, “Put that thing down. The others will see. They’ll fetch the police.”

“They’ve all nodded off.”

“That boy Lau will see.”

“He can’t see the knife from where he’s sitting. He just thinks I’m kissing you.”

Nell and Will investigate the deaths of a notorious actress and her maid in

by Patricia Ryan writing as P.B. Ryan

Chapter 1

June 1869: Boston

The first thing that struck Nell Sweeney about that morning’s
Daily Advertiser
, even before the front page headline in inch-high type, was the illustration that accompanied it. It was a portrait in three-quart profile, deftly inked, of a lady of dark and arresting beauty: feral eyes, audacious cheekbones, rouged lips parted to bare the edges of her teeth. Diamonds encircled her throat and her great, gleaming torrent of loose hair. She gripped a dagger the size of a butcher knife with both hands.