Murder in a mill town (32 page)

Peter said, “Hey, Denny, weren’t you finishing up your breakfast when I came down here half an hour ago?”

“I worked up an appetite between then and now.” Dennis caught the eye of Mary Agnes, who smirked and nudged him with her shoulder.

Peter looked at Nell and then quickly lifted his teacup, ears reddening.

Dennis scooped up the newspaper and handed it to Mary Agnes as they sat side-by-side at the other end of the table. “That’s the one I was telling you about,” he said, pointing to the picture of Virginia Kimball as he speared a slice of ham with his knife and lifted it to his mouth.

“What did you mean about people not wanting to be seen at her funeral?” Nell asked.

Dennis chuckled as he tore off half the slice with his teeth. Chewing with a wide-open mouth, he said, “Let’s just say I’ve heard some things that’d make a prissy little miss like you keel over in a dead faint.”

“Rumors,” Peter said.

Dennis rolled his eyes. “She was an
actress
, Pete. You know as well as I do what that means. A whore’s a whore, and all the diamond necklaces in the world won’t—”

“Watch your mouth in front of the lady,” Peter warned.

Denny said, “The
lady
shouldn’t ask a question if she can’t handle the answer.”

“You might at least mind what you say in front of Gracie,” Nell said.

“What about
me?
” Mary Agnes demanded through a mouthful of hash, scowling petulantly when no one responded.

Dennis frowned at Gracie, still stirring her porridge with her back to them, blessedly oblivious to the conversation. “You ask me,” he said, “the little by-blow’s got no business being in this house, much less—”

“Denny!” Peter looked around anxiously. “What are you thinking, man?”

Nell leaned toward Dennis and said, in a voice strained with fury, “If Mrs. Hewitt were to find out what you just called that child, she would sack you on the spot, and without references.” When Viola adopted the newborn Gracie five years ago, she made it clear to her household staff that the child was to be treated exactly as if she’d been born into the family. Any reference to her being the illegitimate child of a former chambermaid would be punished with dismissal.

“You gonna tattle on him?” Mary Agnes sneered.

“
I
will,” Peter said, “next time it happens—so help me God, I will. You’re pushing your luck, Denny.”

“And you’re wasting your time, Petey-boy, trying to impress that one.” Dennis cocked his head toward Nell. “The likes of us ain’t good enough for the high-reaching Miss Nell Sweeney, never mind we was all spawned out of the same slimy Irish bogs.”

High-reaching. Highfalutin. Lace-curtain. Priggish. Stiff-rumped...
Nell had heard them all, and then some.

Being a governess—that is to say, neither servant nor gentlewoman, but that most exotic of species, an independent working woman—was complicated enough, inasmuch as one never quite fit in, either with the household staff or the family. But being a governess who’d sprung from such humble roots, most having been born into the upper classes, meant that not only was she unique, she was uniquely reviled. The rank and file servants—most of them, anyway—resented the special treatment they felt she’d somehow finagled for herself. As for the nobs, well, there were exceptions, like Viola and Will, but the majority neither understood nor trusted her; some, such as August Hewitt and his son Harry, viewed her with outright suspicion, if not loathing.

In the Hewitts’ household—indeed, in their entire world of Brahmin pomp and privilege—there was literally no one quite like Nell, no established niche for her in the caste system, no recognized rules of comportment, no
place
. On the one hand, it could be, and often was, a somewhat lonely existence. On the other, the lack of ready-made parameters left her free to establish her own, within certain limits—which she’d gotten awfully adept at stretching.

“Denny’s right, Pete. You’re wastin’ your time.” Mary Agnes darted a sly little glance in Nell’s direction. “Her Highness has got her sights set on bigger game than you. You know who she’s been makin’ time with in the Public Garden every afternoon, don’t you?”

Peter came to Nell’s rescue while she was groping for a response. “You shouldn’t be listening to idle talk, Mary Agnes—either of you, whether it’s about Nell or Mrs. Kimball or anyone.”

“Especially Mrs. Kimball,” Nell said. “The lady is dead—murdered, for pity’s sake—and all you can do is gossip about her. Anyone’s death should be greeted with sadness. We all deserve that much.”

“Brady sure seems to think so,” Dennis said with a snicker.

“What do you mean?” Nell asked. Brady, the Hewitts’ driver, had become, during Nell’s five years with the family, almost like a father to her.

Dennis grinned as he stuffed half a scone into his mouth. “He was in here before, when I was having my breakfast—my other breakfast. I was trying to make conversation, but all he wanted to do was read the paper, which is how he is. All of a sudden, his mouth drops open and he kind of...” Dennis gasped and covered his mouth in illustration. “I asked him what was wrong, but he never pays me no mind. He just finished his reading. When he looked up, I swear to God he had tears in his eyes. A grown man—old as my pa, older maybe—and he’s blubbering like a little girl. Never knew he was such a cow-baby.”

“Where is he now?” Nell asked.

Dennis shrugged. “He left right after that. Said he had to go wash the brougham.”

Nell looked from Dennis to Gracie—still stirring away industriously—to Peter. “Peter, do you think you could keep an eye on her for a few minutes while I—”

“Go,” Peter said, shooing her up from the table and out the back door.

Nell stepped outside to find the half-risen sun casting a sanguine luminescence over the backyard. It was a small yard, absurdly so considering the size and grandeur of “Palazzo Hewitt,” as Will had dubbed the Italianate mansion overlooking Boston Common. Viola had planted a charmingly frowsy English-style garden on the tiny patch of land, framed on either side by ivy-covered trellises and in back by a sizable red-roofed Tuscan cottage that served as a carriage house—or, more accurately, a combination stable and carriage house, half the ground floor being fitted out with horse stalls, while the other half housed the Hewitts’ fleet of coaches and buggies. The sprawling second floor provided living quarters for Brady and most of the other male servants.

Nell hesitated before the iron-hinged double carriage door, thinking it was unlike Brady to close it while he was working inside, especially on a mild summer morning like this. She knocked, waited, knocked again. “Brady?”

Once, shortly after she’d first come to work for the Hewitts, Nell had addressed the amiable Irishman as “Mr. Brady.” He’d laughed and said, “It’s just Brady, miss—plain old Brady.” She had no idea whether that was his first or last name. To this day, despite their close friendship, he insisted on addressing Nell as Miss Sweeney in deference to her station within the household.

She creaked the door open and entered the long, stone-walled carriage bay, which was utterly silent save for the rustling of her skirts. It was cool inside, and dim, the windows being few and small. Through the arched doorway to the right came muffled whinnies and the scents of horseflesh and hay. To the left stretched a shadowy double row of vehicles, with a corona of light at the very end. Squinting, Nell made out a lantern hanging from one of the far back rafters.

She walked toward the light, passing Mr. Hewitt’s one-seat bachelor coupe, Viola’s elegant little Victoria, Martin’s Coal Box buggy, the pony wagonette that had been Gracie’s Christmas present from Viola last year, a four-passenger bob sleigh for winter traveling, two nondescript gigs and a cart for the servants’ use, and finally the gem of the collection, the family brougham.

The stately coach shone like black glass through a constellation of droplets, except for the oilcloth-draped driver’s seat. Water dripped from its body and wheels, dissolving into the floor of packed earth; a bucket with a washrag slung over it stood on a bench in the corner. Brady, in shirtsleeves and a damp canvas apron, his back to Nell, stroked a chamois methodically over the vehicle, coaxing it to a high gloss as he dried it off.

Nell was about to say his name again when he stilled and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Without turning around, said, in a damply gruff, Irish-accented voice, “Go, away, miss. I’m fine.”

“Did you know her?” Nell asked softly.

He expelled a long, tremulous sigh. “She was my niece.”

Stunned, Nell almost said,
Virginia Kimball was your niece?
when she realized her mistake. “The maid, you mean?”
Fiona something...

“Fee Gannon. Fiona, but we called her Fee. My little sister’s girl.” He sniffed, straightened up, and resumed his polishing. 

“Oh, Brady, I’m sorry.” She came closer, rested a hand on his broad back.

He just kept on rubbing the chamois over the brougham, taking care to obliterate every trace of moisture from its surface.

Shot in the head...
That was bad enough. But
Miss Gannon was found clutching a number of her late mistress’s famous diamond necklaces...

“Brady...” she began.

“She didn’t do it.” He met Nell’s gaze over his shoulder, his customary good humor replaced by a rheumy-eyed anguish that made her heart contract in her chest. “She’s a good lass.” He turned back around and continued his work. “Was. She would never... She could never...” He slammed a fist on the side window, muttered something under his breath, and squeaked the chamois over the glass to wipe away the mark. “They got it all wrong. It’s
all wrong
. They didn’t know her like I did. They don’t know.”

“I know.”

“No you don’t,”
Brady said as he spun to face her. It was the first time he’d ever raised his voice to her, and it stabbed something deep inside her, something that made her feel alarmed, uprooted. “You
can’t
know, because you didn’t
know
her.” His chin quivered; tears spilled from his eyes. “You didn’t—” The words died on a choking sob. He slumped against the brougham, the chamois fluttering to the floor, his big, work-roughened hands shielding his face.

Nell drew him into her arms, led him to the bench. “Sit. Sit, Brady.”

He was crying in earnest now, amidst muttered imprecations that she couldn’t quite make out. She handed him her handkerchief. He covered his face with it and doubled over, great, hoarse sobs heaving out of him while she patted his back and made comforting noises.

The carriage bay grew brighter during the several minutes it took Brady to pull himself together. Sunlight streamed through the east-facing windows, gleaming off the brougham.

“I’ll have to wash her again,” Brady said in a shaky, sandy-wet voice as he wiped his nose with Nell’s handkerchief. “She’ll have spotted where I didn’t wipe her down.”

“That can wait.” Nell tightened her arm around this man who’d been her bedrock, her salvation, so many times over the past five years. “Are you all right?”

Brady sighed, his elbows resting heavily on his knees. “She was my only kin, Fee was. My only kin over here. The rest of ‘em, they’re still in the old country.”  He wadded up the sodden handkerchief, dabbed his eyes, then flattened it out, frowning at the elaborately embroidered monogram in the corner. “Oh, look what I’ve done to your pretty handkerchief. I remember when Mrs. Hewitt gave you these.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll have it cleaned,” he said as he folded it up into a neat square.

“I don’t care out the handkerchief, Brady,” Nell said as she smoothed his disheveled hair. “I care about you. I feel so...” Helpless. Frightened. He
was
like her father—more of a father, certainly, than her real father had been. He’d always been there for her, rock-solid, cheerful, reliable. Every Sunday morning, before dawn, he drove her up to St. Stephen’s in the North End for early mass. They’d take one of the little gigs so that they could sit next to each other and talk. He’d offer advice, tell her jokes... Sometimes he even sang to her—hymns or drinking songs, depending on his mood. To see him undone like this... It felt as if the very earth were sliding out from beneath her feet.

Nell said, “I remember you mentioning her.” Brady rarely talked about himself, but he’d spoken with affection of “Fee,” for whom he’d found a position in service when she was orphaned in her teens; that would have been a year or two before Nell came to Boston.

“I thought she worked for the Pratts,” Nell said. Orville Pratt, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Boston, had a law practice with August Hewitt’s closest friend, Leo Thorpe.

Brady nodded. “She started off with them. I got her hired on as a chambermaid when her parents passed on, back in ‘sixty-three. Or rather, Mrs. Hewitt did, as a favor to me. She’s a very great lady, Mrs. Hewitt, with a good heart. You don’t find many like her up in them lofty ranks.”

“That’s for sure.”

Brady drew in a shaky breath and let it out slowly. “Fee never did take to the Pratts. Said they demanded too much of her.”

“In terms of the workload, or...?”