Death on Beacon Hill

by P. B. Ryan

  Brady had been more distraught than ever when Nell sought him out in his carriage house that morning. She was framed, he insisted, and everybody believes it ‘cause she was Irish. “Inborn,” that means we’re all that way—you, me, all of us from the old country. I won’t rest till it’s put right.

  He’d had Fiona’s body transported to an undertaker on Pearl Street, where he viewed it yesterday evening. Worst thing I ever seen, he told Nell, his eyes welling with tears. She’d been such a pretty little thing. Twenty-one years old. To see her like that, with her head all... His words had died in his chest; his shoulders shook. I wish to God it was me instead.

  Wanting to confirm that Fiona had been shot at point blank range, Nell had coaxed Brady into describing his niece’s head wound. The entry wound on the right temple was small, he said, and surrounded by a mottled black stain that spread over the side of Fiona’s face. The exit wound was a harrowing crater, the left side of her head having been blown entirely away.

  Solemn music blossomed forth from the most spectacular organ Nell had ever seen, its pipes soaring toward the lofty, barrel-vaulted ceiling. It was a handsome church with two rows of tall white columns separating the nave from the side aisles and upper galleries. A gentleman of about sixty in clerical robes—the Reverend Dr. Gannett, she presumed—sat in a tall-backed chair on the altar, leafing through his notes. Having never before set foot in a Protestant church, Nell felt glaringly out of place, and—although she knew it was absurd—conspicuously Irish Catholic.

  A man strolled past her and down the length of the center aisle before pausing at the coffin, one hand stuffed in a trouser pocket, the other holding a bowler at his side. After a moment, he turned and surveyed the church, his gaze lighting one at a time on the assembled mourners. He was slightly built, with close-cropped gray hair—prematurely so, Nell could tell, given the smoothness of his sharp-featured little face. In contrast to the other gentlemen, all in identical black frock coats, he wore a charcoal gray sack suit buttoned over a plaid vest, his feet clad in humble brown brogans.

  Nell had no doubt whatsoever that this was Detective Charlie Skinner. She smiled to herself. I can still pick out the coppers.

  Her smile waned when Skinner fixed his pale-eyed gaze on her for a brief but penetrating assessment. To be stared at by a cop, even fleetingly and from such a distance, made her want to turn and dart out the front door.

  That impulse grew stronger as the detective strode toward her with an air of purpose, but when he was about twenty feet away, he turned and slid into one of the rear pews. Stiffening her spine, Nell walked toward the front of the church, her pace slowing as she approached the strange coffin and saw that its closed lid was one thick sheet of plate glass, offering a head-to-toe view of the deceased. It called to mind an illustration in one of Gracie’s fairy tale books of the glass box in which Snow White was laid to rest after eating the poisoned apple. The casket itself appeared to be white-painted cast iron crafted to look as if it were draped with fabric.

  Of all the many dead bodies Nell had encountered in her twenty-six years, Virginia Kimball’s was by far the most remarkable. Her unbound hair, so black it had to be either a wig or the product of dye, lay in sinuous ripples over the white satin pillow that cradled her head. Even in death, she was striking to look at, with her dramatically arched eyebrows, elegant cheekbones and powder-pale complexion. She’d been painted with stage makeup, Nell realized, right down to the kohl blackening her eyelids. The initial effect was of a lady who looked much younger than her forty-eight years—until one noticed the furrowed throat and slack jowls, the lines radiating from her eyes, the creases bracketing her crimsoned lips.

  Not only were her cosmetics theatrical; her attire was, too. The dead actress wore a slim gown of silvery white satin with trailing sleeves and an ornate golden girdle, a medieval costume that echoed the fairy tale imagery. Garlands of daisies and wildflowers were strewn over her, and lotus blossoms all around her, giving the impression that she was floating on water.

  Nell hitched in a breath when it came to her. She wasn’t Snow White at all. She was Ophelia.

  Even death couldn’t keep Virginia Kimball from playing what had evidently been a favored role, that of the young woman whose love for Hamlet had driven her to drown herself in madness and despair. Nell couldn’t imagine an undertaker doing this of his own volition, nor was it likely to have been stodgy old Orville Pratt’s idea. Mrs. Kimball must have made her own arrangements ahead of time.

  “Jesus,” Nell whispered, then sketched a hasty sign of the cross, appalled to have blasphemed in a church. Her cheeks stung when she noticed Dr. Gannett watching her from his seat on the altar; Protestants didn’t make the sign of the cross. He offered her a reassuring smile before returning his attention to his notes.

  There was no kneeler in front of the coffin, so Nell merely clasped her gloved hands and murmured a prayer for the departed soul of Virginia Kimball. Unwilling, despite her discomfiture, to abandon the customs of her faith, she crossed herself again, to the accompaniment of a glassy little giggle from behind. Turning, she saw Cecilia Pratt eyeing her while whispering into her mother’s ear.

  Nell chose an aisle seat on the left side about ten pews from the front, which afforded her a good view from behind of everyone except Detective Skinner, some eighty or ninety rows back. She withdrew her little tortoiseshell fan from her chatelaine and flicked it open, wondering why it had to be so blasted hot on a morning when she was obliged to wear wool crepe head to toe. The choir rose and sang “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” after which Reverend Gannett stood and crossed to the podium.

  “Infinite Father,” the minister intoned, “God of light and love, we bless Thy name for this beautiful world Thou hast given us—for the love of our families, the peace of our communities, and, even in our tears, for that angel of death whom Thou dost send to each of us in turn...”

  Much as Nell missed the traditional Latin funeral mass, she found it rather refreshing—heretically so, no doubt—to be able to grasp the substance of what was being said. The lengthy prayer was concluded with a paltry chorus of “Amen’s.” One deep male voice, emanating not from the first few pews but from overhead, stood out among the others. Looking up and to the left, Nell saw a handsome black-haired gentleman sitting in the front row of the gallery above her, his forearms resting on the balustrade, his gaze directed not at Reverend Gannett, but at her. Nell’s fan stilled.

  Will.

  Her breath snagged in her throat. How long had he been gone this time? Weeks. No, over a month. It had been April the last time she’d seen him.

  Will inclined his head to her, not quite smiling but almost. He looked pleased to see her, if slightly baffled by her presence here. She nodded back, wondering whether he’d purposely seated himself directly above her.

  She might have guessed that William Hewitt would want to pay his last respects to the actress with whom he’d once been so besotted, even if he hadn’t seen her in some thirteen years. He was like that. He didn’t put parts of himself, of the man he’d been and the people he’d known, in a box to be stored away and forgotten. For better or for worse, he didn’t—couldn’t—just forget and move on. It was a trait that had earned him more than his share of anguish, although Nell was hopeful that he’d learned how to live with his past without letting it consume him.

  Wresting her gaze from Will, Nell studied the mourners in front of her as Dr. Gannett launched into the comfortingly familiar 23rd Psalm. Orville Pratt consulted his pocket watch as his wife batted the air with her fan. Cecilia fussed with the angle of her hat, a stylish little mound of black satin bows and ostrich feathers. The older lady couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from the bizarre coffin. The only Pratt who seemed to be paying any attention at all to the proceedings was Emily, in an oddly appealing chapeau Chinois of unadorned black straw.

  On the other side of the central aisle and a few rows up from Nell sat a lean gentleman of perhaps sixty with sleekly pom
aded gray hair and a salt-and-pepper goatee. He had his head turned toward Dr. Gannett, revealing a high brow and aristocratically aquiline nose. It was the kind of profile that cried out to be sketched in ink with a good, supple steel nib. A walking stick lay across his lap, its handle—a curved length of deer antler—resting on the arm of the pew.

  Resisting the urge to glance back up at the gallery, Nell surveyed the rest of the meager audience. Three were clearly newspapermen, given the industry with which they were taking notes. Judging by the appearance of most of the others—the ladies’ chic frocks and unapologetic face paint, the gentlemen’s dandyish attire—Nell guessed them to be theater people, or hangers-on thereof.

  Dr. Gannett transitioned from the 23rd Psalm to the 84th—one of Nell’s favorites, which he recited beautifully, without a single glance at the notes in front of him. “How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts....”

  The third verse always filled Nell with a melancholic yearning. “Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young...”

  As grateful as Nell was for the life she’d been blessed with these past five years, the fact remained that her house wasn’t her house at all; it was the Hewitts’ house. And her child, the only child who would ever be hers to rear and love, had been sired on a pretty little chambermaid by William Hewitt one night during the war when they were both alone and desolate and needful of comfort.

  Gracie had cried when Nell left her in Edna Parrish’s care this morning. She’d begged to come along, and had argued relentlessly when Nell tried to explain that a funeral was no place for such a young child. Gracie had made it clear that she didn’t like the doddering old Nurse Parrish, and she definitely didn’t like being abandoned by Nell on a weekday. That was how Nell felt, at least part of her—that she’d abandoned her child to go on a wild goose chase for Brady.

  Was Will still watching her? A woozy self-awareness washed over Nell, exacerbated, no doubt, by the heat. She saw herself from the eyes of someone looking down upon her—from Will’s eyes—as she sat in her stark black mourning dress and spoon bonnet, cheeks flushed despite her continual fanning.

  It was very like Will to materialize, ghostlike, at the edge of her vision just when she’d begun to wonder if she’d ever lay eyes on him again. They’d been in close contact last autumn, while they were trying to figure out what had happened to Bridie Sullivan, but since then she’d seen him only sporadically. From time to time, during her post-luncheon outings with Gracie in the Common and Public Garden, he would appear without warning, keep them company for the afternoon, and then vanish for anywhere from two days to two months.

  Nell never asked him about his longer absences. She didn’t want to hear about the cities he visited, the games of faro and poker and vingt-et-un that he won and lost. Although he kept a room here in Boston at the Revere House, where he also stabled his horses and buggy, he still made his living through cards rather than medicine, and that meant he still had to travel to wherever the high-stakes games were being played.

  A man with William Hewitt’s looks and charisma was certain to attract women wherever he went—exotic beauties, nocturnal and a little dangerous, like Will himself. That was the part Nell especially didn’t want to hear about, although it shamed her that she gave it a moment’s thought.

  Whenever Will strolled back into her world again, it was with an air of peculiarly British nonchalance, as if he’d been expected all along. Gracie would squeal with glee and throw herself into the outstretched arms of her “Uncle Will,” whom she had no idea was actually her father. Will would smile at Nell as he hugged his child, who was more or less Nell’s child, too, and for an all too fleeting interlude, they would be like a real family, the happy little family she’d never had.

  After the hug would come the gift. Will never showed up without something for Gracie: a paper doll book, a pair of hair combs, a sack of marbles, a wooden top... Sometimes Nell wondered where he’d acquired these trinkets, as when, following his longest absence, he gave her a miniature porcelain tea set illustrated with scenes from “Little Red Riding Hood,” with captions in French. Had he been back to his old haunts overseas? Nell knew how treacherous those places were—the unlit back alleys, the opium dens, the cheapness with which life was regarded in certain quarters. Will hadn’t told her much, but he’d told her enough. She knew she shouldn’t worry about him.

  But how could she not? Her friendship with William Hewitt, although hardly the illicit relationship that Mary Agnes liked to insinuate, had grown, over the past year and a half, remarkably deep. They shared a rapport of the mind that she would have thought impossible when she’d first met him, bloodied and filthy and in the throes of opium withdrawal.

  The psalms were followed by passages from Matthew and John and another hymn from the choir, after which Dr. Gannett returned to the podium. “We are met here today to pay the offices of respect to Mrs. Virginia Evelyn Kimball. Her tenure on earth has come to an end, as it must, in due course, for each of us. No more roles will she play, be they penned by man or by the Heavenly Father. No more trials shall she face, nor temptations, nor discord. The play that was her life has run its course; the curtains have been drawn shut...”

  At the conclusion of the sermon, Dr. Gannett introduced “Mrs. Kimball’s oldest and dearest friend, Mr. Maximilian Thurston.”

  The gentleman with the goatee rose and stepped up onto the altar with the assistance of his cane, which he leaned against the podium. He withdrew a folded sheaf of paper from inside his coat—an impeccably tailored double-breasted black frock coat with satin-piped velvet lapels, to which a little cluster of violets had been affixed. It was unbuttoned, revealing a waistcoat of black and purple brocade, colors reflected in both his pocket handkerchief and the paisley scarf tied in a lavish bow around his winged shirt collar. Not quite proper mourning attire, but not necessarily a sign of disrespect; Mr. Thurston was a playwright, after all, and artistic types tended to flout convention.

  He lifted the gold monocle hanging from a chain around his neck, fitted it to his right eye, smoothed out his notes, and cleared his throat. “‘Doubt thou the stars are fire,’” he read in a pseudo-British accent commonplace among Boston’s cultural elite. “‘Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar... But never doubt I love.’”

  Looking up, he said, “So Hamlet wrote to his fair Ophelia. As he revered his lady love, so I revered my dear...” Thurston’s voice faltered. He paused, eyes shimmering, and drew in a tremulous breath. “My dear, dear Virginia. I daresay she captivated me from the moment I first laid eyes upon her, some twenty-one years ago.

  “It was at the Howard Athenaeum, shortly after it had been rebuilt, when it was still quite luxurious, you know. We were casting my play Merry Misadventure, which some of you may recall, and an unknown young actress, new to Boston, had come out to audition for the ingénue role. At first, I was loath to even let her read, having been told that she was dark-haired, for I’d written the character as very fair. But no sooner did Virginia Kimball walk onto the stage that afternoon than I knew I had my Gwendolyn....”

  Mr. Thurston continued in that vein for quite some time, delivering what amounted to a résumé of Virginia Kimball’s acting career, with particular emphasis on plays authored by him, supplemented with personal observations and anecdotes. Some years ago, he said, having grown weary of the footlights and the ceaseless public attention, Mrs. Kimball retired from the stage to devote herself to gardening and good works.

  “For that benign, peaceable life to have been cut short in such a manner...” Mr. Thurston shook his head. “I shan’t ever understand it. My only consolation is that the First Lady of the Boston Stage played her final scene in the manner of a tragic heroine. Somehow I suspect she would have found a certain measure of satisfaction in that. I shall try to do the same. As the grieving Laertes said of his late, beloved sister, ‘Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I for
bid my tears.’”

  Mr. Thurston folded up his notes and slid them back into his coat, removed his monocle, lifted his cane, and descended the altar. But instead of returning immediately to his seat, he paused by the coffin, kissed his fingertips, and touched them to the glass over Virginia Kimball’s face.

  “Lay her in the earth,” he said in a hoarse, shaky voice, “and from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring.”

  Slipping the violets out of his lapel, he placed them on the spot he’d touched. “Sweets to the sweet. Farewell, Virginia.”

  He looked up and scanned the mourners until his gaze lit on Orville Pratt. His eyes, bright with unshed tears, iced over with a naked virulence that sucked the air out of Nell’s lungs. Winifred Pratt turned to look at her husband, who appeared to be staring not at Mr. Thurston, but straight ahead. Something like contempt crept into Thurston’s expression before he finally turned away and walked slowly back to his seat.

  The entire episode had lasted two, perhaps three seconds. It had felt like an hour.

  * * *

  It was about ten minutes later, while the choir was plodding through a particularly long and lugubrious hymn, that Nell noticed movement in the gallery overhead. She looked up to see Will walking toward the back of the church.

  His gait was slightly rigid, thanks to the old bullet wound in his leg, but much improved from the terrible limp that had plagued him last Autumn and Winter, after he’d stopped injecting morphine. Perhaps his body was finally accustoming itself to the lack of opiates, or perhaps it was simply a function of the warmer weather; most likely a bit of both.

  Nell waited a few moments after he ducked into the stairwell, and then she turned and looked down the center aisle to the front door of the church. Will was standing there, a tall, spectral figure backlit by the glaring morning sun. He lit a cigarette and flicked out the match. His hand seemed to move in a beckoning gesture—or was that just a trick of the light?