Death on Beacon Hill

by P. B. Ryan

  “Max was inconsolable,” Foster said. “Weeping, clawing at his head. His clothes were covered with blood, his hair sticking out at all angles—I don’t know what had happened to his hat. I remember thinking how sad it was to see him like that—he’s quite the dandy, always so well turned out. He’d cornered the detective in charge, fellow named Skinner, and wouldn’t let him go. He kept saying he knew who’d killed Virginia, and that it wasn’t Fiona Gannon—that’s what the maid was called.”

  “Really?”

  “He said it was an important man, very wealthy and powerful, but that he was afraid to name him out loud with so many strangers about. He said he’d come to the Detectives’ Bureau in City Hall the next morning, and tell him then. After he left, Skinner made some crude remarks to some of the constables—you know, about Max being a weepy old cot-betty, and how the local matrons shouldn’t meddle in murder cases, that sort of thing. They were roaring with laughter when I left. I went home and poured myself a whiskey and then a few more. I don’t even remember going to bed that night, but when I woke up in the morning, I realized I had a problem.”

  “Yes?” Will said when Foster didn’t continue.

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

  “Because I understand why you cared about Virginia Kimball. It the same reason I cared about her.”

  Presently Foster said, “My old friend is no longer dean of the medical school. The new fellow, Calvin Ellis—it’s well known that he’s a man of strong ethics and principles. He’s considering me for assistant dean, which is something I’ve wanted for a very long time. When I woke up that morning, I realized how damaging it could be if the Red Book were to be made public at this particular juncture.”

  “What did you do?” Will asked, although of course he already knew.

  “I bribed the detective handling the case to bury that damned book as deep as he could—or preferably, burn it—if it should ever come to light.”

  “I suppose I can’t really blame you.”

  “So now that I’ve told you all my darkest secrets,” Foster said in an amused tone, “you owe it to me to buy my house.”

  “All right.”

  Foster chuckled. “Seriously, think about it and—”

  “I have thought about it. Nine thousand, you said?”

  “Um...”

  Nell was as stunned as Isaac Foster—more so.

  “A whole house for less than it takes to buy a secondhand gun,” Will said. “That sounds like a bargain to me.”

  * * *

  “You’re buying the house?” Nell asked incredulously as they strolled back up Acorn after their visit to Foster; they were on foot today.

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “Well, yes, but what does a single man—a single man who’s away from home most of the time—need with such a big house?”

  “Perhaps I’m trying to attract the more desirable young ladies,” he said, mimicking Winifred Pratt’s advice.

  “Hewitt!” They turned to see Isaac Foster leaning out of a second floor window, his hands cupped around his mouth. “This Madame Blavatsky character...?”

  “A gibbering madwoman,” Will called back. “No doubt about it.”

  Foster grinned as if a colleague had just confirmed his diagnosis. “Have your lawyer contact Pratt about the house. I’ve just got one stipulation. The sale is dependent upon your applying to teach medical jurisprudence at Harvard.”

  “What?”

  “Just make an appointment with the dean and propose the course. You don’t have to accept the position, even if he offers it. You just have to apply for it.”

  “Now, wait a—”

  “Within the week.” Foster waved goodbye and shut the window.

  * * *

  “Miss Nell Sweeney and Dr. William Hewitt to see Mr. Thurston.” Will handed his card to the handsome young valet who’d opened the lime green door.

  The valet, clad in a martially inspired blue uniform with fringed epaulettes and lots of gold braid, gestured them into a palatial entry hall. Lifting a silver salver from the hallstand, he placed Will’s card in it and disappeared down the hall.

  He returned a minute later and invited them to follow him back down the hall to a solarium so bursting with potted trees, bushes, ferns and vines that it looked as if a tropical forest had erupted right up through the slate floor. In the middle of the room stood a green wicker table with Will’s calling card on it. Maximilian Thurston, a spotless linen apron tied over his lounging jacket, stood with his back to them, one hand gripping his antler-head cane while the other tilted a watering can over a tub of philodendrons.

  Without pausing in his task or even looking over his shoulder at them, Thurston asked, “Do I know you, Dr. Hewitt?”

  “We met in passing some years ago.” Will’s resonant British drawl made Thurston’s ersatz accent seem rather inane by comparison. “I doubt you’d remember me.”

  Only when the philodendrons were thoroughly watered did Thurston slowly straighten up and turn to face them. He looked sallow in the dappled sunlight filtering through his indoor jungle, and a bit stooped—older than on the day of Virginia Kimball’s funeral. His grooming, however, was impeccable, from the top of his slickly combed head to the toes of his tassled slippers. The slippers and jacket were precisely the same cobalt blue as the design on his floral neck scarf.

  Thurston squinted at Will from across the room, then at Nell. “Some coffee, please, Christopher,” he told the footman, who bowed and left.

  Will stepped forward and laid his hat on the table. “Sir, Miss Sweeney and I are making inquiries into the death of Virginia Kimball on behalf of Fiona Gannon’s uncle. He believes her to be innocent, and he would like to see her exonerated.”

  Thurston laughed shortly. “Good luck to him.”

  Nell said, “We’ve just come from the home of Dr. Isaac Foster. He told us you have your own theory as to who was responsible. Do you mind if we ask you some questions?”

  “It won’t do you any good,” Thurston turned and began watering an India rubber plant so huge that it curved back on itself at the ceiling. “I’ve already tried to get the authorities to listen to reason. I went to that little weasel of a detective. He patted me on the head, then had his bully-boys escort me from the building. He simply did not want to hear it.”

  “Hear what?” Nell asked.

  “That Orville Pratt killed Virginia,” Thurston said without turning around. “Fiona, too, but that’s just because she happened to be there. It was Virginia he’d come gunning for.”

  Chapter 11

  Christopher returned with a tray set out with three cups of coffee, a plate of pastel-hued petit fours, a bowl of sugar, a pitcher of cream, and a decanter of amber liquid. He arranged these things on the table, bowed, and left.

  “What reason would Orville Pratt have had for wanting to kill Mrs. Kimball?” Nell asked.

  “Let’s just say he and Virginia had a little falling out.” Crossing stiffly to the table, Thurston set down the watering can and pulled the glass stopper out of the carafe. “Courvoisier,” he said as he poured a splash into a cup of coffee. “Exquisite. You must try it.”

  “A falling out?” Nell stirred a generous dollop of cream into her coffee; she would pass on the cognac, given that it was only midmorning. “That can’t be the only reason you suspect him.”

  “The day before the murder, he showed up at her house and threatened to kill her.” Thurston blew on his coffee, took a sip, and closed his eyes to savor it.

  “Why?” Will asked.

  “He was furious at her.”

  “What about?”

  “That’s not the important bit,” Thurston said. “The important bit is the threat. I heard it with my own ears.”

  “Is that what you told Detective Skinner?” Will asked. “That Mr. Pratt threatened Mrs. Kimball during a row, the substance of which you refused to relate, and on that basis Pratt should be arrested and tried for mur
der?”

  No wonder Skinner hadn’t taken him seriously. Here was this presumably harmless old “cot-betty” who claimed that Orville Pratt was the murderer, but wouldn’t offer any real proof. Meanwhile, some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Boston, possibly including Pratt himself, were paying Skinner to resolve the case without mentioning their names or letting the Red Book come to light.

  “I heard it with my own ears,” Thurston enunciated, as if he might hammer it through their impenetrable skulls if only he said it clearly enough.

  Nell and Will exchanged a look.

  “Why didn’t you speak out at the inquest?” Nell asked.

  “I tried to, but Skinner cut me off. He turned to the coroner and said, ‘Isn’t he only supposed to answer direct questions?’ And the coroner said that was right, and that he was done questioning me, and that the clerk should strike out my ‘extraneous comments.’”

  “If you’d been permitted to speak,” Nell asked, “what would you have told them?”

  “About Pratt coming to Virginia’s house the day before the murder and threatening to kill her,” Thurston said testily, as if he were being forced to reiterate something he’d already made abundantly plain.

  “Not what they’d been arguing about?” Will asked. “Or what their falling out was about, or—”

  “Voltaire said the secret to being a bore is to tell everything.” Thurston set his cup down, took up the watering can, and hobbled back over to his plants.

  Will came to stand next to Thurston. Gently he said, “I know you want to protect Mrs. Kimball. The last thing you want is for all of Boston to find out...certain things about her, things that might reflect poorly on her. But you also want her murderer brought to justice. You can’t achieve one goal without sacrificing the other, so you’re in a quandary. Am I right?”

  Thurston, who’d stood utterly still, his watering can poised over a bamboo palm as Will delivered that little speech, turned to look at him.

  “We already know about the Red Book,” Will said, “and the blackmail.”

  Thurston closed his eyes; he seemed to deflate. “How’d you find out? Foster?”

  “He knew we could keep a confidence,” Will said. “And you need to know that, too. All we care about is finding out who really pulled the trigger that day so that we can clear Fiona Gannon’s name. I swear to you, as one gentleman to another, that I’ll do everything within my power to protect Virginia Kimball’s reputation. I knew Mrs. Kimball. I liked her. At one point, years ago, I even thought I loved her.”

  Thurston studied Will with eyes that shone like blue marbles. “I remember you,” he said in a low, raw voice. “You’re the one who brought all those beautiful white roses to the Boston Theatre that day. She called you Doc for some reason.”

  “Because I’m a...I was a physician,” Will said.

  “She gave them to me, the roses, because, well, that Federici bastard was—” He dipped his head toward Nell. “I beg your pardon, Miss...Sweeney, is it?”

  “Yes. It’s perfectly all right.”

  “She’d received a cable that morning from Il Conte, saying he’d just arrived in New York, and to expect him in Boston that evening. Naturally she couldn’t let him find roses from another man in the house he’d bought her, so she asked me to take them home. They were absolutely superb, so fresh, half of them not even open yet. Six dozen—I counted them. This house never smelled so lovely.”

  The playwright smiled reflectively as he turned to inspect a group of flowering plants—African violets, dwarf gardenias, quite a few varieties of orchids. Will looked at Nell as if to ask, How can I get through to him? but apparently he already had, because Thurston said, “Virginia was faithful to Federici while he was alive. She had no choice—he had his spies. But once he was dead...”

  He shrugged and moved on to a banana tree, probing its soil with a knobby finger. “She had appetites, and she wasn’t afraid to indulge them. That doesn’t mean she was immoral. Frankly, I always thought she was rather brave.”

  “What kinds of gentlemen did she...associate with?” Nell asked.

  “She was attracted to confidence, power, success...”

  “Gentlemen with the means to express their gratitude?” Will ventured.

  Thurston shot him a look. “Why shouldn’t they have been grateful? This was Virginia Kimball, for pity’s sake, not some two-dollar strumpet.”

  “I meant no disrespect,” Will said with a little bow.

  “Yes, they gave her gifts,” Thurston said. “That doesn’t mean she sold herself. There’s a difference.”

  “Of course there is.”

  “And it’s not as if all of them had the means to lavish her with jewels and the like. There were younger ones from time to time—her ‘Pretty Paupers,’ she called them. Beautiful young men who made her feel young. All she expected from them was, well...”

  “Their youthful enthusiasm?” Will said.

  Thurston gave him a droll look. Nell wondered to what extent Mr. Thurston had lived vicariously through Mrs. Kimball’s amorous escapades.

  “Forgive me, Mr. Thurston,” Nell said, “but did the neighbors not complain of seeing gentlemen coming and going from Mrs. Kimball’s home at all hours?”

  “They used the garden entrance on Acorn.” Thurston checked the soil in his hanging plants—Boston ferns, pothos, English ivy—watering some, bypassing others. “They were less likely to be noticed on such a secluded little lane, and even if they were, well, Acorn people don’t generally move in the same circles as Mount Vernon people—except, of course, for Dr. Foster. Virginia kept her garden entrance and courtyard door unlocked for the convenience of her callers. I thought that most unwise, and I told her so on more than one occasion. She said she had her Remington for protection.” Sadly he added, “She thought she was invincible.”

  “When did she take up blackmail?” Will asked.

  “When it all started falling apart for her, poor thing.” Thurston shook the watering can to expel its last drops onto a spider plant, then limped back to the table, dragged out a chair, and sat, grimacing. Will pulled out a chair for Nell, then took a seat himself.

  “With Federici dead,” Thurston said, “and nothing much in the way of savings, she had to rely on her acting income—which was adequate for a few years, because she was very well paid. But the older she got, the fewer roles she was offered, never mind that she was the most brilliant actress—and the most beautiful—in this city, in the whole country, probably. She began to feel the pinch. She was forced to sell off some land she owned outside the city, then some furniture, her jewelry...even those diamond necklaces she loved so much. That broke my heart, when I found out she’d parted with those. She had paste replicas made up, but it just wasn’t the same.”

  “She wouldn’t take anything from you?” Nell asked, although she knew the answer.

  Thurston shook his head morosely. He noticed his cognac-spiked coffee as if for the first time, and took a healthy swallow. “She had her pride. She told me she’d figured a way out of her predicament. Of course, I was appalled when she told me what she had planned. I tried to talk her out of it, but...that Virginia, she was a stubborn one.”

  “Did she blackmail all her ex-lovers?” Nell asked.

  Thurston nodded automatically as he chose a petit four, then shook his head. “Well, no, not the Pretty Paupers, of course, but the rest of them would get a little note within a few weeks of the final farewell. Once I got over my initial reluctance, I used to help her write them. She liked to include excerpts from the Red Book—really humiliating bits guaranteed to make the fellow pay up.”

  “How long had she been keeping that book?” Will asked.

  “Oh, years and years. Sometimes she’d read aloud from it over a Martinez or two in the afternoon. Oh, how we’d laugh,” Thurston said with a sad little smile. “She wrote about you, you know,” he told Will.

  Will looked surprised. “I can’t imagine what she found to write
about.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t the sort of thing she wrote about the others. It was just a few reflections, some observations...quite poignant, really. She actually had quite a flair for writing, but then she was remarkably intelligent. Most people don’t know that about her.”

  “Do you have the Red Book, Mr. Thurston?” Nell asked.

  He gave her a baleful look. “No, Miss Sweeney, I do not. I dearly wish I did. It would almost be like having Virginia back again, or at least her spirit, to be able to re-read some of those entries. And after all, that book represented years of her life, and it wasn’t all about, well...the sport of love. I’d pay anything to have it. But no, I have no idea where it is, unless perhaps Pratt made off with it. She kept it in her bedroom safe, which was open and empty when I got there.”

  Nell said, “She must have targeted quite a few men, to have supported herself for what, several years?”

  “I’ve no intention of naming names, if that’s what you’re after,” Thurston sniffed. “As far as I’m concerned, they have a right to their privacy. They paid enough for it, God knows.”

  “We know about Horace Bacon and Weyland Swann,” Will said. “And, of course, Isaac Foster.”

  “Foster was one of the better ones. I quite liked him. He was good to Virginia. He treated her like a lover, not a...” Thurston glanced at Nell over the rim of his cup. “Not like some of the others did. She was quite forlorn when he ended it. Of course, he was also a good deal younger and handsomer than most of them.”

  “Except for the Pretty Paupers,” Nell said.

  “Well, yes, obviously.”

  “Was Felix Brudermann one of them?” Will asked.

  Thurston lowered his cup with an expression of disgust, but Nell knew it wasn’t the coffee and cognac that had turned his stomach. “Odious, kraut-munching ape. No class, no finesse, and not a mark to his name. She took up with him around Christmastime. I detested him at first sight, and told her so. I said, ‘He’s a mindless brute, Virginia.’ She said, ‘I know. Isn’t it marvelous?’ She said a little dose of brutishness was just what she needed after all those old men. She got what she asked for, and then some. Felix had a rather...aggressive approach to l’amour.”