Death on Beacon Hill

by P. B. Ryan

  “Doc.” Vera crossed the room in a leisurely way, hips swaying, her gaze fixed on Will. “It’s been so long.” She reached up to stroke his cheek, her eyes glimmering. “There are so many things I’ve wanted to say to you, explain to you...”

  Emily stepped forward. “Aunt Ver—”

  Nell grabbed her arm and shook her head.

  Will glanced at Nell, then met Vera’s eyes. “There’s no need to explain, Mrs. Kimball.”

  “But I was so cruel to you.”

  “You had your reasons. I understand. I do, really.”

  Vera closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were wet with tears. “If you knew how much it means to me, hearing you say that.”

  Will nodded, looking slightly stunned.

  Vera’s gaze lit on the Red Book in Will’s hand, and the letters Nell and Foster were holding. “Y’all are probably wondering what I’ve been up to,” she said with a wicked little smile.

  Nell said, “It looks to be the same thing you were up to before your...tragic demise.”

  Vera chuckled as she lifted the glass to her mouth. “It’d take more than one puny little bullet in the chest to keep Virginia Kimball from her fun.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” Nell said. “I can’t help wondering how you pulled it off, though.”

  “My miraculous resurrection, you mean?” With an airy wave of her hand, she said, “Nothing to it. Vera was looking for a departed spirit to ‘inhabit her earthly shell,’ which was actually a pretty good idea, seeing as how she has no personality of her own to speak of. I, meanwhile, took one look at the Other Side and just knew I had to get back into a nice, warm body as soon as I could. Not that I’m too keen on this one,” she said with a contemptuous glance down at herself, “and I’m definitely not looking forward to sleeping all alone in that sad little bed of hers, but I reckon beggars can’t be choosers. And there is a certain comic irony in possessing the body of the person who did you in. Max should write a play about that. It’d be a hoot.”

  Emily sucked in a breath; Foster wrapped an arm around her. “So you really...I mean Vera...she really m-murdered...?”

  “Your aunt is what you call a ‘killer mouse.’” Vera propped the bed pillow against the wall and reclined there with her drink in her hand, looking like Cleopatra on her barge. “She just scuttles along the walls trying not to be noticed, squeaking and creeping, creeping and squeaking, then one day she all of a sudden goes on the attack.”

  Will leaned against the desk. “What was it, do you suppose, that incited this particular mouse to attack? What happened that afternoon to set her off?”

  “We know you’d been out shopping,” Nell said.

  “Oh, I’d bought the prettiest little hat you ever saw, and now I’m never going to get to wear it, thanks to Vera Pratt, damn her. She was already there when I got home, raising hell with poor Fee up in my room. I heard them as soon as I walked in the front door. When I got upstairs, I found my jewelry case open and my necklaces spilling out. Vera had a big ol’ gun in her hand, but her back was to me, so she didn’t notice me right away. She was screaming at Fee to give her the Red Book.”

  “So you fetched your Remington pocket pistol from under your pillow,” Nell said.

  “Yes, but Vera turned and saw me, so she grabbed Fee by her apron sash and held the gun to her head. That’s when I realized it was Orville’s precious Stonewall Jackson gun. I said, ‘So you’re the one who stole it.’ She told me it was actually you, Emily. She said she swiped it out from under your mattress to punish you after you made plans to take ship without her. She’d been hoping to use my necklaces to pay for her own travels—until she got a good look at them and realized they were paste. She came up with a backup plan, though.”

  “This.” Will held up the Red Book.

  “So she could blackmail her brother?” Nell asked.

  Vera shrugged. “And maybe some of the others. Who knows how a mind like that works? Fee, bless her heart, refused to tell her where the book was. She told me not to tell, either. She kept saying Vera could never kill her, that she didn’t have it in her, but I wasn’t so sure, especially when Vera cocked the hammer back.”

  “So it was a standoff,” Will said, “you with your gun aimed at Vera, and Vera with her gun on Fiona.”

  “Vera swore she’d shoot Fee if I didn’t give up the book. It wasn’t worth gambling with Fee’s life, so I told her it was in the safe behind the painting, and I tossed her the keys—along with a warning that I’d kill her if she hurt Fee. Vera told Fee to take the painting down. Fee refused. Vera screamed at her, threatened her... Fee tried to grab the gun. That’s when...” Vera squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head. “It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. There was this...explosion, and Fee’s head just...” She gulped her drink with a palsied hand, tears trickling from her eyes.

  “You tried to shoot Vera then?” Nell asked.

  “Yes, but I missed. I’m an atrocious shot. She fired at me, and next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, feeling like there was a hundred-pound sandbag on my chest. I opened my eyes and saw Vera gathering up the necklaces and putting them in Fee’s hands. I realized she was framing her, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything to stop her.”

  Will said, “Tonight, when Miss Sweeney and I told Vera that it looked as if the case would be reopened and Fiona exonerated, she changed the scapegoat to Emily.” It was odd to hear him speaking to Vera about herself in the third person, but this entire encounter had been bizarre. “She was subtle about it. She kept insisting Emily couldn’t have committed the murder, yet she made sure to provide us with ample ammunition with which to prove her guilty of just that.”

  “Manipulation and suggestion,” Vera said. “The arsenal of powerless women everywhere.”

  Foster said, “Perhaps I should, er, head on over to Joy Street?” He meant the Joy Street police station.

  Nell shook her head. “City Hall, the Detectives’ Bureau. Colin Cook will be on duty. You’re best off fetching him.”

  “What now?” Vera asked as Foster left. “They slap me in manacles and measure me for a noose? What an ignominious end for dried up, crazy old Vera Pratt—that’s what everyone will think. They won’t realize they’re actually hanging the murder victim.” She laughed as she tilted her glass to her mouth. “A true comedy of the absurd.”

  “I doubt very much that you’ll hang, Miss Pratt,” said Nell, deliberately using her real name in the hope of snapping her out of her delusion. “In all likelihood—assuming your lawyer’s up to snuff—you’ll be found not guilty by reason of insanity.”

  “Yes, of course,” Vera mused. “They’ll think I’m mad. They’ll never believe it’s actually me. You don’t, and you’ve been talking to me all this time—why should they? They’ll assume Vera is simply insane.”

  Emily said, “We’ll testify that we saw you this way, Aunt Vera.”

  “That’s right,” Will said. “And Dr. Foster and I are physicians. We’re familiar with this sort of psychological anomaly. So when you’re, well, Vera again, if there’s any doubt that you had displayed another personality—”

  “When I’m Vera again?” She sat bolt upright, laughing incredulously. “What on earth makes you think I’d ever want to be Vera again?”

  “But...” Nell glanced at Will and Emily, who looked as befuddled as she felt. “Surely...eventually...”

  “If you think I’d give up this body, sorry though it is, and go back to that dreary Other Side, then you’re madder than I’ll ever be. Oh, no. I’m not going anywhere, and if Vera doesn’t like it, she’s only got herself to blame.”

  She smiled as she settled back against the pillow and raised her glass to her mouth. “Seriously, though, why on earth would she ever want me to leave?”

  * * *

  July 1869

  Roxbury, Massachusetts

  “Is that Max Thurston?” Will asked as he and Nell, with Gracie snugged between them in his phaeton, drove u
p to the entrance gate of Forest Hills Cemetery. A majestic, gothic-inspired edifice complete with arches and turrets, it looked more like the gateway to a medieval castle than to a graveyard, however swanky.

  There were a handful of people milling about on this sunny Friday morning, Forest Hills’ acres of picturesque parkland being a popular destination for strolls and picnics. One of those people was a nattily attired, goateed gentleman exiting slowly through the main arch with the aid of a cane.

  “Mr. Thurston!” Nell called as Will wrapped the reins around the brake handle.

  Thurston looked toward them, his free hand shading his eyes, and waved. Nell had wondered if they’d run into him. Although this was their first visit to Virginia Kimball’s final resting place, Thurston was still, some six weeks after her interment, paying almost daily visits to her gravesite.

  “Would you carry these for me?” Will asked Gracie as he retrieved the flowers he’d brought along from the floor of the groom’s seat.

  Gracie’s eyes widened as she took the bouquet, which was enormous and bound with a wide crimson ribbon. “This is the pwettiest thing I’ve ever seen!”

  They joined Thurston on the walkway leading to the gate. He tipped his silk top hat to Nell and Gracie, asking, “And who is this lovely little lady?”

  “Gwace Elizabeth Lindleigh Hewitt,” Gracie said.

  “Hewitt, eh? A relation of yours, I assume?” Thurston asked Will.

  “She’s my...” Will hesitated, having always hated to lie, especially to people for whom he felt some measure of fondness. Thurston’s friendship with Nell and Will had been cemented when they gave him the Red Book, a gesture of affection and trust that had moved him to tears.

  “Gracie is his mother’s adopted child,” Nell said; the truth, if a vague and partial version of it. “I look after her.”

  “What an enviable vocation.” Leaning down to Gracie, the playwright said, “That’s quite a bouquet you’ve got there, Miss Hewitt.”

  “It’s for a lady who went to heaven,” Gracie said.

  Thurston pressed a hand to the small of his back and straightened up slowly, smiling at the child’s artless statement. “A very thoughtful gesture.” To Nell and Will, he said, “The monument is up.”

  “Yes, we’re looking forward to seeing it,” Nell said. Thurston had commandeered from Orville Pratt the responsibility for commissioning a tombstone for Mrs. Kimball’s grave, a duty Mr. Pratt had eagerly relinquished.

  “I say, Hewitt,” Thurston exclaimed. “Very sharp neck scarf you’ve got there—very sharp, indeed. So good to see you showing a little style.”

  “Er, thank you,” Will said as he adjusted the swath of orange and yellow striped silk knotted around his throat.

  “I made it for him,” Gracie said proudly. “For his birthday. And Miseeney painted a picture of me and put it in a gold fwame and gave it to him for his new house.”

  “Well done,” Thurston praised. “So, when was your birthday, old man, and why wasn’t I told of it?”

  Nell answered for him. “It was yesterday—and he didn’t want a fuss made.”

  “So, in direct opposition to my wishes,” Will said, “these two impudent wenches cooked me up a much too grand birthday dinner in my new kitchen.”

  “We had to bwing our own pots and pans,” Gracie said, “‘cause Uncle Will doesn’t have any, and we ate on a blanket in the garden, ‘cause there’s no table in his dining woom, and no chairs, neither.”

  “Either,” Nell said.

  “Either. But we put candles and flowers on the blanket, just like a table, and it was so, so pwetty when the sun went down.” Gracie was bobbing up and down now, as she did when she got excited. “Miseeney made oyster soup and bluefish and beef with mushwooms and apple fwitters—for me, ‘cause I love them—and tomato salad, but she didn’t make me eat that, ‘cause I hate tomatoes.”

  “Don’t care for,” Nell said softly.

  “Don’t care for tomatoes. At all. I made the powidge.”

  Thurston cocked his head. “Powidge?”

  “With waisins and honey.”

  “Gracie’s specialty,” Nell explained.

  “And we had chocolate cake for dessert, but Misseeney said thirty-four candles was too many to fit on a cake, so we just had one big one, and it dwipped all over the fwosting, but it tasted good anyway.”

  “What a lovely way to end a dinner al fresco,” Thurston said. “It sounds divine. I say, why don’t the three of you join me tomorrow evening for a cold supper in my courtyard?”

  “What a delightful invitation,” Nell said, “but I’m afraid Gracie and I will be on our way to the Cape by then.”

  “Oh, well, that won’t do at all,” Thurston said with mock petulance. “When will you be back?”

  “The end of August.”

  “Well, then, I shall have to plan some absurdly lavish dinner to celebrate your return—something really overblown and vulgar. In the meantime,” he said earnestly, “I shall miss you a great deal, Miss Sweeney. I’ve been very blessed, indeed, to have made friends such as you and Dr. Hewitt at this...difficult time. When I lost Virginia...”

  He glanced at Gracie, who was now several yards away, practicing her curtseys with the bouquet in her outstretched hand. “I was tempted, seriously tempted, to join her in oblivion. I couldn’t conceive of ever feeling anything but pain. Virginia would have been appalled, of course. She would have sneered at my weakness, berated me for it. Say what you will about her, but she never gave in, never lost sight of what she really wanted in life.”

  “Which was?” Nell asked.

  “To be magnificent.” Thurston smiled. “People always assumed she was some pampered southern belle, that she’d grown up on a plantation with the best of everything, and she let them believe it. But the truth is, her father was an itinerant preacher, one of these real hellfire and brimstone types. A real hard case, too. He believed that he could instill a sense of godliness in his offspring through frequent and vigorous beatings.”

  Will looked toward Gracie, his jaw tight.

  “He traveled all over Tennessee and Kentucky, dragging his family with him. It was Virginia’s job to collect the offerings. She told me she used to watch the basket fill up and imagine all the things she could do with her life if that money was hers to keep. She was always dreaming of something better. That was one reason she liked Fiona Gannon so much—they had that in common.”

  “How did she end up in Boston?” Will asked.

  “There was this young man, the son of a family they were staying with, the Kimballs. He was her first love. He asked her to marry him, and she said yes. The next day, he...” Thurston glanced at Gracie to make sure she was out of earshot. “He fell on a... I can’t remember what she called it. Some sort of horse-drawn farm implement with iron spikes...”

  Nell winced. “Oh.”

  “She was devastated, of course. And then she realized she was with child—fifteen years old, pregnant, and the father dead. She reckoned her father might actually beat her to death if he found out. So, one Sunday after the collection, she emptied the basket into her purse and bought a train ticket to New York. That’s where she got started in theater—well, low theater, you know, but she loved it, and she was a natural. She said listening to her father rant and rave from the pulpit all those years had been good training for burlesque.”

  “What of the baby?” Nell asked.

  Thurston shook his head. “Cholera took him when he was just an infant—that terrible epidemic back in ‘thirty-two.”

  “Oh, how awful.”

  “Virginia managed to break into the legitimate theater,” Thurston said. “She learned her craft, and well, too. By the time she arrived in Boston, she was the best there was.”

  “I wish you could have seen her act,” Will told Nell. “She really was quite brilliant.”

  Thurston said, “I asked her to marry me once.”

  Nell and Will stared at him.

  “She
just laughed, of course, so I pretended it was in jest. But it wasn’t. Virginia Kimball was the only woman I ever loved.”

  Nell didn’t know what to say to that. From Will’s nonplused expression, neither did he.

  “Miss Sweeney...” Thurston lifted his hat and executed a courtly bow. “I meant it when I said I’d miss you. Hewitt...” He offered his hand. “We’re neighbors now. I shall expect to see much more of you.”

  “You shall.”

  Thurston called goodbye to Gracie, who ran up to give him a farewell hug. He returned the embrace with obvious feeling and kissed the top of her head before taking his leave.

  “I don’t understand,” Nell said as she watched him limp toward his waiting carriage.

  “About his wanting to marry Mrs. Kimball?”

  “Well, yes. He’s... I mean, men like that, aren’t they just supposed to be attracted to...other men?”

  “Love is a capricious phenomenon. It doesn’t always go where it should or do what we expect it to.” He took her arm to escort her through the main archway, while Gracie skipped on ahead.

  Inscribed in gilded letters on the gate were the words I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE, which made Nell think of Vera, that night they’d found the Red Book in her room, speaking of her—or rather, Virginia Kimball’s—“miraculous resurrection.” Since her arrest on a charge of double murder, Vera had clung stubbornly to the conviction that she was Mrs. Kimball, thus virtually guaranteeing her acquittal by reason of insanity—not that she would ever have the luxury of living freely as her own murder victim. The six weeks she’d spent in the psychiatric department of Massachusetts General were only the beginning of what would surely be a long—perhaps even lifelong—stay. However, according to Emily, who regularly visited her there, it wasn’t such a bad life. Orville Pratt had paid for his sister to be put up in a lavish room with a private nurse, special meals, books, magazines, watercolors, a chess set, a piano...every amusement she desired. Having settled into her glamorous new persona, Vera Pratt ruled her wing of the hospital like a queen—a far cry from her old life “scuttling along the walls trying not to be noticed.”