by P. B. Ryan
Will sat and crossed his legs, lifting the bad one over the good one with his hands. “Nell must have told you I accepted a position as adjunct professor at Harvard—just for the autumn term. I’m really not cut out for that life anymore, but Isaac Foster talked me into it, and it affords me the opportunity to do some rather diverting research. Foster was named assistant dean of the medical school over the summer—did you know?”
Viola nodded. “Winnie Pratt told me about that—crowed about it—when she wrote to announce Dr. Foster’s engagement to her daughter Emily while I was on the Cape.”
“I’m teaching medical jurisprudence,” Will said. “What Professor Cuthbert at Edinburgh used to call forensic studies—the legal applications of medicine. One of my conditions when I accepted the position was the right to conduct post-mortems on any good corpses that end up in the morgue at Massachusetts General.”
“Good corpses?” Viola said dubiously.
Will cast a little half-smile toward Nell, as if to say, You understand.
“There are good corpses,” said Nell, who’d assisted at some truly fascinating autopsies during the four years in which she’d been trained in nursing by Dr. Greaves before coming to work for the Hewitts. “Someone whose death was violent or unexplained can be very interesting to dissect, if one knows what to look for.”
“I thought the county coroners handled that sort of thing,” Viola said.
“Yes,” Will said, “but they’re all laymen, so they have to pay private surgeons to perform the actual autopsies—when they bother with them. I’m saving them a bit of trouble and expense by taking on the chewier cases myself. In any event, yesterday evening, two bodies were brought to the morgue, the deaths apparently unrelated, but with one thing in common. Both men had evidently taken their own lives.” He paused, then added, “One of those men, I’m sorry to say, was Noah Bassett.”
“No.” Viola sank back in her wheelchair, looking stricken. “Oh, Will, no. Not Noah.”
Will glanced at Nell as if for support in being the bearer of such grim tidings. She managed a reassuring look despite her own shock and dismay, having grown quite fond of Mr. Bassett herself from when he and his daughters would visit the house.
“I was dreading having to give you this news.” Uncrossing his legs, Will leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I know how much your friendship with the Bassetts means to you. I’d wanted to tell you myself before you read about it in the morning paper.”
“Thank you, Will.” Viola shook her head listlessly. “I wish I could say it comes as a shock that Noah would...do something like that, but given the way his life’s gone these past few years... Was he ruined in the gold crash, do you know?”
“One can only assume so, but I’ll need to find out for sure. To draw a reliable conclusion about a death like this, one must examine not only the victim’s body, but his life—his state of mind, his situation, the circumstances in which he died. Which is partly why I’m here, to help fill in those blanks—although the evidence so far does indicate that Mr. Bassett died by his own hand.”
“How...” Viola hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. “How did he...?”
“He apparently locked himself in his bedroom, filled his bathtub with warm water, and opened both radial arteries with—“
“Radial...?”
“He cut his wrists,” Nell said.
“With a pen knife,” Will added. “His death resulted from massive blood loss.”
Viola closed her eyes, color leaching from face. “Noah, Noah... He was my age exactly, fifty-nine. Our birthdays were only a week apart.”
“His daughter found him,” Will said.
“Which one?” his mother asked. “He’s got two, and they both live with him.”
“Her name is Miriam.”
“She’s the eldest,” Viola said. “About your age, I suspect, mid-thirties or so.”
“A spinster?” Will asked.
“Not for long. She’s engaged to a professor at Harvard Divinity School—Martin’s favorite professor, as a matter of fact, the Reverend John Tanner.”
“Really?” Nell said. “I always sort of assumed Dr. Tanner was married—but perhaps that’s just because he’s a clergyman.”
“You know him?” Will asked.
Nell nodded. “Martin’s had him over to the house a few times. He seems like a pleasant fellow.”
“Your father can’t bear him, because he’s a Unitarian,” Viola said, “but I agree with Nell. He seems like a good man, and I think he’s the right sort for Miriam. She’s the type one would never suspect of having been born into great wealth. She reminded me of Noah in that way—of Noah as he used to be. Mature, pragmatic, capable... I’m glad she’s the one who found him, and not Becky.”
“Becky’s the younger sister?” Will asked.
“Yes. Rebecca, but everyone calls her Becky. Just turned nineteen, I believe, but she seems younger. One of those chatty, chipper young girls, you know? But quite likeable, really.”
“There are just the two daughters?” Will asked. “That’s quite a gap between children.”
“They had a son in between—Tommy. He died in the war. And Lucy, Noah’s wife—his late wife—suffered a number of sad events during those years, as well.”
“Sad events?” Will asked.
“Miscarriages,” Nell said.
“It was heartbreaking,” Viola said, “watching her lose all those babies. Lucy Bassett was the warmest, most generous and patient soul I’ve ever known—the perfect wife for Noah. All she ever wanted was to have a houseful of children to love and take care of. She had no problem having Miriam, but then it took her so long to carry a second child to full term. Miriam was eleven when Tommy was born. There was at least one other disappointment after that. I know Noah wanted her to stop trying for more children, because it was just too upsetting for her, and she wasn’t that young anymore, but then along came Becky. ‘My little gift from God,’ Lucy called her. Unfortunately, her health started deteriorating after that. She died of cancer when Becky was just three years old.”
“How did her husband react to her death?” Will asked.
“Oh, he was devastated. It tore him apart. He was a wonderful man, you know, but far too easily bruised for his own good.” Viola’s voice was hoarser than usual; her eyes shone wetly. She groped under the cuff of her smock for the handkerchief she kept tucked in her dress sleeve.
Will shook his out and handed it to her.
Dabbing her eyes, Viola said, “Poor Noah, he was never the same after that. He was quite a large man, you know—tall and big-boned, and always, well, a bit on the stocky side, with these great, bushy mutton-chop whiskers. I used to think of him as a giant, kindly bear. He was a very popular fellow, the kind of warm-hearted man everyone loved. But after he lost Lucy, he became more like a...well, one of those big, shambling dogs that always looks a bit sad and confused. Then, when he lost Tommy right before the war ended, he just seemed to...gradually collapse. He retreated into himself, neglected his appearance, stopped calling on his friends. We paid a New Year’s Day call on him this year, Nell and Gracie and Martin and I. Miriam told us he was still in bed—at one-thirty in the afternoon.”
Will said, “I’ll need to speak to his daughters before I can confidently label it a suicide, but if he’d been mentally depressed for a number of years, as you suggest, that would make it all the more likely that a major financial loss might send him over the edge. Mr. Munro’s case is a bit woollier, I’m afraid.”
“Philip Munro?” Viola asked.
Will nodded. “He was the other man I autopsied yesterday.”
“Oh, my word,” Viola said. “He’s so young. “Was so young.”
“Thirty-nine,” Will said. “You knew him, obviously.”
“We all knew him, everyone. Well, everyone in a certain circle.” The circle of Boston’s Brahmin elite, she meant. It was a tight-knit, exclusive little cosmos unto itself, g
overned by a rigid code of conduct. She said, “Your brother Harry knew him particularly well. They’d become bosom friends in the past year or so.”
“Really?” Will said. “Munro’s more than ten years older than Harry.”
“They were both bachelors, though, and of like temperament, and after Harry moved out of the house, they lived only two or three blocks apart in the Back Bay. And if you want to know the truth, I do believe there was a fair amount of hero worship involved. I’m told Harry idolized Mr. Munro.”
“Even more than he idolizes himself?” Will said aridly.
Viola said, “Actually, yes. Mr. Munro was older and even richer than Harry, a self-made, charismatic man about town. Handsome, roguish, athletic...and something of a rakehell, which must have appealed enormously to Harry.” She shook her head. “It’s just so hard to believe. Philip Munro, of all people.”
“Why does it surprise you so?” Will asked.
“Well, he was...Philip Munro. He was just so...on top of it all, so confident—to the point of arrogance, but one can hardly blame him. He was indecently rich, you know. New money—his father had been a schoolteacher in Brookline—but it was money nonetheless, and in this city, that counts for something.”
“So does lineage,” Will said. “Was he truly accepted by the old guard? Did they let him into the Somerset Club? Did they whisper behind his back?”
“Well...” Viola appeared to ponder the question. “Boston isn’t quite as bad as New York, where you’ve got to be a sixth generation Knickerbocker before they’ll even acknowledge one’s existence. Still, there is a caste system here, and although they admire achievements, especially as regards business endeavors, I’m afraid it’s pedigree that counts in the long run.”
It was always they when Viola discussed Boston society, not we. Having retained many of the bohème ideals of her youth, she’d never truly felt at home in her husband’s world of wealth and propriety.
“No, they never invited him into the Somerset,” Viola continued. “And there were whispers, to be sure, but they weren’t so much about his lack of breeding as about, well, the way he conducted his private life—although the one was generally blamed for the other.”
“If Munro’s private life was anything like Harry’s,” Will observed, “I don’t doubt he raised a few eyebrows. Especially given his age. Thirty-nine might seem young to you, ma’am, but it strikes me as a bit long in the tooth to be larking about with reprobates like Harry on drunken night sprees and the like.”
“Philip Munro was a firebrand, there’s no denying that,” Viola said. “They say he brought that same sense of daring and recklessness to his business transactions, did insanely risky things, yet he always came out on top.”
“What sort of business did he engage in?” Will asked.
“I believe it had to do with the stock market, mostly, though I confess I’m at a loss as to exactly what it was he did. Those sorts of things—stocks, commodities—they’re utterly foreign to me. Your father disapproved of him, said he wasn’t so much a businessman as a gambler. What was it he called him? A ‘nouveau riche raider.’ Oh, and he had connections, you know—friends in New York and Washington, important, powerful men, the kind who share information and help one another out. I understand he dined with President Grant, he and some of his financier friends, when the president came to Boston in June for the Peace Jubilee.”
“That can’t have hurt his business,” Will said.
“Oh, he made buckets of money, and his money made more money. Before long the men here in Boston who’d once snickered at him were lining up at his door for advice on how to do the same thing—not your father, of course, but most of the others. His back door, mind you. No respectable gentleman wanted to be connected too closely to the likes of Philip Munro.”
“Mustn’t be seen paying a call on the man,” Will said, “but they didn’t mind handing over their purses?”
Viola smiled. “Yes, but you see, they handed them over empty and got them back full. Mr. Munro wasn’t afraid of money, or vaguely ashamed of it, the way the rest of them are. He bought and sold and connived and speculated as if it were all a game and he could invent and reinvent the rules as he went along.”
“Did he always win?” Will asked.
“Often enough to keep some of the most powerful men in Boston in his thrall.”
“Was he in league with those Goldbugs, do you know?” Will meant Jay Gould and his cronies, whose greedy machinations had forced President Grant to sell off some of the government’s supply in order to lower its price, resulting in yesterday’s devastating market collapse. Gould was by far the most notorious Wall Street raider alive, and now the most loathed. Anyone who’d owned gold at noon yesterday, when its value plummeted—and that was a great many people—took a cruel beating. Thousands of investors were left in complete financial ruin.
Viola said, “I don’t think anyone was ever really privy to what he bought and sold, just that he made mountains of money doing it. If he was a gold speculator, let’s hope he didn’t talk Harry into getting involved in it.”
“You didn’t mind Harry befriending a blighter like Munro?” Will asked.
“That question,” Viola said with a sardonic smile, “implies that I enjoy some measure of influence over what Harry does and with whom. Of course I disapproved of Mr. Munro—not because of his background, needless to say, but because of his behavior. But he’s the reason your brother started playing cricket at the Peabody Club up in Cambridge, which I was actually quite pleased about. I thought it might, oh you know, be good for Harry to get a bit of fresh air and exercise. I’m surprised he never asked you to come along.”
Choosing his words with obvious care, Will said, “Harry and I don’t see very much of each other.” Not since the thorough beating Will dealt his brother last year after learning of Harry’s absinthe-fueled attempt to force himself on Nell—something Viola would never, God willing, find out about.
“Harry will take this very hard,” Viola murmured, staring out the window at her little English-style garden, all tangled and leggy, the way it got every year at the end of the summer, no matter how hard Viola worked on it. “How did he die?” she asked without turning from the window.
“That’s debatable, as far as I’m concerned. He was found on the front steps of his house on Marlborough Street, beneath the open window of his office on the fourth floor. It seems fairly clear that he fell that distance, but there are no witnesses. He’s got an unwed sister who lives with him, but I’m told she was napping when it happened, and none of the servants actually saw him fall. He was pretty badly smashed up, but in a way that makes me doubt that he died from the fall itself.”
“I wan out of chalk.” Gracie was standing over her artwork, a stub of chalk in her hand, squirming in a way that instantly put Nell on the alert. “Can I have some more?”
Viola, who was within grabbing distance of Gracie, pulled her close and whispered something in her ear.
“No,” the child insisted with an adamant shake of her head. “I don’t need to.”
“I think you do.”
Crossing one leg over the other, Gracie said, “I just need another piece of chalk so I can finish.”
“First the W.C.,” Nell said as she reached for the child. “Then I’ll fetch you some more chalk.”
“I’ll take her,” said Viola as she crossed the room, wheels rattling over the slate. “You’d best finish sizing that canvas before the glue dries up. Come along, Gracie.”
“But I don’t—“
“We’ll stop at the kitchen afterward and have Mrs. Waters make you a nice cup of hot cocoa.”
Gracie dropped the chalk and hurried after her nana. “Can I wide on your lap?” she asked as she followed Viola into the hall. “Can I? Please?”
“Can you?” Viola challenged.
“May I?” she implored, while dancing that little telltale dance. “Please, Nana?”
“Er...perhaps on the way b
ack.”
Will smiled as he watched them retreat down the hall. There was amusement in his eyes, and pride, and a hint of wonderment at the child he’d created quite by chance one lonely night with a pretty young chambermaid during his last visit to his family.
It had been a Christmas furlough from his service as a Union Army battle surgeon in December of 1863, shortly before he was captured and imprisoned at Andersonville, along with his brother Robbie. After the hellish prison camp claimed Robbie’s life, Will escaped and, wounded inside and out, and allowed his family to think was dead for years while he lost himself in a numbing haze of opium smoke and cards.
“What the devil is that stuff, anyway?” Will asked as Nell dipped up another spatula full of warm, gelatinous glue.
“Rabbit skin glue. Canvases have to be sized with this and then primed with gesso before one can paint on them.”
“She makes you prepare her canvases? And on a Saturday? I thought you had Saturdays off.”
“I do,” Nell said as she smeared and scraped. “This is my canvas, for a painting I’m planning of Martin and some of his divinity school friends rowing on the Charles River.”
“Which ones are yours?” he asked, scanning the solarium-turned-studio. The only painting he’d ever seen of hers was the portrait of Gracie that she gave him for his birthday in July, which hung over the fireplace in the little library of his Acorn Street house. It captured Gracie’s winsome charm, which was why she’d wanted Will to have it, but it was sketchier than her usual work, because she’d been trying to suggest movement as the child played with her dolls.
Nell guided him around the room, pointing out paintings on easels, leaning against walls, and stored in drying racks—portraits and street scenes, mostly, a few interiors.
“Nell, I’m...awestruck,” he said after he’d viewed them all. “Your handling of light is incredible. These paintings—they glow from within. Why have you never shown me these before?”
“You’ve never been to the house before—not since I’ve lived here.” Nell turned back to the canvas she was sizing as her face suffused with heat.
