Murder on Black Friday

by P. B. Ryan

  “Dr. Hewitt doesn’t want your money,” Nell said, “and he’s an excellent physician.”

  “Don’t matter how good he is.” Eileen allowed Will to ease her into the chair, but with a wary expression, as if this were some form of trickery. What Nell knew, and Eileen didn’t, was that William Hewitt had always felt compelled to aid and protect the fairer sex, even back when he it was he, himself, who’d been most in need of saving. “I was born this way,” Eileen said. “It’s God’s will, that’s what me mum always said.”

  “Is she here in Boston?” Nell asked as Will drew a matching stepstool up to the chair. Back when she’d assisted Dr. Greaves, it had been her responsibility to distract his patients with conversation so he could concentrate on his doctoring.

  “Nah, Mum died when I was little. Me da saved up enough to bring us over last year, but he took sick and died on the crossing.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Nell said.

  “Here.” Crouching down, Will lifted Eileen’s bad foot onto the stool, folded her skirt back to the knee, and studied the complicated lacings and buttons that secured her footwear—a bizarre but carefully crafted boot made of mismatched scraps of leather sewn to fit the ungainly shape beneath. “How do I, er...”

  “I’ll do it.” Leaning forward, Eileen swiftly unfastened the makeshift boot and slid it off. The thick block of scarred wood that formed the sole was carved to fit her deformity and lined with sheepskin, as was the leather that surrounded the foot. Will pushed the stool right up against the chair so that Eileen’s right leg, which was slightly shorter than the left, could rest comfortably on it. Even sheathed as it was in a white woolen stocking, Nell could see that her calf was withered and her foot badly malformed.

  “Would you mind taking off your stocking?” Will asked.

  Eileen, chewing on her lower lip, looked from Will to Nell, and then hesitantly peeled it off. She sat unmoving, the stocking twisted in her hands, as Will scrutinized her stunted and inward-bent foot, but when he reached toward it, she recoiled, crying, “Och, murther!”

  “Does it hurt?” Will asked in alarm.

  “No,” she said, as if it were an idiotic question. “Ye said ye was just gonna look at it.”

  “He has to touch your foot to really tell what’s wrong with it, Eileen.” Nell sat on the arm of the chair and patted the girl’s shoulder. “Hasn’t a doctor ever examined you?”

  “Doctors costs money. And what’s wrong wid me is I got a clubfoot,” Eileen said. “Any fool can see that.”

  “Yes,” Will said, “but there are different variations on the condition. May I?” he asked, his hand hovering over her foot.

  Nell nodded to Eileen, who looked away and muttered something that sounded like grudging permission. She sat with her face pressed against threadbare horsehair, a pink tide rising up her throat, as Will lifted her foot and gently manipulated it this way and that.

  “Does this hurt?” he asked, sounding very much as he had while putting Nell’s hair up earlier.

  She shook her head.

  “Does this?”

  Another head shake, and another when he asked whether she ever got sores on the right side of her foot and ankle, which took all the weight when she walked.

  Nell said, “I think that’s what the sheepskin is for.”

  “It’s a good boot,” Will said, “as good as any physician might make.”

  Eileen half unburied her face, eyes sparking. “I made it meself.”

  “Really? Splendid job. It’s kept this foot in tip-top shape. That makes you an excellent candidate for surgical repair.”

  “What’s that?” Eileen asked. “You mean like one of them iron contraptions? I hear they hurt like the divil and don’t work.”

  “True on both counts, especially when a clubfoot has had years to solidify, as yours has.” Will rose stiffly and told Eileen she could put her stocking and boot back on, which she proceeded to do. He said, “There’s a famous bone surgeon named Dr. Lewis Albert Sayre at Bellvue Hospital in New York. He’s come up with a way of operating on clubfeet to untwist them and make them flat again. I understand he’s had wonderful success with this surgery.”

  Eileen paused in the act of lacing up her boot to regard Will with undisguised horror. “You want to cut me open?”

  “Not I,” Will said. “I’m not qualified to perform this particular operation. But I could contact Dr. Sayre and—“

  “Ain’t no one gonna cut me open. I know what happens when folks get cut open, thank ye very much.”

  “That’s all changing,” Will said. “There’s chloroform and ether now, to keep it from hurting, and carbolic spray to prevent—“

  “Miriam!” The voice, Becky Bassett’s voice, came from downstairs. “Done already? Oh, my. That was quick.”

  “That would be our cue,” Will said drolly. “Here.” He patted his pockets until he produced a card, which he handed to Eileen. “This is my name, and the address of my office at Harvard Medical School. If you decide you’d like to discuss the possibility of surgery, just—“

  “Sure, and if I could read,” said Eileen as she offered him back the card, “d’ye think I’d be on me hands and knees, scrubbin’ up a dead man’s blood fer room and board?”

  “Keep the card,” Will said as he held the door open for Nell. “If you change your mind, give it to a cabman, along with some of this.” He dug a generous handful of coins out of his pocket and emptied them into a startled Eileen’s hand. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Chapter 5

  “I have a question about ladies’ underwear,” Will said as he handed Nell down from his black phaeton, parked in front of Philip Munro’s house on Marlborough Street.

  “Sometimes,” Nell said as she stepped down onto the sidewalk, “I think you’ve gotten altogether too familiar with me.”

  “Is it customary,” he asked, “as part of a lady’s mourning costume, for her underclothes to be entirely black? I mean, not just petticoats and stockings, but stays, corset cover...”

  Fluffing up her skirt, Nell said, “That’s an odd question coming from a gentleman who probably knows far more than I do about the vagaries of ladies’ underpinnings. And you’ve always professed a certain admiration for beautiful young women in mourning black—which leads me to suspect,” she added with a coy smile, “that you are probably very well conversant on the subject, Dr. Hewitt.”

  “As it happens, Miss Sweeney, the last time a young widow looked upon me with favor was in England, back before the war. If memory serves, black was reserved for the petticoats and stockings only, the rest being the traditional white, but it occurs to me that customs may have changed.”

  “Because of what you saw hanging in Miriam Bassett’s drying shed,” Nell said. Miriam had dyed everything but her drawers and stays. “As far as I know, it’s still only petticoats and stockings, because one tends to reveal glimpses of them no matter how discreet one tries to be.”

  “Is it an indication of the depth of Miss Bassett’s grief, do you suppose, that she’s...surpassing convention in this regard?”

  “She seems genuinely anguished,” Nell said. “Perhaps she just isn’t thinking clearly. Or perhaps one of her mourning dresses is so sheer that she’s afraid white underclothes will show through.”

  “A sheer mourning dress...” Will mused with a wistfully salacious smile.

  “Altogether too familiar,” Nell huffed as she turned and headed toward the house.

  “I see you trying not to smile.” Will hooked his arm around hers, leaning in close. “Save your ladylike outrage for the rest of the world, my sweet. I’ve met the actress behind the mask, and she’s a damned sight more interesting than the prim and proper little Irish governess she plays.”

  My sweet. The endearment, offhand and lightly mocking though it was, resonated in Nell’s ears as she stared up at the late Mr. Munro’s imposingly tall granite townhouse. Like the houses attached to it on either side, it looked as if it had been plucked
right off Paris’s Champs Elysee, with its mansard roof and myriad pediments, pilasters, and balustrades. The front steps, also granite, led to a portico supported by a pair of stout Corinthian columns. This miniature pavilion formed the base of a four-story bay, crowned by the dormered attic. Every window in the house was curtained in black.

  Will said, “That fourth floor bay window, the front one—that would be the window Munro fell from. He landed on these steps.”

  Pointing to the ornamental molding above the portico, Nell said, “And that would be the cornice he supposedly struck on his way down. I don’t see any blood or marks, though.”

  “Neither do I.”

  As they approached the front door, Nell saw that a black ribbon had been tied to the bell pull. The door was opened by a dour butler wearing a black armband, who took Will’s card and sent a parlor maid upstairs to let Miss Munro know that she had callers.

  The reception room in which the butler left Nell and Will to wait was mournfully dim, its windows being shrouded in black and the gasolier hanging from the fourteen-foot ceiling unlit. Nell rubbed the diaphanous curtains between her fingers—silk crepe, as costly as it was fragile. The fireplace, to which Nell gravitated, was surmounted by a monumental, crepe-draped mirror, both housed in a confection of ornately carved rosewood. Among the various objets d’art cluttering the mantel was a fanciful Rococo clock of ormolu and brass, its hands stilled at just past 3:40.

  Will set his hat and gloves on the marble-topped center table, pulled out a chair, and gestured Nell into it, then took a seat himself.

  She leaned toward him, lowering her voice so as not to be overheard by any household staff who might be lurking nearby. “Do you find it odd that Miss Munro has managed to purchase and install so much black crepe in such a short period of time? Her brother died just—“ she checked her watch, which read 11:40 “—fifteen hours ago, almost to the minute.”

  “How do you know exactly what time he died?” Will asked.

  She nodded toward the mantel clock. “Someone obviously took note of it—a servant, most likely.”

  “That clock would indicate what time he fell from the window,” Will said. “We’ve no idea what time he was actually killed, except that it must have been earlier than three-forty.”

  “Assuming you’re right about his being dead before he fell.”

  “I am. As for the crepe, perhaps Miss Munro keeps a supply of it around for such contingencies.”

  “It looks brand new,” she said. “Smells new, too.”

  “Then perhaps she sent out for it first thing this morning, or even yesterday evening, and had it installed forthwith. It could be that she’s simply an extremely organized lady.”

  They chatted intermittently in hushed voices—mostly about what was delaying the lady of the house—until a whisper of silk drew their attention to the doorway.

  For a moment, Miss Munro just hovered there, a spectral presence in the gloom, as her gaze homed in on her guests. Younger than Nell had anticipated—early thirties, perhaps—she was slender and pale, a delicate china doll dressed in mourning black. She wore her hair clubbed in back and swept in two sleek black wings over her ears, the center part razor-straight. Her eyes were grayish and unremarkable, but framed by the most arresting eyebrows Nell had ever seen, as if someone had dipped a fat No. 10 brush in India ink and painted one sad black stroke over each eye.

  “I’m Catherine Munro.” She had a voice like feathers wrapped in velvet—throaty and drowsy-soft.

  Nell rose along with Will, who bowed and said, “Good afternoon, Miss Munro. I apologize for intruding on your bereavement.”

  “Is it afternoon already?” Catherine Munro looked with an expression of mild curiosity toward the crepe-covered window.

  “Only just,” said Nell with a glance at her watch. In fact, it was ten after twelve. They’d been waiting for almost half an hour.

  Will introduced them, explaining that they’d come for the purpose of investigating both Philip Munro’s death and that of Noah Bassett. “There are business papers of Mr. Bassett’s that his daughters are eager to reclaim. They assume those papers were in Mr. Munro’s possession, given that he served as Mr. Bassett’s financial advisor. As for your brother, it is incumbent upon me in my professional capacity to prove that his demise was, indeed, the result of his own doing rather than foul play.”

  Catherine stood looking at Will for a long moment with the same gravely placid expression she’d worn since entering the room. She had her hands clasped at her waist, bisque-white against the stark black of her dress. It was an elegantly simple mourning gown, not merely trimmed in silk crepe, like Becky’s, but entirely fashioned of it, giving it an aura of lavishness despite its understated cut. The white collar and weeping cuffs—the latter nearly a foot long—were made not of muslin, but of crisp, translucent lawn. Something glinted darkly on her breast, in the center—jewelry of some sort. Her only other adornment, such as it was, appeared to be a ring of keys dangling from her belt.

  When Catherine finally spoke, it wasn’t to respond to Will’s statement as to why he was there, but to say, “I don’t suppose, Dr. Hewitt, that you are any relation to Mr. Harry Hewitt of Commonwealth Avenue.”

  Will paused fractionally before saying, “He’s my brother.” While driving over here, he’d ruminated aloud as to whether his connection to Harry would be an asset or a liability in gaining Miss Munro’s cooperation. Did she loathe her late brother’s notoriously loutish best friend, or had she been taken in—as had so many other women—by his looks and the devilish charm he could turn on and off at will? Having met her, Nell would bet it was the former.

  “There is little family resemblance,” Catherine said.

  “Harry takes after our father, who, as you may know, is very fair. I enjoy my mother’s coloring.” In point of fact, the reason Will didn’t look at all like August Hewitt was that he’d been fathered by a different man entirely, several months before his parents’ marriage—a fact that had played no small part, over the years, in deepening the rift between Will and Mr. Hewitt.

  “If I may say so,” Catherine remarked, “you and Harry seem dissimilar in temperament, as well.”

  Will, apparently still unsure of the right tack, hesitated again, so Nell said, “Dr. Hewitt and his brother are as different as two men can be. It’s quite remarkable to me that they share any blood at all.”

  Catherine shifted her gaze to Nell, her expression softening a bit. “Your name is familiar to me, Miss Sweeney. I believe I may have heard something about an engagement?”

  Taken aback, Nell stammered a bit until Will rescued her by saying, “It’s not official yet. As you may know, Miss Sweeney takes care of a little girl, and for now, she feels her duty to Gracie and my mother must take precedent over our marriage.”

  “Most commendable of you,” Catherine told Nell.

  The conversation felt oddly like an interview. As if Catherine had, indeed, judged them and found them suitable, she invited them to sit and offered to ring for coffee, which Nell and Will declined.

  Lowering herself into the chair Will held out for her, Catherine plucked a neatly folded cambric handkerchief from her sleeve and used it to wipe some invisible smudge from the tabletop. She seemed tired, Nell thought, heavy-lidded and a little unfocused, as if they’d awakened her from a nap, which perhaps they had.

  Nell’s gaze lit on the little glinting object she’d noticed before, resting on Catherine Munro’s upper chest. It was a walnut-sized pendant suspended from a gold chain, comprised of scores of little faceted gems in shades of red, pink and purple that formed a floral shape. Odd, Nell thought, that a lady as deferential to mourning customs as Catherine Munro should be seen in such a showy piece of jewelry the very day after her brother’s death; jet or onyx would have been the conventional choice.

  Catherine, having evidently noticed the direction of Nell’s gaze, closed a hand around the bauble, forcing Nell to meet her eyes.

  “My
brother gave me this,” she said in that eerily serene way of hers, “when I first joined his household twelve years ago. He’d sent for me because he needed someone—someone he could truly trust and depend upon—to act as his private secretary and housekeeper. This necklace was his way of thanking me for taking on those responsibilities.”

  Nell wondered how Munro’s business associates felt about dealing with a female secretary, but she knew better than to voice the thought.

  “It’s actually a sort of locket.” Catherine turned the pendant over, revealing an oval-shaped, glass-covered miniature painting.

  Nell leaned forward, squinting to make out the image in the semidarkness. It was a portrait of a man, brown-haired, mustachioed, and wolfishly handsome. “Is that...?”

  “Philip.” Looking down at the locket, Catherine rubbed her thumb over the glass.

  “So,” Nell said, “you...commissioned Mr. Munro’s portrait to fit the—“

  “Oh, no, it was already in there when he gave it to me.” Smiling wistfully, Catherine turned the pendant back around, patted it, and said, “I mean to wear this every day until I depart this world myself, and then I mean to be buried with it.”

  Nell and Will both sat back in their chairs, staring at the pendant. When the silence started to become awkward, Will said, “Er, Miss Munro, would you mind telling us how long Mr. Munro had been counseling Mr. Bassett on business matters?”

  “A few months. Let’s see, it would been...ah, yes. Four months—since May, because that was when he first called on Mr. Bassett to offer his advice, and it was shortly afterward that he and Miss Bassett...well...” She let out a long, disconsolate sigh.

  Nell and Will both sat forward.

  Still absently fondling the pendant, Catherine said, “I must admit, I was appalled last week, when he told me he’d actually gone and proposed to her. I told him he should give it some more time, he’d only known her four months, but he didn’t want to hear it. Poor Philip. So extraordinary in so many ways, but when it came to females—especially golden little things like Rebecca Bassett—he was...” She shook her head, frowning grimly at the table. “As foolish as any man.”