Murder in a mill town

by P. B. Ryan

  “Is it?” asked Nell from across what seemed like an acre of polished walnut. With the heavy curtains drawn and only a single desk lamp to dispel the gloom in the oak-paneled office, it might have been midnight rather than the midst of a sunny afternoon.

  “Silence gives them an opportunity to reflect and repent,” Whitcomb said. “Reflection, hard work, prayer, and instruction—those are the cornerstones of prisoner life here. They’re a grossly undisciplined breed when they come to us. Our objective is not so much punitive as restorative. By inculcating in these men a sense of order, we’re preparing them to reenter an orderly world.”

  Nell almost laughed out loud at the notion of the world being “orderly.” Schooling her expression, she said, “An ambitious goal.”

  “But one which we pride ourselves on attaining.” Mr. Whitcomb lifted Viola’s open letter from the desk in front of him, rubbing the thick vellum between his thumb and fingertips as if assessing its quality. “Mrs. Hewitt is trying to locate him, you say?”

  Nell nodded. “He disappeared Sunday, along with a young woman from this area named Bridie Sullivan. It’s really Miss Sullivan we’re trying to locate—her mother is beside herself—but we suspect that if we find Mr. Hines, we’ll find her.”

  “I see.”

  “Was he the type of man to...do harm to a female, do you think?” Nell asked.

  “There’s nothing in his history to suggest it,” Whitcomb said. “No arrests for, er, such crimes as such a character flaw would suggest.”

  “What did he do to get sent here?”

  “Stole a lady’s reticule from a coat peg in a tea shop. He was a sneak thief—strictly crimes of opportunity. He’d take whatever was lying about unattended, pick the occasional pocket, do a little confidence work...”

  “Confidence?”

  “Swindles, humbugs—small time, of course. It takes real brains to carry out a complicated bunco scheme. Never used a weapon, that I know of. He was sentenced to three years, but only served one. You’re familiar with the concept of parole, yes?”

  “Oh, yes.” Some thirty years ago, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts instituted a novel new form of clemency—still, to Nell’s knowledge, the only one of its kind in the nation. After serving one-third of his term, an inmate was eligible to be released into society, under supervision and with the threat of revocation should he revert to his former habits. Nell’s disapproval of the parole system stemmed from entirely selfish motives. God help society—but most of all, her—should Duncan ever reenter it! In theory, parole was only granted to the most harmless and well-behaved of prisoners. Nell prayed—literally, and at regular intervals—that the Massachusetts Board of Parole would be savvy enough to keep Duncan under lock and key for the full thirty years of his term.

  “Mr. Hines was released in May?” she asked.

  “That’s right. I don’t recall the date offhand, but it was early in the month, I believe. It’s no surprise to me that he found a lady friend so quickly. He wasn’t a bad looking fellow—if a bit on the scrawny side when he first came here. I put him to work in the stone shops, and that turned him into a man right quick. Nothing builds muscle like stone-cutting.”

  “I wondered what was going on in those buildings,” she said.

  “We take shelves of granite from a local quarry and split them into paving stones and building blocks. Fine work the men do, and for a competitive price. I’m proud to say we’ve got contracts from as far away as...” Whitcomb’s gaze strayed toward the open door behind her. “Ah, Father Beals.”

  Nell turned to find a man standing in the doorway. Were it not for his garb—a plain black coat and trousers, with one of those new Anglican clerical collars—she would never have guessed that this was the “Piscopal chaplan” mentioned in Duncan’s letter. He wasn’t nearly as old as she had envisioned, mid-thirties by her guess, with longish brown hair worn with a side part, so that a great swath of it fell over his forehead. He had striking eyes, dark and mournful, in contrast to his otherwise fair coloring.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Whitcomb,” Beals said, stepping back. “I didn’t realize you were with—”

  “Not at all.” The warden waved him into the office. “Come on in, old man, and let me introduce you.”

  The priest entered with a slightly awkward gait—not a true limp, just a bit of asymmetry, as if one leg weren’t doing quite its fair share of the work.

  “Miss Nell Sweeney, this is the Reverend Adam Beals, our chaplain. Father Beals is the fellow you should be talking to, Miss Sweeney. You’re lucky to have caught him in, though. He’s only here Sundays and Wednesdays.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss...” Father Beals paused in mid-bow, looked up at her with recognition in his eyes. “...Sweeney.”

  “Father.” Nell inclined her head and looked away quickly, knowing he’d connected the name “Nell Sweeney” with Duncan, who must have mentioned her, and praying he didn’t bring it up in front of the warden. Please, St. Dismas, please please please let him keep his mouth shut. Of all the ghosts of her disreputable past, Duncan was potentially the most devastating.

  “Have a seat, Father.” Whitcomb gestured Beals into the leather chair next to Nell’s and handed him Viola’s letter, grunting with the effort of leaniing across the table. “You knew Virgil Hines fairly well, as I recall. Seems he and a young lady disappeared from this area recently. Miss Sweeney is looking into the matter for her employer, Mrs. August Hewitt, at the request of the young lady’s mother.”

  Beals frowned in concentration as he read the letter.

  “Did Mr. Hines happen to tell you what he planned to do after his release?” Nell asked.

  “Yes, of course,” the priest said. “I always discuss a parolee’s intentions with him, so that I can share them with his parole officer. In Virgil’s case, he knew exactly what he wanted to do, which is why I’m somewhat mystified that he chose to remain in the Charlestown area. He was from Salem originally. Always said he’d go back there the instant he was released. His plan was to use his stone-cutting experience to find a job in the Cape Ann quarries so that he could save enough money to buy a farm he had his eye on.”

  “Really?”

  “That was what he told me. All the men in his family had been fishermen for generations. He loved being at sea—he enlisted in the Navy during the war—but he said it was too brutal a life, fishing, that you had to be away from your family too much.”

  “I understand he came out of the Navy with quite an unusual tattoo.”

  “He served aboard the U.S.S. Kearsage when they sank the Alabama in June of sixty-four. The crew and officers all got stars on their foreheads to commemorate the victory.”

  “All of them?”

  “Most, anyway. I was gratified that he’d chosen farming over picking pockets and snatching purses. It’s an honorable calling—I told him so. I gave him a writing box when he was released, so that he could write and let me know how things had turned out.”

  “Has he?” Nell asked.

  “Not yet, no,” he said as he brushed a fleck of lint off the arm of his chair, “but I’m sure I will, once he’s settled.”

  “It’s a thoughtful gift,” Nell said.

  “Our Father Beals is quite the reformer,” Whitcomb confided with an indulgent smile. “A champion of the common man, don’t you know.”

  “They’re lucky to have you,” Nell said.

  The priest looked down with a diffident half-smile, absently finger-combing the hair that hung over his forehead. “I’m only the interim chaplain here, Miss Sweeney—just until they find a permanent replacement for old Father Bannister, God rest his soul. That’s why I’m only here two days a week. I’m actually assigned to Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street in Boston. I’ve been helping out here about eight months so far, but I must tell you they’ve been the most gratifying eight months of my career.”

  “The prisoners love him,” Whitcomb told her.

  “Enough to be a
bsolutely truthful with you?” Nell asked the priest. “What I mean is, would Mr. Hines have admitted it, do you think, if his plans had actually been...less than honorable?”

  Reverend Beals smiled. It was a pleasant smile that didn’t completely conceal the fact that he was sizing her up, but with a subtlety appropriate to his vocation. “Some of them tell me everything. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve heard, and the things I’ve talked men out of. Others, they hold their cards a bit closer to the vest.”

  “Which type was Mr. Hines?” Nell asked.

  “The more candid type—very much so. He loved to talk, and our conversations gave him an opportunity to do that. Despite his criminal past, he always struck me as somewhat guileless. Yes, I believe that he sincerely intended to return to Salem and become a farmer—eventually.”

  “Did he ever talk about women?” Nell asked.

  Beals chuckled. “What twenty-four-year-old man doesn’t talk about women? He was no innocent where women were concerned—he’d had sweethearts—but he was no lothario either. He seemed almost...worshipful of them. If you want to know whether I think he was capable of abducting this girl against her will, or worse, the answer is no.”

  But of course he would take that stand. A champion of the common man, don’t you know.

  “Is there anything else we can assist you with, Miss Sweeney?” Whitcomb slid his watch from his vest pocket and flipped it open.

  Never slow to take a hint, Nell said, “No, you’ve been most helpful, both of you.” She rose; the two men followed suit. “Good to meet you, Warden...Father.”

  “I’ll show you the way out,” the priest offered, gesturing her through the door.

  “I admire your approach to these prisoners, Father,” Nell said as he escorted her down the hall, “your willingness to look beyond their crimes to the men themselves.”

  “There but for the grace of God go you or I.”

  Ah, but Nell had, in fact, gone there, back when God’s grace hadn’t shone quite as brightly in her life as it had these past few years. She wondered if Duncan had shared the sordid details of her past with this Father Beals. Suddenly she felt as if she were walking down this corridor stark naked.

  “They’re not monsters, these prisoners.” Beals walked beside her with his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze on the stone floor ahead of them. His right leg was the weak one, she saw, but not by much, and it looked like a condition he’d learned to live with rather than a recent injury.

  “Monsters don’t exist,” the priest continued. “Only men whose souls are in a state of arrested development. The problem is in the way they were reared—or rather, not reared. Most of them had little in the way of decent family life or religious instruction when they were growing up. They were street arabs, most of them, simply thrown out into the world to fend for themselves at an appallingly early age...” He turned to look at her. “Like Duncan.”

  She stopped walking; so did he.

  Silence engulfed them for one painfully long moment. He was looking at her; she was looking at the stone-block floor.

  “My wife had hair your color,” he said.

  She looked up sharply.

  He looked away, smoothing his hair as before; a nervous habit, it would seem. “You do know that Episcopal priests can marry,” he said.

  “I...yes, I suppose I did know that.”

  “She passed away. A boating accident.”

  “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “It was eight years ago,” he said, as if that should mitigate the tragedy.

  “She must have been quite young—and you, as well.”

  He nodded, clearly ill at ease. “The thing is, I know something of men and women—the bonds that can form between them, how transcendent love can be...and how excruciating. I know about passion, about loneliness...especially loneliness.”

  I have missed you so much these past 8 years. I do not no any fancy way to say it. I just miss you.

  “I doubt you know the whole story, Father,” she said.

  “I believe I do,” he said gently, his gaze lighting on the scar near her eyebrow.

  “Then you understand why I have no desire to visit him.”

  “You’re only human. Humans are naturally self-protective. Of course I understand.”

  “But...?”

  “But he’s changed.”

  She looked down, shook her head. “Father...”

  “Do you know why he learned to read and write?”

  She looked up.

  “They’re voluntary classes. A local schoolmarm comes in twice a week. He’s been taking those classes for years. Do you know why?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “So he could write to you.”

  She stared at him.

  “He won’t attend my Sunday services—says the pope wouldn’t approve. But I host voluntary Bible study on Wednesday afternoons, and he hasn’t missed a single session. Often he stays afterward to talk. He tells me what’s on his mind, asks for advice... Sometimes we pray together.”

  Still she said nothing.

  “Don’t tell me you think it’s impossible for a man to change,” he said.

  “Of course it’s possible. But Duncan, he’s...”

  “Monsters don’t exist, remember? He’s just a man. A flawed man, by his own admission, but a man who’s worked very hard at becoming better.”

  She studied the floor. Nell, I swear to God that I will stop writing to you if you only will come see me once.

  “We have a room for visits,” Beals said. “No one is ever in there this time of day. Duncan is cutting stone right now, but I could—”

  “I won’t be alone with him,” she said.

  A second passed. The priest smiled. “I’ll wait right outside the door. I’ll hear you if you call me.”

  Chapter 6

  “Nell?” Duncan stood in the doorway of the small, simply furnished visiting room, staring at her as if she were a visitation of the Holy Mother. Even in his sleeveless undershirt and striped prison-issue trousers, stone dust matting his honey-brown hair and coating the sweat that sheened him head to toe, he was shockingly handsome.

  Deadly handsome.

  Handsome as the Devil, as Bridie’s mother would say.

  Father Beals, standing behind Duncan, caught Nell’s eye and said, “I’ll be waiting right outside.”

  She nodded. Duncan entered the room, automatically ducking his head the way tall men did, and Father Beals closed the door behind him.

  For a long moment, they just stared at each other.

  “I can’t believe it,” Duncan said in that roughly soft voice of his, that voice that always reminded her of a lion’s purr. “I didn’t think you’d ever come. And now you have, and look at me.” He swatted at his trousers, raising a cloud of dust that glittered in the bands of sunlight from the single barred window. “But look at you,” he said softly, almost reverently. “My God, Nell, you look...”

  He took her in with an expression of awe—the chic little hat, the sleek princess-skirted dress, her gloved hands tightly clasped, her eyes, her mouth...

  “You look...” Like a lady. That was what she thought he was going to say. Instead, he said, “Like an angel.”

  Nell felt the absurd urge to thank him for the compliment, but her throat didn’t seem to be working.

  He took a step toward her.

  She backed up into the scarred old wooden table that occupied the middle of the room, four chairs tucked in around it.

  Duncan hesitated, lowered his head, rubbed the back of his neck. “Will you sit with me?” Crossing warily to the head of the table, he pulled out a chair for her, then circled around to the other end and pulled out one for himself.

  Nell sat, smoothed her skirts, folded her hands on the table.

  Duncan sat opposite her, tugged a grimy handkerchief out of his pants pocket and wiped the dust off his face. “I woulda shaved if I knew you were comin’,” he said as he rasped the cloth over his prickly jaw.

/>   Sunlight painted ribbons of gold over his brutally handsome face.

  “I—” Nell’s voice snagged in her throat; she cleared it. “I probably shouldn’t have come.”

  “Don’t say that,” he implored, reaching across the table.

  She shrank back.

  His jaw clenched; his hand curled up. “God, please don’t say that. You don’t know how I’ve wanted this. You don’t know what it means to me, being able to see you again, to see you looking so...” His expression sobered. “To know that I didn’t...that what I did to you, how I treated you, didn’t...destroy you.”

  “I almost died.”

  He closed his eyes.

  She said, “The baby did die.”

  His throat moved as he swallowed. “I’m sorry, Nell.” He looked at her, his eyes gleaming, voice hoarse. “I’m more sorry than I can tell you. I was...” He shook his head. “I was gonna say I was drunk. But really I was just...” He sat back, expelled a ragged sigh. “I was just so mad at you for wanting to leave me, ‘specially with the law after me ‘cause of the Ripley thing. It was like you were turning your back on me just when I needed you most. I didn’t understand that it was all my fault, that you’d taken as much as you could take.”

  She nodded distractedly. “Yes. Well...I appreciate that, Duncan. Father Beals tells me you’ve changed, and I hope, for your sake, that it’s true.”

  “It is true,” he said with quiet fervor. “Don’t doubt it for a second.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, although she was far from convinced. Duncan had always been a consummate actor. “I hope you meant it when you promised not to write to me anymore if I came to see you. My position with the Hewitts means a great deal to me. The little girl I care for, Gracie, I love her as much as if she were my very own. Mrs. Hewitt doesn’t know about...how I was before. About you...about any of it. A governess is expected to be completely above reproach. If she were to find out—”

  “I done you enough damage. Don’t worry. I won’t send you any more letters.” He smiled. “You talk like a book, almost. Not hoity-toity exactly, but...different from before.”

  “I am different, and I have a whole new life. But I’ll lose it—and I’ll lose Gracie—if my old life ever becomes known. I’ve only ever told two people about it, two people I could trust completely, and even then I didn’t tell them all of it, just—”