Murder in a mill town

by P. B. Ryan

  Nulty winced. “I’m that sorry to hear it.” Jamming the cork back into his whiskey flask, he said, “You look like the wife of one of them Beacon Hill nabobs when they head up to the North End to do charity work. Why do you think I asked if you meant to pray over ‘em? That fella probably thought the same thing.”

  A trill of feminine laughter drew their attention to the stairway connecting Province Street to Bosworth. Two young couples in evening attire came into view beneath the oil lamp, their movements unsteady as they made their way down the stone steps. One of the ladies had let her cloak slip off her shoulders, undraping a blue satin gown that was terribly chic, and also quite daring in that it left her upper bosom and arms completely revealed.

  One of the gentlemen paused at the bottom of the steps to light a cigar. It was the first time Nell had seen a man of his station smoking on the street—a violation both of etiquette and city law. This was the fast young set to whom Nell, cocooned in a world of Brahmin propriety and centuries-old tradition, was rarely exposed.

  “Spence, old man,” the other gentleman slurred, “can’t you wait till we’re in Poole’s to light that damned thing?”

  “You’ll end up having to pay another fine,” warned the lady in blue.

  “There are no watchmen round here,” he said as he spun the tip of the cigar slowly in the flame of his match.

  “Here, take this.” Nell handed her shawl up to Nulty, then unpinned her hat and gave him that as well. His eyes widened when she removed her lace collar and undid the top few buttons, pushing aside the tissue-thin fabric to uncover her upper chest. In an effort to liven up her tame chignon, she plucked at a few tendrils around her hairline, letting them frame her face in curls—a hairstyle not dissimilar to that of the lady in blue. Her two-button kid gloves could stay, she decided, but the chatelaine had to go. Before handing it up to Nulty, she withdrew from it the cigarette that Otis had given her at the Hewitt Mill two days ago.

  The driver shook his head, grinning, as she turned to greet the two approaching couples. “I say, I don’t suppose one of you could spare a light.”

  There was a moment’s pause as the party regarded her curiously. Although cigarettes were making inroads among wealthy young mavericks—Will Hewitt smoked them—it was the rare female who indulged. Their eyes betrayed the nature of their speculations: Was she a wanton, a whore even, or one of their own? The ladies’ gazes scanned her dress; the men’s lingered on her bosom.

  She must have passed muster, at least with the cigar smoker, who tipped his hat and bowed before stepping forward to strike a match. Knowing better than to try to inhale the smoke, Nell merely held it in her mouth for a moment before letting it out. “Many thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” He nodded and rejoined his group, who proceeded down the stairs that led to Orlando Poole’s, with Nell casually bringing up the rear as if she were one of them.

  “Good evening, Mr. Cabot, Mr. Amory,” greeted the Negro as he held the door for them. “Ladies.”

  Nell shielded her face as she passed him by turning her head to blow out a stream of smoke. He led them down the dismal little hallway, the muffled babble of voices and music growing louder as they approached a second door at the end. Opening that door, he gestured them into an enormous room that blazed so brightly with light and people and noise that Nell felt a moment’s reeling disorientation.

  Like Alice entering Wonderland, she thought as she surveyed all this busy, smoke-hazed opulence: the crystal chandeliers, gilt-framed mirrors, and sumptuous furnishings; the pianist playing “Juanita” at a shimmering grand piano; the waiters weaving deftly to and fro, their drink trays held high over the heads of their elegant clientele. A heavily laden banquet table took up most the back wall, with tables for poker and faro to the left, beneath a dozen bright pendant lamps. It was primarily men, quite dashing in their white cravats and tail coats, in that section of the room. The ladies, all young, all sensuously stunning in the latest Paris fashions, had mostly gravitated to the other side, which was more soothingly lit and furnished in intimate little groupings of plush velvet chairs and couches around low marble tables.

  Nell ventured warily into this dazzling bacchanalia, keeping to the sparsely occupied perimeter of the righthand section to avoid being seen as she searched for Harry Hewitt among the men gathered around the gaming tables. The way the tables were set up, however, the dealers stood facing her, while all she could see of the players, for the most part, was their backs. Given their identical dress, the fog of cigar smoke enveloping them, and her distance from the gaming pit, it was a tedious business to sort through them one by one.

  “Nell? Dear God, it is you.” The voice, lazily deep and British-accented, was so familiar—and so startling—that Nell was seized with a sudden ache in her chest, as if her heart had contracted into a tight little knot.

  Chapter 8

  Nell turned to find none other than William Hewitt rising from one of the tufted velvet chairs, bearing an expression of utter incredulity.

  “Dr. Hewitt.” She couldn’t help gaping at him, not only because it was so unexpected to encounter him here—to encounter him anywhere after all these months—but because of how he looked. When she’d first beheld him last winter in that bleak little police station holding cell, he’d appeared every inch the derelict: ill-clad and grimy, battered from an overzealous police interrogation, and reeling from opium sickness. The Will Hewitt standing before her tonight in white tie and swallowtail, his black hair gleaming, a dainty orchid in his lapel, was a different man entirely.

  “Back to ‘Dr. Hewitt,’ are we, then?” he said. “The last time we saw each other, I thought we’d agreed on first names. I must say it’s not very sporting of you to amend the terms of our acquaintance without me being there to plead my case.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “No place quite as interesting as this one’s just become.” He glanced at her unbuttoned bodice, her coyly exposed arms...the cigarette. “You seem to have undergone quite a transformation in my absence.”

  He was teasing her; she saw it in his eyes. Still, like a fool, she said, “I just... I needed to get in here, and the only way was to look like...well...”

  “I tried to tell you once that it was possible to look too respectable. You didn’t believe me.” Indicating her half-burned cigarette, he said, “Are you going to smoke that? I’m fresh out.”

  She handed it to him; he inspected it. “No lip rouge. You don’t wear it?”

  “Of course not.”

  He took a puff, his gaze lighting on her mouth as he blew out the smoke. “I always thought you must wear a bit, at least.”

  She looked away for a moment, discomfited by the directness of his gaze.

  “What on earth possessed you to come here?” he asked. “This hardly seems the kind of place to lure a young lady as monstrously respectable as yourself.”

  “I followed your brother here.”

  “Harry?” Will looked toward the gaming pit on the other side of the vast room.

  Nell tracked his gaze to a faro table, where four men, one of them evidently Harry, were placing their bets. “I need to talk to him,” she said.

  “We arranged to meet here. He made me wait over an hour, then pulled out a roll of greenbacks and headed straight for the pit.”

  They’d arranged to meet? During Will’s brief and turbulent sojourn in Boston last winter, he’d had no direct contact at all with Harry; they hadn’t seen each other since Will’s Christmas furlough from the Union Army in ‘63. Now Will was back in town, and out on a spree with his brother. Nell’s mind reeled with questions, but all she said was, “I’m surprised you’re not over there yourself.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t wager tuppence in this place. This is a skinning joint. They entice the carriage trade here with all these gaudy trappings, then gull them out of everything in their pockets. Harry refuses to believe it because they keep the Pernod flowing like water, and he never sees a bill.�
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  “I need to speak to him,” she said.

  “He won’t want to speak to you.” Leaning over, Will snuffed his cigarette out in an ashtray on the little marble table in front of his chair. “He doesn’t seem terribly fond of you since...the troubles last winter.”

  “I apologized for the things I said about him.”

  “Yes, well...”

  “Your cognac, sir.” A waiter with a trayful of drinks placed a snifter and a linen napkin on the table.

  “Who ordered that?” Will indicated an egg glass half-filled with acid-green liqueur among the whiskeys and champagne flutes on the waiter’s tray. The absinthe sat on a gold-rimmed saucer next to an identical saucer bearing a small pitcher of ice water, a sugar cube, and a slotted spoon.

  “It’s for a gentleman over there,” the waiter said, nodding toward the faro tables.

  “Red waistcoat?” Will asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Take it back.”

  “But...”

  Will handed him a couple of coins. “Bring him a whiskey instead. If he argues with you, send him to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And the lady will have...?” Will looked inquiringly toward Nell.

  “Oh, no—nothing for me. I didn’t come here to—”

  “But you’re here now, so you may as well sit with me and have...a cocktail? A sherry, perhaps. At least a cup of tea.”

  It had been a very long time, indeed, since Nell had sat in a public house and had a drink in the company of a man. A woman in her position enjoyed certain privileges denied to the unwed ladies in whose homes she served, such as the freedom to come and go unescorted, but socializing with men was strictly forbidden. The reason, of course, was that the governess was expected to remain unmarried so as to devote her full attention to her charge, the presumption being that marriage was the ultimate goal of any association with a man. Since Nell had no such designs on Will, what harm could there be in allowing herself this isolated indulgence? Except...

  “I wouldn’t want to be seen,” she said.

  “Sit with your back to the room. No one will take any notice of you in this dark little corner. They’re all far too fascinated by themselves, in any event.”

  She seated herself opposite Will and let him order her a sherry; he asked for a tin of Bull Durhams for himself.

  “It shouldn’t surprise you,” Will said as he cradled the snifter in his palm, swirling the cognac to warm it, “that Harry was unmoved by your apology. Contrition is a foreign notion to him. Never having been called upon to answer for his sins, he never really absorbed the whole concept of penitence and forgiveness. Any sorrow he feels as a result of his own hurtful acts has more to do with fear of repercussions than with guilt or shame.”

  “Not that repercussions have ever been an issue with him.”

  “No. Saint August would never think of allowing his own flesh and blood to twist in the wind that way. Not when Leo Thorpe is so adept at fixing things.”

  Leo Thorpe, attorney, city alderman, and August Thorpe’s oldest and closest friend, had been sweeping Harry Hewitt’s worst transgressions under the carpet since Harry’s adolescence. The arrests for public inebriation and lewdness, the whores, the gambling, the pregnant mill girls, the drunken fist fights... All it ever took was Alderman Thorpe to grease the right palms, and it was as if none of it had ever happened.

  “I’m surprised to find you and Harry in contact with each other,” Nell said.

  Will held his snifter to his nose for a moment to savor the cognac’s aroma, but he didn’t sip it. “I got back to town six days ago—Friday morning. Took a room at the Revere House, stuffed myself on oysters, and then I strolled on down to Colonnade Row. I sat on a bench just inside the Common, across from my parents’ house, and waited for you to step outside.”

  She didn’t bother asking him why he didn’t just walk up to the front door and knock. Long estranged from his parents, especially his coldly judgmental father, it was little wonder he didn’t care to face them.

  “I was on my sixth cigarette,” he said, “when I finally saw you come out. You weren’t alone, though.”

  “Ah.” Nell was beginning to understand. “Gracie.”

  “You were laughing, the two of you. You took her by the hand and ran across the street and into the park. She had a little toy sailboat with her.”

  “She likes to sail it in the Frog Pond.”

  “I hid until you’d passed.”

  “Will...”

  “She’s a pretty little thing.”

  “You should have—”

  “No, Nell,” he said gravely. “I shouldn’t have.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to finally meet her? I mean really meet her, face to face? You’re her father.”

  “A father who makes his living playing cards and can’t go four hours without a syringe full of morphine.”

  She’d wondered whether he was still addicted. “It’s still just morphine, then?” she asked. “You haven’t gone back to...?”

  “The pipe?” He shook his head. “No, I’ve managed to steer clear of all that. Opium...it’s too seductive, too...mesmerizing. It consumes me, it becomes all I want, all I can think about. Morphine doesn’t carry quite the same allure. I use it like medicine, twenty milligrams by injection six times a day—just enough to keep from going into withdrawal. And of course, to keep the leg from aching too badly.”

  “It still troubles you, then?” Four years ago, a bullet had torn a chunk out of Will’s right thigh. His limp was far worse when he was sober than when he was under the influence of the poppy.

  “It’s not too bad,” he said, “so long as I don’t let too much time pass between shots.”

  The waiter came with her sherry, the cigarettes, and a box of matches. Will clicked his glass against hers. “To the renewal of our acquaintance. May it remain both intriguing and agreeable.”

  The sherry was sticky-sweet. Nell felt it warm a path all the way down to her stomach.

  “Do you mind?” Will asked as he opened the Bull Durham tin.

  “Not at all.”

  Withdrawing a cigarette, he said, “While you and Gracie were conducting nautical maneuvers in the Frog Pond that afternoon, I procured a little runabout for the day and drove up to Charlestown to see Harry.”

  “You went to the mill? You didn’t happen to be talking to Harry out in the courtyard when the dinner bell rang?”

  He stilled, the lit match in one hand, the cigarette in the other. “Were you there?”

  “No—not on Friday. I was there yesterday to look into a certain matter for your mother—a mill girl who’s disappeared—and some of the mill workers mentioned having seen your brother talking to a man last Friday who...matched your description.” I swear, I thought they was gonna swoon dead away.

  “You should have seen Harry’s face when his secretary announced me.” Will lit the cigarette, blew a stream of smoke away from her. “We hadn’t seen each other in, what—almost five years?”

  “Why did you seek him out?” She almost said, Why on earth?

  Will settled back in his chair, crossed his long legs, studied the cognac in his glass. “I’d been thinking about him since last winter, when I came to realize how little he’d changed, and that I bear a certain measure of responsibility for his weakness of character.”

  “For not having steered him toward righteousness during his rakehell adolescence?” Nell asked. Will’s self-flagellation over this issue was familiar territory. “Your mother told me there was little you could have done, with you two being six years apart in age, and Harry so resistant to accepting guidance.”

  “If anyone could have managed it, it would have been I. We were fundamentally alike, Harry and I, both drawn to sin like crows to carrion. I could have made him listen, forced him to change...if I hadn’t been so utterly self-absorbed.”

  “You were in England most of that time,” she reminded him. “I don’t know what yo
u think you could have accomplished during the few weeks each year you were home on holiday.”

  “And I suppose we’ll never know. But there’s no reason I can’t try to make up for lost time now. This is the third evening Harry and I have spent together since I’ve been back.”

  “If your purpose in befriending him now is to mold him into an upright gentleman of strong morals and steady habits, I wish you the very best of luck. God knows you’ll need it.” She raised her glass in a mocking toast.

  He smiled into her eyes. “I’ve missed you, Nell.”

  She looked down, took a sip of her sherry. “What have you been up to these past months?”

  He shrugged. “The usual. Three or four different cities, a hundred different card games.”

  “Will you be in Boston very long?”

  “I’m here for an ultra high stakes poker game that’s to take place at the Parker House on Monday. Did you miss me?”

  “Oh, shit.”

  Nell looked up to find Harry hovering over them, a glass of whiskey in one hand, cigar in the other, regarding Nell with an expression of disgust.

  Will said, “There’s a lady present, old man.”

  “Is there?” Harry made a show of looking around. “All I see is some impudent little Irish bitch who managed to slither in here when no one was—”

  “That’s enough, Harry.” Will rose to his feet, a hard thrust to his jaw.

  Harry backed off a step, grinning. “Steady, now. No point coming to blows over some cherry you’re trying to pluck. She’s a ripe one, I’ll give you that, but a bit on the sour side, and damnably hard to pry off the stem. I should know.”

  Will said, “If it’s a bloody nose you’re angling for, Harry, I’m more than happy to—”

  “Easy, brother. I just came over to ask you what the devil you thought you were doing, sending me this pointless swill?” He gestured with the whiskey, which spilled over the rim of the glass.