Murder in a mill town

by P. B. Ryan

  “Best to take command of oneself right from the very beginning,” he said. “When you’re in danger, your heart starts racing. You tremble, perspire, grow breathless. The trick is in transcending your body’s panic reflex, rising above it. Remove your mind from what’s happening to you. Think outside of yourself—ideally, even before the threat is real.”

  “Think outside of yourself,” she repeated dubiously.

  “It’s difficult to articulate, but that’s how I think of it, almost as if I were an onlooker in the situation, rather than a participant. It helps me to think clearly, anticipate my opponent’s moves, land the best punches.”

  “Yes, well, with any luck, I’ll never find myself in such a situation again.”

  “If you rely on luck, you probably will.”

  “You know I don’t intend to trust my fate to luck,” she said. “I’ve told you I’m going to avoid being alone with Harry.”

  Will gazed off toward Gracie, rubbed the back of his neck. “I know what you think of him, and with good reason, but if you’d known him before the war, when he was just this young, carefree lad... He was high-spirited, yes, but not a bad sort, not really. He took Robbie’s death hard. It changed him—made him not just self-involved, but self-destructive. The absinthe he keeps pouring down his throat, it may as well be arsenic, or a noose that he’s slowly tightening...”

  “If you’re asking me to feel sorry for him after what he—”

  “God, no! What he did to you was inexcusable.”

  “And yet,” she said, “here you are making excuses.”

  Will stared at her as rain beat against the taut black silk overhead. He slowly smiled. “I meant it last night, when I said I’d missed you.”

  Did you miss me? Not wanting him to ask it again, because she didn’t want to have to answer it, Nell said, “The entire world makes excuses for Harry. He’ll never have to answer for his sins.”

  “I wouldn’t put money on that if I were you.” Before she could ask him what he meant by that, he said, “Harry’s got his share of misdeeds under his belt, but I can’t imagine he had anything to do with Bridie Sullivan’s disappearance.”

  “Only because you’re blinded by fraternal allegiance. She was blackmailing him, and she intended to keep doing so indefinitely. Once Harry found out about Virgil, he wasn’t about to play along...but he wasn’t about to let her tattle to your father, either, and end up disinherited.”

  “What is it you think Harry did to her?”

  “I don’t know that he did anything, but I can’t simply ignore the possibility because he’s your brother. I know you think he’s just misguided, or muddled by absinthe, but I happen to believe that evil exists in this world, and that some people harbor it in their souls, and that one of those people is Harry. The fact that he’s an absinthe fiend only makes it more likely that he’s guilty. I’m sorry, Will, but I owe it to your mother, and to Bridie’s mother—and to Bridie herself, for that matter—to sort this thing out.”

  “Curious,” Will said, “that you feel you owe it to my mother to prove that her son was responsible for Bridie’s disappearance, yet she mustn’t find out that he tried to rape you.”

  Rape. There it was, the blunt, sordid word, spoken right out loud in this far too small refuge from the storm. Swamped with a sudden, bewildering rush of shame—unwarranted, perhaps, but no less real—Nell didn’t know where to look, what to say.

  Will cupped her chin to lift her face. “Nell...”

  Her eyes stung at the tenderness in his voice, his touch. She shut them, swallowing hard against a spasm in her throat.

  Softly he said, “It was inexcusable, what he did, and I know it was a nightmare for you—which makes it all the more impressive that you were able to get the upper hand.”

  She opened her eyes to find him leaning close. The rain had diminished to a whispery drizzle.

  “Are you certain, though,” he asked, “that your reason for suspecting Harry in the Bridie Sullivan thing has nothing to do with...what he tried to do to you?”

  “You think I’m trying to punish him for one savage act by implicating him in another?”

  “Not consciously, but perhaps—”

  “No. No, Will. I suspect him because of who and what he is, not because of what he did to me. And as far as protecting your mother...” Nell drew a deep breath. “It’s one thing to withhold the fact that her son gives such vent to his lechery, quite another to essentially cover up for...for whatever it was that happened to Bridie.”

  “Assuming she didn’t just run off with—”

  “Assuming she didn’t just run off with Virgil Hines. Yes, it would break your mother’s heart if she found out he’d done something to Bridie. But if he did, she deserves to know—and he deserves to be punished. There’s only so far I’ll go to spare her feelings. There’s only so far she would want me to go.”

  Will turned to look at Gracie, who had stepped out from beneath the huge, dripping oak to gaze upward at the sky. The rain had let up at last, and a gleam of late-afternoon sunshine was trying to insinuate itself between the clouds.

  He lowered the umbrella, shook the rain off, folded it up. “If you mean to conduct a truly impartial inquiry into this matter, you should, by all rights, focus as keenly on Virgil Hines as on my brother.”

  Uncomfortably aware, with the umbrella gone, of how close they were standing, Nell took a step back. “I agree. Your brother has been, however, somewhat easier to locate.”

  His eyebrows quirked. “I wouldn’t have thought you the type to take the lazy way out.”

  “If you knew how much work it is, looking after a four-year-old, you wouldn’t even joke about that.”

  He said, “You do get a day off now and then.”

  “Of course. All day Saturday, and Sunday afternoons, after church.”

  “Don’t tell they make you go to King’s Chapel with them.”

  “Do you honestly think I’m the type to be bullied into Protestantism against my will?” she asked through a chuckle. “No, I attend early Mass at St. Stephen’s, then I watch Gracie while your parents and Nurse Parrish go to church, and then—” she shrugged “—I’m free to do as I please.”

  “St. Stephen’s? Isn’t that all the way in the North End? There must be something closer.”

  “Yes, but St. Stephen’s is Irish. Brady worships there, too. He drives me.”

  “If you want to find Virgil Hines—and possibly Bridie Sullivan as well—I should think your first order of business would be to locate this weekend trysting place of theirs.”

  “I mean to do that—or try—but it won’t be easy. There must be dozens of farms south of Salem, probably hundreds.”

  “But it’s not just any farm,” he said. “It’s one that’s no longer in use.”

  “Am I to simply wander about looking for abandoned farms with white houses?”

  Will smiled. “Still prone to galloping assumptions, I see.” As she was digesting that, he said, “Tomorrow’s Saturday. There’s a livery barn at the Revere House where I can rent some sort of buggy for the day. I’ve been to Salem. Their City Hall is on Washington Street, I believe.”

  “City Hall?”

  “That’s where the Essex County land records will be housed, I would assume—although it may not be open on a Saturday, but there are ways around that. Salem is what—about two hours away if we get a decent pair of horses?”

  We? “I...I suppose, but...”

  “I’d rather not come calling for you at Palazzo Hewitt—the old man is presumably at home on Saturdays. What say we meet at the corner of Tremont and Winter at...eight in the morning? Is that too early?”

  “No, I’m always up at dawn, but...I can’t help but wonder why you want to be a part of this.”

  “I should think you’d welcome my involvement. I can act as your go-between with Harry. Of the two of us, I’m the only one he’ll talk to—for the time being, at least.”

  “Yes, but that’s not your
real reason. Admit it—you think I’m so prejudiced against your brother that I need you along to keep me honest.”

  “Not so much honest as objective.”

  She bristled.

  He smiled. “How I’ve missed your displays of cool indignation.” Sobering, he said, “Look, Nell, I know you wouldn’t unfairly target Harry—not deliberately. But you’re only human. What he did to you, well that was inhuman, and you’re justifiably incensed about it. I just worry that now, after having kept that anger under lock and key for four months, it may influence you more than you realize.”

  “You must think me very weak-minded indeed, if—”

  “Weak-minded? You?” He laughed. “You have one of the sharpest, most capable brains I’ve ever had the pleasure of sparring with. Being human doesn’t mean you’re weak, it just means you’re subject to the same little quirks and foibles as the rest of us—for which you should be grateful. If you were flawless, I wouldn’t want to know you. Nothing’s as dreary as perfection.”

  She smiled, shook her head. “Only you could make one’s character defects smell like virtues.”

  He returned her smile. “Eight o’clock? Tremont and Winter?”

  “I’ll be there.

  Chapter 12

  The White house, as it turned out, wasn’t white at all; nor, from the look of it, had it ever been. It was clear to Nell, even from her first distant glimpse of it as Will drove his rented buggy up the carriageway from the main road—really just wheel ruts through a forsaken apple orchard—that the old farmhouse had never once felt the swipe of a paintbrush. A classic saltbox with a sunken lean-to in back, it was sided in clapboards that had been scoured by four decades of New England winters to a dull, burnished gray. A dilapidated barn missing half its slats stood directly behind the house.

  Upon their arrival in Salem that morning, Will had driven them straight to City Hall, a smallish but dignified granite-fronted edifice topped by a golden eagle. Unfortunately, he’d been right about it being closed for business; the only soul in the place was a grizzled old colored man scrubbing the floors. From him, they discovered that the Registrar of Deeds, whose name was Ephraim Brown, lived on the corner of Putnam and Clement.

  They found Mr. Brown on top of his roof replacing shingles in the harsh morning sun, his shirt and hair sodden, face and bald pate sizzling red. Short-tempered from the heat and determined to stay up there until the odious job was done, he refused Will’s request to let them peruse the deed registers and plat books at City Hall, even after his visitor started pulling a series of five-dollar bank notes out of his pocket. Finally Will shucked his coat and hat, rolled up his sleeves, and climbed up to the roof to help hammer in the remaining shingles.

  Will proved a surprisingly capable roofer; forty minutes later, Mr. Brown was cheerfully unlocking the records room, where they learned that a man named Lawrence White had bought a nine-acre lot about four miles south of Salem on June 7th, 1829. The insurance company that held the most recent mortgage—it had been refinanced numerous times—foreclosed a year and a half ago, but apparently hadn’t resold it yet.

  “Do you smell that?” Nell asked as they rode up the path toward the house.

  Will reined in the horses and turned his face to the warm breeze shuddering through the trees, bringing with it the fusty tang of fallen apples underscored by a breath of something more fetid than rotting fruit, and more ominous. The breeze was coming from the direction of an overgrown field on the east side of the orchard.

  He said, “Opiates have ruined my sense of smell. What is it?”

  “Death.”

  He looked at her. “Are you sure you’re not—”

  “I’m not imagining it,” she said. “There’s something dead nearby.”

  “Perhaps it’s just an animal,” he said as he flicked the reins.

  “I hope so.”

  The smell diminished as they drove around to the front of the house, so Nell felt little hesitation in knocking on the door. It creaked open with the first strike of her fist, revealing a sizable but nearly bare front room, its windows uncurtained and patched with wood, its plank floor devoid of rugs. There was only a hint of that musty old house smell, the windows all being open to let in the fresh air. Dismal it may have been, and pitifully austere, but it had been swept, scrubbed and dusted by someone who clearly thought of himself—or herself, for this was Bridie’s home away from home, too—as more than a mere squatter here.

  The north wall was dominated by an immense stone fireplace in which the embers looked to have died down unattended. A cooking trivet—just the trivet, no pot—stood in the ashes. On the hearth sat a crock of bacon fat, a folded up rag with scorch marks from lifting hot pans, and a big stone-china bowl. Sticking out of the bowl was a wooden spoon imbedded in a bit of congealed, gritty looking batter furred with mold.

  Looking around for a place to set his hat, Will settled on the only real piece of furniture, such as it was—a battered old oak door that had been pressed into service as a table, with a small fruit crate on one side and a step stool on the other to serve as chairs. Two place settings had been laid out, consisting of unmatched plates, forks, and fancily folded linen napkins. Between them, on an embroidered handkerchief, sat two apples, an oil lamp, and a blue Mason jar filled with wilted wildflowers in about two inches of murky water.

  They found a small rear parlor behind that room, half-filled with junk, and two bedrooms upstairs, unfurnished except for a pallet in the back bedroom made up of a tidy arrangement of blankets and quilts.

  Upon returning to the front room, Nell went to the makeshift table and lifted one of the forks, which was heavy, hallmarked sterling, albeit badly tarnished. Stolen, most likely. “They were obviously getting ready to eat,” she said. “That batter bowl is almost empty, but where are the johnnycakes?”

  “What the devil is a johnnycake?”

  She grinned at his bemusement. “A griddlecake made of cornmeal. That’s cornmeal batter in that bowl.”

  Will crossed to the north wall, on which there were a number of hooks. A pink and green flowered shawl and a bonnet adorned with green ribbon and pink silk peonies were hung on two of them, fireplace implements on a few, and one bore an enormous cast iron skillet. He hefted the skillet, which was clearly heavy, glanced inside, sniffed. “Johnnycakes in bacon fat,” he said, holding it up so that Nell could see the greasy residue on its cooking surface, in which she could make out six roughly circular shapes.

  “I wonder why she put it away dirty,” Nell said. “Bridie may have had her faults, but you could eat off the floor in here.”

  “As a matter of fact...” Crossing to the table, Will squatted down, reached beneath it, and came up with a johnnycake swarming with ants. He flung it out the front door, brushed his hands off. “She evidently made six of those things, which, by the way, don’t look as if they’d be very appetizing even fresh off the griddle and sans wildlife. From the mold on the batter, I’d say they were cooked several days ago.”

  Nell said, “That kind of batter can grow mold in a day or two when it’s left out. There’s really no telling how long Bridie and Virgil have been gone.”

  “Or why they left as they did, having evidently tossed out their meal and put the skillet away without washing it.” Taking hold of one end of the door-turned-tabletop, Will said, “Give me a hand putting this on the floor, would you? There’s something underneath I’d like to take a look at. I saw it when I was down there.”

  That something turned out to be another, larger fruit crate, with two items visible through its slats: an old-fashioned gentleman’s drawstring purse of age-stiffened leather and a polished wooden box that was about as large as a good-sized jewelry box.

  Nell kneeled down to lift the box out of the crate; it was walnut, with brass banding and inlays.

  Sitting back on his heels, Will opened the purse, extracted a roll of greenbacks, and fanned them with his thumb. “Twenty-eight dollars.”

  “You can te
ll that without counting it?”

  “In my line of work, one learns to do that sort of thing without a lot of fuss. This must be what’s left of the forty Harry gave Bridie.”

  “This box is locked.” Feeling around in the crate, Nell said, “They key’s not here. Virgil probably keeps it on him.”

  “Can you spare a hairpin?”

  Nell slid one out and gave it to him. He jiggled it in the little brass lock, which sprang open.

  “You have a great many shameful talents, don’t you?” She took the box back.

  He smiled at her. “You did miss me—admit it.”

  Nell pretended she hadn’t heard him as she opened the box, which was divided into two rectangular, velvet-lined compartments. The larger one held good-quality ivory writing paper, while the smaller one was further partitioned for quill pens and pencils, an inkwell, sealing accoutrements, and a pen knife.

  “Father Beals gave this box to Virgil when he was paroled, so he could write to him,” Nell said.

  “Has he?”

  “Not yet.” She lifted one of the quills, the nib of which was black with dried ink. “But it looks as if he’s written to somebody.”

  “Would Beals have lied to you about that, do you think?” Will asked. “In order to protect Virgil, perhaps, in case Virgil had written something incriminating? You did say he was something of a crusader for prisoners and workingmen and so forth.”

  “I can’t imagine it.” She took the sheaf of paper out of its compartment and fanned it as Will had fanned the money, hoping to see writing; she didn’t. “Father Beals struck me as a sincere and honest man. If Virgil was carrying on a correspondence with someone, I doubt it was him.”

  Setting the paper aside, she felt around in its compartment, and then all around the edge of the box.

  “What are you looking for?” Will asked.

  “A latch, a loose panel...”

  “You think there might be a secret drawer?”

  She nodded. “Dr. Greaves had a...well, it wasn’t quite like this. It was more of a lap desk, but it opened up so you could keep your paper and pens and whatnot inside. When the lid was up, if you looked carefully, you could see a slender little brass rod fitted into a groove on the top edge of the box. It looked like part of the decoration, but if you slid the rod along the groove, a drawer would pop open in the side.”