Murder in a mill town

by P. B. Ryan

  Will said, “Harry, have you no compunctions at all about blaspheming in the presence of ladies and clergymen?”

  Nell barely heard him, taken aback as she was by the condition of Harry’s face. In addition to the broken nose and black eye he’d sported three days ago in Detective Cook’s office, he now had several fresh facial contusions and abrasions—bad ones— as well as a split lip and a bandaged forehead. His left arm was in a sling, two fingers splinted. He glowered at Nell with raw loathing.

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “You happened to me, you—“

  “Harry.” Will said it softly, but with a subtly threatening nuance that seemed to do the trick. His brother slumped back in his chair, groaned, and clutched his midsection.

  “Watch those ribs.” Will crossed his legs and lifted his cigarette from the big marble ashtray on the table next to him. “It’s the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth on the left side,” he told Nell, as if chatting with a medical colleague. “I used his scarf to wrap them, which infuriated him, of course, because it might stretch the silk. He paid fifty dollars for it—can you believe that?”

  Nell looked toward Will, silently asking the obvious question: Did you do this?

  “Actually, no,” he said through a stream of smoke. “It was someone else entirely this time.”

  “Who?” Nell asked.

  “I don’t know who,” Harry said, “but I know why. It was ‘cause of you.” He raised his whiskey glass to his mouth, mewing pitifully when the alcohol came in contact with the cut on his lip.

  Adam, who’d been watching the exchange as if it were a stage play, lifted his brandy snifter and took a sip, but not before Nell saw his mouth quirk. He set the snifter down, wiped a drip off the side with his napkin, then refolded it in a triangle and set it neatly to the side of the glass. He’d eschewed his clerical collar for a crisply knotted secular bow tie tonight, probably because he knew he’d be spending the evening in a drinking establishment.

  “My brother showed up a couple of hours ago,” Will explained, “freshly trounced by some fellow he’d met in a dram shop on his way home from the mill.”

  “Some fellow you met in a dram shop?” Nell said. “How can that be construed as my fault?”

  “He got me talking ‘bout you,” Harry slurred. “Sat down next to me at the bar an’ asked what happened to my nose an’ my eye. I tol’ him my brother an’ I got into a set-to over some li’l Irish puss who wasn’t worth—“

  “Harry...” Will said in a warning tone.

  Harry rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I’m a li’l muzzy on the details, but he ended up dragging me out back. Next thing I know, there’s a fist coming at me.”

  The waiter placed a glass of sherry in front of Nell. She lifted it and brought it to her nose, savoring its nutty sweetness. “I don’t suppose he gave a name?”

  Harry shook his head, took a sip of whiskey, winced.

  “Did he look Irish?” she asked. “Perhaps your calling me...what you called me...”

  Will said, “I thought of that, but all Harry remembers is that he was young—about his age, he thinks. He was wearing a cap, so he’s not sure of the hair color. He had on an old sack coat.”

  “And a pair of those big, heavy brogans,” Harry said, “all dirty an’ scuffed up. I ‘member thinking I’d rather die than be seen with crap like that on my feet.” He looked down as his own footwear, a pair of glassily polished balmorals, with what can only be described as drunken reverence. “It was those brogans that did this,” he said, patting his cracked ribs. “Bastard got me down on the ground and kicked me. Very unsportsmanlike.”

  Will crushed out his cigarette, looking as if he were fighting a smile. “Depends on what you consider sport.”

  Harry tossed down the remains of his whiskey, swearing heatedly as it stung his lip. He retrieved his homburg from beneath his chair and put it on, tilting it with inebriated care. “You’ll ‘scuse me if I’d rather not spend the rest of my evening in the company of a woman who’s gotten me thrashed twice in one week.”

  He hauled himself to his feet, grimacing like a rheumatic old man, grabbed his walking stick, and shuffled out of the bar.

  “Drink that,” Will said, pointing to the glass of sherry in Nell’s hand, which she’d forgotten all about.

  She took a sip, felt her nerves quiver and then relax; took another sip and sat back, boneless. “Someone’s following me.”

  Will frowned. “Someone new?”

  “It must be, mustn’t it? Virgil Hines is dead.”

  “Are you sure?” Adam asked. “This whole experience has been—“

  “I’m not imagining it. I’ve been getting that feeling for days now, that feeling of being watched. Then, around dusk on Sunday, after we came back from Salem, I went for a walk by myself in the Public Gardens because it was so pleasant out, and after that mortuary...well, I just wanted to breathe some fresh air and think this whole thing through, sort it out in my mind. I saw him as I was walking. Every time I turned round, there he was, about a hundred yards behind me on the path.”

  “You didn’t recognize him?” Adam asked.

  “No, it was getting dark, and he was too far away. Sometimes he turned his back when I looked, other times he’d keep to the edge of the path and duck behind a tree. I cut my walk short and went back home. I tried to discount it—there are all kinds of strange men in a city this size. But today I saw him again, while your mother and Gracie and I were shopping. Or, I think I saw him. I saw someone dart into a doorway, and it could have been him.”

  She swallowed some more sherry. “I had to tell someone about it, get someone else’s take on it, but if I tell your mother, she’ll worry herself sick. I would have come here sooner, but I had to wait until Gracie was in bed. It’s got me so rattled. Perhaps I really should ask Dr. Drummond for a nerve tonic.”

  “You don’t need a nerve tonic,” Will said in a tone that suggested he would brook no argument. “You need the police.”

  “I’ve got to agree with Will,” Adam said. “Someone’s out there. You don’t have to know why he’s spying on you to know that he could be dangerous. You should have police protection until it’s sorted out.”

  “I’ll bring you over to City Hall as soon as you’re finished with your sherry,” Will told Nell. “I feel certain Detective Cook will take this seriously. Perhaps we can talk him into assigning someone to keep an eye on you.”

  “He’s not there on Tuesdays,” she said.

  “Tomorrow, then. When can you get away?”

  “Not till around nine or nine-thirty at night. I’ll have to wait for Gracie to go to sleep.”

  “Tomorrow night, then. I’ll get a hack and meet you on the corner of Tremont and Winter at nine-thirty. In the meantime, try to stay in the house if you can.”

  “We’re expecting rain tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll think up some indoor project to do with Gracie.”

  “Do the police actually do that sort of thing?” Adam asked. “Assign constables to guard people?”

  Will said, “It’s been my experience that the Boston police will do most anything, so long as one makes it worth their while.”

  As they were rising to go, Adam told Will, “We never did get to discuss this whole parole issue.”

  They agreed to dine together Thursday at Durgin-Park’s, with Will promising to bring along a deck of cards so he could teach Adam how to play poker.

  “Not that I intend to ever really play, mind you,” Adam assured him. “Your profession notwithstanding, games of chance are a spiritual and moral menace.”

  “Spoken like a true shepherd to the black sheep,” Will said wryly.

  Adam shrugged, smiled. “But the prisoners talk about poker all the time, so I feel I really ought to know the rules, at the very least.”

  “And perhaps visit a gaming hell, just once, so as to fully understand the lure of it,” Will said with a wink in Nell’s direction.

  “Gladly,”
Adam said. “If you agree to attend Sunday services at Emmanuel.”

  Will shook his head, chuckling. “If you think I can be so easily reformed...”

  “Just once,” Adam countered with a grin, “so as to fully understand the lure of it.”

  Chapter 20

  Detective Cook swiveled back and forth, back and forth as he ruminated on Nell and Will’s request, his chair’s metallic squealing underscored by the steady drumming of rain against his office windows.

  The skies had threatened all day, but the rain had held off until about five minutes ago, when it suddenly burst from the heavens, a full-blown downpour. Nell watched it sluice down the glass in sheets against an inky night sky. She wondered if she could capture the effect in paint—not just that exquisite, watery luminescence, but the purifying power of it, the way one good, pummeling deluge could wash away years’ worth of grime and dirt.

  The squealing abruptly ceased. Cook leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, and said, “All right, then, here’s what I can do...and what I can’t do. I can assign a man to one forty-eight Tremont starting tomorrow morning, and instruct him to accompany Miss Sweeney whenever she leaves the house. And I can have another man do the same at night. Put that away,” he said as Will withdrew some bills from his coat. “If it was one of you Hewitts, I’d gladly accept your ill-gotten spoils, but it isn’t. It’s Miss Sweeney. Mrs. Cook would have my hide if she knew I’d let you pay me to watch after a girl from the old country.”

  They thanked him.

  “So, that’s what I can do.” Cook rubbed his big jaw. “What I can’t do is guarantee, with absolute certainty, that those men, or any men, will always be available. There’s only so many constables to go round. If they’re needed for more important business...”

  “Of course,” Nell said. “I appreciate anything you can do.”

  “You say you never got a good look at the fella who’s following you around?” Cook asked as he sorted through drifts of papers heaped haphazardly on his desk.

  “That’s right.”

  “Nothin’ about him looked familiar?”

  “He was simply too far away.”

  “The reason I ask is... Ah, here we go.” Cook pulled out a sheet of paper and skimmed it. “This came last week. It’s a communiqué from the state prison in Charlestown. I didn’t make the connection at the time... Well, maybe there is no connection. Probably not, but it’s worth lookin’ into, seeing as how this fella started shadowing you just a few days ago.”

  Nell said, “I’m sorry, Detective. I’m just not following you.”

  “There was a prison break last Wednesday—a week ago today. Fella by the name of Sweeney—” he squinted at the paper “—Duncan Sweeney...”

  The air left Nell’s lungs. She closed her eyes as Will sat forward in his chair. “Duncan Sweeney?” he said.

  “That’s right. It’s a common enough name, which is why I didn’t think much of it at the time. He escaped late at night Wednesday, September sixteenth. It was a moonless night, if you recall, black as pitch, which worked in his favor, but it seems he also had help from one of the guards. The guard admitted under questioning that the escapee had promised him part of his loot from... Miss Sweeney?”

  Nell opened her eyes. The room tilted woozily.

  “You do know him,” Cook said. “Who is he, your brother?”

  Will was staring at her. She kept her gaze on Detective Cook. “Yes.” The lie came out hoarse. She cleared her throat. “Yes. He’s my brother.”

  “You think he might be the one who’s been tailin’ you?”

  She nodded numbly. “Yes. Maybe. I...” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  She stood. Her umbrella, which had been lying across her lap, fell to the floor. Will picked it up and stood to handed it to her. She took it without meeting his eyes.

  “Thank you, Detective,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I have to go now.”

  * * *

  “Damn it, damn it, damn it,” Nell muttered as she strove to open her umbrella beneath the columned portico over the front entrance of Boston’s stately, Parisian-style city hall. The rain fell in a rumbling sheet between her and the front walk. All she could see beyond it were two watery glimmers, one being the lamp atop a stone gatepost; the other had to be a carriage lamp, but it wasn’t moving. If it was a hack and she could commandeer it before it pulled away...

  “Open, damn you,” she muttered as she struggled with the umbrella, only to have it snatched from her hands. She turned to find Will unfolding it with a single thrust. Holding it over them, he wrapped an arm around her, guiding her swiftly down the stairs and front walk toward School Street.

  A hack was, indeed, sitting at the curb, its driver hunkered down in his box with his Macintosh over his head. Will opened the door and handed her in, then had a brief exchange with the driver that she couldn’t hear.

  He’s sending me home alone, she thought. But then he collapsed the umbrella and ducked into the carriage, an old single brougham. He settled in next to her on the cracked leather seat and crossed his legs. With the dripping, folded-up umbrella held upright between, like a walking stick, and his hat on his lap, he laid his head back on the seat and closed his eyes.

  Nell expected the vehicle to start moving. It didn’t. “Why isn’t—“

  “He’s waiting for the rain to lighten up,” Will said without opening his eyes.

  She nodded, although he couldn’t see her, and stared out the front window as it began to grow hazy.

  “Were you ever going to tell me?” He said it so quietly that she wasn’t sure he’d really spoken until she turned and saw him looking at her, his head still resting on the seatback. The amber glow of the lamps on the front corners of the hack filtered through the rain-dappled windows, bathed his face in bubbly golden light. Only his eyes were in shadow.

  She looked down at her hands. “I don’t know. No. I...I was afraid to.”

  “I thought...” He turned away from her, his jaw outthrust. “Never mind.”

  “Will—“

  “No. I thought you and I... I thought you trusted me. I thought you knew me. I thought we...were friends.”

  “I was afraid,” she repeated miserably.

  “That I would tell all of Boston that Miss Nell Sweeney, the oh-so-proper little Irish governess, actually has a husband in prison? You are still married, I take it. You never got divorced?”

  She shook her head. “Divorce isn’t recognized by the church.”

  “But you were afraid if you told me, that I’d blab it to all of—”

  “No, not...” She looked away, shook her head.

  “Not what?”

  “Not if you were sober.”

  There came a pause as he digested that. “I haven’t been drunk on opium—or anything else—since last winter. I only take enough morphine to maintain a state of normality. You know that.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t really believe it. You expect me to slip back into my old habits any day now.”

  “No, I—”

  “It’s all right, perhaps I shall. I’ve been feeling a bit restless lately. Perhaps it’s opium I’m starved for.”

  “Will, don’t say that.”

  He made no response, simply closed his eyes again. The rain continued to fall, not quite as heavily as at first, but at a steady rate, its reverberations making the small coach feel even smaller. The windows grew steamy, the air sultry; there were none of the usual street sounds from without, just the incessant rain.

  Will lay so still that she might have thought he’d fallen asleep, except that he continued to hold that umbrella upright between them, his long fingers curved gracefully over the porcelain knob.

  “You’re his wife.”

  Nell turned to find his eyes open, although he still lay back against the seat.

  “That’s why he’s still as possessive as he is,” Will said, “why he wrote you those letters, why he was so outraged when he th
ought you and Harry...” He shook his head. “Why he’s been following you round, because I’d bet my last nickel it’s him.”

  “It’s him,” she said with certainty. “The height, the way he moved... I suppose I just hadn’t considered the possibility before because I thought he was locked up behind bars.”

  “He’s still trying to keep you under his thumb. You’re married. In his eyes, why shouldn’t he?”

  “We may be married,” she said, relieved that he was talking to her, if only about this, “but I haven’t been under his thumb since I was sixteen.”

  “Did you marry that young?” he asked, then waved a dismissive hand. “No, forget it—it’s not important.”

  “It is to me. And perhaps if you understood how it came about, how he and I—“

  “All I care to understand right now is how to eliminate the problem of Duncan Sweeney so that I can get on with my life as it was before.”

  He may as well have said the problem of Nell Sweeney, because that was surely what he meant. His ultra high stakes poker game was over; he was eager to be moving on. It was as if the glass dome that enveloped them had shattered, instantly dispelling their fragile rapport, that unacknowledged aura of familiarity and understanding, that aching sweetness that she’d come to treasure without even realizing it.

  “Let’s look at this thing logically,” Will said. “Duncan— well, he’s unhinged, obviously.”

  “I...suppose so,” Nell said.

  “Think about it—he escaped from prison. He could have fled the country, started a new life somewhere far away, where he’d never be caught. Instead, he came here, where he must know they’re actively looking for him, so that he could monitor your every move—possibly with the aim of doing you great harm. Your Detective Cook does intend to catch him, by the way. He told me he’s going to alert the entire Boston police force to be on the lookout for him.”

  Nell shook her head. “Duncan must be daft, to be taking such a risk.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that he’s responsible for what happened to Bridie and Virgil?”