Murder in a mill town

by P. B. Ryan

  Duncan did it for her, Nell realized. He escaped from prison and risked being caught to save her. She closed her eyes, as close to tears on his behalf now than she’d been after her trip to City Hall today. Don’t fall apart now. Keep your wits about you.

  Quietly Will said, “I think I understand now, Adam. I do. You’re right, adultery is a sin. By your definition—”

  “It’s God’s definition.”

  “By God’s definition, I’m an adulterer, because I’ve had relations with married women. But I beg you to believe me when I say that Nell wasn’t one of them.”

  “Enough!” Adam whipped a handkerchief out of his pocket as strode toward Will, who thrashed furiously as it was stuffed in his mouth. Using the rest of his rope, Adam secured the gag. “I told you to stop lying to me.”

  Adam, looking weary, dropped into a leather chair facing the fireplace. He gazed into the low flames for several minutes before speaking. “Twelve years ago, when I started breaking out in sores, and I realized what my wife had done, what she’d turned me into, I agonized over how to deal with it. I tried to forgive her. For four years I tried. I’d sit for hours at a time in that damned box, steeped in mercury, sweating and weeping while I imagined my wife, my sweet little Clarissa, moaning in the arms of another man. It became unendurable. I turned to the Bible, looking for answers, for a path—and I found it. Finally it became clear to me the course God wanted me to follow, and I’ve been following it ever since.”

  “Your wife’s boating accident...” Nell said.

  He turned to look at her. “God’s will. I was only his instrument.”

  “And Bridie and Virgil...?”

  “Yes, of course, and others in between—although I must confess, I almost weakened when it came to Virgil, but in the end I did what had to be done. My only regret was that I was naïve enough to think I could leave Harry’s fate in the hands of the commonwealth. Oh, how he needed to dangle at the end of a noose.”

  He stood, sighed, walked over to the nightstand, lifted the bottle of morphine solution and shook it. “They’ll find you in bed, naked,” he told her, “with Will by your side, both of you dead from morphine overdoses. In case you were wondering.”

  “Adam...” Nell began.

  “Shh.” He held a finger to his mouth. “It’s pointless now.”

  Nell met Will’s anguished gaze across the room as Adam uncorked the vial of morphine powder, emptied it into the solution and shook it, thus greatly augmenting its potency.

  “It’s a fitting death,” Adam said as he screwed a needle onto the syringe and filled it from the bottle. “It will be clear to all that you were brought down by your own sin. And, given the dose, it should be relatively quick. Respiratory and cardiac failure, isn’t that right, Doctor?” he asked with a glance at Will. “Your lungs will simply shut down, then your heart, in short order. Not the best death, but not the worst. And then the world will know what you both are, which is only right and just.”

  He laid the full syringe on the nightstand and turned to Nell. His gaze crawled down the length of her. “You need to get out of those things.”

  She shrank back against the pillows as he sat on the edge of the bed, facing her. He pulled her pendant watch over her head and set it on the nightstand, then started unbuttoning the front of her dress. Across the room, Will writhed against his bindings, straining to get free.

  Her dress undone, he spread it open to reveal her muslin corset cover. He paused, then retrieved a folding knife from inside his coat and opened it.

  “Oh, God, don’t,” Nell pleaded as he sliced the left sleeve of her dress from shoulder to wrist, and then the right, scratching her in the process. He pulled off the dress, petticoat and crinoline in one unwieldy mass, then stood at the side of the bed looking down at her.

  Despite her layers of underpinnings—shimmy, stays, corset cover, knee-length drawers, stockings and boots—she felt naked beneath his gaze. No man, except for Duncan and Dr. Greaves, had ever seen her in such a state of undress. And even they had never looked at her quite the way Adam was looking at her.

  He sat down again, studying her as if trying to decide what to remove next. He fingered the ruffled frill at the hem of her drawers, stroked the lace that edged the neckline of her corset cover. Stilling, he rested a hand over her breast, holding her down with his other hand when she tried to wrench away.

  Will thrashed frenziedly, his gag muffling his cries of rage and distress.

  Nell squeezed her eyes shut. God, help me to get out of this... Show me what to do...

  “You like to do this to men, don’t you?” Adam said. “You like to incite their lust, make them forget themselves. Bridie was like that.”

  Nell pictured those awful bruises they’d found on Bridie, and shivered.

  Adam stood, shucked off his coat and vest, shrugged off his braces, his gaze never leaving her.

  “You can never get enough, your kind. You’re always asking for it...begging for it. It’s in your eyes, the way you move, the depraved thoughts you make us think, the things you make us do...”

  I know your kind, Harry had said. I know what you need. She’d turned the tables on Harry. She could do the same to Adam. She could. Think outside of yourself. She just had to keep a grip, keep thinking...

  “Not in front of Will—please,” she begged. “Can’t we go somewhere else?”

  “You’d like that. You’re clever. You’d find a way to get free.” He shook his head as he popped open the top few buttons of his shirt. “We’re staying right where we are. Although, if you prefer,” he added with that dead smile of his, “I can dispatch Will now rather than later, so he doesn’t have to watch. You see? I can be reasonable.”

  “How can you do this?” she asked, desperate to get through to him, to the good, rational man he must have been before syphilis and mercury poisoning ravaged his mind. “This is rape. You must know this is wrong.”

  “It’s only rape if the woman doesn’t want it, but your kind always wants it.”

  “No, Adam, you’re—“

  “Liar!” He slapped her across the face, reigniting the pain in her head. She cried out.

  Will flailed and kicked, screaming through his gag.

  “You lying bitch,” Adam growled, “don’t you dare try to play the innocent with me. And don’t bother struggling,” he said as he untucked his shirt, “because we both know what a farce that would be.”

  “At least...at least let me undress myself,” Nell said, trying to dismiss the pain from her mind so that she could think. “You hurt me with that knife.” She looked at the scratches on her arms. “Untie me so I can—“

  “Untie you?” His laughter had a frantic edge. “Are you joking?”

  “Just my hands, then, so I can get my clothes off.”

  He nodded as if working something out in his mind. “If you like. And I’ll even close the bed curtains so Will doesn’t have to watch. But in return, you have to cooperate—completely. At the first sign of resistance, I’ll truss you up and open the curtains. And then, when it’s time for Will to get his dose, I’ll give him just enough to make it slow and agonizing. Otherwise it’ll be almost instantaneous. It’s your choice.”

  She looked toward Will, his eyes bleak and desperate as he continued to wrestle with his bonds, the couch creaking from his efforts.

  “Close the curtains,” she said.

  Adam pulled the curtains shut, plunging them into semidarkness, released her hands, and sat on the bed to watch her undress. She plucked open the tiny shell buttons of her corset cover, thinking, Be calm. Don’t let your hands shake. Remove your mind from what’s happening to you.

  She slipped off the corset cover, leaving her in her stays of quilted sateen over a cap-sleeved shimmy. The corset’s front busk was secured by means of a row of hooks and loops. Nell allowed her hands to tremble just slightly as she fumbled with the top hook, shaking her head in a display of exasperation. “I can’t... It’s my hands, they won’t.
..”

  “Here.” Leaning over her to see the tiny hooks in the dim light, Adam pried open first one, and then another, as Nell reached toward the nightstand. Slowly, quietly, so he wouldn’t notice, she felt around until she came upon the syringe.

  Adam popped open a third hook.

  Nell grabbed the syringe with one hand, a fistful of his shirt with the other.

  “Shit!” Adam seized her wrist just as she was about to jab the needle into his arm. “Bitch. You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”

  She cried out as he gave her wrist a sharp twist, causing the syringe to drop from her hand. He grabbed it and aimed it at her own arm.

  “I’m losing my patience with you,” he said, his eyes like black buttons in the dark. “Perhaps what you need is a little of what’s in here,” he said with a nod at the syringe. “Just a little. Just enough to take the fight out of you.”

  She reached up, took hold of his little finger—the easiest to break, if you used a sideways motion—and yanked as hard as she could.

  Bone snapped. Adam howled.

  The syringe dropped into the mound of pillows and disappeared. He aimed a fist at her face; she rolled aside to avoid it, felt a sting as the needle pricked her, rolled away.

  She slammed the heel of her hand into his nose; he roared. They grappled furiously. She punched and kicked, cursing the rope around her neck, which hindered her enough for him to swiftly gain the upper hand. He pinioned her body with his own and wrapped his hands around her throat, his grip surprisingly strong despite his broken finger.

  He squeezed, pressing his thumbs into her trachea, his fingernails biting into her flesh. Her lungs spasmed as she tried to draw a breath and found she couldn’t. She tugged at his hands, beat on them, clawed them. He pressed harder, quivering with the effort, his face blood-flushed, a vein snaking through the burn scar on his forehead. “Whore,” he rasped. “Adulteress. You asked for this.”

  From beyond the curtain came Will’s stifled cries and the furious groaning and creaking of wood as she strove to free himself. Nell’s heart pounded; her head pounded; her vision grew murky.

  “I can’t tell you how it excites me to see the panic in your eyes,” Adam panted, “to see you turn blue and gasp for air...”

  The trick is in transcending your body’s panic reflex, rising above it.

  Rise above it...

  It was like floating, like rising out of her body and hovering over the two of them, locked in a fight to the death within this curtained-off bower.

  Something glinted in the dark, an almost imperceptible spark of light.

  Was it real, or just a fancy of her oxygen-starved brain? Struggling to keep her wits as her lungs burned and heaved, she looked to where she’d seen the spark.

  Nothing.

  But there was something there, hidden among the pillows right in that spot. She knew it. She’d felt it only moments before.

  Nell hooked a leg around Adam, grabbed him by the hair, and rolled him faceup onto the spot where the syringe was lodged between two pillows. He flinched and swore rawly as the needle pierced his back, but he kept his grip on her neck.

  Summoning all her strength, she pressed her hands to his chest and pushed as hard as she could to force the plunger in.

  He grimaced, stilled, looked up at her with an expression of surprise. His hands dropped from her neck.

  His back arched; his eyes rolled up. He jerked as if yanked by a string, mouth wide open as if begging for air.

  That part of it lasted mere seconds. He stopped struggling and met Nell’s gaze, his expression slightly confused, his eyes as sweetly soulful as the first time she’d seen him.

  Those eyes lost their focus as the air sighed from his lungs. He went utterly lax, his complexion taking on the waxy pallor of death almost instantly, a phenomenon she’d seen before.

  He hadn’t made a sound from the moment the morphine entered his bloodstream.

  Nell checked his carotid; nothing, of course.

  The air left her own lungs. “Jesus,” she whispered, and crossed herself. “Thank you.”

  She untied the rope from around her neck with palsied hands, becoming aware as she did of dull thumping sounds from the direction of the couch, along with muted grunts of effort from Will. He had no idea what had just transpired. He would have heard Adam gloating as he throttled her, then the sounds of a struggle. Did he think she was dead?

  There came an explosive splintering of wood as she threw open the bed curtain and stepped out into the room.

  Will, still wearing his gag, looked up from trying to free his bloodied hands from their ropes—having already freed his feet by kicking that arm off the couch—and met Nell’s gaze. He stared at her for one long, breathless moment, eyes wide, face sheened with sweat, then closed his eyes and slumped down, a ragged groan rising from his throat.

  She went to him, not caring that she was in her underwear, her corset half undone, hair tangled down her back, bloodied and shivering like a rabbit. His folding lancet was on the table next to him, along with her gloves and hat. Using the lancet, she cut away his gag and the ropes that bound his hands.

  “Nell, oh God...” He wrapped her in his arms, pulled her onto the couch, held her so tightly she could barely draw a breath. His eyes shone wetly; he was shaking from head to toe. “Thank God. Thank God...”

  He buried his hands in her hair, rubbed his beard-roughened cheek against hers, both their faces damp with tears. It was quite some time before they drew apart.

  Chapter 23

  “He had me completely hoodwinked,” said Duncan, sitting across the visiting room table from Nell the following afternoon. His face was heavily bruised, his forehead marred by a dreadful, scabbed-over gash amid livid contusions. The gag and straight waistcoat were gone, however, replaced by a striped prison uniform.

  “Adam had us all hoodwinked,” she replied. “Himself included.”

  “I never woulda told him all the stuff I told him, about you and me and what we used to do and all that...”

  “I know.”

  “I thought he could maybe help me win you back. Give me advice, and all. That’s why I got Virgil to find out where you were livin’ and what your life was like. I thought after I got paroled, maybe you and me...”

  She looked at her gloved hands on the table. “We’ve gone on two different paths, Duncan. They don’t meet up.”

  He looked away, a muscle in his jaw flinching. “Yeah, well, it don’t matter no more, anyway, ‘cause I’m in for the full thirty now. Warden says I can kiss that hocus pocus goodbye.”

  “You knew that when you broke out of here,” she said. “You knew if you got caught it would ruin your chances for parole, but you did it anyway, for me. I...I can’t believe you did that.”

  He shrugged his big shoulders. “I’m your husband, Nell. I’m supposed to take care of you. And I figure I owe it to you, after...you know.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Look.” He leaned forward on the table, imploring her with his eyes—those painfully beautiful eyes—to look at her. “I know we can’t be together again, not for real. But in the eyes of the church, and in my eyes, we’re still man and wife. Nothing can ever change that.”

  How could she argue with that? “Thank you, Duncan, for what you did. It was a very great sacrifice.”

  He shook his head. “What an ass I am. I never shoulda told Father Beals all that, about Virgil and that Bridie girl, and that farm, and you and Harry Hewitt—”

  “You know he and I aren’t really...”

  “Yeah, I know that now. But Virgil and that girl are dead, and they wouldn’t be if I’d of been able to see through that loony priest. And then, after you left that day, the things he was sayin’ to me...like how you’d get your comeuppance real soon, and Harry Hewitt, too. He said I’d be free of you once and for all. He said you’d come to a bad end, just like Bridie and Virgil, which didn’t make no sense to me, ‘cause I didn�
�t know at the time that they were already...” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Poor ol’ Virge.”

  “That was enough for you to break out of here and try to save me?” she asked.

  “Nah, I started getting a funny feeling about things, and askin’ questions he didn’t want to answer. I think he started feelin’ like he shouldn’t of told me nothing. He said somethin’ about how Harry Hewitt was gonna end up hanging, so I got to thinking maybe Hewitt was gonna, you know, kill you, ’cause how else would I ever be free of you? It’s a Catholic marriage. There ain’t no divorce. And I’m thinking for some reason Father Beals knows what Hewitt means to do, but he ain’t gonna stop it.”

  “You didn’t suspect him?”

  “Not at first, not really. He is a priest, you know. Was.”

  “Are you the one who beat up Harry Hewitt?”

  Duncan whooped and slapped the table. “Damn, that was fun. Been eight long years since I’d bloodied my knuckles.”

  “Did you do it because you thought he and I...?”

  “Nah, I knew from talking to him there wasn’t nothin’ like that goin’ on. But he told me what he tried with you, and you can’t let a thing like that go by without drawin’ a little blood. Not if it’s your own wife.”

  Harry’s account of that dram shop conversation, Nell reflected, had excluded some pertinent details. Either he really had been too woolly from absinthe to recall them, or he’d deliberately omitted them out of embarrassment.

  “The more I thought about it,” Duncan said, “the more I started thinking maybe Father Beals himself was the one who was aimin’ to do you in. Problem was, I couldn’t hardly go to the cops, what with them on the lookout for me, so I tried to keep an eye on you—and keep an eye out for Beals.”