Murder in a mill town

by P. B. Ryan

  In the Hewitts’ household—indeed, in their entire world of Brahmin pomp and privilege—there was literally no one quite like Nell, no established niche for her in the caste system, no recognized rules of comportment, no place. On the one hand, it could be, and often was, a somewhat lonely existence. On the other, the lack of ready-made parameters left her free to establish her own, within certain limits—which she’d gotten awfully adept at stretching.

  “Denny’s right, Pete. You’re wastin’ your time.” Mary Agnes darted a sly little glance in Nell’s direction. “Her Highness has got her sights set on bigger game than you. You know who she’s been makin’ time with in the Public Garden every afternoon, don’t you?”

  Peter came to Nell’s rescue while she was groping for a response. “You shouldn’t be listening to idle talk, Mary Agnes—either of you, whether it’s about Nell or Mrs. Kimball or anyone.”

  “Especially Mrs. Kimball,” Nell said. “The lady is dead—murdered, for pity’s sake—and all you can do is gossip about her. Anyone’s death should be greeted with sadness. We all deserve that much.”

  “Brady sure seems to think so,” Dennis said with a snicker.

  “What do you mean?” Nell asked. Brady, the Hewitts’ driver, had become, during Nell’s five years with the family, almost like a father to her.

  Dennis grinned as he stuffed half a scone into his mouth. “He was in here before, when I was having my breakfast—my other breakfast. I was trying to make conversation, but all he wanted to do was read the paper, which is how he is. All of a sudden, his mouth drops open and he kind of...” Dennis gasped and covered his mouth in illustration. “I asked him what was wrong, but he never pays me no mind. He just finished his reading. When he looked up, I swear to God he had tears in his eyes. A grown man—old as my pa, older maybe—and he’s blubbering like a little girl. Never knew he was such a cow-baby.”

  “Where is he now?” Nell asked.

  Dennis shrugged. “He left right after that. Said he had to go wash the brougham.”

  Nell looked from Dennis to Gracie—still stirring away industriously—to Peter. “Peter, do you think you could keep an eye on her for a few minutes while I—”

  “Go,” Peter said, shooing her up from the table and out the back door.

  Chapter 2

  Nell stepped outside to find the half-risen sun casting a sanguine luminescence over the backyard. It was a small yard, absurdly so considering the size and grandeur of “Palazzo Hewitt,” as Will had dubbed the Italianate mansion overlooking Boston Common. Viola had planted a charmingly frowsy English-style garden on the tiny patch of land, framed on either side by ivy-covered trellises and in back by a sizable red-roofed Tuscan cottage that served as a carriage house—or, more accurately, a combination stable and carriage house, half the ground floor being fitted out with horse stalls, while the other half housed the Hewitts’ fleet of coaches and buggies. The sprawling second floor provided living quarters for Brady and most of the other male servants.

  Nell hesitated before the iron-hinged double carriage door, thinking it was unlike Brady to close it while he was working inside, especially on a mild summer morning like this. She knocked, waited, knocked again. “Brady?”

  Once, shortly after she’d first come to work for the Hewitts, Nell had addressed the amiable Irishman as “Mr. Brady.” He’d laughed and said, “It’s just Brady, miss—plain old Brady.” She had no idea whether that was his first or last name. To this day, despite their close friendship, he insisted on addressing Nell as Miss Sweeney in deference to her station within the household.

  She creaked the door open and entered the long, stone-walled carriage bay, which was utterly silent save for the rustling of her skirts. It was cool inside, and dim, the windows being few and small. Through the arched doorway to the right came muffled whinnies and the scents of horseflesh and hay. To the left stretched a shadowy double row of vehicles, with a corona of light at the very end. Squinting, Nell made out a lantern hanging from one of the far back rafters.

  She walked toward the light, passing Mr. Hewitt’s one-seat bachelor coupe, Viola’s elegant little Victoria, Martin’s Coal Box buggy, the pony wagonette that had been Gracie’s Christmas present from Viola last year, a four-passenger bob sleigh for winter traveling, two nondescript gigs and a cart for the servants’ use, and finally the gem of the collection, the family brougham.

  The stately coach shone like black glass through a constellation of droplets, except for the oilcloth-draped driver’s seat. Water dripped from its body and wheels, dissolving into the floor of packed earth; a bucket with a washrag slung over it stood on a bench in the corner. Brady, in shirtsleeves and a damp canvas apron, his back to Nell, stroked a chamois methodically over the vehicle, coaxing it to a high gloss as he dried it off.

  Nell was about to say his name again when he stilled and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Without turning around, said, in a damply gruff, Irish-accented voice, “Go, away, miss. I’m fine.”

  “Did you know her?” Nell asked softly.

  He expelled a long, tremulous sigh. “She was my niece.”

  Stunned, Nell almost said, Virginia Kimball was your niece? when she realized her mistake. “The maid, you mean?” Fiona something...

  “Fee Gannon. Fiona, but we called her Fee. My little sister’s girl.” He sniffed, straightened up, and resumed his polishing.

  “Oh, Brady, I’m sorry.” She came closer, rested a hand on his broad back.

  He just kept on rubbing the chamois over the brougham, taking care to obliterate every trace of moisture from its surface.

  Shot in the head... That was bad enough. But Miss Gannon was found clutching a number of her late mistress’s famous diamond necklaces...

  “Brady...” she began.

  “She didn’t do it.” He met Nell’s gaze over his shoulder, his customary good humor replaced by a rheumy-eyed anguish that made her heart contract in her chest. “She’s a good lass.” He turned back around and continued his work. “Was. She would never... She could never...” He slammed a fist on the side window, muttered something under his breath, and squeaked the chamois over the glass to wipe away the mark. “They got it all wrong. It’s all wrong. They didn’t know her like I did. They don’t know.”

  “I know.”

  “No you don’t,” Brady said as he spun to face her. It was the first time he’d ever raised his voice to her, and it stabbed something deep inside her, something that made her feel alarmed, uprooted. “You can’t know, because you didn’t know her.” His chin quivered; tears spilled from his eyes. “You didn’t—” The words died on a choking sob. He slumped against the brougham, the chamois fluttering to the floor, his big, work-roughened hands shielding his face.

  Nell drew him into her arms, led him to the bench. “Sit. Sit, Brady.”

  He was crying in earnest now, amidst muttered imprecations that she couldn’t quite make out. She handed him her handkerchief. He covered his face with it and doubled over, great, hoarse sobs heaving out of him while she patted his back and made comforting noises.

  The carriage bay grew brighter during the several minutes it took Brady to pull himself together. Sunlight streamed through the east-facing windows, gleaming off the brougham.

  “I’ll have to wash her again,” Brady said in a shaky, sandy-wet voice as he wiped his nose with Nell’s handkerchief. “She’ll have spotted where I didn’t wipe her down.”

  “That can wait.” Nell tightened her arm around this man who’d been her bedrock, her salvation, so many times over the past five years. “Are you all right?”

  Brady sighed, his elbows resting heavily on his knees. “She was my only kin, Fee was. My only kin over here. The rest of ‘em, they’re still in the old country.” He wadded up the sodden handkerchief, dabbed his eyes, then flattened it out, frowning at the elaborately embroidered monogram in the corner. “Oh, look what I’ve done to your pretty handkerchief. I remember when Mrs. Hewitt gave you these.”


  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ll have it cleaned,” he said as he folded it up into a neat square.

  “I don’t care out the handkerchief, Brady,” Nell said as she smoothed his disheveled hair. “I care about you. I feel so...” Helpless. Frightened. He was like her father—more of a father, certainly, than her real father had been. He’d always been there for her, rock-solid, cheerful, reliable. Every Sunday morning, before dawn, he drove her up to St. Stephen’s in the North End for early mass. They’d take one of the little gigs so that they could sit next to each other and talk. He’d offer advice, tell her jokes... Sometimes he even sang to her—hymns or drinking songs, depending on his mood. To see him undone like this... It felt as if the very earth were sliding out from beneath her feet.

  Nell said, “I remember you mentioning her.” Brady rarely talked about himself, but he’d spoken with affection of “Fee,” for whom he’d found a position in service when she was orphaned in her teens; that would have been a year or two before Nell came to Boston.

  “I thought she worked for the Pratts,” Nell said. Orville Pratt, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Boston, had a law practice with August Hewitt’s closest friend, Leo Thorpe.

  Brady nodded. “She started off with them. I got her hired on as a chambermaid when her parents passed on, back in ‘sixty-three. Or rather, Mrs. Hewitt did, as a favor to me. She’s a very great lady, Mrs. Hewitt, with a good heart. You don’t find many like her up in them lofty ranks.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  Brady drew in a shaky breath and let it out slowly. “Fee never did take to the Pratts. Said they demanded too much of her.”

  “In terms of the workload, or...?”

  “That, and how they expected her to conduct herself, even on her off hours.”

  “There’s nothing unusual about that,” Nell said, “especially for a family as prominent as that one.”

  Frowning at the floor, Brady scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Aye, but it rankled Fee somethin’ fierce. See, my sister and her husband, they had a more or less free and easy way about ‘em. Fee didn’t ever really learn to toe the mark. She wasn’t a bad kid, mind you, she just didn’t like havin’ to pretend she was somethin’ she wasn’t.”

  Nell nodded noncommittally, all too aware of how it felt to play a role, and chagrined that this man to whom she’d grown so close had no idea who and what she’d really been in her earlier years. The only person who knew everything—the only person in Boston—was Will Hewitt.

  “Fee hated service,” Brady said. “She wanted to open a notions shop.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, she was savin’ her money for it—what little she made. They paid her a buck and a half a week. God knows how long it would have taken her, but she was real keen on the idea. She’d always loved...fripperies and trifles and such. Ribbons and laces...gloves, parasols, bonnets... Bonnets, especially, she was forever goin’ on about them. She aimed to sell yard goods, too, I think, and writing paper and the like. Other things. She used to go on and on about it. I can’t remember it all. I reckon I wasn’t really listening, on account of I didn’t think anything would ever come of it.” He closed his eyes, rubbed his face.

  “When did she start working for Virginia Kimball?” Nell asked.

  Brady turned the damp handkerchief over and over in his hands. “Just three weeks ago. I meet her sometimes at Pearson’s on Sunday afternoons for a spot of tea. It was the first Sunday in May that she told me Mrs. Kimball had hired her away from the Pratts.”

  “As a chambermaid?” Nell asked.

  “A maid of all work. There weren’t no other servants, just her.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Yeah, I warned her what she was in for. I said if she thought the Pratts overworked her, just wait till she had to do it all. But she said it was worth it, on account of she’d get to do the work of a lady’s maid, which was good experience for her notions shop, and also ‘cause Mrs. Kimball was gonna pay her two dollars a week, so she figured she’d be gettin’ the shop that much sooner. Oh, and she’d get her own bedroom. She’d always hated havin’ to bunk in the Pratts’ attic with all them other girls. I told her it wasn’t worth it in the long run. I begged her to go back to the Pratts, if they’d have her. One of the daughters had helped her get the job with Mrs. Kimball, and—”

  “One of the Pratt girls?” Nell asked. “Cecilia?”

  “Nah, the other one, the one that spent all that time in Europe.”

  “Emily.”

  “Emily, that’s right. I said maybe Miss Emily could put in a good word with her parents, and if that didn’t work, I’d try to get Mrs. Hewitt to help, but Fee wouldn’t hear of it.” He shook his head, looking weary, grayish.

  “It was that important to you?” Nell asked.

  “It wasn’t just the work she’d have to do, it was...who she’d be workin’ for.”

  “An actress.”

  “It didn’t sit well with me, Fee associatin’ with that sort. I felt an obligation, don’t you know, to my late sister, to look after Fee and make sure she stayed on the straight and narrow. And now look what’s happened.” His voice started faltering. “She gets a bullet in the—” He pressed the handkerchief to his mouth, his eyes welling. “And they think she...they think she was a thief and a murderess. Forevermore, that’s how she’s gonna be known. Mother of God, how did things ever come to such a pass?”

  Banding an arm around Brady, Nell said, “There’s going to be an inquest today. I’m sure, if your niece is innocent of—”

  “She is innocent. I told you—she could never have done such a thing.”

  “Yes, I know. I misspoke.” Trying, despite her doubts, to sound reassuring, she said, “The inquest jury will sort through the facts, and when they realize it wasn’t an attempted robbery, they’ll clear Fee’s name.”

  “It’s already been sullied right there on page one, underneath a headline a blind man could read. How are they ever gonna clear it? And why should they? To them, she was just some no-account Irish serving girl. You know what they think of us. You know the names they call us. We’re vermin to them, foreign riff-raff. It won’t even occur to them to question Fee’s guilt—you mark my words.”

  Nell didn’t know how to respond to that, given that he was probably right.

  Shaking his head, a truculent thrust to his jaw, Brady said, “In the twenty some odd years I’ve lived in this city, nothing has changed for our kind. Seems like the more of us that come over, the worse it gets for us. The Board of Aldermen, the City Council, the constables, they’re all out to keep us down. Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t just stay in the old country.”

  “Because there was nothing to eat,” she reminded him with a gentle pat on the back. “And you’re wrong, actually. There are a few councilmen with Irish names, and at least one police detective that I know of.”

  “An Irish copper? Now I’ve heard everything.”

  “His name is Colin Cook,” she said. “They hired him to police Fort Hill.”

  “Got a mick to keep the other micks in line, eh?”

  “Exactly. He’s been promoted, though. He works in the new Detectives’ Bureau at City Hall now. He handles cases all over the city.”

  “A detective, no less.” Brady turned toward her, a glimmer in his eye that made him look, for the first time this morning, almost like his old self. “How well do you know this fella?”

  “Well enough to consider him a friend.”

  “A detective, that’s not like a regular constable. They’re the ones to look into robberies and killings and such.”

  “Yes, but Cook is only one of eight or ten detectives in that bureau. I’ll be happy to speak to him for you—I gather that’s what you’re getting at—but he may not know much more than you or I. And there’s no reason to think he could clear your niece’s name.”

  “I’ll clear it myself, but first I need to find out what really happened. This Cook
, he’ll have to know something.”

  Nell offered Brady as reassuring a smile as she could muster up. “I’ll go to City Hall tonight and talk to him.”

  Brady’s face fell. “You’ve got to wait till tonight?”

  “I’ve got Gracie to take care of. Anyway, Detective Cook isn’t there in the daytime. He works four to midnight.” She patted Brady’s hand. “A few hours won’t make any difference. In the meantime, try not to dwell on it too much.”

  He squeezed her hand, his eyes damp. “She looked a little like you. Not quite as pretty, I reckon, but pretty enough, with the same rusty-brown hair. You’re a fine young lady, Miss Sweeney, an angel. You’re doin’ the good Lord’s work, clearin’ my Fee’s name.”

  If she could clear it. How would Brady take it, Nell wondered, if it turned out Fiona Gannon was just as guilty as she seemed?

  About the Author

  Patricia Ryan, aka P.B. Ryan, has written more than two dozen novels, which have garnered rave reviews and been published in over twenty countries. A RITA winner and four-time nominee, she is also the recipient of two Romantic Times Awards and a Mary Higgins Clark Award nomination for the first book in the Nell Sweeney historical mystery series, Still Life With Murder. Pat’s Evil Twin, Pamela Burford, is also a published romance novelist. Visit Pat’s website at http://www.patricia-ryan.com.

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