by P. B. Ryan
Nell roused from her musings to find the man on the opposite bunk still fondling his ladyfriend—only he wasn’t observing his own actions anymore. He was observing Nell.
She drew in a breath, scooted back on the bunk.
He kept his gaze fixed on her, his eyes dark and knowing as he slowly squeezed and stroked. Oh, God, had he been watching her watch him?
Nell looked away from his impudent gaze, cheeks stinging. Still he stared at her, even as he dipped his head to nuzzle his companion’s hair.
“Dr. Hewitt.” Nell reached out tentatively to nudge his shoulder.
Without opening his eyes, he grumbled, “Christ, but you’re a bloody nuisance.”
“Are you done?” she asked. “Can we go now?”
“Am I done?” he chuckled incredulously. “You’re joking, surely.” Pushing himself upright, he reached for his cigarettes. A certain torpidity dragged at his speech, as if he’d just awakened from a long night’s sleep, and his eyes were heavy-lidded.
“I’m feeling a little lightheaded,” Nell said; she was, in fact. “There’s not enough air in this place.”
“Leave, then.” Will lit a cigarette and dropped the match in a little square-sided stone dish. “Because I’m afraid I’m nowhere near done.” He leaned back against the wall, one arm resting on a cocked leg, looking drowsy and comfortable as he expelled a lungful of smoke. His hands were steady, his breathing regular, his expression contented. Quite the metamorphosis.
“Then...when will you be ready to...”
“When I start answering you with gibberish because I’ve finally smoked enough gong to make your bloody nagging sound like gibberish. That’s when I’ll be ready to leave.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Dr. Hewitt.”
“Oh, I think it’s an excellent idea, Miss Sweeney.” Balancing his cigarette on the edge of the stone dish, he plucked a little sea sponge from a dish of water and used it to wipe down the pipe bowl, steam rising from it as he worked. When it was cooled to his satisfaction, he lifted from the tray a small, ivory-handled knife, scowling when he ran his thumb across the blunt-looking curved blade. He felt around in a trouser pocket, muttering “Where the devil...” Revelation seemed to dawn. He hissed something under his breath, then summoned Lau, sitting on a stool in the corner. The boy leapt up and came over.
“Yen ngow dull,” Will said, flicking the blade with an expression of disdain. “No good. Bring me one that’s sharp. Sharp—understand?” Lau nodded and sprinted away.
“Was it your bistoury you expected to find in your pocket?” Nell asked.
He looked at her, lifted his cigarette, took a long pull on it. Smoke swirled in the wavering lamplight.
She said, “I’ve been wondering why you held on to it. You’re no longer a surgeon—you said so yourself.”
“A pocket knife comes in handy from time to time. Mine just happens to be a bistoury. Or it was. Don’t suppose I’ll ever see it again.”
Curious, Nell thought, how sober he seemed, when just a few minutes ago he was completely insensible.
Lau came back with a better knife, with which Will proceeded to shave bits of opium dross from the tip of the spindle.
Nell glanced covertly toward the opposite bunk to find the man who’d been staring at her absorbed in scooping opium paste onto his spindle from a little clamshell; the two-bit serving, presumably. The Chinamen were talking softly to each other in their own language, one smoking a cigarette while the other twirled his spindle over the flame. She sat back against the wall and tucked her legs under her, arranging her skirts so that they were well away from the oil lamp. Having stripped the long needle of its residue, Will set about doing the same to the pipe bowl.
His hair hung in his eyes as he worked, cigarette clenched in his mouth. So fierce was his concentration that he might have been performing surgery. The grating of the knife as it scraped across the bowl made Nell’s teeth hurt.
“What happened to you?” she asked quietly.
He stabbed his cigarette into the stone dish, blew out a plume of smoke and kept scraping.
She said, “According to your mother, you used to view opium as a blight on humanity.”
“I still do,” he said without raising his gaze from his work. “One need look no further than me for proof of it—but it gets worse. I’ve seen men starve to death on the stuff, because it was all they wanted...all they loved.” Pausing in his efforts, he used the back of the knife to scratch the stubble on his chin. “One fellow in Shanghai offered to sell me his daughter—not just prostitute her, mind you, but sell her outright, for me to own, just so he could keep himself in gong a while longer.”
“What did you do?”
“I bought her.”
“What?”
“As I said before, Miss Sweeney, there’s a whole, vast world out there beyond—”
“Yes, but—”
“‘When in Rome,’ and all that. Things are different in China.”
“Evidently,” Nell said, taking in the shabby room and its denizens with a shiver of distaste.
“Before you go blaming the Chinese for this odious custom, you should know that opium doesn’t even come from there. Most of it comes from Turkey.”
“Still...”
He smiled grimly. “Have you ever met the Astors, William and Caroline? They’re friends of my parents from New York, somewhat younger.”
“Yes, they’ve visited.” They were the most prominent and powerful couple in New York, overweeningly proud of their Knickerbocker lineage—and wealth.
“A while back, William’s grandfather, John Jacob Astor, launched himself in the opium trade by shipping ten tons of it to Canton.”
“Ten tons?”
“This despite its having been banned by the Chinese government. We westerners have been foisting opium on the Chinese—sometimes at gunpoint—for quite some time. At least those of us who come to places like this do so of our own free—if somewhat flimsy—will.” He tapped bits of black ash from the bowl into the stone box. “How did you know these places were called hop joints?”
“That’s what Detective Cook called—”
“Who?”
“Detective Cook. He’s in charge of your case.”
“Oh, yes.” He shoved the tip of the knife in the little hole and twisted it around. “Big Irishman. Giant head. Smarter than he looks.”
“He took me to Flynn’s Boardinghouse to—”
Will looked up sharply. “He took you to Flynn’s? Why?”
“I led him to think your father had sent me to make sure you were really guilty. I wanted to hear what the witnesses had to say, maybe try to piece together what actually—”
“You have no business meddling in this,” he said, a sort of confounded anger vanquishing his good humor.
“I have no choice. Your mother is determined to find out what happened Saturday night, and I’m the only person she can turn to. I tried to get answers from you yesterday, if you recall, but you put me off completely.”
“I don’t recall, actually. The yen was coming on pretty fast. Was I rude?”
“Occasionally.”
“Good. You oughtn’t to pry into such things.” He whacked the pipe against the stone bowl again, so hard she was surprised it didn’t break.
“What did you fight about with Ernest Tulley?” she asked.
“Oh, do spare me, Miss Sweeney.”
“You chased him down the stairs, and kept pursuing him even after he hurled you through a window. Were you fighting over Kathleen Flynn?”
“Who?”
“Seamus Flynn’s daughter. He owns the boardinghouse.”
“Ah, her,” he said. “Yes, that’s it. Clashing horns over a female. Oldest story in the book.”
“No, but really—”
“Yes, indeed. It was the strangely beguiling Kathleen Flynn. Now will you kindly shut up and leave me to my gong?”
“Who was that other man in the back par
lor with you?” she persisted. “The one who was drinking whiskey while you were smoking opium?”
He closed his eyes; the air left his lungs.
“Was he a friend?” she asked. “Or—”
“No. I barely— I didn’t know him. He just...wandered in there. We struck up a conversation.”
Ah—a semi-solid answer, at last. “You talked about Ernest Tulley,” she said. “You made some fairly strong statements. You must have made friends pretty quickly.”
“Gong and booze will do that to you.”
“You said something about making Tulley pay.”
“Did I? I must have been quite enamored of the enchanting Miss Flynn.”
“Are you protecting someone?”
“Do I seem the type to go to the gallows in someone else’s stead?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “What are you afraid of, Dr. Hewitt? That I’ll discover you really did it? Or that you didn’t?”
“If you’re hoping the opium has loosened my tongue to that degree, I’m afraid you’re in for a disappointment. It takes a good deal more than one bowl to deprive me of my wits.”
“How much does it take? More than twenty-five cents’ worth, presumably. As much as what’s in there?” She pointed to the little horn box.
“Good lord, that much smoked at one sitting would kill even me. No, that’s a supply to take with me. Suffice it to say the more I smoke, the more it affects me. A bowl or two at regular intervals, or a tincture of opium if there’s no gong to be found, will keep the shakes and aching at bay so that I can function fairly normally. More than that will gradually strip me of my senses, but in a most...seductive way. No one can appreciate the allure of the poppy until he has experienced it.”
“Do you usually smoke enough to affect your senses?”
“Nearly always. It takes quite some time, and a great deal of gong, but I find it’s the only way I can tolerate myself.”
“They say you killed Ernest Tulley in a frenzy of opium intoxication.”
“What do you think?”
She looked around at Will’s fellow pipe fiends, all of whom were in some stage of deep repose. “I should think it would be a miracle if someone under the influence of this drug could summon up the energy for a proper frenzy.”
“Then I suppose I must have killed him calmly, in cold blood,” Will said as he slid aside the tray that separated them. “I just followed him into the alley—or perhaps I cleverly lured him there, and then trapped him.” Bracing an arm on the other side of Nell, he leaned toward her, forcing her back against the wall. He was so close she could feel his breath on her face. “And then...” Steel flickered in the lamplight as he raised the knife to her throat.
Nell held his gaze, reeling inside as if she were looking down off the edge of a steep cliff at night. Evenly, quietly, she said, “Put that thing down. The others will see. They’ll fetch the police.”
“They’ve all nodded off.”
“That boy Lau will see.”
“He can’t see the knife from where he’s sitting. He just thinks I’m kissing you.”
She swallowed.
He drew the weapon slowly across her throat, its blade a hairs-breadth from her skin. She didn’t flinch, didn’t avert her gaze from his.
“Well done,” he murmured as he turned and leaned against the wall. “You might actually have been quite brilliant on the stage.”
She glanced across the room at Lau, seated on his corner stool. He quickly looked down, fiddling with something in his hands—the coin Will had given him.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, her voice quavering a bit despite her efforts to steady it.
“Just a friendly demonstration,” he said, dipping his spindle once more into the horn box. “Who’s to say I couldn’t have dispatched Ernest Tulley with sober deliberation?”
“I suppose you could have, if you’d had any reason to kill him. But you didn’t even know the man. Why would you want to murder a perfect stranger?”
“It doesn’t matter why. I’ll hang whether I explain myself or not. My guilt is a given. No one doubts it.”
She started to speak, then thought better of it.
He noticed. “Don’t tell me you doubt it.”
“You may well be guilty,” she said. “You probably are. But I’ve been thinking you don’t quite seem the type—notwithstanding your friendly little ‘demonstration.’”
“My dear Miss Sweeney,” he said as he fizzled the opium on the tip of the spindle. “Properly provoked, anyone could be the type.”
That was what Detective Cook had said. “Then why wouldn’t you enter a guilty plea at your arraignment, Dr. Hewitt?”
He shrugged without looking up, occupied with kneading the caramelized opium on the red clay bowl. “Perhaps I just didn’t want to make it easy for them.”
“Or perhaps your thoughts were too muddled from that—” she pointed to the pipe “—to allow you to follow the proceedings.”
“Clever you.”
“So, then, you were intoxicated?”
He sighed heavily. “Too bad women can’t be police officers. You’re quite the interrogator.”
“You should have spoken to a lawyer before your arraignment. It may not be too late, if you retain one now, to undo some of the damage you’ve done.”
“Lawyers make everything so complicated,” he said as he collected the opium on the end of his spindle.
“Lawyers keep people from hanging.”
“It would appear I’m misplaying my hand rather badly, then, wouldn’t it? I’d bet against me if I were you.”
Will implanted the dab in the bowl’s tiny orifice, withdrawing the needle with a deft twist and then using it to tend the dissolving opium while he sucked. He was quite dexterous now that his trembling had abated, deploying the long needle with sure, nimble fingers. He did have a surgeon’s touch; what a sin for it to be employed to such a purpose.
The pipe fell slowly to the bunk, cradled in his lax hand. He blinked listlessly, gazing in glassy-eyed reverie at nothing. Nell slid the “smoking pistol” out of his hand, curious about its construction.
He clutched at it feebly, muttering, “I need that.”
“I just want to look at it.”
“That’s my saw,” he murmured groggily. “I’m not done yet.”
Saw? The only type of saw Dr. William Hewitt was ever likely to have owned would be a bonesaw. She set the pipe back in his hand; his fingers closed possessively around it as his eyes drifted shut.
o0o
“Who gave you that?”
Nell opened her eyes with a start, having very nearly dozed off herself while waiting for Will to revive from his second pipeful. “What?”
Lying faceup on the headrest—how long had he been watching her?—he lifted a hand to point at the small scar near her left eyebrow. “That,” he said sleepily. “Who gave you that? Your father?”
“No.”
He frowned. “Not Dr. Greaves.”
“No, of course not.”
“Who, then?”
“Perhaps I had a bit too much absinthe and took a spill.”
“Into a knife?” He muscled himself into a sitting position. “That’s a knife scar.”
She touched it. It wasn’t very big, perhaps half an inch long. “How did you know that?”
“I didn’t.” Will sat back heavily and sighed. “I do now.” He lifted his cigarette tin, put it down, clawed both hands through his hair. “Look, about before, my...baiting you with that knife. That was...” He glanced again at the little scar, looked away, scraped a hand over his bristly jaw. “You may very well have saved my life today, bringing me that paregoric and getting me out of that blasted... I had no business...” He grabbed the cigarette tin. “Anyway, I owe you an apology and a debt of thanks.”
“I appreciate that, Dr. Hewitt.” She did—yet part of her wished he hadn’t said it. His occasional courtesies, hinting as they did at the gentlema
n beneath the wretch, were strangely unsettling.
He nodded distractedly and lit a cigarette.
“I want to show you something.” Sorting through the contents of her chatelaine, Nell located the little velvet picture case she’d slipped in there this morning. She opened it, displaying a photographic portrait—hand-tinted by Nell—of Gracie in her best frock, and handed it to Will.
His expression softened. “Is this the child you care for? She’s lovely.”
Nell said, “She’s your daughter.”
On a gust of laughter he said, “Is that what she told you—my mother? Because I assure you I’ve never fathered any children. I’m careful about that sort of thing.”
“Gracie’s mother is a chambermaid who used to work for your parents,” Nell said. “Annie McIntyre.”
Will turned away and drew on his cigarette, but not before Nell detected a flicker of recognition in his eyes.
“Gracie was born nine months after your Christmas furlough in sixty-three,” Nell said. “Look at her, Dr. Hewitt. The black hair, those eyes, even her mouth. She looks just like you.”
He contemplated the picture through a haze of cigarette smoke. Nell saw it dawn in his eyes—the acknowledgment that it was true, that he’d fathered this child.
She said, “My suspicions were aroused yesterday, when you told me about...the incident with the chambermaid. I asked your mother about it last night. She told me she’s known Gracie was yours since the night she was born.”
“Of course she’s known. That woman knows everything. Why else would she have taken in a maid’s bastard unless she knew it was her own flesh and blood?”
Nell thought back three and a half years to the stormy night of Gracie’s birth...Annie’s insistence on speaking privately with her employer, the muffled sobs, Mrs. Hewitt’s eagerness to adopt the baby. These matters are complicated, she’d said that night. But we live in a world that likes to pretend such things are simple.
“Saint August will have figured it out, too,” Will said. “He probably threw poor Annie out on her ear after that.”
