by P. B. Ryan
Nell said, “He wanted the best for me. It was a kindness to let me go.” He’d kissed her on the mouth, that night at Falconwood, which he hardly ever did. God, I’ll miss you, Nell. I’ll miss you so much. They hadn’t written. She’d seen him twice in the past three and a half years, just in passing, during her summers with the Hewitts on the Cape. He still had that engaging smile and those warm, sparkling eyes that tended to follow her around a room.
“He sounds like a good man,” Will said.
“He is.” She took a deep breath and said, “I’m afraid to ask what you think of me now.”
He laughed disbelievingly. “Should I think any less of you for your past? Look at mine! Look at my present! No, I’m gratified that you told me this, that you felt you could trust me. Rest assured your secrets are safe with me.”
Nell looked away from him, shamed by his gratitude, by how touched he was that she would confide in him. She’d told him a great deal, of course, but she didn’t dare tell him the worst. What she had revealed would scar her reputation if it got out, but her position with the Hewitts might survive the scandal; Viola had her ways, and hadn’t Nell turned over a new leaf? But the rest of it, if Will were to blurt it out to the wrong person in an opiated daze, might very well destroy her.
He put out his cigarette and helped himself to more Black Drop.
“You might think about weaning yourself off opium,” she said. “Slowly, so it’s not so traumatic.”
“It’s a bit harder than you think, Miss Sweeney, when one is truly in Morphia’s thrall. It’s not just the drug one craves, but the smoky room tucked away from the rest of the world, the feel of the chum tow under one’s head, the aroma of the gong as it bubbles over the flame... Not that I’m discounting the grim realities of addiction. When you’ve been on the hip as long as I have, you need a steady supply of the stuff just to feel normal. Weaning myself off it means feeling fairly dreadful for a fairly long time. Can’t say as I see the point, especially given that I’ve got only a limited amount of freedom left. I do still have to stand trial and face the hangman. Although I suppose I shall have to give up gong rather abruptly when they put me on death row. Now that I know what that’s like, I’m looking forward to it even less.”
Shivering now—and not from the cold—Nell asked, “Have you considered...not standing trial? Just leaving? Going into hiding somewhere?”
“Sacrificing Mummy’s bail money so that I can spend the rest of my life scuttling about in the dark, peering over my shoulder? I think not. In any event, pipe fiends have a hard time avoiding detection. The authorities know where we get our gong. And too,” he said as he took a thoughtful puff of his cigarette, “there’s a certain justice at work here. Some people are meant to die for their sins, don’t you think?”
“Some people. Not you.”
“What makes me so special?”
A hundred different things, but Nell held her tongue.
He smiled at her in the dark. “Tell me, Miss Sweeney. Will you be my angel of mercy after I’m convicted? Will you smuggle in laudanum or Black Drop when I’m on death row waiting to hang?”
Shaking in earnest now, head to toe, she said, “Yes.”
Will’s smile faded; he regarded her with a sort of drowsy intensity. Taking her hand in both of his, he chafed it gently, then just held it, lost in thought, as if he were trying to count every stitch on her glove. She knew he could feel her trembling through the layers of leather and cashmere.
“I’ve kept you too long.” Still holding her hand, he stood and raised her to her feet. She allowed him to escort her by the arm through the lamplit Public Garden and Boston Common to the corner of Tremont and West.
He bid her goodnight from beneath a shadowy copse near the edge of the Common, directly opposite his parents’ home. Nell crossed the street and entered the front door, noticing, as she shut it, that he was still standing there. She hung up her coat, went upstairs to her room and, after a moment’s hesitation, cracked open the shutter blinds on one of the windows facing the Common.
The orange pinpoint of a cigarette was barely visible from within the ice-sheathed thicket of trees. It winked out as a lamplit hansom cab came rattling down Tremont. A top-hatted, black-coated figure—Will—stepped into the amber nimbus of a gas lamp and raised a hand, halting it; he got in and the cab continued on its way.
Nell drew the blinds shut.
Chapter 14
“There’s someone to see you,” announced Peter, the young fair-haired footman, from the doorway of the nursery as Nell and Gracie lunched on veal aspic, stewed carrots and apple fritters. “Big mick in a bowler and tweed coat. Says his name’s Cook—Colin Cook.”
Just “Colin Cook?” Nell thought while picking globs of aspic off the dinner napkin tied around Gracie’s throat, the child meanwhile aiming another heaping, jiggly spoonful at her mouth. Not “Detective” Colin Cook? She wouldn’t have expected such discretion—but she was grateful for it. If it started getting around that a policeman had visited her, God knew what the repercussions would be. Every moment she spent in Gracie’s company was a reminder that it could all be snatched away from her in a heartbeat.
She was grateful, too, that it was the affable young Peter—one of the few Hewitt servants who didn’t openly loathe her—who had answered the door just now. The female staff were forbidden to entertain gentleman visitors—Mrs. Mott’s rule, strictly enforced—and although Nell didn’t answer to the housekeeper, she knew the old woman could make her life good and miserable if she wanted to.
“You got a sweetheart, Miss Sweeney?” Peter asked with a suggestively boyish grin.
Nell gave him a doleful look. “If I did, would I let him come to the house for all to see? Two more bites of carrots now, buttercup—then you may finish the aspic. He must be a tradesman of some sort. You’ll have to send him up, Peter. I can’t leave Gracie right now.” Both Nurse Parrish and Viola were napping, the former because that was how she spent the middle part of every day, and the latter in order to rest up for tonight, when she, Mr. Hewitt and her sons would finally see Bluebeard at the Tremont. Paola was busy altering the gown Viola would wear to the theater, and Mrs. Bouchard was eating her own lunch downstairs. There were a couple of maids Nell trusted to watch Gracie in a pinch, but mealtimes took a certain talent for high-level negotiation, not to mention a tolerance for godawful messes.
Three days had passed since Nell’s evening in the Public Garden with Will Hewitt. She’d made no effort to seek him out, although Jack Thorpe kept her apprised of the comings and goings of his nocturnal houseguest via handsomely penned letters delivered by messenger every day around noon. Those letters—addressed to Viola for the sake of discretion—also related the various legal maneuverings Jack was undertaking on Will’s behalf, in which, according to Jack, Will evinced not the faintest interest.
“Miss Sweeney?” Detective Cook loomed in the doorway, blinking at the nursery, which Viola, thrilled at having a little girl to pamper, had decorated with rococo opulence. Ornamental plasterwork adorned the mirror-lined, sea green walls, cherubs hovered around the gilded ceiling, and the windows were layered with elaborate puffs and swags of silk.
“Detective Cook,” Nell greeted. “May I introduce Miss Grace Lindleigh Hewitt.”
“Well, good afternoon, young lady,” Cook said with a bow, holding his bowler to his chest. “Enjoying your luncheon there, are you?”
Gracie, still gripping her spoon, turned away with a coyly bashful smile to cuddle her governess, the aspic around her mouth smearing the day smock Nell always wore for meals in the nursery.
“What a bonnie little miss she is,” Cook praised. “A good eater, too, I see.”
“She’d eat a brick if it was chopped up into aspic,” said Nell as she tidied the child’s hair. “Have a seat, Detective.”
Cook eyed the chair to which she pointed—delicately carved and upholstered in floral damask, like all the rest in this room—and declined. “I can’t stay
long. I just wanted to share the latest in the matter of the Ernest Tulley case. But if this isn’t a good time...” he added, his gaze lighting on Gracie.
“No, go ahead,” Nell said, breaking an apple fritter in half and handing it to Gracie. “She’s more interested in this fritter than anything we might have to say. What’s happened?”
Cook said, “I’ve had my men watching that flat on Milk Street day and night—the one Pearl shared with Molly? It was Keating on duty last night, a rookie, but sharp. He saw Molly get in a coal wagon this morning around dawn with a trunk and two carpetbags all but bursting, and hand the driver some money. Keating commandeers a milk truck and follows the wagon about six or seven miles as it heads south out of Boston, making deliveries. Around midmorning, they arrive in Quincy, which is where Molly gets out, in front of a little white house. The door opens, and who should be standing there, but...” He spread his hands.
“Pearl Stauber.” Nell closed her eyes for a moment, dismayed by this development. If the prostitute were to testify in court about Will’s threats to “make Tulley pay,” he would almost certainly be found guilty.
“I asked Keating if the house looked like a...place of assignation, but he said no, it’s on a nice little tree-lined street, very respectable. There’s an empty shop on the ground floor—used to be a chocolate shop, the neighbors said. Keating left without announcing his presence, per my instructions, so Pearl has no idea we’ve found her.”
“What now?” Nell asked dejectedly.
“I need to subpoena her as a witness. I’ll get the subpoena today and deliver it personally tomorrow morning. Not that she’s that critical to our case anymore. Something else came to light yesterday that you should know about. I don’t imagine it’ll make you very happy, Miss Sweeney—although August Hewitt will probably break out the champagne.”
“What is it?” Nell asked dully as she swept fritter crumbs from Gracie’s lap. And how could it be worse than Pearl’s reappearance?
Tap, tap, tap went Cook’s bowler against his leg. “You remember me saying as how I needed to get some background on Ernest Tulley, in case something in his past figured in all this?”
“Yes,” she said, recalling their conversation in the morgue.
He scratched his jaw, as if both proud of his news and hesitant to reveal it to her. “Turns out Tulley had been a merchant seaman only since the war. Before that, he was a graycoat posted at Andersonville as a guard. That’s the prison camp where William Hewitt was supposed to have died of—”
“Yes. I know about Andersonville. Are you sure?”
“He was infamous. The men I spoke to who’d been prisoners there told stories that turned my blood cold. Him and three or four other guards, poor Georgia trash like Tulley, they’d get bored, pick out a prisoner—a sick or injured one, usually, so he couldn’t put up too much of a fight—take him into the woods around the compound and, well...basically, torture him. They had different things they liked to do—bury him up to his neck and leave him there, light him on fire...”
“Oh, my God.”
“Their favorite game was to tell the poor soul he could go free if he could outrun their bloodhounds, otherwise they’d use him for target practice. They’d give him a head start, but the dogs always caught up with him, and then they’d do him in. Sometimes they took their time about it, sometimes it was quick, depending on Tulley’s mood—he was the leader.”
“He knew him,” Nell said dazedly. “William Hewitt knew Ernest Tulley.”
“They all did, all the men who’d served time in Andersonville. How they’d cheer and carry on when I told them he’d been murdered. The general consensus was he’d got a taste of his own, and good riddance.”
He’ll pay for it, damn him. He’ll pay with his life. It hadn’t been about Kathleen after all, or if so, only partly.
Cook said, “I’m on to you, you know.”
She looked at him.
“I believed you in the beginning,” he said, “when you said you were doing August Hewitt’s bidding. A pretty girl, if she wants to play a double game, she can usually pull it off pretty easy, and a pretty Irish girl, there’s no finding them out—unless the game goes on a bit too long, ‘cause that’s when you get to wondering about things late at night when you can’t sleep. And then one morning you wake up, and you nudge your wife, layin’ in bed next to you, and you say, ‘You know that Nell Sweeney I was telling you about? I don’t think she’s working for August Hewitt at all. I think it’s the wife who’s callin’ the shots, and I don’t think Hewitt has the slightest notion what she and the governess are up to behind his back. Do you think it’s possible he was hookwinked like that? And not just him, but me?’ And your pretty little Irish wife just laughs and rolls over and goes back to sleep.”
“I’m sorry, Detective,” Nell said. “Please don’t think I regard you with anything less than the utmost respect, but I had no choice but to—”
“Save your breath, Miss Sweeney. If I was of a mind to get het up over it, I wouldn’t have come here.”
“Why did you?”
“‘Cause I know you’ve gotten a bit...wrapped up in this case, and in the notion that William Hewitt is innocent. I just thought you deserved to hear the truth from me.”
She nodded. “Thank you, Detective.”
He cleared his throat. “I, uh, happen to know Dr. Hewitt’s been seen playing faro and poker in the wee hours. We haven’t nabbed him yet for violating the conditions of his bail, ‘cause it hasn’t been important enough—till now. I’m putting the word out among the boys to be on the lookout for him. If he wants to stay out of lockup, he’ll turn homebody right quick. He doesn’t even have to show up in one of his usual haunts. If he so much as lights up a cigarette on a public street, we’ll get him, and this time he ain’t getting out. Just a bit of friendly advice.”
“Why are you offering it, if you want to catch him?” she asked as she gently deflected Gracie’s attempt to feed her a chunk of fritter.
“Because I know he won’t take it. His type, they’re only happy when they’re prowling the streets between dusk and dawn.”
If only it weren’t true.
Cook said, “You should have heard the prosecutor, when I gave him the news about Hewitt knowing Tulley from Andersonville. He giggled like a schoolgirl.”
“It never occurred to me...” Nell said. “I mean, I just assumed they were strangers...”
You infer too much, Miss Sweeney, Will had told her when they first met. Far too many facile assumptions. Even then he’d recognized the flaw that would, in the end, negate everything she’d learned, unravel all her clever theories and speculations...and send her hurtling right back to the beginning.
o0o
She saw him through Jack Thorpe’s glass-paned front door just as she was raising her fist for a third battery of pounding. Will smiled as he approached, his braces dangling and his shirtsleeves rolled up, hair damp and uncombed, lower face flecked with shaving soap, a straight razor in one hand.
“Good afternoon, Miss Sweeney,” he greeted as he opened the door. “What an unexpected—”
“Ernest Tulley killed your brother, didn’t he?” Her voice quavered despite her efforts to steady it. “He took him into the woods, he and his cronies, and they...they...”
Will closed his eyes briefly; a muscle twitched in his jaw. He turned and retreated into the house, leaving the door open.
“You told me Robbie was shot trying to escape,” she said as she followed him through the foyer and up the thickly carpeted stairs.
“No, Miss Sweeney, you told me that,” he said without turning around. “You made an assumption, one of several which—”
“Do not blame my assumptions!” she demanded shakily, and a bit shrilly, although in truth, she blamed herself. “You allowed me to believe it. Just as you allowed me to believe that you didn’t know Ernest Tulley—and God knows how many other erroneous things. You’ve been watching me stumble round in circles, tryi
ng to piece everything together with too little information, or wrong information, and laughing to yourself all the while.”
He paused at the top of the stairs just long enough to say, “I never laughed,” before heading down the hall, Nell right behind him. She followed him into a bathroom stuffed with ferns and paneled in darkly burnished wood, the air balmy and scented with Castile soap, warm water steaming in the marble sink. Guided by his reflection in the gilt-framed toilet glass, he craned his neck to scrape off the last few unshaven patches.
“The police know about Tulley and Andersonville,” she said.
A drop of red beaded on his throat; he held a washcloth to it as he rinsed off the razor.
“And they’ve found Pearl Stauber. Even if they don’t put two and two together about Robbie, they’ll have little trouble proving to a jury that you killed Tulley simply because he’d been such a monster at Andersonville—especially if Pearl and Seamus Flynn testify against you.”
“I told you from the very beginning that it was a waste of time to try to keep me from my date with the hangman.” Will glanced at the spot of blood on the cloth, set it aside, and bent his head over the sink to rinse off the remaining shaving soap. “Hand me that towel, will you?” he asked, pointing.
She shook it out and gave it to him. “Did you do it?” she asked. “I need to hear it from your own mouth. Did you kill Ernest Tulley?”
He lowered his head and buried it in the towel, rubbing it slowly, taking his time. Tossing it aside, he patted his face with Bay Rum, its tropical spiciness filling the little room.
“For pity’s sake!” she exclaimed, her patience strained to the snapping point. “After everything I’ve been through on your behalf, I think I deserve a straight answer for—”
“Yes.” Gripping the sink, head down, eyes closed, Will said, “Yes. Yes. I did it. I...” He opened his eyes and met Nell’s gaze in the mirror, his expression rawly contrite—startling, shocking, even, considering his usual self-possession. “I’m sorry, Nell,” he said in a soft, strained voice. “I truly am. I didn’t want to have to tell you this. I wish to God you’d never gotten involved.”
