A bucket of ashes (29 page)

Even through the door, Nell heard Thorpe’s deep sigh.

“Offer them whatever it will take for them to forget who William Touchette really is,” said Hewitt. “And of course I expect a certain zeal in bringing him to justice. Perhaps a bonus for those involved once he’s found guilty and sentenced. Have this Captain Baxter handle it. But talk to him soon, before he and the others start opening their mouths.”

“It will be done within the hour.”

“I don’t want my name mentioned, Thorpe, or yours. It goes no further than Baxter.”

“What about the girl? That pretty little governess?”

“Nell? She’s devoted to my wife. She’ll keep her mouth shut if I explain to her that it’s in Viola’s best interest—which, of course, it is, although Viola won’t see it that way. As for William, I want him out of that station house and away from prying eyes as soon as it can be arranged.”

“He’s to be transferred to the county jail on Charles Street tomorrow to await trial.”

“Good. Bury him as deep in that bloody mausoleum as you can get him.” Now it was Hewitt’s turn to sigh. “Damn him.”

“Miss Sweeney?”

Nell whirled around, her heart kicking. “Master Martin.” He’d come around the corner, evidently on his way downstairs. “I was just looking at your mother’s paintings,” she said as she walked past him, into the corridor proper, so as not to be heard by the men in the library.

“Extraordinary, aren’t they?” He looked about fifteen when he smiled like that. “I keep telling her she should hang them downstairs, where visitors can see them, but she thinks that would be vulgar.”

Taking in the myriad paintings lining the long, high-ceilinged passageway, she said, “I was wondering why there are none of your brother William.”

“I assumed you knew.” Martin shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. “He was the black sheep of the family.”

“I suppose I suspected that. No one ever talks about him.”

“Father doesn’t like to hear his name—even now that he’s gone. I find it hard to understand. I mean, he can’t have been any worse than Harry, and Harry’s always in one fix or another—either it’s his drinking, or his gambling, or his...” Martin looked away, clearly discomfited.

“His mill girls?” This from Harry himself as he emerged from his room down the hall, teeth flashing, tawny hair well brushed and gleaming. The only evidence of last night’s excesses would be his complexion, which had that bleached-out Sunday palor, and a certain puffiness around the eyes. “Say it, Martin. Our lovely Miseeney is much like mother, you know—unshockable.” Surveying Nell’s dress from neckline to hem, he said, “And doesn’t she look fetching this morning. Is that a new shade of gray?”

“Morning?” Martin scoffed. “It’s two-thirty in the afternoon, Harry. And I hardly think Miss Sweeney appreciates your mockery.”

“Miss Sweeney recognizes a good-natured jest when she hears it. Are you saying you’re the only one who’s allowed to flirt with her? Hardly seems fair.”

“I wasn’t... We weren’t...” Even in the dimly lit corridor, Nell could see Martin’s ears flare crimson.

“If he takes any liberties,” Harry told Nell as he sauntered past, “you must call me at once.” With a wink, and leaning conspiratorially close, he added, “I’d give anything to witness that.”

*   *   *

This was the first time Nell had ever seen Viola Hewitt cry. It wasn’t gentle weeping, either, but great, hoarse sobs that shook her to the bones as she sat hunched over the writing desk in her pink and gold sitting room. “It’s all my fault,” she kept wailing into her handkerchief. “All my fault...”

“Of course it’s not your fault,” Nell soothed as she kept half an eye on Gracie in her Nana’s adjacent boudoir, dragging hatboxes out of the closet while Viola’s lady’s maid, Paola Gabrielli, sat in the corner sewing a veil onto a purple velvet bonnet. “How could it be your fault?”

Viola shook her head, tears dripping onto the letter in front of her, a letter that began,
Dear Will...
“Oh, God. I’m a horrible mother.”

“You’re a wonderful mother.”

“No, you don’t know. You don’t know. And now...and now my baby, my Will... They’re going to h-hang him. And it’s all my fault.”

 Her fault? Did she knife that man outside Flynn’s boardinghouse? Did she tell Alderman Thorpe to bury her son “as deep as you can get him” in the Charles Street Jail? There were people responsible for begetting this situation and making it worse, but it seemed to Nell that Viola Hewitt was as blameless a victim of it as Ernest Tulley.

Heedless of the tear stains dotting the letter, Viola folded it and tucked it into an envelope, on which she wrote, in her signature violet ink,
Dr. William Hewitt
before drawing up short. She jammed the pen back in the crystal inkwell, tore the envelope away and replaced it with a fresh one, which she addressed to
Mr. William Touchette
. She heated a stick of violet sealing wax in the flame of her desktop candle, melted it into a tiny silver spoon, dripped the molten wax onto the envelope’s flap and imprinted it with her monogrammed insignia.

“You must take this to Will,” she told Nell.

“What?”
Nell exclaimed as her employer shoved the letter in her hand.

“You’re the only one who can do this, Nell. God knows August won’t. He won’t even acknowledge Will as a member of this family. He doesn’t care if he hangs—you told me so yourself. And he’ll be livid if I bring Martin or Harry in on this.”

“Mrs. Hewitt, I—”

“Do it this afternoon. Once they transfer him to the county jail, you’ll have a hard time gaining access to him. Right now, he’s at the Division Two station house, which is on Williams Court. I used to bring blankets and Bibles to the prisoners there. Each holding cell has a sort of anteroom for visitors. You’ll be able to talk to him without anyone overhearing you.”

“What if Mr. Hewitt sees me leave? Or Hitchens?” The devoted valet reported everything to his employer. August Hewitt would cast her out in a heartbeat if he found out she’d gone behind his back. Nell’s most harrowing nightmare—the one from which she literally awoke in a sweat from time to time—was the one where she found herself back in her old life, with no home, no family...and worst of all, no Gracie. “Won’t it look suspicious, me going out after deciding to stay home because it was snowing so hard?”

 “If anyone asks, you can tell them you’re planning to paint Boston Common in the snow, and you need to see how it looks.”

It was a good lie; Nell was grudgingly impressed. But what if it didn’t work? Going behind August Hewitt’s back this way was far worse than eavesdropping at his library door. She’d never heard him sound so furious—or determined. If he found out what she’d done, he would fire her, and Viola would be helpless to prevent it. No one defied August Hewitt and got away with it, ever.

And, too, the notion of walking into a police station filled Nell with a cold dread all its own. “I don’t think I could handle this, Mrs. Hewitt.”

Misjudging the reason for her trepidation, Viola said, “Nell, believe me, you have nothing to fear from my Will. He’s incapable of doing what they say he did. And he would die before he’d let an opium pipe touch his lips. He thinks it’s a blight on humanity—he once told me so himself. He said they should outlaw it here, as they have in China. He’s a good man, a
surgeon
. He would never...cause you harm, if that’s what you’re thinking, or—”

“It’s not that. I just...I...”

“I need to find out what really happened, from Will himself. Obviously I can’t go myself, much as I wish I could. I’ve dreamed of seeing him again—literally. I wake up sobbing from those dreams. But I have to think of Will. If I were to visit him, everyone would notice me. They know who I am there. Someone would figure out who Will really is, and he’s obviously gone to great pains to prevent that. And, if Mr. Hewitt were to find out I’d defied him...” Her brow furrowed. “He mustn’t find out you’ve been there, either. Use a false name. Say you’re doing charitable work. Talk to Will alone if you can. Tell him I’m going to try to overturn the bail decision tomorrow so he can get out of there.”

“Can you do that? Without Mr. Hewitt finding out?”

“The husband of an acquaintance of mine is a judge in the criminal court. Horace Bacon is his name. I happen to know she likes to live beyond her means, and I’ve heard rumors Horace has accrued a fair amount of debt. I can’t see him turning down my request if it’s accompanied by a nice, fat envelope. And if it’s fat enough, I imagine you can convince him to expedite the process and keep my name off any paperwork having to do with—”

“
I
can convince him?”

“You’re the only one I can ask to do any of this, Nell.” Frowning, she said, “I’ll need to hire a lawyer, too.”

“Won’t the court appoint a public defender?”

“No, we need our own man, someone very good and very discreet, who’ll agree to keep Mr. Hewitt out of it. That will be trickier than the business about the bail. My husband knows just about every lawyer in Boston.”

A flurry of nonsense babbling drew Nell’s attention to the bedroom, where Gracie was gamboling in circles, arms outstretched, an ostrich-plumed bonnet jammed low over her face. Paola—Nell’s only real friend on the Hewitts’ staff—caught Nell’s eye and smiled. A darkly beautiful woman about Viola’s age, although she looked much younger, Paola was known as “Miss Gabrielli” despite being married—assuming her husband was still alive, for she hadn’t been back to Italy in the thirty or so years she’d served as Viola’s lady’s maid. By the same token, tradition regarding housekeepers dictated that Evelyn Mott, a spinster, be addressed as “Mrs. Mott.” None of it made much sense to Nell, but she’d long ago stopped trying to understand Brahmin customs.

“I can’t leave,” Nell said. “Who’ll keep an eye on Gracie?” She was a child who got into everything and needed frequent running after, which was why Viola was unequal to the task.

“Nurse Parrish will awaken from her nap soon enough. In the meantime, Paola can set aside her work long enough keep a proper watch over her. Please,
please
, Nell—I beseech you. I
must
find out what really happened last night. I won’t rest until I do.” Fresh tears pooled in her eyes. “You’re the only one I trust, and I know you can do this. You’re so strong, so clever and capable. And people respond to you.
Men
respond to you. You’ll have no trouble getting in to see Will.”

Nell pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, feeling trapped and woozy and increasingly resigned. If not for Viola Hewitt, she would still be in East Falmouth, wearing frayed cast-offs as she tended round-the-clock to Cyril Greaves’s every need. Not that she’d begrudged him any of it, God knew. She’d been fond of Dr. Greaves, very much so. He’d quite literally saved her life—only to remake her into the kind of woman who could function in a world of glittering privilege. He’d let her go regretfully, but with a measure of grace that had touched Nell deeply, because she’d known he was doing it for her. For all that, she would be eternally grateful; but she was grateful to Viola Hewitt as well, exceedingly so, for having invited her into this world—and for giving her Gracie, the only child she would ever have.

In a quiet voice still rusty with tears, Viola said, “You’re lucky in a way, you know that?”

“Know it? I think about it every morning when I awaken and every night as I’m falling asleep.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean... You’re so much freer than I am, really—freer than any woman of rank. We’re all kept shrouded in cocoons of propriety lest we somehow bring scandal upon our families—and there are more ways of doing that than you can imagine. The governess, however, occupies a singular niche in our world, neither servant nor pampered gentlewoman, but something quite apart. Do you have any idea how blessed you are to be able to come and go as you please? The demands of my class have crippled me more surely than the affliction that put me in this chair. You, on the other hand, have no cocoon to bind you.”

Reaching out, Viola stroked Nell’s cheek. “You’re a butterfly. How I do envy you.”

“A lady to see you, Touchette,” announced the pockmarked guard through the iron-barred door of the holding cell.

“I don’t know any ladies.” The voice from within—drowsy-deep, British-accented and vaguely bored—did not belong here. It was a voice meant for the opera box, the ballroom, the polo field...not this fetid little police station cage.

Nell’s view of William Hewitt was limited by her position against the wall of the cramped visitor’s alcove and the fact that it was only the cell’s door that was comprised of open grillwork; the walls were solid brick. From her angle, all she could make out through the barred door were two long legs in fawn trousers, right ankle propped on left knee. A hand appeared and struck a match against the sole of a well-made black shoe. The hand was long-fingered, capable—a deft hand with a scalpel, she would guess.

Or a bistoury.

“Her name is Miss Chapel,” said the guard as he hung Nell’s snow-dampened coat and scarf on a hook. “She’s from the Society for the Relief of Convicts and Indigents.”

The aroma of tobacco wafted from the cell. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to point out that I am neither a convict nor an indigent.”