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Authors: P.B. Ryan

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“Astrolabe?” Cyril said.

“Yeah, it’s the jewel of the collection, according to Cunningham—the husband, Frederick Cunningham. We cabled him with the news about his wife, and he came back that day. He was sobbing when he got off the train at the Falmouth depot, and he didn’t stop till we’d poured about a pint of brandy into him. When he’d calmed down enough to talk, he told us about the collection. He said the astrolabe had been on Magellan’s ship when he went around the world.”

“My God,” said Cyril. “It must be worth thousands.”

“Many tens of thousands, Cunningham said. He said the collection as a whole had been appraised at close to six figures. His wife’s great grandfather had put it together, and she’d had a strong sentimental attachment to it. He says it had been against the east wall of the library, but when we got there, it was near the door that let out onto the back porch. Those fellas—your brother and Quinn—were obviously trying to drag it outside so they could put it in their wagon. It would have taken them a while to get it as far as they did, ‘cause it was heavy, with all those brass instruments inside. That’s how we knew Murphy must have had a partner. Me and the boys could barely budge the damned—’scuse me, miss. We could barely move it.”

“Then why do you suppose they didn’t just open up the case and take the instruments out?” Nell asked.

“That’s what I asked Cunningham,” Bryce said. “He said the instruments were bolted to the shelves, and that the case was sealed shut to make it airtight. I asked him if there was anybody with a grudge against him who might have a key to the house, ‘cause there was no sign of forced entry. He said he didn’t have any enemies, and there were only three keys to the house—one for him, one for the missus, and a spare that he kept under a sundial in the garden. Only, when he went to look for it, it was gone. Somebody’d pinched it. Come to find out your brother had been doing yard work for the Cunninghams for a couple of weeks before the burglary, but of course we didn’t make that connection till a couple of days ago, when we identified the burned body and asked Cunningham if the name James Murphy rang a bell.”

Of course?
Had Nell been in charge of investigating this case, her first move would have been to question Mr. Cunningham as to who might have had access to their property.

“Obviously,” said the constable, “your brother figured out that the stuff in that case was valuable, so he stole the key—which he stumbled across while he was working in the yard—so he could slip into the house and make off with it. He would have brung Quinn along just to help him move the thing, and he would have chosen a time when he thought nobody was home—not knowing that the wife had had to cancel her trip to Martha’s Vineyard because of the weather. They wouldn’t have made too much of an effort to keep quiet, thinking they were in an empty house. The carriage house is pretty far away. But then Mrs. C. hears a noise and comes downstairs, one of them pops her, and they flee the scene. They split up and went into hiding. Your brother found the cranberry shed at the Gilmartin farm, or maybe he already knew it was there, and that’s where he decided to hole up.”

“Was he there the whole time he was in hiding, do you know?” Nell asked.

“He would have to have been there for at least a week, ‘cause one of the boarders told me—”

“Boarders?” Nell said.

Bryce said, “Yeah, Mrs. Gilmartin rents out rooms ‘cause the cranberries aren’t enough to support them, but she’s got this great big farmhouse for just her and her daughter. This boarder, fella named George, told me things had gone missing from the house the Sunday before. They’d been at Mass
, the mother, the daughter, and all the boarders. There was an ice cream social afterward, so they all stayed in town but the daughter, who went back home to get a lamb stew started for supper.”

“Doesn’t seem quite fair,” Cyril said, “making her miss out on the festivities.”

“George said she offered, on account of she had a stomach gripe, so she didn’t want any ice cream. When they came home later, she told them she’d found some of the shortbread gone that her ma had made that morning to go with the stew, and some blueberries. There was some ham loaf missing from the ice closet, and a meat knife from a hook on the wall. A quart of milk, too. They started looking around and found an old quilt and a blanket and a pillow gone from the beds. There was some other stuff, I think. I can’t remember it all.”

Because you didn’t bother to write it down.
“Then, a week later,” Nell said, “the cranberry house caught fire.”

“Any idea what started it?” Cyril asked.

“Maybe he fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand,” suggested the constable with a negligent shrug.

“Jamie didn’t smoke,” Nell said.

“Not when you knew him,” Cyril said, “but perhaps—”

“And there’s no match safe in there,” she said, nodding toward the pasteboard box.

“A candle fell over, then,” Bryce said. “Or a lantern. The shed goes up in flames, the daughter raises the alarm...”

“After getting trapped in the fire herself,” Cyril interjected.

“What?” Bryce said. “What are you talking about?”

“I treated her for smoke inhalation yesterday morning,” said Cyril. “She just barely made it out of that shed alive.”

“Didn’t she tell you?” Nell asked.

“She wasn’t around when I was called over there the next morning,” the constable said. “I think the mother said she was up in her room. I never even seen her.”

Nor, obviously, did he seek her out.

“Did she mention what she was doing in the shed when you treated her yesterday?” Nell asked Cyril.

He hesitated, looking grim. “She said she’d heard a man screaming for help.”

Nell sat back, her eyes shut, very sorry she’d asked.

Cyril rested a hand on her shoulder. Quietly he said, “Don’t think about it, Nell. Don’t torment yourself.”

“In any event,” the constable continued, “The shed burned down. Well, not completely. They managed to get the fire put out, thanks to the boarders. They formed a bucket brigade from Mill Pond to the cranberry shed. Got it put out pretty quick, so the shed’s still standing, but there’s not much left of it. I came out with a couple of fellas from Packer’s Mortuary here in town, to look things over and get the body out of there. It was in better shape than I expected ‘cause of how quick they got the fire put out—charred and all, but just on the front,” he said, patting his chest, “‘cause he’d been laying on his back on a folded-up quilt.”

Don’t think about it.

“Constable,” Cyril said, “must you be so graphic? Miss Sweeney
is
his sister, after all, and—”

“It’s all right, Cyril,” Nell said. She would rather Bryce spoke frankly then to pick and choose what he told him.

Bryce said, “Leatherby, the coroner, ordered an autopsy, which is required in cases of accidental death, so a local surgeon did it that night.”

“Which surgeon?” Cyril asked.

“Dr. Monk. You know him?”

“I know all the doctors on the Cape.” A vague answer, no doubt deliberately so. As Nell recalled, Cyril had little respect for the abilities of Chauncey Monk, who’d gotten his training through wartime apprenticeship rather than medical school. “Did the autopsy turn up anything significant?”

“Nah, he died from the fire.”

“The fire or the smoke?” Nell asked, hoping it was the latter.

“Monk didn’t say.”

And you didn’t ask.
How very unsurprising.

“I don’t suppose you get too many murder cases in this neck of the woods,” Nell said.

“This would be my first,” Bryce replied. “There hasn’t been anybody hanged on the Cape in fifty years.”

“Is my brother’s body still in the mortuary?” she asked, hoping he hadn’t been buried in some paupers’ cemetery.

Chief Bryce looked down, scratching his chin. “Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s still there, but—”

“Well, that’s something.” Turning to Cyril, Nell said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to visit the mortuary after we leave here, and then St. Catherine’s in East Falmouth, so that I can see to his final arrangements.”

“That should make Claire Gilmartin happy,” said Cyril. “While I was examining her yesterday, she seemed very concerned that he be buried in consecrated ground. She’s extremely pious, and a bit... not simple, but quite naïve. She said it wouldn’t be right to deny him a proper burial with a priest officiating just because he was a criminal, that God loves sinners just as much as He loves the rest of us.”

“How did she know he was Catholic?” Nell asked.

“Murphy?” he said. “It would be
my
guess.”

Chief Bryce, who’d been following this exchange with an oddly strained expression, said, “I, uh, I don’t think you’re gonna be able to have him buried.”

“But I’m his next of kin,” Nell said.

“Yeah, but see, the body’s already been sold.”

“Sold?”

“I should have known,” muttered Cyril.

“It’s been embalmed and sold to Harvard Medical School to be anatomized,” Bryce said. “It’s being shipped up to Boston next—”

“My brother’s body is not going anywhere,” Nell said slowly, her voice quivering ever so slightly as she strove to contain her fury, “except to St. Catherine’s to be buried in the churchyard next to my mother and the rest of my brothers and sisters. God help you or anyone else who tries to prevent that.”

“Hey, it was Packer and Monk that arranged for the sale,” Bryce said. “Talk to them.”

“Wait a minute,” said Cyril. “You can’t dissect a body that’s been autopsied. Well, you can, but it wouldn’t be much good for teaching purposes, with all the organs removed.”

“I understand Dr. Monk made an effort to disturb the remains as little as possible for that reason,” Bryce said.

“Did they even try to find out whether my brother had any family?” Nell demanded heatedly. “Or did they just—”

“It’s all right, Nell,” said Cyril, patting her back. “We’ll go to Packer’s and—”

“Get off of me!” yelled a man from somewhere on the other side of the constable’s office door. “It’d be ‘interference’ if you bastards knew what you were doing, but you’re a bunch of blundering incompetents, every last man among you.”

Chief Bryce pulled a face. “That’s the husband, Fred Cunningham. He’s in here every day, sometimes twice a day, checking up on us, seeing if we’ve got any new leads, telling us how to do our jobs... The rest of the time, he’s out there snooping around and making a pest of himself. Hey, I sympathize with him. He’s a grieving husband, he wants justice for his wife. But I wish he’d just trust us to—”

A knock came at the door, which squeaked open to reveal a ginger-haired young constable holding out a handbill. “Sorry to interrupt you, Chief, but he’s at it again. Klingman found him passing these out in Davey Quinn’s neighborhood.”

Bryce took the handbill, grimacing as he read it. “This is even worse than the last one. Next, he’ll be asking for the guy’s head on a spike.”

Nell looked through the open doorway to see a fortyish man with wild, red-rimmed eyes trying to muscle his way between two big men blocking Chief Bryce’s door. “That includes you, Bryce!” he screamed, stabbing a finger in the chief’s direction. “All you do is tack up posters and sit around waiting for tips that never come, and you get mad when I go out and actually look for the son of a bitch. What do you think, if you wait long enough, he’s just going to just walk in here and give himself up?”

“Tell him I’ll be out there to listen to his current rant just as soon as I’m finished up here,” Bryce instructed the young constable, who backed up and closed the door.

“May I?” asked Nell as she reached for the handbill.

With a
why not
look, Bryce handed over the bill. Nell held it so that Cyril could read it, too.

 

$3,000 REWARD!!!

For the capture of
DAVID QUINN,
wanted for

M U R D E R !

TURN HIM IN DEAD

Or Alive

 

The sum of THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS is offered by Mr. Frederick Cunningham of Falmouth Heights and Boston, Mass., upon presentation of the BODY or person of DAVID QUINN. As DAVID QUINN is known to be a first-rate marksman who is furthermore possessed of an excitable temperament, any attempt to capture him alive should be undertaken only by armed lawmen. Others are encouraged to employ whatever means necessary to subdue DAVID QUINN before he can vent his murderous rage.

 

An additional award of TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS will be paid upon receipt of the CORPSE of DAVID QUINN within three months from the date of this circular, provided it is delivered in recognizable condition.

 

DESCRIPTION.

DAVID QUINN is 29 years old; 5 feet 7 inches high; thinly built; hair dark and thin; complexion pale; eyes protruding somewhat; a moustache of dark color; teeth defective; speaks rather quickly from the nose, in a high tone of voice; has a brisk gait; manner jerky and erratic; wears a bowler hat.

BOOK: A bucket of ashes
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