Murder in the North End (13 page)

The coal cellar, which was about half the size of the adjacent flat, also had crumbling plaster walls, gone dusky from years’ worth of coal dust. Tucked into the back left corner, beneath the chute, a rudimentary coal crib had been built out of rough, unfinished wood. Within this three-sided enclosure a small mound of coal left over from the winter glittered darkly in the wavering light from Denny’s lantern.

A coal shovel and a broom missing about half its bristles leaned against the back wall amid a grimy accumulation of detritus: shards of wood and crockery, a coil of twine, some wadded up handkerchiefs, an unidentifiable, lace-edged lady’s undergarment, old newspapers and magazines, a torn burlap sack, and an empty bottle of McMunn’s Elixir. There was also something that looked like a fat test tube made of rubber, which Nell assumed was a French letter, although she’d never actually seen one. Both fascinated and repelled, she tried not to stare, lest Will notice and tease her about it later—anything to coax a blush out of her.

Piled up against the wall to the right was a jumble of wooden crates, barrels, and sacks, which Denny was busily searching through as he held the lantern aloft.

“Aha!” He hauled a stoneware jug stamped
John Jameson Dublin Whiskey
out of a crate lined with wood shavings. “What are you doing?” he asked as Will climbed atop the coal crib’s low wooden partition, rather gracelessly, given his bad leg.

Will bent over, arms buttressed on the wall, to peer through the hole, all but invisible against the haze of coal dust.

“We discovered a hole between this room and the flat,” Nell said.

“You get a pretty fair view from here,” Will said in his Boston accent. “The hole is angled downward, so I can see a good deal of the room.”

“Did you know about this hole?” Nell asked Denny.

He stared at her for a second. “Um...no. No, I...” He shook his head.

“It’s a hole for peeking into the flat,” Will said. “Someone bored it out for that very purpose. Denny, hand me that lantern, would you?”

Still balancing on the edge of the coal crib, Will took the lantern and held it toward the hole. The wall surrounding it bore smudges in the patina of coal dust. Scores of smeary handprints formed fluttery, ghostlike wings to either side.

“Any idea who might have made that hole?” Nell asked Denny.

“I
didn’t.”

“I didn’t suggest you did,” she said gently.

“It was here when I first came to Nabby’s,” Denny said.

Will said, “I thought you hadn’t known about it.”

“I... We’re not supposed to talk about it. We’re s’posed to pretend it ain’t there. When I first got here, I asked Johnny about it, and he punched me in the head and said it wasn’t none of my business and to forget I seen it.
Saw
it.”

Handing the lantern back to Denny, Will jumped down from the coal crib and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the fine black dust off his hands.

“I’d like to have a look,” Nell said, handing Will her shawl as she gathered up her skirts.

“Easy, there.” Draping the shawl over his shoulder, Will took her hand to steady her as she stepped up onto the wooden divider, then wrapped his hands around her middle as she leaned over to look through the spy hole. So tightly corseted was she that his long fingers nearly spanned her waist.

Still unsteady in her fashionably dainty, spoon-heeled boots, Nell braced her hands on the wall to balance herself—or rather, her fingertips, since she didn’t want to get her borrowed lace mitts too dirty. She closed one eye to focus in on the candlelit flat, of which she had an excellent view from above. The bed and the area to the side of it were completely visible. She couldn’t help wondering if the couple who’d rumpled that quilt had been secretly observed as they’d disported themselves.

Would it have been Mary and Johnny on that bed, or Mary and a customer? Was Johnny doing the spying, or did other men pay to watch? Did Mary realize she was being spied upon, or had Johnny kept that fact from her? Nell imagined being watched unawares while she shared her bed with a man. The thought inspired a rush of humiliated outrage on Mary’s behalf.

“I don’t even want to know why this hole is here.” Nell glanced down to find Will’s gaze on her bosom, which was pretty much directly at the level of his eyes. With her leaning over as she was, and sporting such a deep décolletage, it must have been quite an eyeful.

He looked up at her, and abruptly away, with a discomfited, almost pained expression. Nell found her embarrassment outweighed by amusement that the urbane, unflappable William Hewitt should not only act like a “leering boor,” but display such chagrin at being caught at it.

Keeping one hand on the wall for support, Nell lifted her skirts and prepared to step down.

“Careful.” Still gripping her about the waist, Will lifted her as easily as if she were made of papier maché. He set her down gently, his hands seeming almost to caress her as he withdrew them.

Nell murmured her thanks without meeting his eyes, unaccountably rattled that he had the strength to handle her so effortlessly. He draped the shawl over her arms, offering not one word of protest this time when she pulled it up over her shoulders, tying it in front for good measure.

“Is this door always kept locked?” Will asked Denny.

“It is now. You got to get the key from Mother if you want to get in here—even Riley.”

“Now?” Will asked. “It didn’t used to be?”

“Um, no. Only about the past year or so. Before that, it didn’t even have a lock on it.”

“Why did Mother Nabby decide to lock it?” Will asked. “Had there been thefts?”

“Dunno. I guess. So, uh, you folks all done here, or...?”

Will said, “Yeah, I reckon we’ve seen all there is to see.”

“How awful,” Nell said as Denny locked the doors to the flat and the coal cellar, “a man getting murdered right in that very room. Where you here when it happened?” she asked him.

“Yeah. Well... Nobody knew what was happening downstairs, you know? It was Tuesday night, and Tuesday night’s fight night. Tuesday and Saturday. It’s godawful noisy on fight night, what with everybody screamin’ and howlin’ and carryin’ on. It’s louder even than right now, with them...with those can-can dancers.”

“Who fought Tuesday night?” Will asked as they made their way back through the basement. Interesting; Nell wouldn’t have thought to ask that.

Denny said, “First fight was Finn Cassidy against Davey Kerr. Second fight was Jimmy Muldoon against Phelix McCann. That was it, just the two fights.”

“When did the murder happen?” Will asked.

“During the second fight, while Muldoon was fightin’ McCann. They was...they were in the middle of the third round when Pru runs upstairs, screamin—”

“Pru?” Nell said.

“Pru Devine,” Denny said as he hung the lantern back on its hook at the bottom of the stairs. “I think her real name is Prudence. She come runnin’ upstairs screamin about a murder. ‘Johnny Cassidy’s been shot in the head.’ She said the guy that done it was still down there, and he had a gun. Riley came runnin’, and the girls, and Finn. Everybody came runnin’. The fight stopped. Mother made Riley lock the basement door, and she sent me out to fetch a cop. I found Constable Skinner down at the corner, and I brung him...brought him back and he took over and...” Denny shrugged. “He asked some questions, and they hauled the body away, and that was that.”

“Who did he question, do you know?” Nell asked.
We got three witnesses that say he done it,
Skinner had claimed.

“Well, I know he talked to Pru, ‘cause I guess she was the first one that saw what happened. She had a customer down here, and he came upstairs, too, but he slipped away in all the commotion before Skinner could talk to him. I reckon he didn’t want to have to give his name to the cops and have everybody findin’ out what he’d been doing down here with Pru.”

“I reckon not,” Will said with a little smile.

“Do you know whether Constable Skinner tried to track down this customer?” Nell asked.

“He said it wouldn’t be necessary, ‘cause it was clear as day what happened.”

“Why open the door to other possibilities,” Will said to Nell, “once he’d decided who to accuse?”

“Do you happen to know what Pru told Constable Skinner?” Nell asked Denny.

“Yeah, I heard she said Detective Cook killed Johnny. He’s this state cop that comes around here sometimes. That’s what she said, but...”

“But you don’t believe he did it?” Nell asked.

“I know he didn’t. He...he wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t, not him. He ain’t like the blood tubs that hang around here.
Isn’t.
He says the law is everything, it’s how moral men keep the world safe for women and children, for the future. He says it’s never right to break the law, ‘cause it’s like a pact among good people everywhere, and without it, there’s no such thing as civilization.”

“It sounds as if you’re pretty friendly with Detective Cook,” Nell said.

“We chew the fat sometimes, when he’s around. He tries to make me talk like a highbrow, ‘cause he says folks judge you mostly by what comes out of your mouth, so if you want to get ahead in life, you have to talk like the person you want to be. He says you gotta think about where you’re goin’, not where you’ve been.”

“That’s very true,” said Nell, who had been blessed enough to have effected just such a transformation herself.

“He brings me newspapers to read,” Denny said, “and copies of
Harper’s
and
Putnam’s
and other magazines when he’s done with ‘em, and books from the liberry. He brung me this one...
brought
me this one.” He pulled out the book that he’d tucked in his trousers and showed it to them.

“The Last of the Mohicans,”
Will said. “Great story.”

“It’s pretty good,” Denny said as he tucked it back in. “Mary liked it a lot. I used to lend her my books to read on the sly. Johnny didn’t like her reading ‘cause he said it made her look like a bluestocking and gave her ideas, but really I think it was ‘cause he couldn’t read so well himself—not well enough to read a book, anyways. My favorite book is
Ivanhoe.
I read that one a second time after Mary was done with it, or almost. I had to give it back before I was finished so Detective Cook could return it to the liberry.”

“I could buy you a copy,” Will said, “and then you could read it as often as you—”

“No. Uh-uh. Thanks all the same, mister. Detective Cook said the same thing, but that’s different than gettin’ it from the liberry. That’d be like a hand-out. He’s offered me money, too, Detective Cook, but I wouldn’t take that, neither. Either.”

“Self-reliance is an admirable trait,” Nell said, “but it makes people feel good to help people they like.”

 “My mum said never to take any hand-outs, and I don’t mean to start now, just ‘cause she ain’t here to see it. I told that to Detective Cook, and he said then I better plan on lots of hard work, on account of that’s what it takes to get ahead with no help from anybody else, so that’s what I aim to do.”

Will said, “If Detective Cook is the top-notch fella you make him out to be, I can understand why you don’t think he killed Johnny Cassidy. But then, why do you reckon this Pru said he did?”

With a look of disgust, Denny said, “She says she seen him standin’ over Johnny’s body with his gun drawn, but—”

“‘Cause that’s what I seen, you little pimple.” One of the red curtains whipped open, revealing a dark-haired young woman in tawdry finery, hooking up her bodice. She had pallid skin, sullen, black-limned eyes, and the kind of squashy lips that always look freshly punched. The furnishings in the “dance booth” consisted of a blanket-covered pallet on the floor and a straight-backed chair, on which sat an obese, mustachioed gentleman in his shirtsleeves, grunting with effort as he squeezed his silk-stockinged foot into a shoe.

“You callin’ me a liar?” Pru asked Denny as she sauntered toward them, hands on hips, the top few hooks of her bodice still undone. She brought with her a sweetly sour tang of sweat and rose oil.

“Were you even sober enough that night to know what you seen?” Denny demanded, standing his own.

“Since us girls ain’t allowed to drink on the job,” she sneered, “I reckon I musta been.”

Denny said, “Aw, c’mon, Pru, I ain’t blind and deaf, and I got a nose on me. Most of the time, when you show up here, you’re half-soused already. I’ve seen you sneakin’ sips from the customers’ drinks, and I’ve heard you beggin’ Riley for ‘just a little taste just to get you through the night.’ You were prob’ly too corned that night to know what you seen, and now—”

“Yeah, well, just so happens I was as sober that night as I am right now, worse luck, and I know damn well what I seen. I seen Johnny Cassidy layin’ there in a pool of blood, and that big black Irish cop standin’ over him with his gun in his hand.”

Her customer, upon hearing this, glanced curiously in their direction as he shrugged his braces over his shoulders.

“Did you hear the gunshot?” Will asked her. “Was that what drew you to the flat?”

Pru’s gaze lit on Will and lingered there for a moment, a spark igniting in her flat black eyes. She sized Nell up swiftly, head to toe, then turned back to Will. Reaching into a pocket of her skirt, she produced a little tarnished brass compact and flipped it open. “Who’s askin’?”