Murder in the North End (3 page)

After he left, Viola nodded toward the brass horn still clutched tight in Nell’s fist. “It’s about time that hideous thing came in good for something.”

Nell let out her breath in a tremulous chuckle. Viola cocked her head in the direction of the door, which Nell closed.

“Have a seat, my dear,” said Viola as she wheeled further into the room. “You’re white as chalk.”

Nell sat on a sheet-swathed chair and rubbed her left arm, which was sore where Skinner had grabbed it.

“I realize I should have made my presence known,” Viola said, “but curiosity overcame propriety when I caught on to the nature of the conversation, so I hid behind the curio cabinet. This Detective Cook, he’s the one you’re so fond of, yes?”

Nell sat back, nodding. “He’s a good man, Mrs. Hewitt. I can’t believe he’d murder someone. I
don’t
believe it.”

“Are you quite certain? Given the right situation, you might be surprised how brutal the nicest person can be.”

Viola wouldn’t be offering little insights on brutality if she knew what Nell’s life had been like until about ten years ago. Choosing her words carefully, so as not to sound too conversant on the subject, Nell said, “It would seem to me that, to actually kill someone—not for just cause, but in anger, say—is to cross a line that most of us are incapable of crossing, no matter how enraged we become. It’s as if God has equipped us with a sort of...moral brake that won’t allow us to take a life unless there’s an exceptionally good reason.”

“Is it possible, do you suppose, that your Detective Cook might have felt that he had an exceptionally good reason to kill this...what was his name? Cassidy?”

“Johnny Cassidy. Something like self-defense, you mean? If that were the case, it must not be obvious, or else they wouldn’t be hunting him down as a murderer.”

“Nor,” Viola pointed out gently, “would it be likely that he would have fled in the first place.”

Nell closed her eyes and shook her head. “If you knew him as I know him...”

“Was it true, what you told Constable Skinner—that you haven’t been in touch with Detective Cook?”

Nodding, Nell said, “The last time I saw him was two or three weeks ago. I’d taken Gracie for one of her afternoon outings in the Commons, and he passed by. We chatted for a while about the new house he’d just bought, and his work with the State Constabulary.”

“He didn’t mention anything about problems in the North End, or...”

“He did say he’d been spending quite a bit of time up there, in his professional capacity, which would stand to reason, given his current responsibilities. Fort Hill, too. The Irish slums are where most of the gaming dens and taverns and and...other such places are located.”

“Brothels,” Viola added with a smile. “You can say it—it’s just us.”

Nell returned her smile. One of the most Viola’s most endearing qualities was her candor about such matters, a holdover from her early bohemian years in Paris.

“He mentioned his work,” Nell said, “but only in a general way. He told me it was a big job, trying to stamp out vice in a city like Boston. He said that, by last count, there were over three-thousand places where liquor was sold, dozens of gaming halls, and somewhere between two and three-hundred...‘houses of accommodation,’ as he called them.”

Viola chuckled at the euphemism.

Nell said, “If anyone could make inroads in cleaning up those neighborhoods, it would be Colin Cook. He’s a very capable detective, and Irish, to boot. He fits in with those people, he knows how they think, he speaks their language. And he has a deeply ingrained sense of right and wrong.”

“And yet,” Viola said with a sigh, “he’s now found himself a fugitive from the law.”

Burying her face in her hands, still trembling from her encounter with Skinner, Nell said, “I can’t imagine how this came to pass. It’s not just Skinner who thinks he did it. The chief of the state constabulary must suspect him, else he wouldn’t have ordered Skinner to track him down. I’m so afraid he’s going to be found and...oh, God. By the time I come back from the Cape, he’ll be in prison—if they haven’t already hanged him by then. Who knows, Skinner might just take matters into his own hands and execute him on the spot, claiming he’d tried to make a break for it. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Wheeling herself closer to Nell, Viola reached out to take her hand. “You want to help him, don’t you?”

“How can I?” Nell asked shakily, her throat tightening with impending tears. “I’ll...I’ll be on the Cape while Skinner is hunting him down and...and...”

“And the whole while,” Viola said, “you’ll be fretting about your friend, wondering if he’s been found.”

“Or killed.”

“I daresay you’ll be no good to Gracie in such a state.”

“No, I...I wouldn’t let this interfere with—”

“You couldn’t help it. You’re only human.” After a thoughtful pause, Viola said, “I know you. I know your sense of justice, your fidelity to your friends. You wish you were staying in Boston so that you could try to find your detective friend before Constable Skinner does.”

“Of course, b-but—”

“You could, you know, if you wanted to.”

Nell looked up. “Stay here? But—”

“For a while, anyway, until you’d sorted things out.”

“But what about Gracie?”

“Eileen could look after her until you can join us on the Cape. I’ll leave you money for the train. Just cable me at Falconwood to let me know when you’ll be arriving at the Falmouth depot, and I’ll send Brady to meet you. You see, it’s really no great challenge to arrange—if it’s really what you want.”

“It is. But I would feel as if I were shirking my duty to Gracie...and to you.”

“Gracie’s adaptable, as am I. And Eileen is more than capable of shouldering the burden until you’re back. The only question is where you would stay. I’m not sure I’m quite comfortable with you being all alone in this big, empty house. Do you have friends you could stay with?”

Nell sat back and thought about it. “There’s Emily Pratt, but, well, she’s still living in her parents’ home until her marriage to Dr. Foster, and...”

“And it goes without saying that Orville Pratt wouldn’t tolerate an Irish-born governess under his roof. What about the Thorpes? They’d take you in if I asked them to.”

“Mrs. Thorpe treats me like a scullery maid, and Mr. Thorpe...well, he’s your husband’s closest friend, and considering how Mr. Hewitt feels about me...”

“Mm... There’s Max Thurston. He adores you.” The eccentric playwright had formed a warm friendship with Viola in recent months.

Shaking her head, Nell said, “It wouldn’t look right, me living alone with a gentleman.”

“Yes, but everyone knows that Max is, shall we say, immune to feminine temptations.”

“Most people know that. It would still be scandalous. I
could
stay here, you know. It doesn’t bother me to be alone, and it would only be for a little while.” With any luck.

“Are you quite sure, my dear?”

Nell wasn’t at all sure, but there didn’t seem to be much of an option, so she said, with as much determination as she could muster, “Absolutely. I’ll keep the doors locked and the curtains drawn. No one will even know I’m here.”

Don’t you ever forget there are eyes out there, watching your every move.

Skinner’s implicit threat echoed over and over in Nell’s mind as she lay awake in her big bed that night on the third floor of Palazzo Hewitt, as Will had scornfully dubbed it. Despite her exhaustion, sleep eluded her. The heat was partly to blame. Though the windows on both sides of the corner room were wide open, it was a sweltering night, and the few breezes that wafted through the big room felt like gusts of heat from an opened oven door.

For the most part, though, Nell’s restiveness was born of her sense of complete isolation. She felt exposed and forsaken in this huge mansion with it ghostly, sheet-draped furniture, regardless of the fact that she was there of her own volition.

Having never been in this house when it wasn’t occupied by a swarm of family and servants, Nell hadn’t counted on the utter, preternatural
emptiness
of it. There were no muffled voices reverberating through the walls, no opening and shutting of doors, no footsteps, no
life.
Just the faint, faraway ticking of the grandfather clock in the front parlor downstairs, which she’d never recalled hearing in her bedroom before, even in the middle of the night.

Rising out of bed, she crossed to the mantel clock, peering closely to make out the time in the thin moonlight: almost one in the morning. One would think that, having been awake for some twenty-two hours, after only five hours of sleep the night before, she’d be too exhausted to be sleepless, no matter how uneasy she felt.

Wanting to get her mane of sweat-dampened hair off her neck, Nell opened her top dresser drawer to search for the thin length of velvet she used to tie her hair back when she slept, because it resisted slipping off during the night. While rummaging among her little collection of gloves and collars and ribbons, she came upon a neatly folded, tissue-wrapped swath of silk tucked away in the back—the scarf Will Hewitt had been wearing the last time she saw him, back in January.

Nell had come to the railroad station on that blisteringly cold morning to see him off on his train to San Francisco, from whence he would board a steamer bound for Shanghai. It was to be a long and grueling journey, one destined to last perhaps years, one he hadn’t been looking forward to, but felt compelled to embark on in order to put some distance between them.

Leaving Boston meant leaving not just her and Gracie, but his new position teaching forensic studies at Harvard medical school, which she knew he’d found rewarding. They’d never spoken frankly about his reasons for the trip, about the feelings that had arisen between them over the nearly three years of their acquaintance. Such feelings could lead nowhere, given her clandestine marriage. As a Catholic, divorce was a pointless option; she would be excommunicated should she ever remarry. For as long as she lived, Nell was destined to remain a spinster. And an intimate relationship outside of marriage, should it ever become known, would ruin her; she would lose her home with the Hewitts, her job, but worst of all, Gracie.

Will had understood this, which was why he’d chosen to take his extended sojourn away from Boston as a reprieve from the agony of their being together, yet ultimately apart. He’d been surprised to see her at the railroad station that morning, until she’d reminded him of the offer he’d made to her once, in a moment of weakness: one kiss from her—just one, he would never ask for another—and he would remain in Boston. They would go on as before, never speaking of those things better left unsaid. The kiss would be the end of it.

Ah, but the kiss, when it came, had been the end of nothing, and the promise of far too much. It had been wondrous, devastating, the admission of a secret longing that should never have been acknowledged. A door had been opened, and they both knew, without having to discuss it, that if they walked through that door, she could lose everything.

And so he’d boarded that train just as it was pulling out of the station, for her sake, his scarf flying off as he’d sprinted across the platform. Nell had picked it up off the granite pavement, her damp cheeks smarting in the cold, and brought it home. She’d taken his top hat, too, which had dropped to the ground during the kiss, and stored it in a hatbox on the top shelf of her clothespress.

Unwrapping the tissue for the first time since tucking the scarf away in the drawer, Nell rubbed the liquid-smooth silk between her fingers. She unfolded it and held it to her nose, inhaling a whisper of Bay Rum, a trace of tobacco. In the months before leaving Boston, Will had cut down dramatically on the number of cigarettes he smoked, but he’d had one that morning while waiting for his train.
Something to soothe me and keep me occupied when I can’t quite abide the world and my role in it.

The bittersweet scent of the scarf made Nell’s eyes sting. God, how she’d missed him these past six months—that droll wit, that intimate smile, that velvety-deep voice, British-accented from his youthful exile in England. It was as if a great void had been carved from her chest, leaving her empty, needy. She’d always prided herself on her independence and self-reliance, yet here she was, close to tears over the absence of someone who could never be more to her than a friend—the dearest friend she’d ever had. How had this man—this cardsharp, this rake—come to feel like the other half of herself?

There came a muted creak from the hallway. Nell turned to see a yellowish ribbon of light beneath the door to her room; she’d left the hall lights off when she’d gone to bed.

Heart kicking, she shoved the scarf back in the drawer and plucked a hatpin from the porcelain holder on her dresser. A door squeaked open, the door from the hall to the adjacent nursery.

I could crack any lock in this house in less than a minute.

Nell crossed herself with a quaking hand, whispering a hurried prayer to St. Dismas. She padded on bare, silent feet to the hall door and stood, listening.

Through the next door down, which led to the nursery, she heard that one loose floorboard groan beneath the Persian rug. He must be looking for her. He’d notice the door connecting her room to the nursery and try that next.