Murder on Black Friday (24 page)

“I never should have done that, given his state of mind,” Miriam said. “I was busy. I wasn’t thinking. It’s my fault that he became so distraught.”

“He got dressed and went to see Philip Munro then, yes?” Nell prompted.

Miriam said, “I didn’t realize he was doing that, or I would have tried to stop him. I was upstairs when he came home, and I met him on the landing. He told me we were ruined, that we were going to lose the house. He said Philip had done it on purpose, and that he would only fix it if Papa blessed his marriage to Becky. Papa refused. Some very hot words were exchanged. Munro asked him whom he thought he’d been dealing with. He told Papa he’d send him to the poor house, then set Becky up as his mistress, and when he was done with her, he’d sell her to some Fort Hill brothel. He said...” Miriam looked at Tanner, then at the floor. “He said some things about me, too, things Papa hadn’t known before. Papa...he said it was as if were watching himself from above. He grabbed a cricket bat off the rack, and...”

She was trembling. Tanner, kneeling beside her, chafed her hands.

“Papa said he couldn’t believe it when he realized what he’d done. He said it felt unreal, as if another man had done it. He came straight home. He wanted to turn himself in to the police, but I begged him not to. I asked him if anyone had seen him enter Philip’s house or leave it, and he said no, just that kitchen girl who never seems to notice anything. He was in tears, he was so upset. I’d never seen him like that. I told him I’d take care of it, and I sent Eileen to his room to bring him a brandy. I changed and went to Marlborough Street and slipped up the service stairs. Philip was slumped over his desk with his head all...” She shivered. “It was...it was...”

“It’s all right, Miriam,” murmured Dr. Tanner as he closed his hands around both of her. “I’m here.”
Miriam.
It was the first time Nell had heard him call her by her Christian name.

“I didn’t want to get blood all over my dress,” Miriam said, “so I took it off before I started cleaning things up. I dragged Philip to the window and heaved him out, and then I got my dress back on as quickly as I could. I was wiping up the last few spots on the rug when I heard someone outside, a man, say, ‘Oh, my God.’”

“That would have been Freddie Wallace,” Will said.

“There was a great deal of fuss out front then,” Miriam said. “I had no trouble getting out the back door unseen. When I got home, I went straight upstairs to see Papa, but his bedroom door was locked. I knew right away something was wrong. I had Eileen bring the key. It was the most awful thing I’d ever seen, even worse than Philip, because he was such a good man, and he’d done it to himself.”

“What did he say in his note?” Nell asked.

“That he’d killed Philip Munro, on his own with no help from anyone else, and that he took full responsibility for it, both in this life and the next. He asked that the police be informed of what he’d done so as to set the record straight.”

“That sounds like Noah,” Tanner said.

“He asked us to pray for both him and Philip,” Miriam said. “And he said we—Becky and I—wouldn’t have to worry about money from now on, because he had that life insurance.”

“You dyed your bloodstained clothing,” Nell said, “and burned the note. What happened to the cricket bat?”

“I smuggled it back home under my skirt and threw it in the kitchen fire before I went to check on Papa.”

“Why were you so determined to erase all evidence of the connection between Philip Munro and your family?” Will asked.

“I thought if it came out that he’d helped Papa with his investments, eventually someone would discover that he’d ruined Papa.”

“Thus giving your father a motive for killing him,” Nell said.

“I just wanted to pretend he’d never existed.”

“Yes, but if he hadn’t,” Tanner said quietly, “you never would have had Becky.”

Miriam turned to stare at him. So did Nell and Will. When, Nell wondered, had Tanner come to realize that Becky was Munro’s daughter.

“You opposed the marriage with such uncharacteristic virulence,” Tanner told Miriam, “that I knew there must be more to the story than you were letting on. Then came the revelation that Munro had once wanted to marry you. And then this Sophie Wallace, nee Cabot, who delights in spreading rumors about you that you would rather I didn’t hear—which was why you sent me on that fool’s errand to find Becky yesterday.” The minister smiled at his fiancée. “My imagination can fill in a great deal, Miriam. I may be a man of the cloth, but I am vaguely acquainted, if only in an abstract sense, with the ways of the world.”

That little speech actually drew a smile, albeit a small and rather wobbly one, from Miriam.

“Were you in love with Munro?” Tanner asked her.

“God, no. No! Never! He was never...” Miriam shook her head as if to settle her thoughts. “I had a beau, Chet Langdon. He was the one I...thought I loved. We were betrothed—secretly, because I was only sixteen, and Mamá would never have permitted it. I knew Philip wanted to take Chet’s place—he’d made that abundantly clear—but I never gave him a second’s encouragement. Chet and I... He was leaving for Europe the next day, and he was going to be gone a year, and he wanted... He, he said it was almost as if we were married already, and I, I already missed him so much...”

“Yes,” Tanner said. “I understand.”

“Afterward, I was worried about, well, getting in trouble. The only woman I knew who might know about these matters was Sophie Cabot. I had no idea she and Philip... If I did, I never would have confided in her. I wasn’t pregnant, of course, just naïve and fretful. But Sophie told Philip that that I was carrying Chet’s child, so of course he completely changed his mind about me. He came to think of me as a woman who gave herself cheaply, and when I resisted his advances, he... It was at the Children’s Aid Ball. He put something in my champagne—I realized that later. Everything became...very strange. The room was whirling like a carousel, and I could barely stand. I remember being walked down a long hallway, being half-carried, really, and told I looked faint and needed to lie down, and then the next thing I remember is being on a couch in some little room, with my dress half undone, and him...” She shuddered.

Tanner swore under his breath and wrapped an arm around her.

“He knew I would never tell,” Miriam said. “It would have destroyed my reputation. A few weeks later, my mother was having tea with Chet’s mother, and she couldn’t stop bragging about the young countess he was courting. By then, I knew I was pregnant by Philip Munro.”

“I think I can guess what happened then,” Tanner said. “Your mother sent you away under the pretext of finishing school and pretended she herself was with child. You returned to Boston after Becky was born, and no one was the wiser.”

“That’s right. I’ve never wanted to tell Becky, because she’s such a chatterbox. I only told Philip because I had to prevent the wedding, no matter what it took, but he didn’t believe me. He was convinced I’d already been with child by Chet when he...‘took his turn’ with me. That was how he put it. I kept going back to see him, hoping I could talk sense to him—with my father’s pistol in my pocket, just to feel safe. It was terribly frustrating trying to reason with him. All he seemed interested in was, well, having his way with me again. He was constantly making advances, switching tactics whenever it became clear that he wasn’t getting anywhere. He assured me I didn’t need the pistol, that he wouldn’t do anything I didn’t ask him to do, and that I
would
ask him sooner or later, that I’d end up begging him, in fact.”

“
Begging
him?” Tanner said.

“His arrogance was almost laughable.”

Having all too much insight into men like Philip Munro—there was a bit of him in Duncan—Nell said, “He was thinking that if the woman he’d once taken by force actually begged him for it, if she wanted it as much as he, it might mitigate what he’d done twenty years ago. A ravisher he may have been, but it would appear he didn’t like to think of himself as such.”

“I can’t pretend I’m sorry that he’s gone,” Miriam said. “I
am
sorry that my father was the instrument of his death. Perhaps...perhaps I should do as he asked, and tell the police how Philip really died.”

“If you do that,” Nell said, “you will, of course, be implicating yourself. After all, you tampered with a murder scene for the purpose of misleading the authorities.”

Will said, “Yes, but since she was merely trying to protect her father, I can’t imagine her punishment, if there is any, will be very severe.”

“It would be worth it,” Miriam said, “just to have it all out in the open. I could be at peace with it, then.” She looked at Dr. Tanner, took his hand. “I could start over.”

*   *   *

Nell and Will were walking up the Bassetts’ driveway toward his phaeton parked around back when she noticed a movement in the side parlor window: John Tanner clasping Miriam’s arms, his head bent to hers as he spoke. Circling around to the passenger side of the black buggy, Nell stole a long look in their direction.

Miriam said something; Tanner nodded. He raised his hands to her face, framing it tenderly. She closed her eyes. He touched his mouth to her forehead, her eyelids, whispered earnestly in her ear...

Something brushed Nell’s arm. She turned to find Will standing beside her, looking toward the window. He watched for a long moment, seeming deep in thought.

His gaze shifted to Nell. She had the impression he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. He opened the carriage door and handed her up. They drove away in silence.

*   *  *

January 1870

“All aboard for Providence and points west!” roared the railroad conductor through a speaking trumpet as he picked his way among the swarm of passengers, well-wishers, porters, and luggage carts jostling each other on the station platform. Steam from the waiting locomotive billowed into the frigid morning air.

Nell buttoned her coat with one gloved but numb hand and used the other to shield her eyes from the sun as she wove her way through the chaos, looking for Will. Her ears, only partially covered by her winter beret—aquamarine velvet, to match her coat collar—stung with the cold. Frozen slush crunched underfoot as she quickened her pace, searching, searching...

“With connections to the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific!”

She would never find him before he left on his self-imposed exile to the Orient. There were too many people, she’d come too late. It was bedlam.

“Chicago, Omaha, Cheyenne...”

She shouldn’t have come. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t, but then, at the last minute...

“Great Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Stockton, and
San...Fran...cisco!”

As autumn surrendered to winter, Nell had entertained the hope that Will might change his mind about Shanghai. She’d avoided bringing it up, as if the idea might simply evaporate if only they didn’t talk about it. For the most part, she was able to put it out of her mind altogether, occupied as she’d been these past months with caring for Gracie and helping Eileen Tierney through her surgery and recovery.

At Will’s invitation, and funded by him, the renowned Dr. Lewis Albert Sayre had come to Boston to demonstrate his innovative new clubfoot operation in the surgical theater at Massachusetts General. Having left the Bassetts’ employ, Eileen recuperated at the Hewitts’ in a third floor room near the nursery, so that Nell could look after her. She took so well to Gracie that Viola asked her to stay on as a sort of assistant to Nell—replacing the increasingly infirm Nurse Parrish—with the understanding that she would eventually serve as Gracie’s lady’s maid. Now entirely healed from the surgery, and with a lovely pair of custom-made boots Viola had ordered for her, Eileen’s gait was so graceful that one would never suspect she’d been born with a deformity. 

The reaction of upper class Bostonians, when told the circumstances of Philip Munro’s murder, was nearly always the same. Poor Noah Bassett, it was felt, had been laboring under an aberration of mind when he took that cricket bat to Munro, who’d invited such a fate through his own rapaciousness. Around dinner tables at the Somerset Club and the Parker House, it was generally agreed that this sort of unseemly business was what came of elevating the lower classes. The district attorney, taking into account the extenuating circumstances and Miriam Bassett’s standing in the community—not to mention the support of all of Brahmin society—declined to charge her as an accessory after the fact. She and John Tanner were married in October—in a small, quiet service, given that she was in mourning—and last week she’d confided to Nell that she was expecting.

“All aboard!”

She saw him.

Nell stopped walking and stared at him, her breath puff-puff-puffing. He was about twenty yards away, standing gravely still amid the roiling masses, his ubiquitous black top hat shadowing his eyes.

Will tugged off his gloves, stuffed them in a pocket of his great coat, and withdrew his tin of Bull Durhams. He studied it for a moment, flipped it open, tapped a cigarette, and lit it.

What was it he’d said, that he only lit up nowadays as a sort of nerve tonic?
Something to soothe me and keep me occupied when I can’t quite abide the world and my role in it.