Murder on Black Friday (3 page)

“I believe it had to do with the stock market, mostly, though I confess I’m at a loss as to exactly what it was he did. Those sorts of things—stocks, commodities—they’re utterly foreign to me. Your father disapproved of him, said he wasn’t so much a businessman as a gambler. What was it he called him? A ‘nouveau riche raider.’ Oh, and he had connections, you know—friends in New York and Washington, important, powerful men, the kind who share information and help one another out. I understand he dined with President Grant, he and some of his financier friends, when the president came to Boston in June for the Peace Jubilee.”

“That can’t have hurt his business,” Will said.

“Oh, he made buckets of money, and his money made more money. Before long the men here in Boston who’d once snickered at him were lining up at his door for advice on how to do the same thing—not your father, of course, but most of the others. His
back
door, mind you. No respectable gentleman wanted to be connected too closely to the likes of Philip Munro.”

“Mustn’t be seen paying a call on the man,” Will said, “but they didn’t mind handing over their purses?”

Viola smiled. “Yes, but you see, they handed them over empty and got them back full. Mr. Munro wasn’t afraid of money, or vaguely ashamed of it, the way the rest of them are. He bought and sold and connived and speculated as if it were all a game and he could invent and reinvent the rules as he went along.”

“Did he always win?” Will asked.

“Often enough to keep some of the most powerful men in Boston in his thrall.”

“Was he in league with those Goldbugs, do you know?” Will meant Jay Gould and his cronies, whose greedy machinations had forced President Grant to sell off some of the government’s supply in order to lower its price, resulting in yesterday’s devastating market collapse. Gould was by far the most notorious Wall Street raider alive, and now the most loathed. Anyone who’d owned gold at noon yesterday, when its value plummeted—and that was a great many people—took a cruel beating. Thousands of investors were left in complete financial ruin.

Viola said, “I don’t think anyone was ever really privy to what he bought and sold, just that he made mountains of money doing it. If he
was
a gold speculator, let’s hope he didn’t talk Harry into getting involved in it.”

“You didn’t mind Harry befriending a blighter like Munro?” Will asked.

“That question,” Viola said with a sardonic smile, “implies that I enjoy some measure of influence over what Harry does and with whom. Of course I disapproved of Mr. Munro—not because of his background, needless to say, but because of his behavior. But he’s the reason your brother started playing cricket at the Peabody Club up in Cambridge, which I was actually quite pleased about. I thought it might, oh you know, be good for Harry to get a bit of fresh air and exercise. I’m surprised he never asked you to come along.”

Choosing his words with obvious care, Will said, “Harry and I don’t see very much of each other.” Not since the thorough beating Will dealt his brother last year after learning of Harry’s absinthe-fueled attempt to force himself on Nell—something Viola would never, God willing, find out about.

“Harry will take this
very
hard,” Viola murmured, staring out the window at her little English-style garden, all tangled and leggy, the way it got every year at the end of the summer, no matter how hard Viola worked on it. “How did he die?” she asked without turning from the window.

“That’s debatable, as far as I’m concerned. He was found on the front steps of his house on Marlborough Street, beneath the open window of his office on the fourth floor. It seems fairly clear that he fell that distance, but there are no witnesses. He’s got an unwed sister who lives with him, but I’m told she was napping when it happened, and none of the servants actually saw him fall. He was pretty badly smashed up, but in a way that makes me doubt that he died from the fall itself.”

“I wan out of chalk.” Gracie was standing over her artwork, a stub of chalk in her hand, squirming in a way that instantly put Nell on the alert. “Can I have some more?”

Viola, who was within grabbing distance of Gracie, pulled her close and whispered something in her ear.

“No,” the child insisted with an adamant shake of her head. “I don’t need to.”

“I think you do.”

Crossing one leg over the other, Gracie said, “I just need another piece of chalk so I can finish.”

“First the W.C.,” Nell said as she reached for the child. “Then I’ll fetch you some more chalk.”

“I’ll take her,” said Viola as she crossed the room, wheels rattling over the slate. “You’d best finish sizing that canvas before the glue dries up. Come along, Gracie.”

“But I don’t—“

“We’ll stop at the kitchen afterward and have Mrs. Waters make you a nice cup of hot cocoa.”

Gracie dropped the chalk and hurried after her nana. “Can I wide on your lap?” she asked as she followed Viola into the hall. “Can I? Please?”

“Can
you?” Viola challenged.

“May
I?” she implored, while dancing that little telltale dance. “Please, Nana?”

“Er...perhaps on the way back.”

Will smiled as he watched them retreat down the hall. There was amusement in his eyes, and pride, and a hint of wonderment at the child he’d created quite by chance one lonely night with a pretty young chambermaid during his last visit to his family.

It had been a Christmas furlough from his service as a Union Army battle surgeon in December of 1863, shortly before he was captured and imprisoned at Andersonville, along with his brother Robbie. After the hellish prison camp claimed Robbie’s life, Will escaped and, wounded inside and out, and allowed his family to think was dead for years while he lost himself in a numbing haze of opium smoke and cards.

“What the devil is that stuff, anyway?” Will asked as Nell dipped up another spatula full of warm, gelatinous glue.

“Rabbit skin glue. Canvases have to be sized with this and then primed with gesso before one can paint on them.”

“She makes you prepare her canvases? And on a Saturday? I thought you had Saturdays off.”

“I do,” Nell said as she smeared and scraped. “This is
my
canvas, for a painting I’m planning of Martin and some of his divinity school friends rowing on the Charles River.”

“Which ones are yours?” he asked, scanning the solarium-turned-studio. The only painting he’d ever seen of hers was the portrait of Gracie that she gave him for his birthday in July, which hung over the fireplace in the little library of his Acorn Street house. It captured Gracie’s winsome charm, which was why she’d wanted Will to have it, but it was sketchier than her usual work, because she’d been trying to suggest movement as the child played with her dolls.

Nell guided him around the room, pointing out paintings on easels, leaning against walls, and stored in drying racks—portraits and street scenes, mostly, a few interiors.

“Nell, I’m...awestruck,” he said after he’d viewed them all. “Your handling of light is incredible. These paintings—they glow from within. Why have you never shown me these before?”

“You’ve never been to the house before—not since I’ve lived here.” Nell turned back to the canvas she was sizing as her face suffused with heat.

“Are you blushing?” There was amusement in his voice as he came up behind her. He liked to make her redden, then tease her about it, and it wasn’t hard, with her coloring. Although she wasn’t quite a redhead, her hair being a sort of rust-stained brown, she was cursed with the volatile complexion of that breed—pale, translucent skin that sizzled at the drop of an innuendo.

“You are, aren’t you?” he asked.

“No.” There was something about blushing with pride from Will’s praise that made her feel particularly exposed, as if that which lay in the deepest recesses of her heart were emblazoned in scarlet all over her face for the entire world to see.

“I think you are.” He was standing so close that his legs rustled the silk faille skirt beneath her smock frock. “What the devil...?”

Her scalp tickled as he slid one of the filbert brushes out of the twist of hair at her nape, loosening it. “Ah, the ever practical Miseeney,” he chuckled.

“You’re making it come undone,” Nell said over her shoulder, the movement causing the chignon to unfurl heavily down her back. She bent to retrieve the second brush as it clattered onto the slate.

“I’ve got it,” Will said as he stooped to pick it up, bracing a hand on his bad leg.

Nell glanced back over her shoulder, reaching for the brushes.

“Allow me.” Slipping the brushes into his coat pocket, he shook out the rope of hair and slowly combed his fingers through it, sending little shivers of pleasure into her scalp.

“You know how to put a lady’s hair up?” she asked, heavy-lidded from the gentle pulling and tugging.

“I know quite a few things I probably shouldn’t.” Will gathered up her hair, his long fingers grazing the back of her neck, and twisted the thick, wavy hank into a knot. She wished it didn’t feel as good as it did, because she wanted it to go on and on, whereas she probably shouldn’t even be letting him do it. It was a rather intimate thing for a gentleman to do for a lady, the sort of thing one might do for a wife. Or a mistress.

Nell should know, having been more than a nurse to Dr. Greaves even though she already had a husband. The fact that Duncan, who was serving thirty years for armed robbery and aggravated assault, had brutalized her unmercifully, mitigated the sin to some extent. Even kindly old Father Donnelly, who’d counseled Nell in her futile attempt to secure an annulment, had conceded as much during her weekly confessions.

Of course, a liaison of that nature was unthinkable in Nell’s present circumstances, and not just because she still had a husband in Charleston State Prison—a fact known only to Will and her current confessor, Father Gorman at St. Stephen’s. Viola had made it clear five years ago, when she asked the presumably unwed “Miss Sweeney” to serve as governess to her adopted infant, that she expected Nell not only to conduct herself with the utmost propriety, but to forswear marriage while Gracie was young, in order to devote her full attention to her charge. She no doubt still expected it, notwithstanding Nell’s friendship with Will, which the rest of Boston society took to be an unofficial betrothal—an assumption Will encouraged, since it permitted Will to spend time with Nell and his daughter without raising eyebrows. Only Viola and August—and, of course, Father Gorman—knew that the courtship was just a façade. They were also the only people in Boston, aside from Nell and Will, who knew that the chambermaid’s baby Viola Hewitt was rearing as her own had actually been sired by her son.

“Tell me if this hurts,” Will said as he slid one of the brushes into the twist of hair he’d made, pushing it through the thick knot and out the other side. He did the same with the second brush.
“Eh voila,”
he murmured, letting his hands linger on her shoulders for a moment before removing them.

Nell patted the chignon, impressed with how solidly it held. “I couldn’t have done better myself.”

“Surgeon’s hands,” he said.

That comment reminded her of the autopsies he’d performed yesterday evening. She shook her head as she dipped up some more rabbit glue. “How awful about Mr. Bassett. I feel so sorry for his daughters. They were always so kind and gracious to me. Some of your mother’s callers treat me like one of the scullery maids.”

“That’s because you have an Irish name,” Will said, “not because you’re a governess. Since a governess is usually just a well-born lady in reduced circumstances, they’re considered social equals more or less. An Irishwoman, on the other hand, is, well,
Irish.
I’ve traveled all over the world, and I think it’s fair to say the Irish are more loathed in Boston than anywhere I’ve been—more so than New York, or even London. But Bassett’s daughters like you, eh, eh?”

“They seem to.” She skimmed the last of the glue off and turned to look at him. “Why?”

“I’m going to be paying a call on them when I leave here, and I’m thinking it might help if you came along. You could introduce me, assure them I’m an all right sort, encourage them to answer my questions.”

“An Irish governess vouching for a Hewitt?” Nell said as she wiped off her spatula, having sealed the entire canvas.

“Most of my parents’ circle, except for old family friends like the Pratts and the Thorpes, have never met me. Some of them don’t even know I exist. Somehow I doubt Saint August would bring me up in casual conversation. If he does, God knows what he says. You, on the other hand, are a familiar presence to anyone who’s spent any time with my mother these past few years. And, of course, you’re now presumed to be her prospective daughter-in-law. You’ll be trading in that troublesome Irish surname for one of the oldest and most respected names in Boston.”

“Presumably.”

“Presumably.”

“How long do you suppose we can keep up this sham courtship?” she asked.

“Long engagements are
du rigeur
in Boston society. We could go on this way for years without causing comment.”

Nell set a battered enameled bowl on her worktable. “I’ll go with you to the Bassetts. It’s best if I’m there to reassure them that you’re all right, what with everything they’re going through right now.”