Murder on Black Friday (4 page)

“I appreciate that. Anything I can do help?” he asked as she opened the little storage cabinet in which she kept her supplies.

“Thanks, but I’m just mixing up a batch of gesso. It’s a one-person job.” Fetching down a jar of white pigment, she said, “You might want to keep your distance until I get this stuff bound. It’s powdered lead.”

Backing away, he said, “You do take measures to keep from breathing that in, don’t you?”

Nell pulled a kerchief from the pocket of her smock. “This from the gentleman who persists in inhaling tobacco smoke despite all the warnings from, let’s see...the medical journals,
Harper’s Weekly
, your good friend Isaac Foster, who happens to be a pulmonary expert...”

“I’ve cut down substantially just to get you and Foster off my back. I only light up nowadays as a sort of...inhalable nerve tonic, something to soothe me and keep me occupied when I can’t quite abide the world and my role in it.”

“Does that happen very often?” Nell asked.

“Much less often than it did before I...”
Before I met you?
“Before I returned to Boston. My point is, if I quit altogether, I’ll have no bad habits left at all, and that’s far too dreary a prospect to contemplate.”

Tying the kerchief around her nose and mouth, Nell unscrewed the jar, carefully filled an eight-ounce scoop, and tipped it into the bowl. She dribbled in enough glue to work the powder into a harmless paste, then pushed down her makeshift mask.

“Actually, there
is
something you can do for me.” Pointing to the big sack of whiting under the table, she said, “Would you mind pulling that out?”

Will crouched down to retrieve the sack. “What’s in here?” he asked, grunting with effort as he dragged it out.

“White marble dust. Chalk or gypsum would do, but your mother likes marble.”

“Only the best for Lady Viola, eh?”

Untying the sack, Nell scooped up eight ounces of the talcum-fine powder and added it to the lead paste. “I must say, Will, it’s gratifying to see you take such an interest in your work for Harvard, especially given the arm-twisting Isaac had to go through to get you on board.”

“He’s probably regretting it right now.”

“Nonsense.” Nell poured a scoop of warm glue into the bowl and mixed it with a wooden spoon. “I’ve seen Isaac and Emily two or three times since the fall term started, and he assures me you’re a brilliant teacher.”

“It’s the research side of things where I’m developing a bit of a reputation. My colleagues regard me, some of them, anyway, as a foreign-educated dilettante who got where he is through nepotism—which is entirely true, of course. They know I specialized in forensics at Edinburgh, but they’re not at all convinced it’s a valid field of study. My methods and the conclusions I draw are greeted with no end of hilarity by a number of my peers, and the Philip Munro case is no exception. Isaac had a couple of the anatomy professors review my autopsy findings yesterday—standard procedure—and they agreed I’m utterly daft for thinking it might be anything other than a cut and dried suicide.”

“If they knew you as I do,” she said with a smile, “they’d realize you’re utterly daft for entirely different reasons.”

He leaned against the table, contemplating her. “I’ve missed our afternoons in the park,” he said quietly.

Nell returned her attention to her bowlful of gesso, stirring industriously to rid it of lumps. “Isaac tells me you’re held in high regard by the new dean of the medical school. Dr. Ellis, is it?”

Will nodded. “Calvin Ellis—good man. Gratifying though I find his praise, it only serves to further disaffect certain other member of the faculty.”

“They’re jealous because the dean admires you? One would assume men of that stature would be immune to such a base sentiment.”

Chuckling, Will said, “You’re still prone to those galloping assumptions, I see. The possession of a medical degree is no guarantee of emotional maturity. I wouldn’t care, except that there seems to be a campaign afoot to discredit me in Dr. Ellis’s eyes. I have my allies—Foster and a few of the other professors. But it’s been my experience that it doesn’t take much for people to make trouble for you, if they’re bound and determined to do so.”

“Why should you care about what they think of you at Harvard?” Nell asked, smiling to herself as she stirred the gesso. “After all, you’re only there for one term, as a lark.”

“I’ve asked myself that,” Will said. “I suppose what it boils down to is that no man likes to look the fool in any endeavor, even one that’s of relatively little consequence to him.”

Nell looked up from the bowl to gauge Will’s sincerity. Was he really so blasé about his professional reputation, or did he care more than he was willing to let on?

Wresting his gaze from hers, he said, “I went to see your detective friend at City Hall yesterday evening.”

“Colin Cook?”

Will nodded. “I’d wanted to see if he’d be willing to look into this Philip Munro business, but he said he couldn’t touch it—the matter had already been assigned to another detective. Guess which one?”

“Not that ghastly little weasel with the plaid waistcoats and the sneer.”

Will nodded grimly. “Charlie Skinner—although I daresay ‘Ghastly Weasel’ suits him better. He was still there, so I went in to have a word with him. I shouldn’t dream of repeating his, er, greeting, such as it was, in the presence of a lady. Suffice it to say there is no chance he would have helped me even if he didn’t loathe me—which he does, to a rather comical degree. He’s convinced Munro threw himself out of that window. Won’t even offer a reward for information.”

“So, if Mr. Munro’s death is to be explained as something other than suicide, thereby salvaging your professional reputation, it’s up to you to—“

“Thereby not just salvaging my reputation,” Will corrected, “but seeing justice done. Even to a selfish lout such as I, the notion of someone bludgeoning a man in the head, then tossing him out the window and walking free...” He shook his head.

“What makes you so sure it happened that way?” Nell asked as she stirred. “Someone who’s fallen four stories onto a flight of stone entrance steps must end up pretty, well...”

“Oh, he was a mess, all right, but as far as I can tell, the wounds to his trunk and limbs appeared to have been acquired
post
-mortem. There’s a difference in appearance, you know, between injuries sustained during life and those done to a body after death. The bones of a dead man are difficult to break, and they break differently than those of someone who’s alive. Take the ribs. In a living man, they’ll splinter. In someone who’s already dead, if they break at all, they’ll merely crack.”

“And Mr. Munro’s ribs?” Nell paused in her stirring to shake out her aching arm; those lumps were stubborn.

“Completely intact but for a couple of hairline cracks. Here, give me that,” Will said as he lifted the spoon from her hand and took over the stirring. “Also, with the vast majority of his wounds, there was no sign of any vital reaction. No inflammation, no hemorrhage, no suppuration... He was bashed up, yes, but in the way a cadaver might be bashed up if it was dropped four tall stories.”

“With the exception of his head?” Nell surmised, given what he’d said about the bludgeoning.

“He had several compound depressed fractures of the skull, as of a blunt, elongated object applied to a small area with extreme force. Most of these were basal and occipital fractures. Unlike his other injuries, these head wounds were almost certainly sustained while he still living. Cranial bones, especially those at the base of the skull, are nearly impossible to break post-mortem.”

“Hence your theory that he was hit over the head and tossed out the window,” Nell said.

“That’s how I see it, but my critics at Harvard think it’s all humbug. They think his head struck the cornice over the front porch on the way down—which was presumably what killed him, since it’s actually possible to survive a fall of that height, even onto hard stone steps. But had that been that case, one would expect a skull fracture to be linear, not depressed, and with much less extravasation of blood within the cranial cavity. I wouldn’t mind having a look at that cornice, though, just to see what we’re dealing with.” He handed Nell the bowlful of creamy, lump-free gesso. “Do you have to apply this now, or...?”

“No, it can wait,” she said as she covered it with a rag. “What about the front of his head? His face?”

“Smashed, as one would expect. Few vital reactions in that area.”

“But some?”

Will shrugged. “The nose could have been broken before death. It’s hard to tell when there’s so much—“

“Uncle Will!” Gracie called out as she darted into the room. “Nana says I can invite you to my birthday tea!”

“She did?”

“It’s tomowwow afternoon,” Gracie said, bobbing up and down the way she did when she was excited. “And there’s going to be cake, and all my fwiends will be there, and Mr. Thurston and Miseeney. Please say you’ll come. Please?” “Mr. Thurston” was Maxmillian Thurston, the celebrated playwright, who’d forged a close friendship of late with Nell and Will. Flamboyant, witty, and warm-natured, he’d become a sort of surrogate grandfather to Gracie.

Viola, wheeling into the room, said, “Do come to the tea, Will, if only for a little while. It would mean so much to us, and, well, I’m quite sure your father shan’t be there.” Not only did August Hewitt have no tolerance for children’s amusements, he’d never warmed to Gracie, who reminded him far too much of Will. His distaste for the child had grown to the point where he could scarcely bear to be in the same room with her.

“A birthday tea, eh?” Crouching down, Will gathered his daughter in his arms. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Eileen!” called a girlish voice from inside the house after Will tapped the door knocker for the second time. It was a brass lion’s head knocker, filmed with tarnish.

The Bassett home, one of the few freestanding townhouses on Beacon Hill, was an imposing redbrick edifice that had probably been built around the end of the last century. The house looked weathered, and not charmingly so. The black door and shutters needed scraping and repainting, the mortar repointing, the lawns watering. So choked with weeds and moss was the driveway that one could hardly see the cobblestones.

“Eileen, the door!”

About half a minute passed before the door finally swung open, courtesy of a shapely strawberry blonde dressed entirely in black: Becky Bassett. She smiled when she recognized Nell. “Miss Sweeney.” She glanced up at Will, as if trying to place him, then back at Nell. “The girl should have answered the door. I don’t know where she is.”

Becky had one of those voices that had stopped maturing at around the age of eight; no matter how old she got, she would always sound like a little child. The effect was reinforced by her soft features and big, guileless blue eyes.

Nell said, “I’m so sorry to disturb you at a time like this. Miss Bassett, allow me to introduce Dr. William Hewitt.”

Will doffed his hat and bowed. “My condolences, Miss Bassett.”

“Thank you.” Becky stuck a needle and thread into the square of white fabric in her hand, which Nell had at first taken for a handkerchief. On closer inspection, it appeared to be a half-sewn cuff of white muslin, most likely intended for the dress Becky had on—a mourning gown with a drop-shouldered yoke and elaborate piping, generously trimmed in black silk crepe. It was a lovely dress, or would have been had it not pulled slightly across a too snugly corseted bosom, as if it were a size too small. 

From somewhere in the house came a pungent, vinegary aroma.

“Is your sister at home?” Nell asked.

“Yes, of course. Miriam’s been in and out of the kitchen all morning.” Becky gestured them into a front hall that struck Nell, despite its lofty ceiling and palatial staircase, as timeworn and cheerless. The hallstand was water stained, the walls decorated with a hodgepodge of cheap and mundane steel engravings. Imprinted here and there on the wallpaper, an outmoded design of classical urns and swags, were ghostly shadows of the paintings that had once graced these walls. The staircase rose to a landing lit by a tall, arched window that would have looked quite striking had it not been marred by two cracked panes.

Leading them toward the back of the house, Becky said, “My sister always needs to be doing things. If there’s no work to be done, she’ll invent some, especially when she’s fretting about something, and she’s always fretting about something. Of course, with what happened to Papa, one can understand, I suppose, but even when everything’s going along splendidly, she always has to be tending to things and making sure everything’s just so....”

She guided them around the staircase to the left, through an anteroom that housed the service stairwell, past a china room with nearly bare shelves, and into the sweltering kitchen, babbling on all the while. “Dash it,” Becky said. “She was here just a few minutes ago.”

The kitchen was enormous but gloomy. Occupying most of the back wall was a fireplace in which a copper wash boiler simmered away over low flames, a three-pronged dolly stick balanced across its top. On the hearth sat a ceramic jar labeled
Blue Vitriol
and a burlap sack half-filled with small, dark wood chips. Nell scooped up a handful and sniffed them: logwood, a not unpleasant scent, but one she would forever associate with death. “Your sister is dyeing clothes?” She peered into the inky liquid seething in the pot.