Death on Beacon Hill (29 page)

Gracie made an exaggeratedly bemused face, as if “Uncle Will” had said something ludicrous. “Nana’s not my weal mommy. She picked me out special ‘cause she always wanted a little girl, and she never had one, but now she has me. I’m dopted, wight, Nana?”

“A
dopted. Yes, that’s right, darling.” Viola met her son’s eyes for a weighty moment before looking away to set her palette on the worktable.

Will, suddenly sobered, kissed the child’s forehead and set her down. “I knew that. I was just teasing.”

He glanced at Nell, who offered a weak smile as she knelt to wipe up the glue that had dripped onto the floor from her neglected spatula. Setting his hat aside, Will hitched up his trousers and crouched down, a bit stiffly because of the old bullet wound in his leg. “Here.” He took the rag from her hand and set about cleaning up the mess himself. “Watching you scrub a floor is like seeing a lovely little mourning dove on a trash heap.”

Having always thought of mourning doves as gray and ordinary, Nell wasn’t entirely sure how to take that.

“Uncle Will, guess what?” Gracie asked excitedly. “Tomowwow’s my birthday, and the next day I get to go on a twain and a steamship.”

“You do?”

“The twain goes to, um...” The child looked to her nana for a prompt.

“Bristol, Rhode Island,” Viola said.

“Bwistol, Wode Island, only it’s not weally an island, and then we get on a steamship called the Pwovidence that looks like a palace inside.”

“The Providence, eh? You’re going to New York, then, I take it?”

Viola said, “Your father and I are taking Gracie on a birthday visit to your Great-Aunt Hewitt in Gramercy Park. We’ll be gone a week.”

“Really?” There was a note of genuine surprise in Will’s response, and Nell knew why. August Hewitt had never made any secret of the fact that he found Gracie’s presence in his home as vexing as that of the upstart Irish nursery governess entrusted with her care. On his instructions, the child took all her meals, except for holiday dinners, with Nell in the third floor nursery, and he never spent very long in the same room with Gracie before ordering her removed. For him to consent to a weeklong trip with the child was remarkable.

Viola said, “Aunt Hewitt commanded us to visit when she found out Gracie was turning five. She wrote and said she was afraid she’d die without ever having met her. I wrote back that I was more than willing, that it was your father she had to convince. She sent him a letter. I didn’t read it, but that evening over supper, he suggested the trip. We’re bringing Nurse Parrish along to look after Gracie.”

“Nurse Parrish?” Will said dubiously. “She must be ninety by now. Can she still travel?”

“She’s eighty-three, and she tells me she’s looking forward to the trip. She loves New York, and she hasn’t been there in years.”

Taking Nell along would, of course, have been out of the question. Mr. Hewitt loathed her as deeply as he did Will. It was only his indulgent love for his wife, and Viola’s own steely resolve, that had permitted Nell to remain with the family as long as she had.

“You must draw pictures of the things you see in New York,” Will told Gracie, “so you can show them to me when you get back. I know you like to draw, like Nana and Miss Sweeney.” Pointing to the crude but oddly cheerful design chalked onto the floor amid the forest of easels, Will said, “This is your handiwork, is it not?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yes, sir,” Nell softly corrected.

“Yes, sir,” Gracie echoed. “I dwew the morning sunshine, ‘cause Miseeney says she misses it when it goes away.”

“How very thoughtful of you,” Will praised as he awkwardly gained his feet.

“And how very thoughtful of
you,”
his mother told him, “to pay a call at the house. You don’t know what it means to me, Will. Your, uh, your father is at his office, by the way, so...” She glanced at Gracie, who was sprawled on the floor again, chalk in hand. “You know. You needn’t worry that there will be any...unpleasantness.”

“He’s working?” Will asked. “On a Saturday?”

“He’s worse than ever,” Viola said with a slightly weary, smile. “Six days a week, he’s at India Wharf by dawn.” August Hewitt’s dedication to the shipping empire founded by his great-great grandfather was legendary among his fellow “codfish aristocrats.”

“I wish I could claim that my visit was prompted by mere thoughtfulness,” Will said. “The fact is, I’ve something rather distressing to report.”

“Oh, dear.” Viola’s smile waned. “I can’t say I’m eager for any more bad news, after that frightful gold business yesterday. Your father knows men who lost their entire...” Looking up sharply, she said,
“You’re
all right, aren’t you, Will? You didn’t...?”

“Good Lord, no. I’ve never invested in gold.” Will kept his considerable gambling swag in the weather-beaten alligator satchel Viola had gifted him with upon his graduation from medical school at the University of Edinburgh. “No, I came through yesterday quite unscathed, but as you’ve pointed out, the same can’t be said for everyone.” He looked around, rubbing his neck. “I say, are there any chairs in this room, or...?”

“Here.” Nell pulled out a paint-speckled kitchen chair that had been tucked under a table. “It’s safe to sit on. The paint’s dry.”

Will sat and crossed his legs, lifting the bad one over the good one with his hands. “Nell must have told you I accepted a position as adjunct professor at Harvard—just for the autumn term. I’m really not cut out for that life anymore, but Isaac Foster talked me into it, and it affords me the opportunity to do some rather diverting research. Foster was named assistant dean of the medical school over the summer—did you know?”

Viola nodded. “Winnie Pratt told me about that—crowed about it—when she wrote to announce Dr. Foster’s engagement to her daughter Emily while I was on the Cape.”

“I’m teaching medical jurisprudence,” Will said. “What Professor Cuthbert at Edinburgh used to call forensic studies—the legal applications of medicine. One of my conditions when I accepted the position was the right to conduct post-mortems on any good corpses that end up in the morgue at Massachusetts General.”

“Good corpses?” Viola said dubiously.

Will cast a little half-smile toward Nell, as if to say,
You understand.

“There are good corpses,” said Nell, who’d assisted at some truly fascinating autopsies during the four years in which she’d been trained in nursing by Dr. Greaves before coming to work for the Hewitts. “Someone whose death was violent or unexplained can be very interesting to dissect, if one knows what to look for.”

“I thought the county coroners handled that sort of thing,” Viola said.

“Yes,” Will said, “but they’re all laymen, so they have to pay private surgeons to perform the actual autopsies—when they bother with them. I’m saving them a bit of trouble and expense by taking on the chewier cases myself. In any event, yesterday evening, two bodies were brought to the morgue, the deaths apparently unrelated, but with one thing in common. Both men had evidently taken their own lives.” He paused, then added, “One of those men, I’m sorry to say, was Noah Bassett.”

“No.”
Viola sank back in her wheelchair, looking stricken. “Oh, Will, no. Not Noah.”

Will glanced at Nell as if for support in being the bearer of such grim tidings. She managed a reassuring look despite her own shock and dismay, having grown quite fond of Mr. Bassett herself from when he and his daughters would visit the house.

“I was dreading having to give you this news.” Uncrossing his legs, Will leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I know how much your friendship with the Bassetts means to you. I’d wanted to tell you myself before you read about it in the morning paper.”

“Thank you, Will.” Viola shook her head listlessly. “I wish I could say it comes as a shock that Noah would...do something like that, but given the way his life’s gone these past few years... Was he ruined in the gold crash, do you know?”

“One can only assume so, but I’ll need to find out for sure. To draw a reliable conclusion about a death like this, one must examine not only the victim’s body, but his life—his state of mind, his situation, the circumstances in which he died. Which is partly why I’m here, to help fill in those blanks—although the evidence so far does indicate that Mr. Bassett died by his own hand.”

“How...” Viola hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. “How did he...?”

“He apparently locked himself in his bedroom, filled his bathtub with warm water, and opened both radial arteries with—“

“Radial...?”

“He cut his wrists,” Nell said.

“With a pen knife,” Will added. “His death resulted from massive blood loss.”

Viola closed her eyes, color leaching from face. “Noah, Noah... He was my age exactly, fifty-nine. Our birthdays were only a week apart.”

“His daughter found him,” Will said.

“Which one?” his mother asked. “He’s got two, and they both live with him.”

“Her name is Miriam.”

“She’s the eldest,” Viola said. “About your age, I suspect, mid-thirties or so.”

“A spinster?” Will asked.

“Not for long. She’s engaged to a professor at Harvard Divinity School—Martin’s favorite professor, as a matter of fact, the Reverend John Tanner.”

“Really?” Nell said. “I always sort of assumed Dr. Tanner was married—but perhaps that’s just because he’s a clergyman.”

“You know him?” Will asked.

Nell nodded. “Martin’s had him over to the house a few times. He seems like a pleasant fellow.”

“Your father can’t bear him, because he’s a Unitarian,” Viola said, “but I agree with Nell. He seems like a good man, and I think he’s the right sort for Miriam. She’s the type one would never suspect of having been born into great wealth. She reminded me of Noah in that way—of Noah as he used to be. Mature, pragmatic, capable... I’m glad she’s the one who found him, and not Becky.”

“Becky’s the younger sister?” Will asked.

“Yes. Rebecca, but everyone calls her Becky. Just turned nineteen, I believe, but she seems younger. One of those chatty, chipper young girls, you know? But quite likeable, really.”

“There are just the two daughters?” Will asked. “That’s quite a gap between children.”

“They had a son in between—Tommy. He died in the war. And Lucy, Noah’s wife—his late wife—suffered a number of sad events during those years, as well.”

“Sad events?” Will asked.

“Miscarriages,” Nell said.

“It was heartbreaking,” Viola said, “watching her lose all those babies. Lucy Bassett was the warmest, most generous and patient soul I’ve ever known—the perfect wife for Noah. All she ever wanted was to have a houseful of children to love and take care of. She had no problem having Miriam, but then it took her so long to carry a second child to full term. Miriam was eleven when Tommy was born. There was at least one other disappointment after that. I know Noah wanted her to stop trying for more children, because it was just too upsetting for her, and she wasn’t that young anymore, but then along came Becky. ‘My little gift from God,’ Lucy called her. Unfortunately, her health started deteriorating after that. She died of cancer when Becky was just three years old.”

“How did her husband react to her death?” Will asked.

“Oh, he was devastated. It tore him apart. He was a wonderful man, you know, but far too easily bruised for his own good.” Viola’s voice was hoarser than usual; her eyes shone wetly. She groped under the cuff of her smock for the handkerchief she kept tucked in her dress sleeve.

Will shook his out and handed it to her.

Dabbing her eyes, Viola said, “Poor Noah, he was never the same after that. He was quite a large man, you know—tall and big-boned, and always, well, a bit on the stocky side, with these great, bushy mutton-chop whiskers. I used to think of him as a giant, kindly bear. He was a very popular fellow, the kind of warm-hearted man everyone loved. But after he lost Lucy, he became more like a...well, one of those big, shambling dogs that always looks a bit sad and confused. Then, when he lost Tommy right before the war ended, he just seemed to...gradually collapse. He retreated into himself, neglected his appearance, stopped calling on his friends. We paid a New Year’s Day call on him this year, Nell and Gracie and Martin and I. Miriam told us he was still in bed—at one-thirty in the afternoon.”

Will said, “I’ll need to speak to his daughters before I can confidently label it a suicide, but if he’d been mentally depressed for a number of years, as you suggest, that would make it all the more likely that a major financial loss might send him over the edge. Mr. Munro’s case is a bit woollier, I’m afraid.”

“
Philip
Munro?” Viola asked.

Will nodded. “He was the other man I autopsied yesterday.”

“Oh, my word,” Viola said. “He’s so young. “
Was
so young.”

“Thirty-nine,” Will said. “You knew him, obviously.”

“We all knew him, everyone. Well, everyone in a certain circle.” The circle of Boston’s Brahmin elite, she meant. It was a tight-knit, exclusive little cosmos unto itself, governed by a rigid code of conduct. She said, “Your brother Harry knew him particularly well. They’d become bosom friends in the past year or so.”