Death on Beacon Hill (9 page)

“I did,” Will said. “Gives him a rather dashing air, I think.”

“Oh, my dear William,” she giggled. “You were always such a card. Dare I hope you’ve returned to Boston for good? It would so please your dear mamá.”

He hesitated, his fingers tightening reflexively on Nell’s arm. “We shall see what the future brings.”

“Oh! I’ve a splendid idea.” Mrs. Pratt smacked Will on the chest with her fan. “You must join us for dinner tomorrow evening. Yes, indeed. Mr. Pratt’s gone and invited some client he ran into yesterday, so I don’t see why I might not ask you, especially since your parents and Harry will be coming.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yes, and your brother Martin, too, if he doesn’t have too much studying—you know how he is. I do hope he can come. He and Emily used to get along so well when they were young. Don’t you think they’d be just perfect for each other?”

“Er...”

“Oh, do come. It would smashing to see all the Hewitts together again at one table. I shall die if you refuse.”

“Mustn’t have that.” To Nell’s utter shock, considering his estrangement from his family, he added, “I say, you don’t mind if I bring Miss Sweeney?”

Nell and Winifred Pratt both stared at Will for a long, excruciating moment. “Why...no, not at all,” said Mrs. Pratt, her smile riveted in place. “Of course not. Lovely idea. Lovely. Shall we say seven o’clock?”

“We shall be there,” Will said.

“Well, then...yes. Very good. I, er, I shall save my good-byes until later. You
are
going to the graveside service.”

“I’m afraid not,” Will said before Nell could answer in the affirmative. “Miss Sweeney is unwell. The heat, you know.”

“Oh, dear, yes,” said Mrs. Pratt, her fan fluttering to life again. “My, yes. This blasted heat. Well, then. Lovely running into you. Absolutely lovely. I shall see you tomorrow, then.”

Will bowed as she turned away. “Looking forward to it.”

“I’ll thank you not to speak for me,” Nell told Will when Mrs. Pratt was out of earshot. “I had every intention of going to the cemetery. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Mr. Pratt yet—or Maximilian Thurston. Or—”

“It shouldn’t be much trouble to arrange an interview with Mr. Thurston, given the extent to which he appears to relish the art of discourse. As for Orville Pratt, you’ll be a guest in his home tomorrow evening. You can talk to him then.”

Watching the Pratts’ driver delicately wedge his rotund mistress into the Landau, Nell said, “What were you thinking, asking her if I could come?”

“Can’t Nurse Parrish put Gracie to bed tomorrow night?”

“I don’t mean that. Don’t you realize what they’ll think?” she asked. “They’ll think I’m your...that we’re...”

Will shook his head, smiling. “Poor, conventional Cornelia. Still a slave to the opinions of others.”

With an exasperated sigh, she said, “This is what I was talking about before. You’ve never given your reputation a second thought, so you don’t seem to grasp how critical mine is to me.”

“Nell, the rumors that have got you so fretful arose because people assume you’re meeting me on the sly, leading them to conclude that we’re engaged in a clandestine liaison of a, shall we say, impure nature. But if I were to court you openly—”

“
Court
me?” Courtship implied the prospect of matrimony, not remotely an option for Nell, who, at sixteen, had wedded a charismatic hothead currently nine years into a thirty year prison sentence for armed robbery and aggravated assault. Nell’s marriage to Duncan Sweeney was the worst mistake of her life, as she discovered when the Church refused to annul it. Divorce would be pointless, given the certainty of excommunication should she ever remarry. Therefore Nell secretly remained the wife of a convicted felon while all of Boston—except for Will—viewed her as a pious Irish Catholic miss with an unblemished past.

“What I meant,” he said, “was if I were to
appear
to court you. We could be seen together as often as we liked, without anyone misconstruing it. Or rather,” he added as Nell prepared to point out the obvious, “they’d be misconstruing it, but by our own contrivance. We could attend this dinner party, or any other function, without worrying about the whispers. We could be seen in public as often as we liked, with no fear for your reputation. No one would look askance if they thought I was simply paying my addresses to you, openly and honorably.”

“A Hewitt, openly paying addresses to
me
?” she said. “I should think a great many people would look askance at that.”

“Come, now, you must have read at least one of those vapid governess novels. Doesn’t the heroine always end up married off to one of her employer’s sons?”

“Or to someone even richer and more important,” she confirmed, having gone through a phase in her late teens when she’d devoured such novels. “But the governesses in those novels are invariably from the same background as the families they serve. They’re well-born young ladies in reduced circumstances, not some poor Irish chit who just happened to stumble upon a stroke of good luck. You and I...” She shook her head. “People would never believe it.”

There came the snap of reins, followed by hooves clattering on the granite-paved road. They both turned to watch the funeral procession wind its way down the street and around the corner. When Nell looked back at Will, she found him studying her in that quietly intense way of his.

“Of course people will believe it,” he said. “You’re widely admired, you know, and not just by my mother. No one thinks of you as just some poor Irish chit who got lucky.”

“Your brother Harry does.”

Will smiled. “He
says
he does. The truth is, he’s terrified of you.”

Nell let out a dubious little huff of laughter.

“Think about it,” Will said. “Every time he encounters you—or someone who has your interests at heart—he ends up with at least one fresh new scar. He knows he’s no match for you—not that he’ll ever admit it, but he knows.”

“No match for
you
, you mean.” Nell had Will to thank for Harry’s having let her be for the greater part of the past year. Enraged at Harry’s attempt to force himself on Nell last year, Will had dealt his brother a fractured nose and black eye, promising to crush both of his arms should he ever touch her again.

“Harry will be at the Pratts’ tomorrow night,” she said. “I assure you I have no desire to socialize with him.”

“Nor he with you, I daresay. He’ll probably ignore you completely.”

“Your parents will be there,” she said. “I’m surprised you’d be willing to spend that much time in their company.”

“I can’t avoid them forever, and your being there will take some of the sting out of dealing with them.”

Nell looked away for a moment, afraid he might see, on her face, a hint of the gratification she felt at knowing her presence was that important to him. “I still don’t understand why you’re doing this,” she said. “You loathe these sorts of evenings. You don’t care anything about the Pratts, you can’t bear either of your parents, you’ve given up trying to reform Harry...”

“I’m quite fond of young Martin, actually.”

“You could see him alone if you wanted to.”

“I do. We sometimes meet for lunch in Cambridge when I’m in town.”

“Then what’s the point of going to this dinner party?” she asked.

“Perhaps you’ve convinced me that I owe it to the late Mrs. Kimball to get to the bottom of her murder.”

Is that all?
She wanted to ask. Was it possible he felt she needed him around for protection, given the powerful men she was going up against? Then there was this courtship ruse. On the one hand, she balked at the notion of living a lie; yet wasn’t that what she’d been doing all along? At least, if she went along with this sham, Will would be free to openly associate not only with her, but with his daughter.

“I won’t deceive your mother,” she said on a capitulatory sigh. “Not after everything she’s done for me.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to. You’d never get away with it, in any event. Doesn’t she expect you to remain unwed while Grace is little? You’d have to reassure her on that score.”

A secretly married woman, reassuring her employer that she’ll remain single while carrying on a fabricated courtship with her son? Nell kneaded her forehead. “This is mad.”

“Life is mad.” Will smiled down at her sober black dress. “Have I ever told you about this odd attraction I have toward beautiful young ladies in mourning attire?”

“Yes, actually.” Feeling heat rise up her throat, Nell lowered her gaze and fiddled with the keys, hoping the brim of her bonnet would hide her reddened face from his view.

“And the swooning was a nice touch.” He laid one hand lightly over both of hers, his fingers warm even through her black silk gloves. She felt incapable of resistance when he gently hooked a finger through the key ring and extracted it from her grasp. Closing one hand around the keys and the other around her arm, he escorted her down the front steps. “Shall we?”

“Are you taking me home?” she asked as he guided her across the street toward his buggy, a compact black phaeton with the top down.

He nodded. “By way of Mount Vernon Street.”

She turned to look at him. “Mrs. Kimball’s house?”

Will smiled and shrugged. “Best we get there before Mr. Pratt’s cleaners do.”

“Quite a house for just one person,” Nell said as Will unlocked the front door of Mrs. Kimball’s handsome, four-story townhouse and accompanied her inside.

The entrance foyer was spacious and imposing, with a pink marble floor and coffered walls. Will set his hat on a mirrored hallstand strewn with mail and calling cards, some of which had fallen to the floor. A porcelain umbrella stand lay smashed on its side next to two frilly parasols and a gentleman’s gold-handled walking stick. Straight ahead, off a long hallway, were two massive mahogany newel posts flanking a carpeted staircase.

“The bodies were found on the second floor,” Nell said, “but I think I’d like to look around a bit down here first.”

The hallway led to a grand double parlor, the front half set off from the back by gilded pillars. Gilt-framed mirrors and paintings—most of Mrs. Kimball costumed for various roles—stood against the walls, having evidently been taken down from their hooks. Two couches and a number of French gilt side chairs were overturned, their undersides slit open and gutted, tufts of horsehair scattered about the Persian carpet. An ivory-inlaid table cabinet lay on the floor with one door broken off. Even the logs in the clean-swept fireplace had been taken out and dumped onto the hearth rug.

“This is Detective Skinner’s handiwork,” Nell said. “He was looking for the Red Book.”

“No doubt he could name his own price if he got his hands on it.”

The rest of the first floor—dining room, kitchen, pantry, and water closet—was similarly ransacked. On the theory that an intruder may have broken into the house, they checked the courtyard door, service door and windows, but found no evidence of a forced entry.

They climbed the stairs to the second floor and paused in the hall, which was lined with framed
ambrotypes and cartes de visite of Virginia Kimball costumed for various roles, as well as playbills featuring her name in oversized type. It was sweltering upstairs, and airless. Nell caught a gamy-sweet whiff of old blood that made her nostrils flare.

Will pointed out a series of brownish red footprints on the Aubusson carpet. “I assume these are from the police tramping through the evidence.”

“If there were any prints here when Skinner first arrived,” Nell said, “he might not have noticed, given the pattern on the carpet. And even if he did, he’d never admit it now that the case is ‘solved.’ Why muddy the waters?”

To the right, toward the front of the house, were three open doors, leading to a library, a sitting room, and a large W.C.; they were all ravaged. The library floor was a sea of books.

There was one door to the left. It, too, stood open, revealing an enormous butter yellow bedroom flooded with sunlight from two south-facing leaded glass windows overlooking a lush flower garden. The smell of blood grew stronger as they approached. There rose a low insect hum that made Nell’s scalp prickle.

From the open doorway could be seen a huge canopied bed against the north wall, its mattress slashed. Bedclothes lay in a heap on the floor alongside mounds of clothing, white goose feathers from the mattress blanketing them like snow. The orchid-patterned carpet must have been custom-made, because it fit the big room perfectly. Just inside the door, iridescent blue flies hovered over a cluster of dried bloodstains; the largest had soaked deeply into the pile of the rug, while others were little more than smears.

“This is where Mrs. Kimball died,” Nell said.

Will appraised the stains gravely. “Doesn’t look as if she moved from that spot after she was shot, although she may have shifted a bit.”

“Mr. Thurston testified at the inquest that he found her right there in the doorway. He said he held her until she passed.”

Will nodded. “She wouldn’t have wanted to die alone.”

“Would anybody?”