Still Life With Murder (21 page)

He opened the door for Nell and held out his hand. She faced him patiently, making no move to enter the carriage.

He smiled. “I took her to a convent and arranged for her to be schooled there. She lives there still. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“If it’s the truth.”

“I am many despicable things, Miss Sweeney, but I am not a liar.”

“Are you quite sure…Mr. Toussaint?”

He nodded as if to acknowledge her point. “I am not often a liar. I was weaned on lies and secrets and genteel fabrications, and as a result, I’ve developed an aversion to pretense—except on the stage. I’m actually quite fond of the theater. You know, I really do think you’d make a brilliant actress—if it weren’t for that dreadful propriety you wear like armor around your soul.”

She let him hand her up into the hack then, closing the door behind her once she’d gotten her skirts gathered in.

“Miss Sweeney.” He reached in through the open side window to tug at her loosely draped green scarf, warmly chafing the back of her neck. “Do tuck this in. You’ll catch your death.”

CHAPTER NINE

A
 
KNOCK CAME AT NELL
’
S BEDROOM
door that night as she sat at her drawing table in the sitting room alcove, putting the finishing touches on her sketch of the hop joint above Deng Bao’s grocery store. She glanced at the clock on the mantel; not quite eleven. It was late for Mrs. Hewitt to be stopping by, and Nell had already reported to her on the day’s events—quite an intense conversation this afternoon, during which she’d revealed Will’s opium addiction, and the fact that he made his living through gambling.

She stacked her sketches—this evening’s and those she’d drawn last night after Viola’s visit—and covered them with a blank sheet of paper before she rose to answer the door, mindful of all she had to lose should the wrong person find out what she was up to.

“I’m so glad you’re still up,” said Viola, seated in her rather rickety old third-floor wheelchair, when Nell opened the door and ushered her into the room. She had on one of her many kimonos, the lime green one; on her lap was the bulging needlework bag she used for toting things around the house. “I’m not disturbing you, am I? Oh, were you about to turn in?” she asked when she noticed that Nell was in her dressing gown.

“Not at all. I was just finishing up a sketch, but I’m so tired I’ll just ruin it if I keep going.” Was it Nell’s imagination, or was Viola a little tipsy? Her speech, normally so crisp and refined, sounded suspiciously thick, and there was something about her too-bright eyes and ruddy nose—although that could easily be from all the crying she’d done of late. Nell had never known
her employer to have more than a glass of wine at dinner, two at the most.

That speculation was put to rest when Viola withdrew from her bag a bottle of amber-colored liquid, about three-quarters full. “Do you have a couple of glasses? I left my snifter downstairs. Anything will do.”

Nell fetched a small water glass and empty tea cup off her night stand and brought them to the drawing table, thinking this would be the first time strong spirits had touched her lips in over seven years. She exclaimed in protest as Viola filled both glass and cup nearly to the brim.

“I’m trying to finish it,” Viola explained.

Um…
“Do you think that’s such a good idea, Mrs. Hewitt?”

“No, it’s a terrible idea. We’ll both have blinding headaches tomorrow.” Handing Nell the tea cup, she raised her own glass toward the half-open door to the darkened nursery, where Gracie was fast asleep. “To Grace Elizabeth Lindleigh Hewitt.”

“To Gracie.” Nell took a sip; the liqueur tasted sweet and nutty and a little musty, but pleasantly so…deliciously so. It went down like hot satin. “This is good.”

“It should be.”

Something in Viola’s tone gave Nell pause. She held the bottle in the light from the oil lamp on her drawing table to read the brittle old label through its fine, finger-smeared powdering of dust; it was a Hennessy cognac. “This isn’t…you wouldn’t… Um, how old is this cognac?” she asked, taking another small sip.

“It spent twenty-six years in an oak barrel.” Viola smiled. “And another seventy-four in this bottle.”

Nell choked as she was swallowing. “This…this is Mr. Hewitt’s hundred-year-old cognac!”

“It is,” Viola said as she took a generous swig.

“But he’s saving it for the birth of his first grandchild!”

“So you reminded me yesterday. So, last night I reminded
him
that our first grandchild had, in fact, been born three and a half years ago. I asked him if it wasn’t past time to uncork Grandpapa’s cognac. He gave me
that look
.” Tilting her chin up just slightly and peering down her regal nose, Viola fixed Nell with a subtle but altogether withering disdain.

So flawless was the impression, and so surprising—Viola never criticized her husband, and certainly never mocked him—that Nell burst out laughing.

Viola laughed, too, and they clinked their glasses. Nell silently prayed, as she drank, that August Hewitt would never discover the part she’d played in polishing off his precious cognac—not to mention bailing out his son! Her position here, her charmed life…Gracie…It was vulnerable, all of it. She’d begun to take it for granted, but it could all be snatched from her in a heartbeat, and then where would she be?

“What are you drawing?” asked Viola as she wheeled closer to the table. Nell lifted the blank sheet and handed Viola the gloomy little charcoal sketch she was working on. “Is this the opium den he took you to? I can hardly make anything out.”

“It was dark.”

“So I see.” Viola shuffled idly through the stack of drawings: Flynn’s Boardinghouse; the alley outside Flynn’s, rendered in pencil except for a dilute ink wash to indicate the bloodstained snow; a map of Boston she’d traced out of the city almanac, with her notations scrawled on it…“Ah, you’ve finished this one.” Viola picked up the meticulous pen and ink drawing of Deng Bao’s grocery store to examine it more closely. “The detail is extraordinary. Was it really this…” She stilled, her gaze on the pencil drawing at the very bottom of the stack. “Oh, my God. Is that him?”

“Oh…Mrs. Hewitt,” Nell said as Viola lifted the sketch, a pencil portrait of Will, pale, unshaven and battered. “I’m sorry. Yes. That’s him.”

Viola’s eyes reddened as she brushed a fingertip over the contusion surrounding his left eye. “My poor Will.” She gazed at the portrait through a shimmering glaze of unshed tears. Laying the drawing aside, she opened her needlework bag and produced two flat, embossed leather cases, which she handed to Nell. “This is who he used to be.”

Nell opened the top case to reveal a smoky-silver daguerreotype of a woman and two children framed in an oval of golden scrollwork. The woman, seated with a baby in her lap, was a very young, very pretty Viola; she wore a flower-sprigged dress, with her hair center-parted and ringleted in the style of the late thirties. Leaning up against her, his arm resting protectively on the baby, was a boy in knickers with neatly combed black hair, huge eyes and a beguiling smile.

“The little one is Robbie,” Viola said as she tilted her glass to her mouth. Robbie was one of those big, sturdy babies who was undeniably male despite his pale curls and elaborate, lacy, christening gown. “And of course the boy is Will. He’s about four there.”

“He looks older.”

“It was his height, those long, gangly limbs. August always thought of him as older, always expected so much of him, but he was really just a little—” Viola’s voice caught. She took a gulp of cognac.

“He looks so happy,” Nell said. There was something heartbreaking about that guileless smile, the solicitous little hand on his baby brother.

“Will adored Robbie. He was never jealous, like some older siblings. All he wanted was to play with him and take care of him.” Viola’s hand shook slightly as she snapped open the second case. “This was taken in June of fifty-eight, before a ball to benefit the Children’s Aid Society.”

The photograph was of four handsome young men in white tie, lounging in what Nell recognized as the Red Room downstairs.
Robbie, looking like a gilded young god at about twenty, was seated on his mother’s favorite piece of furniture, the thronelike Japanese chair elaborately carved with “guardian lions.” The adolescent Harry sat perched on an arm of the chair, his grin precociously cocky, a hand resting on Robbie’s shoulder. In contrast to the older three, whose eveningwear was classically austere, Harry wore a waistcoat of gaudily-patterned brocade. Will and another young man, whom Nell didn’t recognize—light brown hair, fair skin—stood in back, framed by an enormous Japanese painting of a hawk in the snow.

“That fellow standing next to Will is Leo Thorpe’s son Jack,” Viola explained. “He was Robbie’s best friend, about a year older. They were still in their teens when Will started dragging them to saloons and gaming hells and God knows where else. For the week or two every year that Will was in this city, it was always just the three of them.”

“I heard Mr. Thorpe say something about making his son a partner in his law firm.”

Viola nodded. “Poor Jack, he really never wanted that, but Leo has his ways…” She sighed and took another sip of cognac. “Jack joined the Fortieth Mounted Infantry along with Will and Robbie right out of law school. When the war ended, he took a job in Washington instead of coming back here to join Pratt and Thorpe, which greatly upset Leo, since he’s the only son. But this past Christmas he moved back to Boston, and the next thing I knew, he was unofficially engaged to Orville Pratt’s daughter Cecilia. Leo and August have their differences, but they’re very much alike in one respect. If there’s something they want, they eventually get it.”

Too true
, Nell thought, studying the photograph. “Were Harry and Robbie close?” she asked, taken by the fraternal affection of that hand on the shoulder.

“Oh, yes, Harry adored Robbie—everyone did. He was one of those people who just…shines. There was something about him,
a special grace, a light. Harry was three years younger. Mind you, he was a little wild even back then, but he worshipped Robbie.”

“Was he jealous of Jack?” Nell asked. “Because of how close he and Robbie were?”

“I think so, but he managed to keep that under wraps fairly well. He never got into any serious trouble until the war, but then, without Robbie around to try to please, well…” Gravely Viola added, “When he heard about Robbie’s death, he went a little mad, I think. Started drinking and didn’t stop for days, wouldn’t go to the mill. He hasn’t been quite the same since then.” She shook her head. “I feel responsible. I should have done more for him.”

“William feels the same way. He regrets not having guided him more effectively.”

“He shouldn’t. They were so far apart in age, he and Harry. And Harry was a hard one to guide. He still is. He’ll do something utterly outrageous, and seem so contrite about it, even devastated, but then the next day it’s as if none of it ever happened. Do you know he started a fistfight over a woman after a service at King’s Chapel last year? He beat the poor fellow unconscious right there in front of the church. An hour later, he was laughing about it over Sunday dinner. It cost August five thousand dollars to keep him from being prosecuted.”

Nell nodded as she sipped her cognac. “I heard about that.”

“Did you hear about the time he got arrested for public indecency?” When Nell shook her head, Viola said, “It was about five or six years ago. He went for a little midnight swim in the Frog Pond with two…women of the town, and by the time the police arrived, they were…well…no longer swimming.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Leo handled it,” Viola said, her words slurring together. “Leo handles everything. All those ghastly little dramas with Harry’s mill girls…The pregnancies to be dealt with, the husbands to pay
off, the gambling debts, all those fines for public intoxication…I just worry that someday Harry will do something money can’t put right. Will was no angel either, but at least he was only arrested the once that I know of, when they raided that brothel back in fifty-three.”

“Until now,” Nell reminded her.

Viola drained her glass and reached for the bottle.

“Was
William
ever jealous of Jack’s friendship with Robbie?” Nell asked.

“Oh, no. Will was…well, not so much above such petty emotions as…apart from them. I don’t know if that makes any sense.”

“Yes,” Nell said. “I know what you mean.”

Touching the photograph thoughtfully, Viola said, “I think this was the only time I’d ever managed to talk Will into attending one of the charity balls. Frankly, I was hoping he’d meet some suitable girls. His taste ran to…well…” She took another sip of cognac.

What a sensation he must have caused that night! The “suitable girls” would have gone wobbly in the knees; their mothers, if they had any sense, might have steered them toward safer prospects.

“He disappeared from the ball after about twenty minutes,” Viola said. “Came home the next morning with his tie gone and his shirt open, reeking of whiskey and perfume. August was seething, of course. Will calmly packed a few things, as he always did, and left. We didn’t see him for days, but Robbie eventually found him and talked him into coming to Cape Cod with us. Will loved those summers at Falconwood—although he usually stayed by himself in the boathouse. He said he liked the lapping of the water against the dock. It infuriated August, of course, but I think it was preferable in his mind to having Will in the main house, where he’d have to deal with him.”