Still Life With Murder (25 page)

“A
RE YOU SURE YOU WOULDN
’
T
rather wait downstairs in the lobby?” Jack asked Nell as he prepared to knock on the door of the apartment that occupied the entire third floor of the posh Pelham Hotel.

“I’ve already answered that,” she reminded him. “More than once.” Four times, to be precise, during the six-block walk from the Boston Museum Theatre near the old Burying Ground to the corner of Tremont and Boylston. Jack’s reluctance to have Nell accompany him into the home of the actress with whom William Hewitt might be living at the moment—a concession to her maidenly sensibilities, presumably—was amusingly ironic. After all, hadn’t Nell herself spent some four years living in sinful cohabitation with Dr. Greaves? But her good humor, strained from having gotten too little sleep last night, had waned with every repetition of his offer to handle this encounter himself.

Not that she’d minded his taking the lead during their conversation with the stage manager for the theater’s stock company—a chinless troll with a trailing moustache who’d leered openly at Nell while Jack scrutinized a handbill illustrated with drawings of the cast.

Her
, Jack had said, pointing.

The stage manager had grinned lasciviously.
Not bad, eh? That’s Mathilde Cloutier. She plays Portia’s servant, Nerissa
.

Jack had met Nell’s eyes with a look that made it clear they’d struck pay dirt.
Where does she live?
he’d asked the troll.

Well, now, I can’t just be givin’ out company members’ addresses without their…
His eyes had glinted as Jack pressed a couple of
shiners into his palm.
Pelham Hotel. That’s them French flats on the corner of Tremont and Boylston. Third floor
.

“I really don’t mind doing this alone,” Jack persisted as he stalled outside the apartment door.

With a groan of frustration, Nell raised her fist to knock, only to have him capture her wrist before she could do so. “She’s not French,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Mathilde Cloutier. You probably think she’s from France, because of her name. But she’s actually from the French West Indies. She’s, um…they call her the…Ethiopian Enchantress.”

“Ah.”

“You’re shocked.”

A little. “No.” Her gaze lit on his hand, still gripping her wrist.

Jack released her abruptly, muttering an apology as a faint pink stain crawled up his throat. He knocked on the door and said, without meeting her gaze, “Will saw her on and off for several years before the war. I met her a few times. She performed with Buckley’s Minstrels then, wearing blackface.”

“But isn’t she already…?”

“Yes, but the audience didn’t know that. It was the only work she could get at the time. Things are different now.”

As footsteps approached from the other side of the door, Jack whispered, “Remember me mentioning a woman Will came to blows over once? That was Mathilde.”

The door swung open on a lissome creature whose most outstanding feature was a great froth of corkscrew curls tumbling just past her shoulders. Mathilde Cloutier had huge, heavy-lidded eyes, bold cheekbones and smooth-burnished skin the color of coffee laced with a dollop of cream. So swiftly did she size up her visitors that Jack had barely opened his mouth to greet her when
she said, “I hope you’re here to take him away.” Her accent, while nominally French, was seasoned with a sing-songy Caribbean lilt. Opening the door wider so they could enter, she added, “I am sick to death of him.”

She turned and motioned for them to follow her through the vast, opulent apartment—room after room papered in watered silk, layered with Oriental carpets, furnished with Turkish-tufted fainting couches, French gilt mirrors, lushly overgrown rubber trees…none of it more gorgeously exotic than Mathilde Cloutier herself. She didn’t walk so much as strut, her long legs propelling her with a graceful underwater languor as her dressing gown—a wisp of amethyst silk—floated along behind her like an empress’s court train.

Nell breathed in the sooty-sweet aroma of opium mingled with a whiff of patchouli as Mathilde called out, “Company!” Sweeping aside a curtain of tinkling glass beads, she ushered them into a boudoir that might have housed a sultan’s harem, so lavishly bedecked was it in jewel-toned draperies and mounds of pillows.

Looking quite at home in this silken seraglio was William Hewitt, reclining on his side atop a colossal bed tented in sheer netting. Drowsy-eyed and naked from the waist up—his lower body being concealed beneath a rumpled sheet—he had his head propped on one hand while the other cradled a bamboo smoking pistol. A silver tray on the floor held the attendant paraphernalia—spirit lamp, spindle, sea sponge, knife…Nell noticed the cylindrical horn opium box he’d purchased at Deng Bao’s hop joint, which lay open on its side. It had been full when he’d bought it on Monday; now it was nearly empty.

Will went very still when he saw Jack. He stared at his old friend through the netting, looking suddenly wide awake. The cuts and contusions on his face were healing, but Nell was sobered
by the bruising to his torso—fading but extensive, especially around his ribs.

“Will,” Jack said with a nervous little smile.

Pushing the netting aside, Will looked from Jack to Nell, his expression grim. Quietly he said, “Miss Sweeney, I do wish you hadn’t done this.”

“Take him away.” Snatching up a leather traveling case from the corner, Mathilde proceeded to cram into it various items strewn around the room—a man’s shirt, a china shaving cup, a pair of leather braces…“Take him out of my sight. I cannot bear another moment of this.”

“You cut me to the quick,” Will said wearily.

“Take your filthy gong and go!” she yelled at him. “Poison yourself if you must, but don’t do it here. I’ve put up with it as long as I care to!”

“Save it for the stage, Mattie,” Will drawled.

She began berating him in French—although it didn’t sound much like the French Dr. Greaves used to drill into Nell—hurling abuse and imperious commands as she stuffed the bag with his possessions. Will responded in the same dialect, but with a good deal less volume and emotion.

“Get out!”
she screamed, hurling the luggage at his head.

He ducked lazily to avoid it as it tumbled onto the bed behind him.

“Go away and kill yourself someplace else.” She departed the room with icy majesty, the silken robe flowing to the hypnotic sway of her hips.

Will sat up, rubbing his face as if he’d just awakened. “What the devil did you say to set her off?” he asked Nell.

“
Me?
Nothing! Not that I don’t sympathize with her. In her position, I’d probably kick you out, too.”

He turned to his friend. “Et tu, Jack?”

Jack hesitated, glanced at Nell. “I…” He spread his hands.

“Still traveling with the herd, eh, counselor? Seems I’m outvoted. Right, then.” Whipping aside the sheet, Will threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood, completely and utterly nude.

“Will!” Jack gasped. “For pity’s sake!”

Nell whirled around and fled from the room, the rattling of the beaded curtain not quite drowning out Will’s groggy chuckles. Heat scalded her face; her legs quivered. She didn’t know which sight affected her more deeply: six plus feet of shockingly naked male, or the damage to his legs, in the form of multiple bruises and a deep scar that puckered the long quadriceps of his right thigh. The old Nell would never have reacted this way to the sight of a man’s body, regardless of his wounds or state of undress—but the old Nell had yet to encounter William Hewitt.

Retracing her steps, she met up with Mathilde in what appeared to be a buttery connecting the main hallway to the dining room.

“Would you like some?” the actress inquired, holding up a decanter of hazy greenish liquid and a tiny gold-rimmed glass. “Don’t worry, it’s not absinthe—just an herbal liqueur. French—very good.”

“No, thank you.” Nell might have accepted the drink, if only to calm her nerves after that spectacle—why was it that only William Hewitt had the power, and the desire, to make her blush like a callow young girl?—but her post-cognac headache Tuesday morning was still fresh in her memory.

“A cup of tea?” Mathilde leaned back against a wine cabinet to sip her liqueur. Nell was surprised to find her in such amenable spirits so soon after her own little drama with Will.

“No, really. I’m fine.”

Setting down her glass, Mathilde withdrew a box of matches from the pocket of her wrapper, and a hand-rolled cigarette, which she slid between her lips. Nell had never seen a woman smoke before. “So you’re Nell Sweeney.”

“He spoke of me?”

Mathilde let out a little huff of laughter as she lit the cigarette. She looked at Nell as she drew in and exhaled the smoke. “He was drunk on opium.”

Nell nodded, wondering what he’d said but unwilling to ask.

“You’re going to have to take him away.” Another sip of the green liqueur, another puff of the cigarette. “He’s in some trouble, eh?”

“He’s been accused of murder.”

Mathilde’s eyes lit with interest. “Did he do it?”

“Do you think he’s capable of it?”

The actress considered that. “I don’t know. Maybe. If someone tried to take away his gong.”

“Before the gong. When you knew him before the war.”

“He did beat a man up once. I was waiting for Will and his friends one night in front of Tuttle’s Restaurant—I’d wanted to get some air while they settled the bill—and a man stopped his carriage, got out and, well…propositioned me very crudely. I was in one of my best gowns, too—it wasn’t as if I should be mistaken for some common
putain
. When I slapped his face, he slapped me back and grabbed me where he shouldn’t have, and called me a… something very rude about my color. He was trying to force me into his carriage when Will came out of the restaurant.” She smiled at her reminiscence. “Oh, he was furious,
très sauvage
. I never knew he had it in him. His brother Robbie and that one in there—” she cocked her head toward the bedroom “—they pulled him off this man, because they were afraid he’d kill him. It was very exciting.”

“I imagine it was.”

“My father killed a man, back in Martinique. He had it coming to him, but you would never have thought a gentle man like my father could do something like that. Sometimes I think anyone can kill if given enough reason.” Mathilde tossed back the last of her liqueur and set the glass back down. “He can’t stay here. Take him away—anywhere—but get him out of here.”

“You’re that put out with him?”

She sighed, raised the cigarette to her lips. “My gentleman friend is coming back.”

“Your…
Oh
.” Nell had wondered how an actress of no particular renown could afford to live in such luxury.

“Will cannot be here when Edmund arrives. That bed is big, but not big enough for three, you know?”

“No, I suppose not.”

On the assumption that Will had had time to get at least partially dressed, Nell returned to the bedroom, peering through the beaded curtain as she warily approached it.

Will, still shirtless and standing with his back to her as he buttoned his trousers, was talking about Mathilde. “She’s miffed because I can’t rouse to her. It’s not her, of course. It’s the god-damned gong—it’s got a stranglehold on my cock.”

Jack, sitting on the edge of the bed facing the doorway, noticed Nell and hitched in a breath. Will turned, saw her, closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath. Jack’s embarrassment did not surprise her. Will’s did—especially in light of his nonchalance about the nudity.

Jack rose to his feet as Nell entered the room. “I, uh, was telling Will that capital crimes are tried before the Supreme Judicial Court. Not all attorneys can argue before the SJC, but I can.”

“Not on my behalf, you can’t,” Will growled as he yanked an undershirt over his head. “Not without my leave.”

“If you won’t let me represent you, the court will appoint someone.”

“So, let it,” Will said, buttoning on his shirt. “Why waste your valuable time when I can waste that of some public greenhorn with nothing better to do?”

“Because it won’t be some greenhorn, Will. They can’t argue before the SJC. If it’s not me, it’ll probably be somebody better and more experienced than me.”

Will took his time tucking in his shirt and shrugging on his braces. He shook out his vest and paused, raking a hand through his hair. “Why are you doing this?” he asked Jack, his voice low and earnest.

Jack regarded him in weighty silence. “You know why.” When Will didn’t respond, he added, “I swore to stick with you once, and I didn’t. This time I’m going to. How could I not, consider-ing…My God, Will.
How could I not?
”

“Your papa won’t be pleased.”

“The hell with him.”

After a moment’s nonplused silence, Will burst out laughing. “It’s worth putting up with you just to have heard that,” he said as he buttoned his vest. “All right. Go ahead and represent me, for all the good it’ll do. They want to hang me and I’ll wager they will, regardless of how brilliantly you defend me.”

“We’ll see about that,” Jack said, holding Will’s coat open for him—not August Hewitt’s hand-me-down, Nell noticed, but a new looking black frock coat that fit him perfectly. “My first order of business will be to find out everything the police know, and hopefully a bit more. Miss Sweeney, I wonder if you would be willing to visit Flynn’s Boardinghouse with me tomorrow—say, around noon? You can introduce me to our cast of players.”

“Of course.” Nurse Parrish was generally awake and alert enough to care for Gracie around then. Pray God she didn’t cry and carry on when Nell left; it was excruciating to have to extract oneself from a sobbing child when all one wanted was to hold her and rock her until she calmed.

“I’d rather you stayed out of it,” Will told her as he donned a handsome black overcoat. “With Jack playing the intrepid champion, I don’t see the need for you to be involved.”

“Your mother sees it differently,” Nell said. “She made it clear I’m to keep close tabs on you.”
I want to know where he goes and what he does
, Viola had said last night after her guests left and Nell
finally got the chance to relate her conversation with Jack.
But be careful. If anything happened to you, I’d never be able to forgive myself
.