Still Life With Murder (26 page)

Jack said, “You can tell her Will’s going to stay with me till this all blows over.”

“That will be a comfort to her,” Nell said. “She’s very relieved that you’ve agreed to help us. Where do you live?”

“The Back Bay—one of those townhouses on Commonwealth near the Public Garden. My father bought me one as a Christmas present. Mother had it all furnished before I even got here.”

“That should make Miss Pratt happy,” Nell said.

“Are you serious?” he asked with an incredulous little laugh. “Nothing less than a forty-room chateau will do for a Pratt. The blueprints have already been drawn up.”

“A wedding gift from your father?” Will asked.

“From hers. Come, let me walk you over to my place and get you settled.”

Nell said, “I’ll come with you.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Jack said.

“Oh, but it is. Mrs. Hewitt insists that I actually see where her son is staying this time. I’ve got to go inside, look around with my own eyes and draw a picture for her when I get home—literally. She said she’s had enough Belmont Hotels to last her a lifetime.”

“Speaking of my mother…” Will withdrew a well-stuffed envelope from inside his coat and handed it to Nell. “That’s what she lent me last Sunday, plus a week’s interest.”

Nell felt the stack of bills through the crackling paper. “You’ve been gambling?”

He gave a little smile, as if it were a naive inquiry. “It’s what I do.”

“You really shouldn’t while you’re out on bail,” Jack said. “If you’re caught—”

“Miss Sweeney has already delivered this cautionary lecture, Jack. Don’t worry—I won’t be caught.”

“Your mother never intended for you to pay this back,” Nell said, holding the envelope out for him.

“The last thing I want,” he said as he turned and held the beaded curtain open for her, “is that woman’s charity.”

T
HE WAR HAD SLOWED DEVELOPMENT
in the Back Bay landfill, envisioned a decade ago as a haven for Brahmins who hadn’t managed to buy into Beacon Hill or Colonnade Row before they filled up. The broad boulevard dubbed Commonwealth Avenue was to have been, by now, Boston’s very own Champs-Elysées, surrounded by a harmonious little enclave of Parisian-style mansions and townhouses. The landfill extended only two blocks west of Arlington and the Public Garden, however, and contained many vacant lots, giving it a rather sparse and melancholic aura. Commonwealth Avenue ended abruptly at the tidal flat that was shrinking all too slowly in the western end. Indeed, the effluvial reek of that great stretch of mud and sewage tainted every breath one drew in this section of the city. Thus, the most desirable part of the Back Bay at present was the far eastern edge, which was relatively built-up, and this was where Jack’s house was located.

Number ten Commonwealth Avenue was one of an attached row of four-story, bay-windowed brownstones with imposing flights of front steps disappearing beneath handsome porticos. Will limped only slightly as he carried his bag through the ornate iron gate and up the stairs, and the four-block walk over here hadn’t seemed to trouble him—evidence that he’d dosed himself at Mathilde’s with enough opium to deaden the lingering ache of that old bullet wound, at least for the time being.

“I assume Papa provided you with servants,” he said as Jack twisted his key in the glazed, French-style double front door.

“A cook and a maid, but they’re only here on weekday mornings, while I’m at the firm, because I can’t bear having them underfoot. I take my suppers at the club.”

“The Somerset?” The inquiry had a mocking little bite to it. It was the most prestigious gentlemen’s club in Boston, the Somerset—the home away from home of such eminent personages as Leo Thorpe, Orville Pratt and August Hewitt.

Ignoring the taunt, Jack ushered Nell and Will into the house, which was remarkable for the value and quality of its furnishings—matched sets of Hepplewhite and Sheraton, mostly—as well as for the utter absence of evidence that this was actually someone’s home. Jack had presumably been living here for two months, yet there were no personal effects lying about, no untidy little corners, no open books or half-read newspapers, no lap rug tossed over the back of a chair, no kicked-off shoes next to a couch. In every room they passed, the carpets—Axminsters, Savonneries—were as velvety and pristine as if they’d never felt the tread of a shoe.

“My word,” Nell murmured, pausing in the wide entrance to the formal dining room. Suspended over a gleaming mahogany table was the most spectacular chandelier Nell had ever seen—a monumental confection of crystal and brass that looked as if it weighed a ton. “It must be as bright as the sun when you turn the gas all the way up.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jack replied. “I’ve never lit it.”

“I would have lit it once just to see what it looks like,” she said.

He answered that with a disinterested little grunt. “Mother had it sent from Venice. She’s terribly proud of it, calls it the centerpiece of the house. She tells me it’ll be the talk of Boston once I start having people to dinner.”

He smiled and shook his head, as if bemused by the notion that he would ever have anyone to dinner.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“T
HIS IS WHERE IT HAPPENED
?” asked Jack Thorpe as Nell guided him into the alley next to Flynn’s Boardinghouse at noon the next day.

“Right there.” Nell pointed to a section of the cracked stone pavement—devoid now of snow—that was still slightly discolored. “He bled out fast once his carotid artery was cut.”

Jack stared at the spot, one hand in a pocket of his overcoat, the other absently kneading his temple. He looked pale and wrung out today, and had complained of a headache earlier. “You viewed the corpse, you say?”

“Yes. The wounds were extensive, and rather savagely haphazard. I believe he tried to ward them off.”

Jack looked up at her uneasily. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I don’t know what that detective was thinking, bringing a lady into a morgue.”

“He was only doing what I—”

“Miss Swee—er, Chapel? I
thought
that was your voice.”

Nell looked toward the window into the back parlor, partially open as always, to find none other than Detective Cook himself leaning on the sill to peer at her through the glass, smeared with a dingy brownish stain from years of opium smoke.

“Speak of the Devil,” she said. “Mr. Jack Thorpe, I’d like you to meet Detective Colin Cook, whose job it is to ensure that your client hangs by the neck until he’s dead.”

“You’re Toussaint’s lawyer?” Cook asked.

“I am. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Detective.”

Cook speared Nell with an incisive little glance. He would assume, from what she’d had the thankful presence of mind to
tell him last time, that retaining Jack was a sop for Mrs. Hewitt, and would have no effect on her husband’s zeal to see his son hang—or on the payoff due Cook for paving his way to the gallows. The detective said, “You
will
be pleased, Mr. Thorpe, once you come on inside and find out how much more difficult my job has just gotten.”

They joined him in the parlor to find Seamus Flynn standing in the corner, expression dour, arms crossed. Molly, the prostitute who’d talked her friend Pearl into working at Flynn’s, sat on the leather chaise lighting a cigarette. Curious, after having gone her entire twenty-six years without seeing a woman smoke, that Nell should witness it twice in as many days. She wondered if the easy women she’d known on Cape Cod were smoking cigarettes now, or if the trend was confined to the big cities.

Molly had on the same lowcut purple basque and red-and-white striped skirt as she’d been wearing last week when Nell and Detective Cook had barged in on her servicing her customer in the pink room; her black-dyed hair was mounded high on her head. She eyed Nell and Jack with a studied lack of expression as she smoked.

Tapping his bowler against his leg, Cook said, “I took it into my head to pay a visit to Pearl this morning, mainly to make sure she was trying to sober up for her court date. I found no one at home, and the neighbors saying as how one of the wenches that lived there had up and run off during the night. Since I knew that had to be either Molly or Pearl, I came here straightaway and found Molly hard at work upstairs. Quite industrious for so early in the day, Molly. You’re to be commended for your work ethic.”

Molly looked bored as she drew on her cigarette.

“Pearl disappeared with no word to anybody,” Cook said, “including Molly here, who’s shared a flat with her for…how long has it been, Molly?”

“Seven years,” Molly said to the wall.

“Seven years, and she never told you she was leaving?” The detective propped a giant foot on the chaise lounge, hovering over Molly in the manner of a grizzly hovering over a rabbit.

Molly shrugged. “That’s Pearl.”

“That’s Pearl, yes,” Cook said. “That’s Pearl. I suppose that will have to do. My most important—correct that, my
only
real witness who can pin this murder on William Toussaint has vanished into thin air, but hey—
That’s Pearl
. Thank you for that insight, Molly. I can’t tell you what that means to me. Well, I
could
,” he growled, leaning over the whore, “but my ma taught me never to curse in front of a lady, and I tend to be very generous in my definition of ‘lady.’”

Nell sat next to Molly on the chaise. “What happened?”

“I woke up this morning and found her gone,” Molly said.

“All her things are still there?” Nell asked.

“Yep.”

“She didn’t leave a note?”

“She don’t write too good.”

“You didn’t hear
anything
when she left?” Cook asked.

“She can be quiet when she wants.”

Nell said, “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

“Nope.”

Addressing the detective, Nell said, “She might not have left voluntarily, given that she didn’t take anything with her, or tell Molly she was leaving.”

“I considered that,” he said, “but Molly tells me the two of them sleep in the same bed. Surely Molly would have woken up if Pearl had been abducted against her will.”

Jack said, “She probably just decided she didn’t want the trouble of testifying—or getting sober.”

It was understandable that Jack chose to believe, as Cook did, that Pearl had left on her own, given that her disappearance was
such a boon to his case. But Nell’s conscience wouldn’t permit her to so easily dismiss the more ominous possibility. “The abductor might have had a gun, or a knife, and threatened to kill her if she made any noise,” she pointed out.

Flynn spoke up for the first time. “Roy Noonan’s got a gun
and
a knife.”

“So does every other ruffian in this town.” Detective Cook churned that great jaw in thoughtful rumination. “Where was William Toussaint last night?” he asked, looking from Nell to Jack, and back again.

Jack seemed momentarily thrown by the question, but recovered swiftly. “He…he was in my house, asleep. He’s staying with me.”

“You’re sure he didn’t leave?”

“I would have seen him if he had. I was up all night reading in the library, with the door open.” Reading and drinking, Nell assumed; she knew a morning head when she saw one.

“All night?”

“I have trouble sleeping sometimes.”

That last bit, about Jack’s wakefulness, was true enough. He’d told Nell while driving her over here in his smart little one-horse gig that he’d reread Mr. Fourier’s
The Social Destiny of Man
start to finish last night. He’d been too uneasy to sleep, he’d explained, after hearing Will steal out of the house around midnight—presumably to gamble. Dawn was breaking by the time Will returned, groggy and disheveled and uninterested in Jack’s advice that he adopt more circumspect habits, at least until his murder case was resolved.

Clearly, Jack was lying about Will’s whereabouts last night not just because gambling was a violation of his bail conditions, but in order to prevent him from being implicated in Pearl’s disappearance. Regardless of whether Will had anything to do with it—and Nell couldn’t believe, didn’t want to believe, that
he had—it wouldn’t do to ignore the possibility that Pearl was in terrible trouble. “I don’t have to tell you how much I sympathize with your position, Mr. Thorpe,” she said. “But I’m afraid common decency obligates us to look for Pearl. If she was abducted against her will and is being held somewhere—”

“She took her pictures,” Molly said. So unexpected was it for her to volunteer information that Nell and the three men just stared at her.

The prostitute sucked on her cigarette, stained bloodred at the tip, held the smoke in her lungs for a few seconds, and blew it out in a stream. “She’s got two pictures—photographs, in velvet cases. One’s of her and her sisters, when they was all little. The other’s of her babies.”

“She has children?” Nell asked.

“They died within a day of bein’ born, both of ’em. Little twin girls, Ernestine and Adelaide. She had a photograph made of the two of ’em in their coffin. They was buried together,” she said with surprising wistfulness, “like two little china dolls in a box.”

“Why did you tell us she didn’t take anything?” Cook asked.