Death on Beacon Hill

by P. B. Ryan

  “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.”

  Chapter 6

  “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?”

  “I’ve always felt I would prefer it. I used to, anyway.”

  Nell directed a quizzical look toward Will, but he didn’t meet her gaze.

  He entered the room, stepping carefully over the blood, and took Nell’s hand to help her do the same. More footprints formed tracks back and forth all over the carpet. The clothespress and armoire were open, their contents strewn about. Drawers had been yanked from them, as well as from the dressing table and writing desk, and emptied onto the floor.

  A bed bench upholstered in yellow silk had been upended and gutted near the foot of the bed. Nearby lay a lacquered box, its lid open, revealing an empty jewelry tray lined with purple velvet. Nell lifted the tray; the compartment beneath it was empty, too. She turned the box over and felt around, looking for evidence of a secret drawer, but there was none.

  “Look at this,” Will said as he pulled aside the curtains on the lefthand window. The window frame on the right side had a small gouge carved out of it, and several panes of glass were shattered, letting in a little welcome air, along with street sounds from outside—wheels on cobblestones, the neighing of horses, a newsboy yelling, “Mrs. Kimball murdered by her own maid! Fiona Gannon guilty!”

  Nell said, “That’s where they retrieved the bullet Mrs. Kimball fired first.”

  “And that’s where Fiona fell.” Will pointed to a pool of congealed blood, thick with flies, on the floor near the west wall—not just blood, Nell realized, but bits of what could only be Fiona Gannon’s skull and brain tissue. Leaning against that wall was an enormous oil painting that had been taken down, exposing an open wall safe, its wooden shelves entirely empty. The painting was of Virginia Kimball posing as an odalisque, her nudity cloaked by a violent burst of blood mixed with specks of other matter.

  “That painting was on the wall during the shooting.” Nell pointed out a mist of blood on the wallpaper surrounding the pristine, rectangular section that had been shielded by the picture. She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, but the smell of all that blood conspired with the oppressive heat to make her feel as if the world was wobbling slightly on its axis.

  Will grasped her arms to steady her. “So much for being immune to swooning.”

  She opened her eyes to take in the ravaged bedroom. “I’m all right. I’m just...” She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Murder almost never does.”

  “No, I mean it doesn’t make sense that the bullet that killed Fiona Gannon could have remained in her head, as the coroner claimed it did, if the exit wound was as explosive as it appears to have been. Brady described it as a ‘crater.’ He said the left side of her head had been blown completely away. I thought he might have been exaggerating, and that I’d have to have a look at the body myself to be sure, but from what I can see here...”

  “He wasn’t exaggerating,” Will said soberly. “A gun pressed to the head tends to do a remarkable amount of damage.”

  “That being the case, wouldn’t the bullet have been ejected along with...everything else? And wouldn’t it all have landed on the same wall?”

  Will smiled at Nell with that nonchalant directness that was peculiarly his. “One of the delights of your company is never having to explain the obvious. Yes, one would think the blood and fragments from such a massive exit wound would follow the path of the bullet. It’s a commonsense observation that cannot, I suspect, have escaped either the coroner or Detective Skinner.”

  “Giving Skinner the benefit of the doubt for the moment—”

  “In a peculiarly charitable mood today, are we?” Will asked.

  “Perhaps he really does believe it happened the way he said it did, with Mrs. Kimball catching Fiona in the act, being shot, then shooting twice at Fiona. Perhaps Skinner searched in earnest for the second bullet, the one that passed through Fiona’s head—a spent thirty-one caliber ball he could match to the murder weapon, hard physical evidence to show off at the inquest. He took the painting down, which revealed the safe, but no bullet hole.” She looked at the section of wall that had been concealed behind the painting; it appeared to be unmarked.

  Will squatted down to inspect the patina of blood covering the middle of the huge painting. “And yet...” He pointed to a gash in the canvas that would have been immediately noticeable but for the bloody mess that surrounded it. “Almost dead center.”

  They both raised their gazes to the spot the bullet would have struck.

  “The safe,” Will said as he stood, favoring his bad leg.

  Nell closed the safe’s door, a slab of maroon-painted iron with the words Diebold Safelock Co. – Canton Oh. stenciled onto it in gold leaf. Its surface was smooth and undamaged save for a dime-sized spot above the lock—not a combination lock, but the type that opened with a key—where the paint was missing. Nell touched the little blemish, which was slightly concave. “Could a thirty-one caliber slug have left a dent like this?”


  “Any bullet could have. And one can’t help but think Skinner would have noticed it.”

  “And searched for the bullet that did it.”

  Will lifted the painting to look behind it, then set it back down. Hiking up his trousers, he knelt and examined the area in front of the wall with an expression of fierce concentration. He said, “The bullet must have struck the safe, bounced back through the hole in the painting, and landed somewhere on the floor, probably within a few feet of the wall.”

  “If it was here,” Nell said, “wouldn’t Skinner have found it?”

  “The fact that he didn’t doesn’t mean it’s not here. Bullets don’t just vaporize on impact.” Will stroked the carpet in a methodical back and forth pattern as he edged away from the wall. “Depending on the type of bullet and what it hits, it might fragment, or mushroom, or otherwise deform, but it won’t disappear. It might even end up relatively unscathed. The bullet you found among Mrs. Kimball’s effects, the one from the window frame—what did it look like?”

  “Like a lump of spruce gum after it’s been chewed and spat out.” Nell leaned over to scrutinize the intricate pattern on the carpet; two sets of eyes were better than one.

  “Then that’s more or less what we’re looking for.” He bent over to peer at the spot where Fiona’s head had come to rest after she fell. The blood and various unthinkable bits had coagulated into a grisly mass that Nell, despite her strong stomach, found hard to look at.

  “Those bluebottles have been busy,” Will said as he probed the gummy matter with his fingers. “There are hundreds of first stage larvae in here.”

  Nell swallowed hard. It didn’t surprise her that Will thought nothing of poking about in such ghastly stuff. As a battle surgeon, he’d seen and touched much worse. Would Skinner have had the grit for it? She couldn’t imagine it.

  “It would appear the good detective simply didn’t examine the evidence quite thoroughly enough.” Will held something between his gore-smeared fingers, something small and dully metallic. “If he’d just been willing to soil his hands, he’d have found it. He knew it, too. He must have.”