Death on Beacon Hill

by P. B. Ryan

  Will looked up from unstoppering the decanter. “How aggressive?”

  Thurston sighed, sipped his coffee. “At first she liked it, more or less. But Felix just didn’t know where to draw the line. He got too rough, so she told him it was time for him to leave. He did, but not before backhanding her into the bedpost.”

  Will muttered something under his breath.

  “The bruise took two weeks to heal,” Thurston said. “She covered it with makeup, but you could still tell it was there.”

  “When was this,” Nell asked, “that he hit her?”

  “February fourteenth. That black eye was his Valentine’s Day gift to her. That was the last time she saw him until the Pratts’ annual ball at the end of April.”

  “But at the ball,” Nell asked, “didn’t she tell Felix that he’d left his watch on her dressing table ‘the other day?’”

  Thurston nodded, cackling. “She’d heard his engagement was to be announced that night, and she told me she couldn’t just stand by and watch any girl, even a ninny like Cecilia Pratt, bind herself in matrimony to ‘that vicious Hun.’ She knew she’d be widely reviled for saying what she said—in front of witnesses, no less—but she felt it was the only way to make a real impression on such a silly little squab. As far as saying it was ‘the other day,’ her reasoning was... How did she put it? ‘A lady’s capacity for forgiveness tends to be in inverse proportion to the freshness of the transgression.’”

  “Was that why she crashed the ball?” Nell asked. “To warn Cecilia off Felix?”

  “Oh, good heavens, no. That was just a little side mission. Her true purpose was to light a fire under Orville Pratt. He’d been ignoring her little notes, you see, even though what she was asking was mere loose change to someone of his means. His lawyerly arrogance, you know—despicable snipe.”

  “Wait,” Nell said. “She was blackmailing Mr. Pratt?”

  “Attempting to.”

  “So she and Mr. Pratt...?”

  “Oh, yes,” Thurston said. “For about three years, ever since he took her on as a client to sell that land for her. She kept him on retainer—in a manner of speaking. I believe he’d waived his fees in light of their...personal relationship. But then, a few months ago, he took on a new mistress—also an actress, but much younger—and he lost all interest in Virginia.”

  “Who’s the new one?” Will asked.

  “Daisy Newland. Nineteen years old, and an abysmal actress. I’d die before I’d let her be cast in one of my plays. She does, however, have certain...compensatory assets that appeal to some directors...and patrons. Pratt rents her a suite in the Tremont House, just down the street from the family manse. He’s a man who likes to keep his leisure pursuits as convenient as possible. I always thought part of Virginia’s appeal for him was that she lived so close. Did you know he’s trying to relocate the Somerset Club from the corner of Somerset and Beacon to David Sears’ house, now that Sears has retired to his country home?”

  “Well, the Sears place is much bigger than what they’ve got now.”

  “It’s closer to Pratt’s house,” Thurston said. “That’s all he cares about. Orville Pratt doesn’t go in search of his pleasures. His pleasures come to him.”

  “How did he react when Mrs. Kimball showed up at the ball?” Nell asked.

  “He went so white I thought he might keel right over. He let Virginia spirit him off to a quiet corner, where she produced the Red Book and had him read her accounts of what they’d done together.” The playwright grinned impishly. “And what he’d worn while they were doing it.”

  “Worn?” Nell asked.

  “Let’s just say some of Virginia’s prettier underpinnings were always a bit stretched out of shape after Mr. Pratt’s visits.”

  Nell stared at him in disbelief as she battled to keep certain mental images at bay. Will smiled and sipped his cognac-laced coffee.

  “Pratt knuckled under,” Thurston said. “He agreed to send his valet to meet her maid the next evening—her former maid, Clara. It was Clara who delivered the notes and collected the payoffs. She’d meet the gentleman—or, more often, his man—in some relatively isolated location at night. He’d hand her an envelope, she’d bring it back, and Virginia would give her five dollars out of it for her efforts. Clara probably doubled or tripled her pay that way.”

  Mr. Thurston swallowed the last of his coffee and rose from the table with the help of his cane. He crossed to a little copse of ficus trees, which he inspected with a critical eye—pushing aside branches, testing the soil. “I was enjoying a few drinks with Virginia the next evening when Clara came in wet and shivering—it was pouring rain that night. She was quite put out. She’s a Swedish spinster and a born malcontent, always carping about something, so one doesn’t normally pay much mind. But on this particular evening, it turned out that Pratt’s valet never shown up with the money. Clara had waited on the designated street corner for half an hour in the rain before giving up.”

  “He promised to pay but didn’t?” Will asked. “What did Mrs. Kimball do?”

  “She and I were actually debating that very question when who should barge through the front door, soaking wet, three sheets to the wind, and brandishing the biggest, nastiest dagger I’ve ever seen?”

  Will sat up straighter. “Pratt?”

  “He was drunk?” Nell asked.

  “Pickled to the bone,” Thurston said as he plucked dried leaves off the trees. “Staggering, raving...and he wasn’t alone. He thought he was, but he’d been followed there by that dreary sister of his, and the daughter. Not Cecilia, the other one, the one who wears those peculiar...”

  “Emily,” Nell said. “The sister is Vera.”

  “Yes, well, they came in behind him, but he was so soused, he didn’t notice at first. He started screaming about that precious gun of his, which had apparently gone missing. He said he knew Virginia had stolen it the night before, during the ball, which of course she hadn’t. She told him to report it to the police if he was so upset about it, but he said, ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ He said they’d be sure to question Virginia because of her showing up at the ball uninvited, and that, knowing her, she would delight in telling them about her and Pratt. Virginia stood up to him, literally, despite the dagger. She ordered him out of her house, with a warning that if he didn’t pay up the next day, she’d have his section of the Red Book made into a pamphlet and passed out on street corners.”

  Will laughed appreciatively. “I must admit, that would be entertaining.”

  Thurston deposited a handful of crackly leaves on the table and proceeded to pick off some more. “Pratt went wild when he heard that. He screamed that she’d get her money when he got his gun. He called her a...a vulgar name for a certain kind of female, and a thief. He said he knew he wasn’t the only man to slip through her garden door, nor was he the only one she was shaking down, and that the things she’d written in the Red Book just proved she was a born...well... You get the idea.”

  “Quite,” Nell said.

  “Clara was present for this tirade,” Thurston said. “It was the last straw for her. She started shrieking about how she’d had enough, she couldn’t take another day under Virginia’s roof, the extra money wasn’t worth it, and so on. She said she was leaving that night—she didn’t care about references. And all the while, Pratt was still bellowing and waving that dagger around. I’d begun to worry that he might try to use it, when the sister—Vera? She stepped forward and told him it was time to go home.”

  “He quieted down then?” Will asked.

  “It was like pulling a switch. He hadn’t realized they were there—and not just the sister, but his daughter, as well—listening to him rant about his affair with Virginia. He looked quite abashed. Vera took the dagger from him, and apologized to us for his behavior, then they shepherded him out of the house.”

  “But that wasn’t the end of it,” said Nell, thinking of his supposed threat the day before the murder.
>
  “For a while, it seemed to be,” Thurston said as he withdrew a large, utilitarian-looking atomizer from a cabinet. He brought it over to a corner sink tucked away amid the foliage, and filled its glass jar with water. “He didn’t pay, but there was nothing Virginia could really do at that point.”

  “No street corner pamphlets?” Will asked.

  “That was just a bluff.” Tucking the glass jar under the arm that held the cane, Thurston pumped the bulb, dispensing a fine mist over his hanging plants. “She couldn’t afford to have pamphlets printed up, and Pratt knew it. A month went by, then, on the last day of May, he came here again, sans kinfolk and even more furious than before.”

  “You were there?” Nell asked.

  “I was almost always there in the evenings,” Thurston said. “Afternoon cocktails usually lasted till about eight o’clock, then we’d have a little light supper and some postprandial liqueurs. It was about eleven when Pratt showed up. His rage...” Thurston shook his head. “I’d never seen anything like it. The fact that he seemed to be stone cold sober only made him that much more fearsome. He was roaring about that bloody gun. He said, ‘I paid you, now where’s my gun?’ Except that wasn’t quite how he put it, but I wouldn’t repeat his language in front of a lady.”

  Will said, “Wait a minute. Had he and Mrs. Kimball made some sort of arrangement to exchange the gun for payment?”

  “Absolutely not,” Thurston said as he shuffled around the room, misting his plants. “There’d been no communication at all between them since his last unwelcome visit a month before. Virginia and I were completely baffled by what he was saying, but he seemed to think we were just being coy, and that only enraged him further. He kept insisting that he’d paid what she’d demanded, and now he wanted his gun. He said he’d personally handed over five thousand dollars to Fiona—Virginia had hired her right after Clara quit—in return for which Virginia had supposedly promised to give back the gun and keep her mouth shut permanently about their past together.”

  “Fiona had taken over bagwoman duty from Clara?” Will asked.

  “Oh, yes, Fiona had made it clear when Virginia first interviewed her that she was prepared to assume all of Clara’s old duties—all of them—for what she’d been paying Clara.”

  “Two dollars a week plus five for every payoff she handled?” Nell asked.

  “That’s right. It was Fiona who’d broached that particular subject, not Virginia. Virginia had asked her how she knew about that, and she said she’d heard about it from the daughter.”

  Nell nodded as she thought it through. “Emily and Fiona were friendly. She must have told her about following her father to Mrs. Kimball’s the night after the ball and seeing Clara quit.”

  “She wrote Fiona a reference,” Thurston said. “Virginia took to the girl immediately, hired her on the spot.”

  “Was Fiona there during Pratt’s second visit?” Will asked.

  “Oh, yes. She denied having taken any money from Pratt. He accused her of lying, and said Virginia must have put her up to it. Virginia told him to leave or she’d summon the constables. That really sent him over the edge. He went absolutely purple, and his eyes...they were like a wolf’s eyes, almost colorless and utterly predatory. He turned on Virginia. He said, ‘I’ll kill you, you deceitful...’ Well, suffice it to say the name he called her was one I’d never, ever thought to hear from the mouth of a gentleman. Virginia slapped his face. He slapped her back.”

  “He struck her?” Will asked. Even when he’d been a dissolute opium addict, William Hewitt had exhibited a touching protectiveness toward women.

  “What did she do?” Nell asked.

  “She didn’t do anything. Pratt was already out cold before she’d had time to react.” Thurston smiled at his listeners’ reactions. “Once upon a time I was, believe it or not, Harvard’s bare-knuckled boxing champion. They called me ‘Thunderfist Thurston’ for my right hook. I must admit, it was gratifying, after all these years, to find that I could still put a fellow down with one swing.”

  “I know the feeling,” Will said. “I boxed when I was in university back in England.”

  “Cambridge?” Thurston asked.

  “Oxford—an unofficial club.”

  Nell said, “Dr. Hewitt got the chance to practice his own right hook on Felix Brudermann last night.”

  “Good show!” Thurston exclaimed. “Did you knock him out?”

  “He was conscious, more or less,” Will said, “but not happy about it.”

  “Pratt was a rag doll, but a heavy one,” Thurston said. “It took all three of us—Virginia, Fiona and myself—to haul him outside and wrestle him into a hackney. If I’d known then what I know now, I would have tied a paving stone ‘round his neck and dumped him in the Charles River. Virginia might still be alive then.”

  “But you’d be a murderer,” Nell said. “It wouldn’t have been worth it.”

  Thurston looked at her as if she’d said something absurd. “Of course it would, if it meant Virginia would have lived.”

  “Even if you’d ended up hanging?” Will asked.

  “I loved Virginia,” Thurston said. “I would have done anything for her, sacrificed anything.”

  Will said, “Yes, but—”

  “Have you ever loved anyone, Dr. Hewitt?” Thurston asked. “Not your mother, I mean, and not Virginia—you’ve already admitted you merely thought you’d loved her. I mean real, all-consuming, helpless-in-the-face-of-it love.”

  Will stared at Thurston for several long seconds, then lowered his gaze to his coffee cup, his jaw tight. He took a sip, swallowed it. “I believe so.”

  “Would you give your life for this person?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know how I felt about Virginia. The fact that we were never lovers doesn’t alter the devotion I felt toward her. Yes, I would have gone to the gallows for her. And what’s more, I think she would have done the same for me.”

  Will nodded mutely. He seemed to be avoiding Nell’s eyes.

  “Poor Virginia.” Thurston set the atomizer on the table and lowered himself with difficulty into a chair. “She lost another maid that night.”

  “Fiona quit?” Nell asked.

  “Yes, she was most apologetic about it, but she said it had been a mistake, her coming to work for Virginia. She said she’d gotten in over her head, and that she was going to open that notions shop she always used to talk about.”

  Will said, “With what money?”

  “That’s what Virginia asked her. The girl claimed she had enough saved up, but how could she have, on a maid’s salary? Virginia tried to talk her out of it. She was quite soft-hearted, deep down. She was worried about the girl, you know, biting off more than she could chew and ending up on the streets or hooking out of some North End bagnio. But Fiona stood her ground. She did give a week’s notice, which was more than Clara had done.”

  “If she hadn’t,” Nell said, “she would probably be alive now.”

  Thurston nodded morosely. “Pratt came back the next day and killed them both, then set it up to look as if it was Fiona’s doing.”

  “You’re saying he killed them out of simple anger?” Will asked.

  “If you’d seen him that evening, sputtering and ranting, you’d know how unhinged he’d become. Virginia was the real target—although I’m sure he was put out with Fiona after she’d essentially called him a liar in front of us. I think he became so utterly enraged that he had no real control over his actions. Or, who knows? Perhaps he’d been planning it for some time.”

  “All that drama over the gun,” Nell said, “and it turned out to have been locked away in his own desk the whole time—or so he claims.”

  Will said, “I’d like to know when he really found it.”

  “All I know is he killed my Virginia,” Thurston said, “and I promised her, as I stood over her coffin, that I would see him hang for it.”

  “I was wondering about that coffin and how she was...la
id out,” Nell said.

  “I’m sure a great many people have been wondering about it,” Thurston said with a mordant little smile. “She’d planned every detail herself—circled the coffin in a catalogue, described her hair and makeup, and how the flowers were to be arranged on her. The gown was a costume she’d kept from a production of Hamlet some years ago. And she was most explicit about being buried as quickly as possible. She’d never been one to drag out the ending of a scene. ‘One should exit swiftly,’ she always used to say, ‘even with a bit of unseeming haste. Far better to leave them wanting a bit more of you than a bit less.’ Speaking of which...” The playwright rose to his feet, taking most of his weight on the cane. “I do hate to be rude, but I must dress for a read-through with the cast of my new play, so...”

  Will pulled Nell’s chair out for her, then gestured toward Thurston’s cane. “I say, is that what I think it is?”

  “Like it?” The playwright handed it over, leaning on the table for support. “It’s Belgian. I bought it in the early fifties, when they were all the rage.”

  “Air?” Will held the cane at eye level and sighted down its wooden shaft, as if down the barrel of a rifle, which was when Nell realized that was precisely what it was.

  “Percussion,” Thurston said. “Breech-loader. A far sight more powerful than those puny cane guns Remington is coming out with now. Takes a forty-four caliber bullet. The trigger folds up into that silver ring.”

  Will met Nell’s gaze for a split second. “Mind if I take a look at the action?” he asked.

  “Be my guest. But do take care—I keep it loaded.”

  Will twisted the handle and pulled it out, exposing the exotic weapon’s inner workings. “That’s odd. You bought this in the early fifties, you say?”

  “You’re wondering about the metal cartridge. I had it converted last year to fire those.”