by P. B. Ryan
“That explains it, then.” Will shoved the action back in, twisted it closed, and returned the device to its owner. “A fine weapon, beautifully kept. Thanks for letting me take a peek.”
Thurston walked his visitors to the front door, his gait laborious. Their visit had tired him, it seemed.
Thurston appeared lost in thought as he shook Will’s hand. “Virginia adored you, you know.”
Clearly taken aback, Will said, “I...I’m afraid you’re misremembering, sir—or possibly trying to be kind. My affection for Mrs. Kimball was entirely unreciprocated. The very afternoon I gave her those roses, she dismissed me from her life in no uncertain terms.”
Still clutching Will’s hand, Thurston smiled. “Oh, how she used to rhapsodize about you—your handsomeness, your keen mind, the...let’s see, how did she put it in her book... Ah, yes, ‘the white-hot passion simmering beneath that cool façade.’ She was mad for you, you know. But...” Thurston lifted his shoulders on a sigh as he released Will’s hand. “Il Conte was coming. He provided for her, kept her like a princess. She needed to get you out of the way, and quickly.”
“Perhaps if she’d simply explained the situation,” Will said, “and asked me to leave of my own accord...”
“Would you have gone away peacefully, or would you have stuck around and tried to fight for her?”
Will’s expression, as he pondered that, was telling.
Thurston chuckled. “As I say, most people never realized how smart she was, how...complicated. But I did. I always knew.”
Chapter 12
From Louisburg Square, Nell and Will strolled down to the Pratt “family manse” at 82 Beacon Street and asked to see Orville Pratt, but he wasn’t at home. He was at his club, Mrs. Pratt informed them, lunching with friends, as was his custom on Saturdays.
On the way to the Somerset Club, they discussed the fact that Nell would be forbidden to enter the gentlemen-only enclave, and decided that she should wait for Will in the restaurant of the Parker House, just a short block away. Will would question Pratt alone, with the aim of corroborating or disproving what Maximilian Thurston had said about him.
According to the Somerset’s doorman, however, Mr. Pratt hadn’t been there that day, and wasn’t expected. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid whoever informed you that Mr. Pratt lunches here on Saturdays was mistaken. I’ve never known the gentleman to arrive before suppertime on a Saturday.”
The Tremont House, where Orville Pratt kept his new mistress, was virtually across the street from the Somerset Club. “How terribly convenient,” Nell said as they headed there.
It was the first time she’d ever been inside the luxurious hotel, and it took all her willpower to keep from gaping at its architectural splendor. “Miss Newland?” The desk clerk didn’t even have to look it up. “She’s on the second floor—suite two-oh-two.”
Will’s first knock went unanswered, as did his second. As he raised his fist a third time, a girlish voice called, “Who is it, fer Chrissake?” through the door.
“I’m William Hewitt, an acquaintance of Mr. Pratt’s,” he said. “I’m here with Miss Nell Sweeney. It’s imperative that we see him right away.”
“He ain’t here.” After a brief pause, she said, “And I don’t know any Mr. Pratt.”
Mr. Thurston had been right; Daisy Newland was an abysmal actress.
Will said, “Kindly tell him that it’s a matter having to do with Mrs. Kimball and the Stonewall Jackson gun. If he can’t see us right now, perhaps we’ll call on Mrs. Pratt and see if she can be of any help.”
About half a minute ticked by, and then the door was opened by a blonde in a lacy dressing gown with its bodice half-unbuttoned, putting her “compensatory assets” on audacious display. Her hair was loose and tangled, her skin creamy, her lips a vivid cherry red. She was softly pretty in that down-stuffed way some girls have, but for a pair of black-limned, dully sullen eyes.
Daisy didn’t greet them, merely turned and sauntered away across the fussily decorated sitting room, trailing a miasma of saccharine perfume. Rapping on a closed door, she said, “You ready yet?”
There came a muffled male response that Nell couldn’t make out. The girl crossed to a cocktail cabinet, emptied the last few ounces of whiskey from a decanter into her glass, and stretched out onto a velvet fainting couch to sip it. The skirt of her wrapper parted, revealing her legs from the knees down; if she realized it, she didn’t seem to mind. She surveyed Will over the rim of her glass, which made Nell feel as if all the little hairs at the nape of her neck were quivering on end.
Orville Pratt emerged several long minutes later, perfectly attired in a fine black frock coat and bow tie. He looked every inch the quintessential Brahmin businessman—save for his black eye, which was turning greenish, and his faintly ruddy lips. It looked as if he’d tried to wipe them off, but the more vivid shades of lip rouge tended to leave a stubborn stain. Nell assumed he’d kissed off some of Daisy’s rouge—until she realized that his lips were smudged not with cherry red, but with a warmer, more orangish vermilion.
Pratt glowered at his unwanted callers, his gaze settling on Will. “What’s the meaning of this, Hewitt?”
“Fiona Gannon’s uncle has asked Miss Sweeney to look into Virginia Kimball’s murder,” Will said. “We have reason to believe that your Lefaucheux may have been involved.”
Pratt frowned as if he hadn’t quite heard right. “Fiona Gannon committed that murder, using Mrs. Kimball’s own gun,” he said. “That’s been well established. For you to barge in on me like this, with utter disregard for my privacy or the dictates of common civility, only proves what your father’s been saying about you all these years. No gentleman would have done such a thing, and if you have a shred of common decency, you will leave this instant and apologize to Miss Sweeney for having brought her here. In return, I’m prepared to overlook your appalling judgment and go on as if none of this had transpired.”
“Well done, sir,” Will said. “I could never have composed that speech on such short notice. The reason we’re here is that it’s come to our attention that you threatened to kill Mrs. Kimball the day before she was, in fact, killed. You can see how that might pique our interest.”
“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,” Pratt said. “I expect you to take Miss Sweeney and—”
“No, I’m afraid it’s I who haven’t been clear,” Will said. “Miss Gannon’s guilt has not, in fact, been well established, and there’s every reason to expect that this case will be reopened. When it is, your name will top the list of suspects.”
“Just because some dotty old poofter of a playwright claims he heard me make a threat?”
Nell said, “You’re referring to Mr. Thurston, I assume. What makes you think he’s the one who told us what you said?”
“What I’m alleged to have said.” The lawyer stalked over to the cocktail cabinet and shook the empty decanter. “Jesus, Daisy, this was full just three days ago.”
“There’s some rum,” she said as she raised the glass to her bright red mouth.
Pratt poured himself a generous helping of rum and took a gulp, his face screwed up in revulsion.
“We know about your affair with Mrs. Kimball,” Will said.
“Preposterous!” Pratt’s ears were scarlet. “Who told you that? Thurston? He’s hated me ever since I took Mrs. Kimball on as a client. He was jealous of everyone she knew.”
Nell said, “We know she blackmailed you after you ended it.”
“She blackmailed you?” Daisy said with gleeful astonishment.
“I wouldn’t get any ideas,” Will advised her. “It’s not a pastime for amateurs.”
“You were too proud to pay up, though,” Nell said, “so Mrs. Kimball lit a fire under you by crashing your annual ball—which seemed to work, until you, uh, misplaced your Lefaucheux. You drank yourself into a rage the next day, grabbed one of your daggers, and went to her house to accuse her of stealing it.”
Daisy barked with laughter.
“An amusing story.” A vein crawled across Pratt’s vast, pink brow like a worm burrowing just under the skin. “But I daresay it’s as far-fetched as those idiotic little farces of Thurston’s.”
Will said, “It gets more dramatic.”
“Mrs. Kimball demanded her money,” Nell said. “You demanded your gun. Eventually Vera and Emily took you home. But a month later you were back, with some tall tale about having given Fiona Gannon five thousand dollars in exchange for your—”
“Tall tale?” Pratt wheeled to face Nell, half his drink sloshing onto the rug. “That lying little bogtrotter! I handed her that money myself, and she stood there and denied ever having—” He shut his eyes and growled something under his breath.
Will smiled at Nell as if impressed that she’d smoked this much of an admission out of Pratt. “So,” he said, “you admit that Mrs. Kimball made you an offer—the gun for five thousand dollars.”
“I admit nothing to you,” Pratt said with seething contempt. “Who do you think you are—either of you—seeking me out here, of all places, and—”
“If you’d prefer,” Will said, “I’d be happy to send a police detective over, and you can talk to him. Of course, you’ve handled enough criminal cases to know that if you do that, certain unsavory details will become public knowledge sooner or later. Even if you’re found innocent of any wrongdoing toward Virginia Kimball, all of Boston, including your wife and your clients, will know some very interesting things about you. If, instead, you talk candidly to us, we’ll reveal only as much as is necessary to see justice done.”
Will paused to let that sink in. Pratt dropped into a chair and stared at the Persian rug. Daisy regarded him with frank but mild interest, as if he were an actor in a play and not the man who’d been sharing her bed for the past few months.
“The gun for five thousand,” Nell said. “Did Mrs. Kimball put this in a note?”
Pratt shook his head without looking up. “She didn’t want to admit to grand larceny in writing. She had Fiona come and lay it all out. I hand over five grand, and the next day the gun is delivered to my house—and the shakedowns end.”
“Why the next day?” Nell asked. “I should think you would have demanded that the gun be returned to you when you handed over the money.”
Pratt let out a humorless little grunt of laughter. “Yes, well, as it was explained to me, Virginia didn’t think Fiona would be able to fight me off if I were of a mind to take the gun without paying up. In any event, the conditions were non-negotiable. One thing I’ve learned as an attorney is if the other party flat out refuses to compromise, there’s not a great deal one can do but go along or walk away from the deal.”
“You were that desperate to get that gun back?” Will asked.
Pratt sighed and drained his rum.
“So you paid up,” Will said, “but the gun was never delivered.”
“Did it never occur to you that she might not even have had it?” Nell asked. “After all, she’d been denying it for some time. And then, when she said she had to get the money before she’d give up the gun...”
Pratt rubbed his gigantic forehead with an unsteady hand, as if trying to smooth away that vein.
Nell said, “So you let a couple of days go by, and then you went to Mrs. Kimball’s and threatened to kill her.”
“Manhandling her in the process,” Will said, “whereupon Mr. Thurston proved he’s got what it takes in the ring.”
“That punch came out of nowhere!” Slamming his glass on a table, Pratt sprang to his feet, his face so red—from mortification, evidently, at having been bested by the likes of Maximilian Thurston—that it looked as if it were about to burst. “He sneaked it in. It was completely unsportsmanlike—not that one would expect otherwise from one of them. Had it been a fair fight, I would have—”
“A gentleman deserves a fair fight,” Will said evenly. “The kind of vermin who would strike a lady deserves whatever he gets.”
“Lady?” A frantic little burst of laughter erupted from Pratt. “How can you even think to call a whoring bit of baggage like that—”
Will whipped a fist across Pratt’s face, sending him flying back into his chair. Pratt cursed like a stevedore. Daisy’s startled shriek degenerated into a flurry of giggles.
“My word, Will,” Nell said. “You’ve been doing that an awful lot lately. Aren’t you afraid of damaging your hand?”
“I used my left this time. It’s not as strong as the right, but this way he gets a new black eye on the other side, and there’s a certain pleasing symmetry to that.”
“Clever you.”
Pratt called Will a great many things, all unspeakably foul. Daisy just couldn’t seem to stop laughing.
“You’ll have to invent a new lie for what happened to you this time,” Nell told Pratt.
“By the way,” Will said, “why did you tell your wife that you’d been robbed by a basher, and the rest of us that you’d tripped on the stairs?”
Pratt sat forward, rubbing the side of his face. “I never told my wife... Oh. Vera must have told her that. She can’t seem to stop looking after me. Gets damnably irritating.”
“So you don’t deny having visited Mrs. Kimball the day before her murder and threatening her?” Nell asked.
Pratt cupped his face in his hands, muttering in evident exasperation. “Yes. Yes! I got fed up. Who wouldn’t? She got her money, I didn’t get my gun. I went there, and I...I probably said some things I shouldn’t have, but it was just in the heat of anger. It didn’t mean anything.”
“Perhaps not,” Will said, “but the next day, Virginia Kimball was found shot to death. You do understand why you’re at the top of our list.”
“All right,” Pratt said. “How much to get me off that list?”
“I beg your pardon?” Nell asked.
Will said, “He’s offering us money to ignore the fact that he may be a murderer.”
“For God’s sake, I’m not a murderer.”
Will smiled. “With all due respect, that is what murderers tend to say.”
“And to answer your question,” Nell said, “there’s no amount of money you could offer that would sway us. The only way you can get off the list is by convincing us you didn’t do it.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Pratt grumbled. “I was nowhere near Mount Vernon Street that afternoon.”
“Where were you?” Nell asked.
“That’s not imp—”
“Here?” Will asked.
Pratt’s hesitation was telling.
“Would you swear to that in a court of law, Miss Newland?” Will asked.
“Hm? Oh, um...” Daisy shrugged and made a little pfft sound. “Sure, I guess.”
“No.” Pratt rose to his feet, hands outstretched as if to ward off such a prospect. “No, no, no, no, no. That can’t happen. Don’t you see that? My reputation, my marriage...”
“Even if it keeps you from hanging?” Will asked.
Pratt said, “No one could seriously think I shot those two women. This is...this is mad. This entire conversation is mad. Why am I standing here listening to this?”
“Mrs. Kimball and Miss Gannon were killed with a high caliber revolver,” Will said. “Who’s to say you didn’t go to Mrs. Kimball’s looking for your Lefaucheux the day after Thurston dealt you that black eye? You used the unlocked garden and courtyard doors to sneak into the house. You did find the gun, but then Mrs. Kimball came home. Or perhaps Fiona caught you upstairs, and—”
“This is absurd. I don’t need to listen to any more of this.” Pratt raised his chin and puffed out his chest in a cartoon parody of the image he liked to project. “I’m a person of substance in this city, in case it’s escaped your notice. People look up to me. They listen to what I have to say. And after all, who are you two? A professional gambler—yes, Hewitt, I know how you make your living—and an Irish governess. If it should come down to your word against mine—either
one of you—I have very little doubt as to who will prevail. In the meantime, I’ll thank you to leave this flat immediately.”
“I believe we’ve gotten what we came here for,” Will said as he took Nell’s arm and led her toward the door.
“And if you think you can gain ground by eviscerating my character,” Pratt continued, “I shall not only deny your allegations, but turn them against you. I’ve had decades of practice playing dirty. I’ll wager I’m a bit more skilled at it than you two.”
Pausing in the doorway, Will said, “Ah, but it’s as much about ammunition as skill. You see, we know about the Red Book, Mr. Pratt. We know what Mrs. Kimball wrote about you and your...proclivities.”
“Speaking of which,” Nell added, “a little cold cream will take that lip rouge right off.”
Pratt touched his lips, the color leaching from his face, as they closed the door. Daisy’s laughter pursued them down the hall.
* * *
“Citizens with information about a case.” That was how Nell and Will announced themselves to the clerk sitting outside Detective Charles Skinner’s office in City Hall.
It was midafternoon by the time they arrived there, Will having taken Nell and his daughter for a leisurely luncheon at the Revere House—to the immense joy of Gracie, who normally didn’t get to see too much of her beloved “Miseeney” on Saturdays. The restaurant meal, an exhilarating novelty for the child, had left her sated and drowsy; she’d dosed in her “Uncle Will’s” arms during the cab ride back to Colonnade Row. He’d carried her into the house and all the way up to the third floor nursery, kissing her sleep-flushed cheek as Nell tucked her into bed. That kiss had made Nell’s heart clench.
Skinner rose behind his desk as Nell and Will entered his office, which stank of meat and onions; a wad of greasy paper lay on the floor next to his overflowing wastebasket. He wore the cordially baffled expression of a man facing visitors whom he knew he’d met recently, but couldn’t quite place.
“Mrs. Kimball’s funeral,” Will reminded him. “Miss Sweeney is the lady who was overcome by the heat. I’m the physician who—”