Murder on Black Friday

by P. B. Ryan

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Four Months Later

  An EXCERPT from Book #5

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  “The author has an amazing grasp of life during this period of history. Each detail is crafter to let the reader feel immersed in the time; from the major historical events, to the minutiae of everyday life. These facts are effortlessly woven into the overall narrative.” —The Romance Reader’s Connection

  MURDER ON BLACK FRIDAY

  Book #4 in P.B. Ryan’s historical mystery series featuring governess Nell Sweeney

  Patricia Ryan writing as P. B. Ryan

  Copyright © 2005 Patricia Ryan. All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.

  Originally published by Berkley Prime Crime, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., as Book #4 of The Gilded Age Mysteries

  Author’s Note

  Financial corruption and stock market panics are nothing new. In fact, the term “Black Friday” originated with the Gold Ring conspiracy of 1869, when gold was the most heavily traded market on Wall Street. About $25 million worth circulated privately in the U.S., with more than $75 million held by the Federal government.

  In April of that year, speculator Jay Gould launched an ambitious scheme to corner the gold market. The idea was to buy up the nation’s private supply so that he could sell it for paper currency at his own price, thereby reaping a colossal profit. The only fly in the ointment was President Grant. If he were to get nervous about the rising price of gold, he could drive it back down by releasing some of the government’s supply, thereby foiling Gould’s plan.

  Gould’s co-conspirators included colorful financier “Big Jim” Fisk and Grant’s own brother-in-law, Abel Corbin. There’s even been speculation that the United States Treasury Secretary, George S. Boutwell, was involved. The players were ready; the stage was set.

  Gold started soaring in value on September 23rd, which was when Gould, tipped off that Grant was onto him, quietly sold off his own holdings for an estimated $50-100 million. At 11:00 on the morning of Friday, September 24th, with the Gold Exchange in pandemonium, Grant ordered $4 million in federal gold to be sold the following day. Secretary Boutwell cabled the New York treasurer with this information shortly after noon, but curiously, some investors seemed to know about it already, because the price of gold had started diving at 11:50.

  “Possibly no avalanche ever swept with more terrible violence,” stated the New York Herald. “As the bells of Trinity pealed forth the hour of noon, the gold on the indicator [a clocklike gauge at the Exchange] stood at 160. Just a moment later, and before the echoes died away, gold fell to 138.” Within fifteen minutes, it had plummeted to $133 an ounce, inciting a nationwide financial panic.

  The stock market reeled. Trading houses went bankrupt. Countless investors were ruined.

  Chapter 1

  September 25, 1869: Boston

  “Are you expecting someone, Mrs. Hewitt?” Nell Sweeney scooped up a spatula full of warm hide glue and spread it on the freshly stretched canvas propped on her easel.

  “A bit early in the morning for callers, I should think.” Wheeling her Merlin chair away from her work in progress, a still life of autumn fruit, Viola Hewitt rummaged amid the paint tubes and turpentine-soaked rags on her worktable. “Where in Hades did I put that watch?”

  “I’ll get it, Nana.” Little Gracie Hewitt leapt up from the solarium’s slate floor, on which she was chalking the shifting patterns of sunlight streaming in through the tall, leaded glass windows. Clicking open the little diamond-encrusted pocket watch, she offered it to Viola.

  Nell, ever the governess, said, “Can you read the time yourself, Gracie?”

  Gracie studied the watch intently.

  “Where’s the little hand?” Nell asked as she ran the spatula down the drum-tight linen, skimming off the surplus glue.

  “At the eight.”

  “And the big hand?”

  “At the thwee.”

  “Three,” Nell gently corrected; they’d been working on her diction. “So that would mean it’s...?”

  “Eight, um...” Gracie screwed up her face in concentration. “Thirty?”

  “Eight-fifteen,” Nell said.

  “Good try, though,” Viola said in her throaty, British-inflected voice as she mixed a dab of ultramarine into the rose madder on her palette. “Nell, dear, what makes you think I’d be expecting someone at this hour? I’m not at home for callers till ten—and I’m hardly dressed for company.” Like Nell, she wore a gray, paint-spattered smocked tunic over her morning dress.

  “Someone knocked at the front door,” Nell said she dipped her spatula back in the glue pot, which was snugged into a pan of hot water. “You didn’t hear it?”

  “My ears are only there for show nowadays,” Viola said as footsteps shuffled toward them along the long, marble-floored central hall.

  Hodges, the Hewitts’ elderly butler, appeared in the open doorway looking oddly hesitant. “So sorry to interrupt, Mrs. Hewitt. Your son is here to see you.”

  “Harry? Really?” Viola’s roguish and dissolute middle son had spent the past year and a half in self-imposed exile from the family’s Tremont Street mansion. As far as Nell knew, Viola hadn’t even seen him since June, when his engagement to Cecilia Pratt was announced over dinner at her parents’ home. Of Viola’s three living sons, twenty-two-year-old Martin was the only one still at home—and the only one who still enjoyed cordial relations with his parents.

  Hodges said, “It’s not Mr. Harry, ma’am. It’s...Dr. Hewitt. William.”

  “Will?” Viola gaped at Hodges, and then at Nell, who shared her astonishment.

  It had been almost six years since the Hewitts’ eldest son had set foot in this house. Even during his youth, Will had been more of an occasional visitor than a member of the family, having been shunted off to England when he was Gracie’s age to be reared by indifferent relatives and educated in a succession of boarding schools—thus inaugurating three decades of semi-estrangement from Viola and August Hewitt. Will’s coolness toward his mother had begun to thaw a bit this past spring, before the Hewitts and their staff left for their summer home on Cape Cod, and Will for Europe. As for the stern and venerable August, Nell doubted he and Will would ever exchange a civil word again.

  Nell listened to Will’s approaching footsteps as she buttered the canvas with glue and scraped away the excess, thinking she would have known his unhurried, long-legged stride anywhere. She tried to draw a deep breath, but her stays hindered that, which made her feel like a ninny for wearing so many pointless layers of clothing under this blasted smock frock that hid everything anyway, making her look like some great, fat, ugly, repulsive farmwife. It didn’t help that her hastily coiled chignon was held in place with two paint-crusted hog’s hair filbert brushes.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Nell turned, spatula dripping, to find Will standing just outside the doorway in a handsome black morning coat and fawn trousers, top hat in hand, inky hair smartly combed, smiling at her. She’d seen him only twice since she’d been back from the Cape, all too briefly both times. In the past, he would sometimes join Nell and Gracie for their afternoon outings in the Common and Public Garden—when he was in Boston, and not off playing faro and vingt-et
-un for outrageous stakes in some exotic and dangerous city. But now that he was teaching, he had a good deal less free time during the day.

  “Mother.” He bowed to Viola, straightening only partially as he ducked into the sun-washed solarium. “What a remarkable display of industry for so early in the morning.”

  “Almost unseemly, I know,” Viola said.

  “My thoughts precisely.”

  Every time Nell saw Will and his mother together, she was struck by their similarities, not just in appearance—the height, the dramatic coloring—but in their manner of speech. Although Will’s accent was stronger than that of Viola, who’d spent the past thirty-two years in Boston, they both spoke with the refined nuances of the British upper classes. Even when Will had been an embittered, soul-weary opium addict, he’d always sounded like a gentleman—and usually acted like one, too, despite his best efforts to turn his back on the “hollow, gold-plated world” he’d been born into.

  “Nell.” He bowed, smiling that coolly intimate smile that he never seemed to use with anyone else.

  “Good to see you, Will.”

  “Uncle Will!” Gracie launched herself into Will’s arms as he crouched to gather her up.

  He groaned with mock effort as he lifted her high, taking care not to let her head bump the ceiling. “By Jove, you’re taller every time I see you—a raven-haired beanpole, just like your nana.” To Viola, he said, “She’s the spitting image of you.”

  Gracie made an exaggeratedly bemused face, as if “Uncle Will” had said something ludicrous. “Nana’s not my weal mommy. She picked me out special ‘cause she always wanted a little girl, and she never had one, but now she has me. I’m dopted, wight, Nana?”

  “Adopted. Yes, that’s right, darling.” Viola met her son’s eyes for a weighty moment before looking away to set her palette on the worktable.

  Will, suddenly sobered, kissed the child’s forehead and set her down. “I knew that. I was just teasing.”

  He glanced at Nell, who offered a weak smile as she knelt to wipe up the glue that had dripped onto the floor from her neglected spatula. Setting his hat aside, Will hitched up his trousers and crouched down, a bit stiffly because of the old bullet wound in his leg. “Here.” He took the rag from her hand and set about cleaning up the mess himself. “Watching you scrub a floor is like seeing a lovely little mourning dove on a trash heap.”

  Having always thought of mourning doves as gray and ordinary, Nell wasn’t entirely sure how to take that.

  “Uncle Will, guess what?” Gracie asked excitedly. “Tomowwow’s my birthday, and the next day I get to go on a twain and a steamship.”

  “You do?”

  “The twain goes to, um...” The child looked to her nana for a prompt.

  “Bristol, Rhode Island,” Viola said.

  “Bwistol, Wode Island, only it’s not weally an island, and then we get on a steamship called the Pwovidence that looks like a palace inside.”

  “The Providence, eh? You’re going to New York, then, I take it?”

  Viola said, “Your father and I are taking Gracie on a birthday visit to your Great-Aunt Hewitt in Gramercy Park. We’ll be gone a week.”

  “Really?” There was a note of genuine surprise in Will’s response, and Nell knew why. August Hewitt had never made any secret of the fact that he found Gracie’s presence in his home as vexing as that of the upstart Irish nursery governess entrusted with her care. On his instructions, the child took all her meals, except for holiday dinners, with Nell in the third floor nursery, and he never spent very long in the same room with Gracie before ordering her removed. For him to consent to a weeklong trip with the child was remarkable.

  Viola said, “Aunt Hewitt commanded us to visit when she found out Gracie was turning five. She wrote and said she was afraid she’d die without ever having met her. I wrote back that I was more than willing, that it was your father she had to convince. She sent him a letter. I didn’t read it, but that evening over supper, he suggested the trip. We’re bringing Nurse Parrish along to look after Gracie.”

  “Nurse Parrish?” Will said dubiously. “She must be ninety by now. Can she still travel?”

  “She’s eighty-three, and she tells me she’s looking forward to the trip. She loves New York, and she hasn’t been there in years.”

  Taking Nell along would, of course, have been out of the question. Mr. Hewitt loathed her as deeply as he did Will. It was only his indulgent love for his wife, and Viola’s own steely resolve, that had permitted Nell to remain with the family as long as she had.

  “You must draw pictures of the things you see in New York,” Will told Gracie, “so you can show them to me when you get back. I know you like to draw, like Nana and Miss Sweeney.” Pointing to the crude but oddly cheerful design chalked onto the floor amid the forest of easels, Will said, “This is your handiwork, is it not?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nell softly corrected.

  “Yes, sir,” Gracie echoed. “I dwew the morning sunshine, ‘cause Miseeney says she misses it when it goes away.”

  “How very thoughtful of you,” Will praised as he awkwardly gained his feet.

  “And how very thoughtful of you,” his mother told him, “to pay a call at the house. You don’t know what it means to me, Will. Your, uh, your father is at his office, by the way, so...” She glanced at Gracie, who was sprawled on the floor again, chalk in hand. “You know. You needn’t worry that there will be any...unpleasantness.”

  “He’s working?” Will asked. “On a Saturday?”

  “He’s worse than ever,” Viola said with a slightly weary, smile. “Six days a week, he’s at India Wharf by dawn.” August Hewitt’s dedication to the shipping empire founded by his great-great grandfather was legendary among his fellow “codfish aristocrats.”

  “I wish I could claim that my visit was prompted by mere thoughtfulness,” Will said. “The fact is, I’ve something rather distressing to report.”

  “Oh, dear.” Viola’s smile waned. “I can’t say I’m eager for any more bad news, after that frightful gold business yesterday. Your father knows men who lost their entire...” Looking up sharply, she said, “You’re all right, aren’t you, Will? You didn’t...?”

  “Good Lord, no. I’ve never invested in gold.” Will kept his considerable gambling swag in the weather-beaten alligator satchel Viola had gifted him with upon his graduation from medical school at the University of Edinburgh. “No, I came through yesterday quite unscathed, but as you’ve pointed out, the same can’t be said for everyone.” He looked around, rubbing his neck. “I say, are there any chairs in this room, or...?”

  “Here.” Nell pulled out a paint-speckled kitchen chair that had been tucked under a table. “It’s safe to sit on. The paint’s dry.”

  Will sat and crossed his legs, lifting the bad one over the good one with his hands. “Nell must have told you I accepted a position as adjunct professor at Harvard—just for the autumn term. I’m really not cut out for that life anymore, but Isaac Foster talked me into it, and it affords me the opportunity to do some rather diverting research. Foster was named assistant dean of the medical school over the summer—did you know?”

  Viola nodded. “Winnie Pratt told me about that—crowed about it—when she wrote to announce Dr. Foster’s engagement to her daughter Emily while I was on the Cape.”

  “I’m teaching medical jurisprudence,” Will said. “What Professor Cuthbert at Edinburgh used to call forensic studies—the legal applications of medicine. One of my conditions when I accepted the position was the right to conduct post-mortems on any good corpses that end up in the morgue at Massachusetts General.”

  “Good corpses?” Viola said dubiously.

  Will cast a little half-smile toward Nell, as if to say, You understand.

  “There are good corpses,” said Nell, who’d assisted at some truly fascinating autopsies during the four years in which she’d been trained in nursing by Dr. Greaves before comin
g to work for the Hewitts. “Someone whose death was violent or unexplained can be very interesting to dissect, if one knows what to look for.”

  “I thought the county coroners handled that sort of thing,” Viola said.

  “Yes,” Will said, “but they’re all laymen, so they have to pay private surgeons to perform the actual autopsies—when they bother with them. I’m saving them a bit of trouble and expense by taking on the chewier cases myself. In any event, yesterday evening, two bodies were brought to the morgue, the deaths apparently unrelated, but with one thing in common. Both men had evidently taken their own lives.” He paused, then added, “One of those men, I’m sorry to say, was Noah Bassett.”

  “No.” Viola sank back in her wheelchair, looking stricken. “Oh, Will, no. Not Noah.”

  Will glanced at Nell as if for support in being the bearer of such grim tidings. She managed a reassuring look despite her own shock and dismay, having grown quite fond of Mr. Bassett herself from when he and his daughters would visit the house.

  “I was dreading having to give you this news.” Uncrossing his legs, Will leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I know how much your friendship with the Bassetts means to you. I’d wanted to tell you myself before you read about it in the morning paper.”

  “Thank you, Will.” Viola shook her head listlessly. “I wish I could say it comes as a shock that Noah would...do something like that, but given the way his life’s gone these past few years... Was he ruined in the gold crash, do you know?”

  “One can only assume so, but I’ll need to find out for sure. To draw a reliable conclusion about a death like this, one must examine not only the victim’s body, but his life—his state of mind, his situation, the circumstances in which he died. Which is partly why I’m here, to help fill in those blanks—although the evidence so far does indicate that Mr. Bassett died by his own hand.”

  “How...” Viola hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. “How did he...?”