Murder on Black Friday

by P. B. Ryan

  “Scores, but they weren’t really ladies, and they weren’t really friends, and it never lasted beyond a tumble or two.”

  “Who was the mistress?”

  “Sophie Wallace, of course.”

  Will cocked his head, as if seeking elaboration.

  “Sophie Wallace,” Harry said. “Everyone knows about Phil and Sophie.”

  “Since I clearly don’t, perhaps you’ll enlighten me.”

  “Oh, she’s a juicy little peach, very blond, very voluptuous.” Leaning his head back, Harry ran his hands over his hair, slicking it into a semblance of the pomaded perfection it had been when he left the house an hour ago. “Light in the tail, of course, a real tart, but not your run of the mill baggage. Quite well born, really. Her father was a Cabot—a lesser branch of the family, but a Cabot nonetheless. What I mean to say is, she’s from people, not just some...”

  “Some tart from some other branch of the animal kingdom?”

  “Granted, she’s getting a bit long in the tooth—she’s forty if she’s a day—but still quite the dame. Always on heat, or with that look in her eye, if you know what I mean. A tigress in silk stockings. I swear, I thought Phil had about a hundred screws loose when he let that one slip the leash.”

  Harry clasped his hands behind his head and propped an ankle on his knee, only to notice the dusting of cigarette ash on his otherwise immaculate white shin pad. “Shit.” He tried to brush it away, but of course that only turned it into a grayish smear. “Damn it all, these were brand new. Never even wore them in a match, and now I’ll have to throw them out.”

  “Can’t you have the laundress bleach it?” Will asked.

  “It’ll never look the same,” Harry groused as he rubbed at the spot. “Damn.”

  With a bemused little half-smile in Nell’s direction, Will said, “Tell me, Harry, when was it Phil ended things with Miss Wallace? Was it recently?”

  “It’s Mrs. Wallace, and it was just a couple of days ago.” Harry gave up rubbing the ash and sat back to pout at the stain. “Damn.”

  “Mrs. Wallace? Is she a widow?”

  “Married. The cuckold in question is Freddie Wallace, Phil’s attorney.”

  F. Wallace — 3:30

  That was why the name “Wallace” had seemed so familiar to Nell. His attorney arrived for an appointment and found him on the front steps.

  “Cuckold?” Will said. “Does Mr. Wallace know about his wife and Munro?”

  “He didn’t for the longest time, never mind that it had been an open secret for years—decades, really. They tell me Phil had been banging her since his freshman year at Harvard. Sophie was a year or two older, but no blushing maiden. I hear they met when he walked into a professor’s office and found her bent over the desk. She was unwed at the time—didn’t marry Wallace till she was almost thirty. Got tired of waiting for Phil to ask her—that’s what I heard, and Wallace was damnably persistent with his proposals. He adored her, worshipped her like a goddess.”

  Will said, “And yet, the entire time she was married to Wallace, she continued serving as Munro’s mistress?”

  “That right, and Wallace, the poor lovesick mutt, didn’t suspect a thing till a couple of weeks ago, when he came home and found a diamond and bloodstone tiepin on Sophie’s night table that he recognized as Phil’s. I heard he walked away from the house in tears, clutching the damned thing—literally walked down the street that way. He moved into the Parker House and initiated divorce proceedings.”

  “A couple of weeks ago, eh?” Will said. “Mrs. Wallace lost a husband and a lover in fairly short order. Why did Munro end things with her? Was it because of his engagement to Miss Bassett?”

  On a little grunt of laughter, Harry said, “A man’s engagement doesn’t eliminate his need to shake the sheets now and again—I should know. If anything, one tries to get in as much as possible before the wedding, because afterward, one has to sneak about for one’s sport.” With a derisive little sneer, he added, “A married man is expected to be discreet, don’t you know.”

  Harry asked for another cigarette; Will, of course, obliged.

  “Did Wallace ever confront Munro?” Will glanced at Nell as he asked the question; it would seem he recalled the 3:30 appointment, as well.

  “Oh, yes,” Harry said through a cloud of smoke, “and a most entertaining spectacle it was. He made quite an ass of himself in the dining room of the Parker House night before last.”

  “Thursday?” Will said. “What did he do?”

  “He barged in and stumbled over to our table—Phil and I were having dinner with Larry Pinch and Ezra Chapman. Anyway, Wallace lit in on Phil, very loudly and crudely, in front of the entire dining room. He was drunk as a lord, of course, could barely stand. Accused Phil—his most important client, mind you, the one who pays the lion’s share of his bills—of doing the old four-legged frolic with his wife.”

  Will stared at his brother. To publicly name a lady as having been free with her favors was considered terribly poor form among that class of gentleman. To name one’s own wife was appalling.

  “What did Munro do?” Will asked.

  “Denied it, naturally. Wallace called him a liar, said he’d make him pay for humiliating him that way. He actually took a swing at Phil, but he was so soused that he ended up toppling into the next table. Larry and Ezra dragged him out of there and took him up to his room to sleep it off. I hear he woke up the next morning covered in his own sick.”

  Will shook his head.

  “Meanwhile, that very same night,” Harry continued with a grin as he raised his cigarette to his lips, “who do you suppose was lying in wait for Phil back home, but the wayward wife herself.”

  “Sophie Wallace?”

  “The four of us went back there after dinner for cognac and cigars before heading out to Fat Zack’s. You know, that little gaming hell over on—”

  “I know it,” Will said.

  “Phil led the way up the service stairs,” Harry said, “so he was the first to find her waiting there in his office. He told the rest of us to go ahead to Zack’s and that he’d meet up with us later, but I confess my curiosity got the better of me. I lingered a while on the fourth floor landing after the other two had left.”

  Will sighed and kneaded the back of his neck.

  “She got right to the point.” Harry picked a fleck of tobacco off his tongue and flicked it in Nell’s direction. “Said she’d be free to marry now that Wallace was divorcing her, that she’d waited twenty years to be Phil’s wife, and now was their chance, and so on and so forth. Phil told her she was too late, that he had plans to marry Becky Bassett. She became quite worked up at that—apparently she’d no idea it had gone that far. She implored him to reconsider, got down on her knees, literally.”

  “You could see them?” Will asked.

  Harry nodded. “I’d crept up to the door. She begged and pleaded and declared her undying love. That might have actually generated a bit of pity on Phil’s part, I thought, but then she made a fatal error. She told him he was all she had left in the world, that Wallace was threatening to take the house and leave her without a settlement, because of the adultery. She said she was no good at being alone, that she was too old for it, that Phil owed it to her, after all those years on her back, to make an honest woman of her at last. She should have known better than to take such a tack with a man like Phil Munro—telling him what he owed, what was expected of him. He yanked her to her feet and told her, in so many words, that men in his position didn’t wed aging, round-heeled divorcees.”

  Nell winced.

  “Lovely fellow, your friend Phil,” Will said.

  “She went completely round the bend.” Harry grinned and shook his head. “Came after him with claws bared, shrieking like a wildcat. ‘You heartless bastard. I gave you everything. You should roast in hell...’ All that sort of claptrap. He threw her down on the chaise and pulled her skirts up, with her fighting and screaming all the while. Told her h
e’d give her one last pop just to calm her down and help her get hold of herself, but then that would be the end of them.”

  Will said, “Please tell me you didn’t stand there and watch.”

  Harry waved a dismissive hand. “Phil wouldn’t have minded. It was rather exciting at first, with her thrashing and screaming. I was sure someone would come upstairs to see what the ruckus was, but no one did.”

  What was it Catherine had said? If it came to my attention that Philip was entertaining one of his female acquaintances, I merely ignored the fact and went on about my business.

  “After a minute or two,” Harry said, “she gave up struggling and just sort of went limp—and then came the tears. Phil didn’t seem to mind, just kept on giving it to her, but that’s when I left for Zack’s.” He flung his cigarette butt to the ground and crushed it with his heel. “There’s nothing like a weeping woman to ruin a bit of harmless fun. It’s like a bucket of cold water every time.”

  “Harry,” Will said on a long, weary sigh, “there are times when I wonder how you can bear being you.”

  Chapter 8

  “Uncle Will!” Gracie exclaimed when she opened the lid of the big, iron-banded trunk she’d just unwrapped. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!” Her little friends, gathered around her like a bouquet of spring flowers in their frocks of taffeta and satin, contributed a chorus of oohs and ahhs.

  The velvet-lined trunk, which bore the label M. Jumeau - Paris, housed six exquisite bisque fashion dolls, each wearing a traditional provincial costume. “They represent different regions in France,” Will explained as the dolls were passed from one enraptured little girl to the next. “That one with the lace bonnet and the blue neckerchief is from Poitou. The one you’re holding, Gracie, with the blue skirt, is from Brittany. The others are from Provence, Alsace, Pyrenees, and Bourgogne.”

  The trunk yielded up a vast collection of accessories, as well—hats, fans, shoes, stockings, gloves, brushes, combs, jewelry, baskets, purses, mirrors, even pets, one for each doll; two dogs, two cats, a duck, and a lamb.

  “Look!” said one of the girls as she turned the head of the Burgundian doll to the side. “It moves!”

  This innovation inspired a new flurry of excitement. The girlish squeals put Nell in mind of a skyful of bats. Nurse Parrish awoke with a start from her armchair doze in the corner, looked around blearily, and went back to sleep.

  “They’re wonderful! Oh, Uncle Will, I love them. I love you.” Gracie opened her arms to Will, who knelt to return the embrace.

  “I love you, too, ma petite.” Will kissed his daughter’s cheek and pulled her close, burying his face in her hair.

  Nell felt a fist close around her heart, squeezing, squeezing... She noticed Viola, watching Will and Gracie from her Merlin chair in the doorway of the festively decorated front parlor. The older woman looked up and met Nell’s gaze. Even from across the room, Nell could see her eyes glimmering wetly in the sunlight sweeping in through the windows.

  Viola reached into her sleeve for her handkerchief, but Max Thurston, standing behind her with his hands on the grips of her chair, swiftly produced his own and shook it out for her. The elderly playwright had met the Hewitt matriarch only about an hour ago, when he arrived for Gracie’s birthday tea with a picnic hamper containing a beribboned poodle pup for Gracie and a flagon of Martinez cocktails for himself, but they seemed to have taken to each other with remarkable speed. Not that surprising, really, when Nell thought about it. Max and Viola were both iconoclasts in their own way, both outsiders stuck, for better or for worse, in the gilded cage of Boston aristocracy. They would have much in common, once one scratched the surface—and they were both, despite their upper-crust veneers, not above a bit of scratching now and then.

  Max bent to Viola and whispered something. Nell read his lips: “Are you quite all right, my dear?” Only Max could get away with calling a lady he’d just met—one of the most venerable matrons in Boston, no less—“my dear.”

  Viola returned her gaze to her son and granddaughter for a long moment, then nodded to Max and said something Nell couldn’t make out. He backed her chair out of the doorway and wheeled her down the hall.

  Nell felt a hand on her arm and turned to find Will standing next to her. “Meet me in the garden?” he asked.

  “I’ve got to help serve the cake and mulled wine,” she said, “and then I’ll be out.”

  * * *

  She found him stretched out in the afternoon sun on the little stone bench that was the focal point of Viola’s frowsily charming back garden. Dressed as he was, in a fine black frock coat, eyes closed, fingers laced on his stomach, he might have resembled a corpse laid out for viewing were it not for his healthy color. He’d been pallid when she first met him, and thinner, his eyes cast in shadow beneath that deep brow, a rapacious thrust to his jaw. Those sharp-carved features looked not so much predatory nowadays as patrician. Will Hewitt had the kind of face one saw on ancient Roman coins.

  “Mulled wine for five-year-olds?” he murmured with his eyes still closed.

  “It’s more sugar water than anything else,” Nell said as she strolled toward him. “There’s just a pint of port in that entire punchbowl.”

  Opening his eyes, he said, “Just enough booze to make the wee misses feel chic and daring. The lure of sin starts young.”

  Swinging up to a sitting position, he patted the bench next to him. Nell sat, brushing the dust of the bench off the back of Will’s coat. He smiled at her, and it struck her suddenly that this sort of offhand tidying was the type of thing a wife might do for a husband. She drew back, mildly embarrassed.

  “No, please.” Turning to face away from her, Will said over his shoulder, “I’d hate to walk about looking like a dustman and not know it.”

  She continued, all too aware, as she smoothed her hands over his shoulders and down his arms, of his lean, solid body through the velvety wool.

  Their silence only made her more self-conscious, so she said, “I saw Eileen Tierney in church this morning. The Bassetts’ maid?”

  He nodded. “The girl with the clubfoot. Did you speak to her?”

  “She spoke to me,” Nell said, pulling his coat taut with one hand as she swept it off with the other. “She came up to me as I was waiting for confession before mass. She’d just made confession herself, and she asked Father Gannon what he thought about the idea of surgery to repair her clubfoot. He said God helps those who help themselves, and that he knew and trusted me, and if I thought it was a good idea, it probably was. There.” She gave his back one final, awkwardly chummy swat. “Not a speck left.”

  He smiled at her again as he turned to face her. “It’s a novel thing to be tended to. Quite pleasant, actually. Thank you.”

  It would be a novel thing, Nell realized, for a man who’d been spent most of his youth among uncaring relatives and schoolmasters, and his adult years fending for himself in the War, in Andersonville, and then in a long, smoky succession of gaming hells and opium dens.

  “Your Father Gannon sounds like a good man,” Will said.

  “He is.” It pleased Nell that the irreligious Will should make such an observation. “Eileen’s only qualms at this point have to do with... Well, she’s very young, and very innocent, and...”

  “And she doesn’t like the idea of strange men touching her,” Will said.

  “She doesn’t even want to be alone in a room with a man, even a doctor. She made me promise to be there when she met with you.”

  “Did you set a date?”

  “Tuesday morning at nine o’clock. I hope that’s all right, because she gets half a day off on Tuesdays, so long as she’s finished all her chores the night before, and nothing else all week. Well, except for a couple of hours on Sunday mornings, for mass.”

  “Tuesday at nine is fine. And perhaps you wouldn’t mind accompanying me on a visit to Sophie Wallace tomorrow morning. There are a few things I’d like to ask her, as you can imagine, and your perspective,
as always, would be invaluable.”

  With a little shrug, Nell said, “I’ve got nothing but time on my hands this week, seeing as Gracie won’t be here.”

  “I’d like to return Mr. Bassett’s papers to his daughters, as well,” Will said.

  “Did you get a chance to look them over yesterday?” she asked.

  He nodded as he lifted his bad leg over the good. “I gave the letters a fairly thorough read. As you know, Munro advised Bassett to buy gold over the summer, even if he had to take out a loan to do it. Bassett didn’t want to go into debt. He’d never owed money, and he didn’t want to start. He wanted to cash in his life insurance, but Munro told him he couldn’t, because the payments had lapsed. So that’s why, on Munro’s advice but much against his better judgment, he ended up borrowing fifty thousand against the house and signing the letter of attorney.”

  “The life insurance had lapsed?” Nell asked. “It’s worthless?”

  With a grin, Will said, “Not being quite as prone to galloping assumptions as a certain little Irish governess I could name, I decided to look up an old acquaintance of mine, a surgeon named Bill Morland. He used to edit the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal back before the war, and he wrote quite an excellent book on diseases of the urinary organs. Now, as it happens, he’s the chief medical examiner for New England Mutual. I paid a call on him yesterday and offered to buy him supper at Tuttle’s in exchange for a bit of brain-picking on the subject of life insurance.”

  “And...?”

  “And it seems the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed a law eight years ago to the effect that when someone stops paying his premiums, the policy simply converts to term for a fixed number of years.”

  “Converts to term?” Nell said. “I’m afraid you’ve reached the limit of what I know about life insurance.”

  “Simply put, your beneficiaries can still collect the death benefit if you die—up until the end of the term—but you can’t cash in the policy or do anything else with it. I showed Bill the five policies Bassett held, and he told me the first one was due to expire two months from now, in November, and the rest before the end of the year.”