Murder on Black Friday

by P. B. Ryan

  Not wanting anything omitted from Eileen’s account this time, Nell said, “Why don’t you start at the beginning? Presumably Friday started out like any other day. When did things start changing?”

  “When Miss Bassett heard the newsboy yellin’ ‘Extra,’ and sent me out to buy a one.”

  “In the early afternoon, then,” Will said.

  “Aye, it was just as I’d finished cleanin’ up from lunch. She had me bring the paper up to her da, and then I was holed up in the kitchen fer a spell, ironing the wash. I heard footsteps comin’ down the stairs, real slow and heavy, so I knew it was himself, and not one of the sisters. I looked down the hall and saw him headin’ out the front door in a good suit of clothes. Wasn’t often I saw him that way, turned out all proper. Most days he just kept to his room in his shirtsleeves—sometimes just his nightshirt all day.”

  “Was he gone long?” Will asked.

  Eileen frowned as she thought about it. “An hour? Maybe a little less. I was makin’ me way up the service stairs with a stack of pressed linens, and I heard him on the landing of the main stairs—that landing with the big tall window that has them cracks in it?”

  “The one you can see from the front hall?” Nell asked.

  “That’s right. There’s a door on that landing that opens onto the service stairs, and it ain’t very thick. It’s painted to look like mahogany, but it ain’t, and ya can hear right through it when’s somebody’s talkin’ loud on th’other side. Mr. Bassett, he had that big, deep voice, don’t you know, and was goin’ on about how he’d been ruined. Miss Bassett was there, too, and she was tryin’ to shush him.”

  “The elder Miss Bassett?” Nell asked, just to make sure.

  “That’s right. She sounds a lot different than Miss Becky, so I knew it was her. Mr. Bassett’s voice was shakin’ so hard, it almost didn’t sound like him. I knew it was wrong to stand there and listen, but if you’d heard him...” Eileen shook her head. “I liked him. Low-spirited as he was, he was always kind to me, never troubled me fer much. He’d ask me how I was gittin’ along, and were his daughters workin’ me too hard. And here he was, carryin’ on like that. I tell you, my heart bled for him.”

  “What did he say?” Will asked.

  “He’d been to see some fella, and he was mad about somethin’ the fella had done. He said, ‘He did it on purpose—on purpose.’ He kept repeating that bit—‘on purpose.’ He called the fella some names I don’t want to say, which struck me odd, ‘cause he wasn’t the type to swear, ‘specially in front of his girls. Miss Bassett, she was askin’ him to get hold of himself, but he was only gittin’ more worked up. The worst of it was when he started cryin’.”

  “Crying?” Nell asked.

  “His voice had that wet, sobby kind of sound. I heard him say, ‘He admitted it. He laughed about it.’ Then he started in about somethin’ else this fella had said. I couldn’t make it out too good, on account of the cryin’, but it had to do with Miss Bassett comin’ to see him, and things she said to him.”

  “Said to Mr. Mun— the other fellow?” Nell asked.

  “I think so. It was kind of hard to follow, ‘cause of all the cryin’. Mr. Bassett says, ‘I told him it’s a foul lie, that you never would of said such a thing. Tell me he’s just makin’ it up.’ Well, then she starts cryin’, and she says it’s the truth. And Mr. Bassett, he starts bellowin’ somethin’ fierce. Took the Lord’s name in vain, and I never thought I’d see the day he done that. He asked her did anybody else know, and she said...I think it was Kathleen?”

  “Catherine?” Will asked.

  “Catherine,” Eileen said with a nod. “Miss Bassett, she says, ‘Me and her talked about it Wednesday night, but she won’t tell, ‘cause she don’t want nobody to know.’ Then Mr. Bassett starts in about how this fella didn’t just ruin him, he ruined his whole family. He says the fella ruined him just to prove he could, and that he’d...I think he said the fella would ‘give the fifty thousand back’ if Mr. Bassett...it sounded like ‘if I were to give my blessing’.”

  “It means allowing Becky to marry,” Nell said.

  “Miss Becky’s gettin’ hitched?”

  “Not anymore. What happened then?”

  “There was more cryin’ and talkin’, and then Miss Bassett says, ‘Don’t worry, Papa. I’ll take care of it. Everything will be all right.’”

  “Take care of what?” Will asked.

  Eileen shook her head. “I’m tellin’ you what I could make out. She told him he should go lie down in his room, and that she’d fetch me and have me bring him a brandy. Sometimes, when she’s lookin’ fer me, she takes the service stairs, and sure enough the door flies open, and I’m face to face with her. Mr. Bassett was shufflin’ away, he didn’t notice, but Miss Bassett knew right off I’d been earwigging. She asked me what I heard, and I said not much, but she didn’t believe me. She told me if I ever repeated any of it, she’d sack me with no references, and no one else would want me, on account of me leg.”

  Nell said, “I can’t imagine Miriam Bassett making a threat like that. She’s...I suppose you’d say self-contained, but she’s never struck me as cruel. Not that I don’t believe you, but...”

  “She wasn’t herself,” Eileen said. “She was scared. I could tell. I told her I wouldn’t say nothin’ to no one, and then I brung Mr. Bassett his brandy. He was sittin’ on the edge of his bed with his head hangin’ down, all red-eyed. I asked him was anything wrong, but he didn’t answer me.” Sadly she added, “It was the last time I saw him alive.”

  “Where was Becky when all this was going on?” Nell asked.

  “Out.”

  “Out where?”

  Eileen shrugged. “She goes out visiting sometimes. There’s a couple of young ladies in the neighborhood she’s friendly with. Or sometimes she shops without buyin’ nothin’. Miss Bassett went out after that, too. She had me to help her change her clothes. She’d been wearing that drab old frock she does chores in, and she needed me to lace her up tighter and button her into her striped walking dress.”

  “Yellow and pink stripes?” Nell asked. “With a ruffled skirt?”

  “That’s right. She put her bonnet and gloves on, too, so I knew she was goin’ out.”

  “Did she say where she was going?” Will asked.

  “Nah.”

  “Did you notice when she returned?”

  “Yeah, I was scrubbin’ the floor in the front hall when she come in. She never even looked at me, just raced up them stairs, white as a sheet. A minute later she calls down to me to fetch the key to her da’s room from the butler’s pantry, so I did.”

  “And the rest is as you told us the other day?” Nell asked. “Unlocking the room and finding Mr. Bassett with his wrists cut?”

  “Aye...” she said hesitantly. “‘Cept for one more thing I kinda...didn’t mention, and one...well, one real lie, the outright kind.”

  “Let’s hear the outright one first,” Will said.

  Eileen literally covered her face in shame. “You remember when you asked me if I’d found a note and I said no?”

  “You did find one?” Nell asked.

  The girl lowered her hands enough to meet Nell’s eyes, and nodded. “Miss Bassett asked me to look for one. I found it on his pillow and gave it to her.”

  “Did she give you any indication of what it said?” Nell asked, knowing what the answer would be, but not wanting to assume.

  Eileen shook her head. “Sorry. She started tearin’ up when she read it, but she didn’t say what was in it. She told me I must keep it their secret, about there bein’ a note, otherwise I’d get the sack and all that, and then she went to her room. I heard her sobbing past candle lighting.”

  “And you never saw the note again?” Will asked. “When you cleaned her room, perhaps?”

  “Sorry, no.

  “What was the lie of omission?” Nell asked.

  “The keepin’ it to yerself kind? It was about Miss Bassett’s dress, the one
she changed into to go out. After she come back and had me fetch the key, I noticed...” Eileen glanced at Nell and Will, then lowered her voice along with her gaze. “I was standin’ behind her when she unlocked the door, and...it was buttoned wrong.”

  “Her dress?” Nell asked.

  Eileen nodded. “It buttons down the back, and there was a button that got skipped—you know, so there’s a little gap, and then the rest of the buttons are one buttonhole off? The thing of it is, she was buttoned up perfect when she left the house. I should know. I did it meself.”

  “Which would suggest,” Nell said, “that, between leaving the house and coming home, she removed her dress and put it back on.”

  “Which, in turn,” Will said, “would suggest how Miss Bassett meant to ‘take care of’ the problem of her family’s impoverishment without condemning her sister to a loveless marriage—a marriage to the man with whom she may, in fact, have been smitten herself.”

  “She offered herself in Becky’s stead?” Nell asked.

  “He’d apparently been trying to seduce her all summer. According to Harry, he’d become obsessed with having her...on his own terms.”

  “But would he have accepted a Bassett mistress in lieu of a Bassett bride?” Nell asked. “Would Miriam have been worth fifty grand to him?”

  “From what we know of the man,” Will said, “I wouldn’t put it past him to let Miriam follow through with her end of the deal, then renege on his.”

  “I...I don’t think so,” Eileen said.

  Nell and Will turned to look at the pink-faced girl, whose blush deepened as she said, “I mean I don’t think Miss Bassett...did what you think she did with that fella. I don’t think that’s why her dress was buttoned wrong.”

  “Why do you think it was buttoned wrong, then?” Nell asked.

  “I dunno, but I don’t think it was that.”

  “Why not?” Will asked.

  Eileen ducked her head and shrugged.

  Will said, “If you’re holding something back—”

  “It’s just...” She glanced at him, then quickly away. “Fergit it. I’m just blatherin’. I don’t know nothin’.”

  “Is it that you don’t think wellborn, churchgoing ladies do that sort of thing?” Nell asked. “Or is it because she’s engaged to Dr. Tanner?”

  “I...I reckon I don’t know. Like I said, I’m blatherin’.”

  “Miriam Bassett is a person who does what needs to be done,” Nell said. “Or what she thinks needs to be done. If she felt there was no alternative, I think she might have committed a sin for the sake of her family.”

  “I s’pose so,” Eileen said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

  * * *

  “Miss Munro is not at home,” declared the sour-faced butler with the black armband who opened the door to Nell and Will later that morning.

  Nell considered and rejected the notion of saying, We know she’s at home, you self-important little toad. We saw her in the front window of her brother’s office as we were walking up to the house. Catherine Munro looked like a black-clad wraith, staring out through the swath of crepe with her white face and her sad eyebrows and her vague, dreamy gaze. A skyful of clouds, dark as smoke, cast an appropriately murky pall over the scene.

  “Not at home” usually meant “not at home for callers” or “not at home for particular callers.” After their last visit, which had left the late Mr. Munro’s fourth floor office in shambles, Nell suspected his sister had issued orders that they never again be allowed into her home.

  “Would you ask Miss Munro if she would be so kind as to make an exception and see us?” Will asked. “It’s a matter of some importance.”

  “I’m afraid that’s out of the question, sir. Mr. Munro’s funeral is to take place this afternoon, and Miss Munro prefers to be undisturbed until then.”

  Having been thus dismissed, Nell and Will walked a few doors down to an alley between two blocks of attached townhouses, wove their way to the kitchen yard of the Munro house, and opened the back door after a perfunctory knock. Doffing his hat, Will said good morning to Mrs. Gell and her slow-witted assistant, and escorted Nell up the skylit service stairs.

  They entered Philip Munro’s office to find Catherine still standing with her back to them at the middle bay window. The room was unlit but for a meager haze of sunlight through the filmy crepe. If Nell hadn’t known that the shadowy form by the window was Catherine, she might have thought no one was there.

  “I’m not at home,” Catherine said without turning around. Her voice, naturally soft, had an especially blurry quality this morning.

  Will said, “We realize that, Miss Munro, and I apologize for the imposition, but we have something important to ask you that may help to unravel the truth about how your brother died. You’ll be burying him this afternoon. Perhaps, by then, we’ll have disproved the notion that he died by his own hand, which will perhaps provide you some comfort as you lay him to rest. I promise we won’t take up any more of your time than absolutely necessary.”

  Catherine remained entirely motionless for so long that Nell had decided she was unmoved by Will’s handsome speech...until she slowly turned toward them. As she did so, her gaze fell on a small druggist’s vial on the window ledge, before Catherine scooped it into a hidden pocket in her dress. It was another elegantly unfussy crepe gown, this one sans weeping cuffs and with a very high neck that framed her chin in tiny black pleats. There were no buttons or adornments of any kind, no belt buckle, no key ring, no watch—just a wasp-waisted silhouette of matte black punctuated by the glittery little locket housing Philip Munro’s portrait.

  Catherine’s face and hands looked unnaturally pale against the darkness of her hair and dress and the surrounding room. Nell took a mental photograph so that she could capture the image later in India ink brushed onto good, heavy watercolor paper with just a hint of a tooth.

  “What is your question?” Catherine asked, her hands clasped at her waist, her eyes oddly heavy-lidded.

  Moving farther into the room, Nell saw that some of the damage Harry had wreaked with that cricket bat had been repaired. There were new sheets of glass over the pictures on the wall, and new shelves on the étagère. The silk wallpaper, however, bore an unsightly grayish abrasion where someone had tried to scrub away the ink stain; it would need to be replaced.

  “What we’d like to know,” Nell told her, “is what Miriam Bassett talked to you about Wednesday night.”

  Catherine frowned blearily. “Wednesday night?”

  “She spoke to you about something,” Will said. “It was something she’d told your brother, something of a confidential nature. Friday afternoon, your brother shared it with Mr. Bassett, who didn’t believe it at first. When he found out it was true, he became very distraught. It would go far toward helping us piece together what happened that day if we knew what it was Miss Bassett spoke to you about.”

  “Have you asked her?”

  “We thought you might be more forthcoming,” Nell said.

  “You thought wrong,” Catherine said. “Philip’s posthumous reputation is all he has left. It is my intent to promote that reputation through philanthropic works in his name, not sully it.”

  “So it’s something that reflects poorly upon your brother,” Nell said. “Then I can certainly understand why you might want to keep such information to yourself, but you should know what the repercussions will be, should you take that tack. Dr. Hewitt and I will have to expand our investigation, question many more people. If we do that, certain other information is bound to get around, information that, if I were you, I might want to keep under wraps.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as the fact that Philip Munro took advantage of his power of attorney on behalf of Noah Bassett to destroy Mr. Bassett financially.”

  Catherine said, “If Mr. Bassett suffered setbacks Friday, that is most regretful, I’m sure, but it is hardly my brother’s fault. Countless investors were ruined Friday.” />
  “How many were ruined,” Will asked, “as a result of the deliberate connivance of their advisors?”

  “That’s absurd,” Catherine said.

  “It’s the truth,” Nell said, “He talked Mr. Bassett into buying gold with borrowed money, and left him holding it Friday when he knew the market was about to collapse. His purpose was to force Mr. Bassett to allow his marriage to Becky. If he allowed it, your brother would dig him out of the hole he’d dropped him in. If not...” She lifted her shoulders. “I suppose Noah Bassett would have ended his days in the poor house.”

  Catherine said, “You can’t prove any of this.”

  “We have telegrams taken from your brother’s safe that will prove it quite effectively.”

  Catherine’s eyes glowed as if they were lit from within. “You took things belonging to my brother?”

  “You can have them back when the district attorney is through with them,” Nell said. “You do realize it’s not just unethical, but an actual criminal act to abuse a power of attorney that way. Noah Bassett was a beloved figure in this city. When it becomes known what was done to him, your brother will be forever remembered as a duplicitous, double-crossing schemer.”

  “You might consider naming the Philip James Munro Foundation after someone else,” Will said dryly.

  Catherine stood with her eyes closed for a moment, then walked to the chaise lounge, her layers of black crepe whispering shush, shush, shush in the dusky room. She sat and folded her hands in her lap, staring at nothing. “If I tell you about...Wednesday night,” she said in a voice almost devoid of inflection, “who will find out?”

  Will said, “That would depend, I suppose, on what you tell us, and how helpful it is in explaining your brother’s murder. All I can promise, but it is a sincere gentleman’s promise, is that I’ll be as vigilant as possible in keeping certain information, such as your brother’s dealings with Mr. Bassett, out of the Boston gossip mill.”

  Catherine’s chest rose and fell slowly. In a somnolent monotone, she said, “Miriam came to see him Wednesday night. I knew she was up here. I heard raised voices, but I ignored them. Philip needs his—needed his privacy. I tended to turn a deaf ear to what went on up here.”