by P. B. Ryan
Carefully lifting the lamp from his hand, Nell set it back on the table and re-cloaked it with the sheet. “What happens in the North End is of no interest to me.” Aside from the fact that it was home to tens of thousands of Irish, crammed together in their wretched waterfront hovels.
With a little snort of amusement, Skinner said, “Oh, yeah, you lace-curtain colleens think you’re too good for that rat warren, don’t you? Well, I happen to know you never miss early Sunday mass at St. Stephen’s up on Hanover Street.”
Rattled, but determined not to show it, Nell said, “Have you been spying on me, Constable?”
Skinner lifted the sheet draped over one of the six-foot obelisks flanking the entrance to the Red Room, Viola’s private haven. “The North End is my beat—and us cops like to keep track of them that make trouble for us.”
“I still don’t see what the murder of a perfect stranger has to do with me.”
“What it has to do with you,” Skinner said as he strolled around the room, eyeing the shapes beneath the linen shrouds, “is that the murderer happens to be an old friend of yours.” He met her gaze with a smug grin. “Detective Colin Cook.”
Chapter 2
Nell somehow managed to keep her expression neutral even as her thoughts careened. Colin Cook, one of Skinner’s former colleagues in the Detectives’ Bureau, not that the rest of them had ever considered him as such, given his Irishness, had been the lone member of the bureau to escape the retribution meted out to the rest of them after the corruption hearings. Though not entirely blameless—Cook had been known to pocket a few greenbacks now and then—the bearlike black Irishman had enjoyed a singular reputation for integrity and competence. When the rest of the Boston detectives were fired or sent out to patrol the streets, Cook had been offered what amounted to a promotion: a coveted appointment to the Massachusetts State Constabulary. As a state detective, Cook was primarily charged with stemming Boston’s rising tide of vice, although murder investigations also fell under his purview.
“I can’t imagine that your information is correct,” Nell said evenly, “if you’ve come to the conclusion that Detective Cook is the responsible party.”
“You don’t think he’s capable of killing a man?”
“For just cause? Certainly. He fought for the Union, after all. But outright murder?” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t expect the likes of you to understand such a thing, but there are men in this world who have moral standards, and Colin Cook is one of them.”
“A pretty speech, Miss Sweeney,” said Skinner with a mocking little bow, “and I’m sure if Cook were present to hear it, he’d be moved by your faith in him. But as it happens, that faith is sadly misplaced. He did do murder. He did it savagely, and I must say, rather sloppily. I was the first cop on the scene, and I can tell you it was pretty cut and dried. They all know him there—he’s a regular—and we got three witnesses that say he done it.”
“‘We?’ Surely you’re not the officer handling this case. That would be the responsibility of the state detectives, would it not?”
“It would but for the fact that Major Jones, who’s in charge of that unit, feels it would be a—what did he call it?—’conflict of interest’ for his boys to investigate one of their own. Now, me, I’ve got experience as a detective, and no reason to want to go soft on Cook. So, in the interest of justice, I stepped forward and offered to—”
“In the interest of justice?” she scoffed. “In the interest of revenge, you mean. You’d like nothing more than to see Detective Cook hang.”
Skinner tugged the sheet off the round marble table in the center of the room, laid out with a selection of August Hewitt’s favorite antique musical instruments. He picked up the pocket hunting horn, a heavily coiled brass trumpet less than a foot long, dented and tarnished with age. Viola thought it ugly, and didn’t see the point of keeping it out, but as the music room was her husband’s special haven, the instrument remained on display.
Skinner hefted the horn as if testing its weight. “I won’t deny that it gives me a warm feeling inside to see murderers twitch at the end of a noose.”
Nell said, “It would give you no end of glee to see Detective Cook hang, if only because he’s Irish, and a better man than you. But on top of that, he was actually rewarded when the truth came out about what you detectives were up to, while the rest of you ended up—”
“He sold us out,” Skinner said, teeth bared. “He ratted on us in secret sessions during the hearings, just him and those big bugs that don’t have the slightest idea what it takes to deal with the foreign vermin who’ve overrun this town. Next thing you know, I end up policing Paddyland for a Paddy captain, of all damn things, who treats me like I’m some stray cat he’d like to drown, while that humbug-spouting mick gets bumped up to Jones’s unit. He’s earning almost twice what he used to, while I’m still making do on eight-hundred bucks a year.”
“Surely, Constable, you’re making the job pay better than that,” Nell said with a knowing little smile.
In a crude imitation of an Irish accent, Skinner said, “Oh, you fancy yourself quite the clever little lass, don’t you, now?”
“I’m not stupid,” she said. “I know how you and your kind do business. As for Cook spouting humbug, what are you saying? Are you claiming he lied?”
“He made stuff up just to get us in hot water, and they swallowed it whole and asked for more.”
“And how would you know that,” she challenged, “if those sessions were so secret?”
“Oh, you are clever, aren’t you?” He closed in on her, clutching her arm in a painful grip; she could smell the rum on his breath, the sour tang of his sweat. “You’re two of a kind, you and Cook, a couple of crafty, high-reaching bogtrotters out to get what you can over the backs of all us regular, hardworking Americans. Yeah, but I’ll bet you’re not so high-and-mighty when the good detective gets you alone, eh? Do you give him a good ride, Miss Sweeney? Do you buck and scream and—”
“Get out.” Nell tried to wrestle free of his grip, but she was no match for his wiry strength.
He slammed her one-handed against the door, holding her there as he tilted her chin up with the mouthpiece of the horn. In a menacing murmur he said, “I wouldn’t mind hearing you scream.”
“Nor I you.” She wrenched the horn from his hand and whipped it across his face.
He stumbled back into the piano with a yowl of pain, his hands cupping his nose. “You bitch!” he screamed in a nasal rasp. “Jesus! You goddamned—”
“Get out.” Nell opened the door to the hallway. Two kitchen maids passing by with armloads of pots and kettles paused to gape at the constable.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he snarled as he advanced on her.
About the Author
Patricia Ryan, aka P.B. Ryan, has written more than two dozen novels, which have garnered rave reviews and been published in over twenty countries. A RITA winner and four-time nominee, she is also the recipient of two Romantic Times Awards and a Mary Higgins Clark Award nomination for the first book in the Nell Sweeney historical mystery series, Still Life With Murder. Pat’s Evil Twin, Pamela Burford, is also a published romance novelist. Visit Pat’s website at http://www.patricia-ryan.com.
Inhoudsopgave
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
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