A Fatal Four-Pack

by P. B. Ryan

  Flynn stilled, head cocked, grinning slowly. Nell heard an almost imperceptible rustling and backed out of the stall into the aisle. Whirling around with surprising grace, the Irishman kicked the straw heaped in the corner, tongs poised. A huge rat darted out; Flynn plucked it up deftly and held it aloft as it thrashed and squealed. “Oh, what a fine big brute you are!” he praised, depositing the writhing rodent in his sack. “Mind you give my Miss Flossie a good tussle next Saturday. She gets bored when it’s too easy.”

  Swallowing down her bile, Nell said, “I, uh, I understand you came upstairs yourself a few times to sell opium to your customers who were smoking it.”

  Flynn nodded. “Yeah, I like to keep an eye on things in there, make sure everybody has what they need. Weren’t much to do last night, though. That one they arrested—Touchette—he was there all night, but he was real quiet-like. Just shoved some money in my hand, laid hisself down and lit up bowl after bowl—I rarely seen anybody go through it like him.”

  “There were others in there with him, right?” Nell asked.

  “Couple of sailors early on—regulars whenever they’re in port—but they just had a bowl or two apiece and left. Next time I checked, there was just Touchette, who’d more or less dozed off—the gong does that to ‘em—and one other feller. I asked him if he wanted somethin’ to smoke, but he says nah, he ain’t no hop fiend, and then I seen he was suckin’ on a bottle. The swells, they like to bring their own. The gin I sell here ain’t good enough for ‘em.”

  “Why did he come to your place,” Nell asked, “if not for opium or the rat pit? He could have done his drinking anywhere.”

  “There’s them that’ll show up on a Saturday night for cards or chuck, not knowin’ about Rat Night, or maybe forgettin’ about it ‘cause they’re already in their cups. The rats ain’t for everybody. Some of ‘em take off then, and some just sit and drink. I reckon this feller just wanted to sit and drink.”

  “What did he look like?” Nell asked.

  “Can’t rightly say,” Flynn scratched his soft belly with the tongs. “I keep it dark in there, ‘cause that’s the way them gowsters like it, and all I seen was the back of his head, ‘cause he was settin’ on the couch that faces away from the door. Sounded like a swell, though, and I think I saw a top hat on the arm of the couch.”

  “Do you happen to know when he left?” she asked.

  “He weren’t there when I came up the last time,” Flynn said. “Nobody was—the room was empty. That’s when Kathleen screamed. I wouldn’t have heard her if I’d still been downstairs. Ain’t nothin’ noisier than a rat pit, ‘cept maybe a cockfight. Blood sport brings out the howlers. I look out the window and what do I see in the alley but ol’ Ernest Tulley layin’ there in a pool of blood.” He sketched a cursory sign of the cross with his curling tongs.

  “And William Hewitt finishing him off,” Cook prompted.

  “Well...” Flynn lifted his shoulders. “Can’t rightly say that’s what he was doing.”

  “He was crouching over the body,” Cook said.

  “With his back to me.”

  The detective glowered. “Seems like lots of fellas had their backs to you last night.”

  “All I’m sayin’ is I never seen him do the deed. Neither did Kathleen, when you come right down to it. And like I told you last night, there was some boyos in the house across the way who seen somebody tearin’ out of that alley and down Purchase Street before Kathleen screamed, so you might well be jumpin’ to—”

  “Someone was seen running away?” Nell turned to face Cook. “What else haven’t you told me?”

  The detective cast his weary gaze to the ceiling. “They were hooched-up on homemade bark juice, those fellas. Within minutes, just about everyone in this entire place had up and run off, so who knows what they really saw, or when?”

  “Want to know what I think?” Flynn asked.

  Cook said “No” as Nell said “Yes.”

  Flynn scowled, his nostrils flaring. “I think nothin’s been right in my house since that Roy Noonan started comin’ here. When them others run out of money to gamble with, they borrow it from him, and they’re too ignorant—or desperate—to ask how much it’s gonna end up costin’ ‘em. If they’re slow in payin’, he gives ‘em a taste of those big fists of his, and promises worse.”

  “I think I saw a bit of his handiwork in there,” Cook said.

  “On the one hand, they look up to him like he’s Lord God Almighty, but most of ‘em are scared of him, too—and if you ask me, they’re right to be. They say he killed a man aboard a whaler couple-few years ago and dumped the body overboard, and not a crewman willing to finger him for fear he’d be next. I ast him myself if it was true, and he just grinned at me in that dead-eyed way of his.”

  “If you hate him so much,” Cook asked, “how come you let him stay here?”

  “The one time I tried to tell him we was full up and I couldn’t rent him a bed, he whips out a knife like you use to gut fish and starts diggin’ under his fingernails. He asks me am I sure about that? What am I supposed to say then?”

  “Did Ernest Tulley owe Noonan money?” Nell asked.

  “Seems to me I heard he did,” Flynn said as he knelt down to tie off the sack. “Heard he owed him quite a bit, and when Noonan demanded payment, Tulley just laughed at him. Noonan don’t like being laughed at.”

  “What are you implying?” Nell asked.

  Flynn raised his gaze to her. “You seem like a smart lass. You figure it out. And when you do, maybe you’d like to share it with the good detective here.”

  Cook shoved his bowler on with a little too much force. “Good news for you, Mr. Flynn. I’ve had about all I can stand of this place for the time being. I don’t relish having to go back empty-handed to my captain, but I did warn him it was pointless, sending me here. If you come up with any more fascinating theories, write them down and send them to Miss Chapel, care of Station Two—assuming you can write.”

  Flynn grunted something under his breath as he stood.

  Nell was halfway down the aisle when she turned and said, “One thing I was wondering, Mr. Flynn. How did your daughter get that black eye?”

  Hefting the bag over his shoulder, he said, “I’m thinkin’ it’s that dago she’s so sweet on.”

  Cook said, “You mean Castelli?”

  “Are they sweethearts?” Nell asked.

  “I know she meets him in here at night,” Flynn sneered. “I say he’s the one dealt her that shiner—they’re a hot-blooded race—but it’s no more’n she deserves for gettin’ mixed up with his kind. Prob’ly brought it on herself, anyway, headstrong as she is.”

  “Kathleen?” Nell thought about that childlike voice, those big eyes lingering on her hat and coat.

  “She don’t look it,” Flynn said, “but believe me, she can be as much of a bitch as my Flossie when she’s riled. One of these Saturday nights I should throw her in the pit with the rats. She’ll set a new record—see if she don’t.”

  o0o

  It was a good deal darker when Nell and Detective Cook left the boardinghouse than when they’d entered it, in part because it had stopped snowing. They stood under a street lamp, Cook’s hands stuffed in his pockets, his expression shadowed by the brim of the bowler. “I’ve held up my end of our bargain, Miss Sweeney. Now tell me about your conversation with William Hewitt.”

  “Was Ernest Tulley a heavy man, Detective?”

  He cocked his head, as if thrown by the non sequitur.

  She said, “Noonan called Tulley ‘that fat, miserable yellow jacket.’ Fat. I just wondered if he actually was.”

  “He was a stocky man, I’ll grant you that, but no more so than Noonan himself. They bore a certain resemblance, now that I think of it—both with that dark, shaggy hair and full beard—and that barrel chest. You might have thought they were brothers—twin brothers, even—except I understand Tulley had quite the Georgia drawl.”

  “Was he as tall as Noon
an?”

  “Taller—he was monstrous. Dressed shabby, like all the rest of ‘em.”

  “I’d like to see him, if I may.”

  “Ernest Tulley?” A disbelieving little huff of laughter escaped him. “You can’t be serious.”

  “He’s in some morgue, I would assume.”

  “You must be mad if you think I’d bring a lady into—”

  “I’m a sort of nurse.” Or was at one time, if one stretched the definition of “nurse.” “I’ve seen my share of dead men.” That much was true.

  “Nevertheless...”

  “And afterward you can ask me anything you want about my conversation with William Hewitt.”

  He regarded her sullenly, working that great jaw back and forth. “You’re really a very difficult woman, Miss Sweeney.”

  She smiled. “So you’ve said.”

  o0o

  Nell had seen dead men, many of them, but none in recent years, and never one who had succumbed to such savagery. Ernest Tulley’s throat had been carved open like meat. Pushing his beard aside, Nell counted seven haphazard slashes, some shallow, some deep and gaping. One had severed the carotid, hence the copious bleeding and a death that was almost certainly swift—blessedly so.

  Almost as hard to look upon as the dead man’s throat was his face. With his grayish skin, protruding tongue and wide, startled eyes, he resembled nothing so much as a gargoyle on some medieval cathedral.

  “Have you located his next of kin?” Nell asked.

  “I’ve got the boys working on it. I’d like to get some background on him, anyway. Oftentimes it turns out the seeds of a murder were planted long ago—they just need the right conditions to sprout.”

  Pointing to the slashed neck, Nell asked, “Does this look to you like the work of a surgeon, Detective?”

  “That wasn’t surgery, Miss Sweeney. It was a mindless attack by a man in the grip of opium intoxication.”

  “Yes, but still, one would think—”

  “Then one would be thinking too much—something that seems to be a bad habit of yours, if I may be so bold.”

  “Did you notice the blood on Dr. Hewitt’s shirt?” she persisted. “Those few little spatters? Given these wounds, and the violence with which this man bled out, the killer should have been saturated with it.”

  “He was wearing a long frock coat and vest. A tie, too. Most of the blood would have ended up on them.”

  “He didn’t have them in his cell.” Otherwise he wouldn’t have had to wrap himself up in that blanket when he started shivering. “Were they put aside as evidence?”

  “Should have been, but the boys don’t always see to the details like they should. Things tend to get a little confusing when a fella gets arrested for murder. Stuff gets misplaced. There’s no question Hewitt had blood on him, though. His hands were red up to the wrists.”

  Nell closed her eyes, remembering the dried blood encrusting William Hewitt’s shirt cuffs. She filled her lungs with chilled air tainted with death and carbolic, let it out.

  “Seen enough?” asked Detective Cook from behind her.

  “Almost.” Had Tulley been ambushed and dispatched before he realized what was happening, or had he struggled with his attacker? She eased the sheet down to expose the huge man’s burly crossed arms. “He tried to ward off the blade,” she told Cook, pointing to the lacerations on his wrists and hands where he’d raised his arms or made grabs for the weapon; indeed, the little finger of his right hand was nearly chopped off.

  “Where did you learn about defensive wounds?” Cook asked. “From some book?”

  From witnessing knife fights, actually, and patching up the survivors, but she could hardly tell him that. “From a book, yes. There was a whole chapter on it.”

  “Are you done now?” he asked.

  Nell whipped the sheet back over the dead man. How I wish I were.

  o0o

  “So, what did you and William Hewitt talk about this afternoon?” Cook asked when they were outside on the street again, breathing in the clean night air.

  She scoured her mind for something innocuous, something he couldn’t use to help build a case for the prosecution. “He’s estranged from his parents.”

  “I think I already guessed that.” The detective blew on his ungloved hands and rubbed them together.

  “He doesn’t want an attorney.”

  “Which he made abundantly clear last night.”

  “He did say he doesn’t consider himself a surgeon anymore.”

  Cook shoved his hands impatiently in his coat pockets. “Did he say anything about Tulley? Give any hint why he done it?”

  “He never admitted having done it. I imagine he knows that the burden of proof rests with the commonwealth. He is innocent until proven guilty, regardless of your own prejudices.”

  Cook studied her in the dark. “Where on earth did August Hewitt find the likes of you, anyway?”

  “I’m the governess for a little girl they adopted.”

  The detective barked with laughter. “A governess! That’s perfect. The demure little Irish miss who knows just what to do and say. You know, you remind me of my wife, Miss Sweeney. Not in looks so much, though you’re almost as pretty as she is. No, it’s that whipcrack brain—” he thumped a finger on his own broad cranium “—that seems to know everything except when to back off.”

  “I hardly think—”

  “Back off, Miss Sweeney,” he said with quiet fervor. “Heed a word of warning from someone who’s been dealing with miscreants of all stripes for far too many years. William Hewitt may be well-born, and he may be educated and amusing and all the rest of it, but that don’t mean he didn’t rip Ernest Tulley’s throat open like a rabid dog last night. In fact, it’s often those young Brahmin princes who do the worst, ‘cause they’ve been raised to do as they please, and never mind the consequences. There’s always someone willing to clean up their messes.”

  Too true, Nell reflected, thinking of Harry, and so many others like him.

  “You think William Hewitt’s different somehow, but he’s just another rich young bounder who takes what he wants when he wants it—and what he wanted last night was opium, and plenty of it. Whether it was that alone that drove him to do what he done, or whether he’s a little bit gone in the head, or even if there’s some better reason on top of that, the fact remains that he’s a vicious man—a vicious and charming man. Take it from me, they’re by far the most dangerous kind.”

  “As I’m all too well aware,” she said sincerely. “Don’t worry, Detective. I’ve been exposed to that breed. I’m quite immune now.”

  “For your sake, I hope that’s true.”

  o0o

  Upon arriving home that evening, Nell headed straight for the Red Room to report the day’s events to Viola, only to pause outside the door when she heard Mrs. Mott’s voice from within.

  “As you know, Mrs. Hewitt, my duty is to the household rather than any one member of it. And when a situation arises that upsets the balance of the household, well, I see it as my duty to say something. Now, as regards the Sweeney girl...” To Mrs. Mott, Nell was “the Sweeney girl.” Mrs. Bouchard, of whom she also heartily disapproved, was “the Negress.” “You know my feelings on the matter. The girl is underbred for her position, and that causes enough problems right there, but to let her lark about like she does... Meaning no disrespect, ma’am, but it sets a poor example to the other servants.”

  Viola’s tone, when she spoke, was very quiet and even in that way that meant she was holding herself in check. Mrs. Mott was the third generation of her family to serve the Hewitts, and August wouldn’t hear of dismissing her despite her testy relationship with his wife. “Nell is not a servant.”

  “A matter of semantics, ma’am. She’s—”

  “And therefore not under your jurisdiction.”

  “Not officially, but—”

  “Will there be anything else, Mrs. Mott?”

  There came a strained pause
. “No, ma’am.”

  Nell stood right where she was until the door opened. Mrs. Mott’s parchment-pale face lost a bit more of its color when she encountered the subject of her little diatribe staring her in the face. Stepping aside to let her pass, Nell said, “Good evening, Mrs. Mott.”

  The housekeeper brushed past her and receded down the central hall, her footsteps utterly silent on the marble floor.

  Chapter 5

  “You here for William Touchette?” the pockmarked guard asked as Nell approached his desk at Station House Two the next morning. “You’re too late. Sorry.”

  “Too late?” Nell remembered how pale Dr. Hewitt had been when she’d left him yesterday, how shaky. “You don’t mean—”

  “He took sick after you left yesterday, real sick.”

  “Oh, God.” The floor felt as if it were shifting under her feet. She braced her free arm on the desk to steady herself, the other being burdened with the coat Viola Hewitt had sent for her son.

  “We got him out of here around dawn. If he’s fixing to go under, better he does it at the Charles Street Jail than here. Let them file the report.”

  Nell closed her eyes, weak with relief. He was alive—ailing, but alive. The first thing Viola had asked when Nell joined her in the Red Room yesterday evening was How is he? Is he all right?

  He’ll be fine, she’d hedged, loath to reveal the true extent of William’s condition. Viola was reeling emotionally; first the revelation that one of her two dead sons was actually alive, followed immediately by the news that he’d been arrested for murder. How much more could she take?

  Tell me everything, Viola had implored. Nell had told her as much as she dared, hating that her well-meaning prevarications put her in the same league with August Hewitt, who coddled her to a fault. She did tell Viola that her son had burned her letter, but not how badly he’d been pummeled, nor how ill he’d appeared toward the end. They talked for quite a long time; Viola was more forthcoming than Nell had ever known her to be. Are you all right? Viola had asked her as their conversation wound down. I’m asking a great deal of you, I know. Is it too much?