by P. B. Ryan
Nell felt suddenly starved for air, as if her stays were tightening all on their own. The bathroom walls seemed to sway inward, upsetting her balance. She reached out for something to hold onto and felt his arms catch her up. “Easy, now.”
Will walked her down the hall and through a door as her skull crawled with cold and her lungs heaved, every breath a labor. Divesting her swiftly of her coat and hat, he said, “Lie down.”
Through her graying vision, she saw that it was an unmade bed—his bed, judging from the tray of opium paraphernalia on the far side. The little horn box, she saw, was nearly empty again.
“No,” she said, even as the room spun on its axis and her feet lifted off the floor. Her head nestled into something dreamily soft that smelled like Bay Rum—a down pillow—and she closed her eyes, just for a moment, until the world righted itself.
o0o
Nell blinked as she came to in Will’s bed, lying curled on her side with a quilt drawn up over her shoulders. She felt much more herself; if nothing else, she could take a full breath again. The light through the curtains had that buttery, late-afternoon richness to it, so she knew some time had passed. She smelled a whisper of cigarette smoke, heard the squeak of a chair behind her.
“Are you awake?” he asked softly.
Nell rolled onto her back, crinoline rustling beneath the quilt, and turned her head to find him in a Windsor chair on the other side of the bed, leaning his elbows on his knees.
“How are you feeling?” He set his cigarette in an alabaster ashtray and rose to sit next to her on the bed.
“Fine.” She tried to sit up, but it made her head swim.
“Yes, well...” Easing her back down, he said, “Best to give it a bit longer.”
Nell nodded, her eyes drifting shut. She sensed him reaching toward the ashtray; the cigarette crackled as he drew on it.
When she reopened her eyes—it felt as if only a few minutes had passed, but it might have been longer—she found he’d shifted on the edge of the bed to look at her. She held his gaze until he said, “They came for Robbie just before sunset. They chose him—really it was Tulley who chose him—because he was missing that arm. It made him an easier target.”
No, don’t tell me, she wanted to say. I don’t want to hear it. But they’d come too far for that. He was, at long last, offering the truth. He’d lived it; the least she could do was listen.
“I tried to fight them off,” Will said, “but there were too many of them, and I didn’t have much strength left at that point. I screamed at them to take me instead. Tulley just laughed. He said, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s your brother, ain’t he? All right, then, we’ll let you watch.’”
In her mind’s eye, Nell saw those photographs from Harper’s Weekly, the sea of emaciated men, the pine log stockade, the surrounding woods.
Will said, “They tied my hands behind me and forced us at gunpoint into a clearing in the woods. I was still trying to convince them to take me instead of Robbie, but Tulley couldn’t be swayed. His lackeys got tired of holding me back, so he shot me in the leg to disable me. They told Robbie to run, and then they set the bloodhounds on him. He wasn’t used to running with only one arm, so he didn’t get very far. It was all over rather quickly. They dragged him back to the clearing and shoved him onto his knees in front of me.”
Nell realized she’d curled up into a tight ball, her arms wrapped around her.
“Tulley had a big brass-framed Reb version of a forty-four Remington. He put it to Robbie’s head and cocked the hammer. He asked me if I still wanted to take my brother’s place—if so, I had three seconds to speak up. Robbie said, ‘Don’t you dare. I couldn’t live with it.’ I figured he’d have to, like it or not, but just as I opened my mouth, Tulley said, ‘Time’s up,’ and he pulled the trigger. The top of Robbie’s head disappeared before he hit the ground.”
Nell squeezed her eyes shut, crossed herself.
“You know the rest,” Will said. “I removed the bullet from my leg that night, and the next day, when the storm came, I saw my chance and got out of there. Then, a couple of weeks ago, while I was buying gong from Seamus Flynn, who should walk past the parlor door but Ernest Tulley. I recognized him instantly, even without his Confederate uniform. It was like a kick in the stomach—I could hardly breathe. I followed him up to the third floor with no idea where he was going, or why. When I opened that door and saw what he was up to with Flynn’s daughter...” Will shook his head. “It was clear he hadn’t changed.”
“No wonder you were so enraged.” But could his rage have turned murderous four hours later, especially in light of all the opium he’d smoked that night?
As if he’d read her mind, Will said, “I can be relatively alert between bowls, as you’ve observed.”
“Alert enough to...” Nell shuddered as she recalled Patrolman Hooper’s account. You should have seen his eyes. They were like a wild animal’s, and his face was spattered with blood.
He looked down, clawed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what to tell you, Miss Sweeney. I was...” He seemed to be groping for words. “I’d been thinking about Robbie all evening, remembering. Christ, I’ve done nothing but remember for the past three and a half years, remember and wonder why I wasn’t just a little quicker in speaking up, why I let him die like that. I can’t go to sleep at night without finding myself in that bloody clearing in the woods, seeing Robbie’s eyes when the bullet fired. So when I saw Tulley return, I suppose I...went a bit mad. I mean, obviously I did, to have...” He shook his head. “Christ.”
“Talking to yourself now, Will?”
Nell and Will both turned as Jack entered the room, his smile dimming as he took in the two of them. Will’s hair was as mussed as before, his shirt half-unbuttoned, braces undone; she was still lying next to him on the bed, wrapped up in the quilt.
Jack stared at her—at both of them. “Oh. I...I’m sorry,” he stammered, backing out of the room. “I’ll just be—”
“Stay,” Will said as he rose and circled the bed. “It’s a conversation you’re interrupting, counselor, not a tryst. Miss Sweeney fainted. That’s why she’s lying down.”
Nell was about to protest that she never fainted, when she realized that any alternative explanation was bound to raise untoward questions.
“You fainted?” Jack asked, crossing to her. “Are you ill?”
“Not at all.” She sat up, the quilt slipping off her shoulders, her chignon uncoiling down her back as the pins slipped out. “I’m fine. I just...”
Jack was gaping at her.
She looked down at herself, only to find her dress and corset cover unbuttoned and the steel busk that secured the front of her stays completely unhooked, revealing the linen chemise beneath. She gasped, tugging her garments closed, and shot Will a look of outrage.
“You couldn’t breathe,” he said. “I am a physician.”
“When it suits you.” Turning her back on them to sit on the edge of the bed, she snatched off her gloves and set about refastening her clothes.
“She’s not ill,” Will said. “She just had a bit of a shock.”
“What...what kind of—”
“I admitted to her that I killed Ernest Tulley. I plan to make a full confession to the authorities and put an end to all this ridiculous—”
“What? No.”
Nell glanced over her shoulder as she fumbled with her busk to find Jack looking utterly stricken.
“No, Will,” he repeated.
“I’m afraid so, Jack.”
“Will...”
“They’ve got me, Jack. New evidence has come to light regarding my motive for—”
“No! This is insanity. You can’t—”
“Let’s step outside and give Miss Sweeney a little privacy, shall we?” Will suggested, guiding his friend toward the door. “I’ll explain what’s happened.”
o0o
Nell found them downstairs in the library, Will lazing back in one of a pair of leather ar
mchairs flanking the hearth, Jack hunched over in another, one hand cradling his forehead, the other wrapped around a glass of whiskey. Both men rose when she entered the room, properly attired once more, complete with gloves.
“Ah, Miss Sweeney. All buttoned up now, are we?” Will took her hat and coat out of her hands and pulled a big velvet-upholstered wing chair over to the fire for her to sit on, prompting an expression of dismay from Jack. “Something wrong, old man?”
“It’s nothing, just...” Sheepishly Jack said, “It’s Mother. She likes the furniture to stay where she’s arranged it. I can move it back later.”
Will arched a bemused eyebrow for Nell’s benefit as Jack paced away from them, drink in hand.
“What I’m trying to tell you, Will,” Jack said, “is that you don’t have to hang. There’s no reason it should come to that.”
“A drink, Miss Sweeney?” Will gestured toward a cabinet set out with decanters and glasses. “Sherry? Port?”
“No, thank you.”
Will lowered himself back into his chair, crossed his legs and brushed some dust off his trousers. “A murder’s been committed, counselor. People like to see someone hang when that happens.”
Turning, hands on hips, Jack said, “Will, listen to me. I’m a lawyer. I’m your lawyer...”
“And you don’t like to lose. I realize that, but—”
“It’s not about losing!” Jack crossed to Will in a few long steps, reddening. “Christ, Will, you know it isn’t.”
“I know what it’s about, Jack,” Will said. “And I know what I have to do. I’ve played my hand and lost. I chose to play it, knowing the risks.”
“Yes. Fine. I understand that, but there’s no reason you should hang when we can still establish a reasonable doubt as to your guilt.”
Will flipped open a cigarette tin labeled Sphinx. “How the devil do you propose to do that?”
“By presenting evidence that someone else may have been responsible. Whereas it’s true you had the motive and weapon—”
“Not to mention having been caught in the act,” Will said as he struck a match.
“Flynn’s not a credible witness,” Jack said. “I could eviscerate him on the stand, and the prosecutor will know it.”
Nell said, “Yes, but the patrolman who was first on the scene says he saw Will...choking Tulley.”
Jack stared at Will in stunned disbelief. “Jesus, Will. Why in God’s name would you...”
“Why would I have done any of it?” Will asked on a stream of fragrant smoke as he shook out the match. “I never did want to have to think up answers for all these absurd questions. Everyone wants answers that makes sense, but there are no answers that make sense. Bloody hell... Is this what the trial’s going to be like?”
“With any luck,” Jack said, “there won’t be a trial— assuming I can cast enough suspicion on someone else. No matter how good a case they’ve got against you, they’ll have to drop it if I can make it seem just as likely that another man committed the murder.”
“Whom do you plan to sacrifice,” Will asked with a mild smile, “so that a reprobate like me can walk free?”
“We don’t have to get this other person convicted,” Jack said. “I just have to show that he was equally likely to have killed Ernest Tulley.” To Nell he said, “I’m thinking about Roy Noonan.”
“But Noonan’s ledger proves that Tulley didn’t owe him any money,” Nell said.
“Perhaps not all of his debtors are listed in the ledger. Perhaps he keeps a second ledger. If I offer up enough witnesses willing to swear that Tulley owed Noonan money, that’s bound to carry some weight.”
“What if it carries too much?” Will asked, tapping his cigarette ash into an exquisite Japanese bowl. “What if they try him, and he ends up being convicted?”
“Have you met the man?” Jack asked, taking a drink. “I wouldn’t trouble my conscience too much on his account.”
Will shook his head. “If it came to it, I couldn’t allow it. I’d have to confess.”
“It doesn’t have to be Noonan,” Nell said. “There was the other man in the back parlor. Who’s to say he wasn’t the killer? We can argue that he was the man the neighbors saw running away that night.”
“Absolutely not,” Will said. “I won’t have an uninvolved man dragged into this.”
“Those witnesses were drunk, in any event,” Jack said. “That will cast doubt on their testimony.”
“But we know he was there,” she said, sitting up as the idea took form in her mind. “At least two people besides Dr. Hewitt saw him, but he’s still completely anonymous. No one knows who he was, just that he was there that night—drinking heavily, I might add. We can make a case for him being the killer without exposing him to arrest, because no one knows his identity.”
“Yes, but what if they go looking for him?” Will asked. “As you say, two people saw him. He might very well be tracked down and identified.”
“That’s an acceptable risk,” Jack said.
Will shook his head resolutely. “Not to me. Suppose they find him?”
Jack drained his glass in one tilt. “Suppose they do? It’ll be his problem then. Better him than you.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“I wish you’d try to,” Jack said earnestly. “I want to help you, but you make it so blasted difficult.”
“Then stop trying so hard. Learn to accept the situation.”
“Accept your being hanged? Never! Even if I have to—”
“You’re to do nothing without my say-so, Jack, do you understand me?” Will demanded. “As my attorney, you can advise a course of action, but only I can authorize it. We’ve been all through this. I chose my path. I gambled and lost, and now I intend to take my losses like a man, without a lot of humiliating last-ditch efforts from you.” Including Nell in his gaze, he added, “From either of you.”
“Then I don’t suppose you’d be receptive to a plea of insanity,” she said.
“Oh, do spare me,” Will groaned, stabbing out his cigarette.
“You went through some terrible things during the war,” she said. “You wouldn’t be the only man who’s come back a bit...unhinged. And there’s the opium on top of that.”
“Not guilty by virtue of being an opium fiend?” Chuckling, Will stood and started rolling down his sleeves. “It might be worth mounting that defense just for the entertainment value of watching Jack try to argue the case.”
“I considered it, actually,” Jack said as he refilled his glass, rather generously, from a decanter of whiskey, “but it won’t work. Everyone was driven a little mad by the war, and as for the opium, that was voluntarily self-administered. And then there’s the fact that Will displays no overt symptoms of lunacy.”
“Murdering a man by stabbing and choking doesn’t count?” she asked incredulously.
“Not if it’s the only time he’s ever done such a thing. Even if I could get him declared non compos mentis, he wouldn’t be sent to some nice, progressive hospital like Massachusetts General, or the Friends Asylum. He’d spend the rest of his days in some ghastly public lunatic house, under lock and key.”
“I don’t have to tell you I’d rather be executed—even by hanging—than face that prospect,” Will said. “I do wish you two would just relax and stop trying to clean up a mess that shouldn’t be any of your concern. I know that’s just what I’m going to do.”
What a contrast, Nell thought, to Will’s brother Harry, who was more than happy to let others follow behind him with a mop and pail. He wouldn’t have any compunction about Jack pointing the finger at someone else, as long as he got to keep on whoring and drinking and losing at cards night after night.
“Lovely chatting with you two,” Will said as he levered himself out of the chair, “but if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make myself presentable, then head out in my nightly pursuit of riches and intoxication.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Nell said. “E
very policeman in the city will be watching for you, starting tonight. Detective Cook knows you’ve been violating your bail conditions. He means to catch you in the act—or at least have you picked up on a nuisance charge. It’s not safe for you out there.”
“What’s a nocturnal adventure without a bit of risk?” he asked as he crossed to the door.
“Fine,” she countered, “but don’t expect any Black Drop if you end up behind bars before your trial. That offer was only for after your conviction.”
Pausing in the doorway, he said, “You’ve got a streak of pure, cold-blooded venom in you, Miss Sweeney. I find that devastating in a woman.”
“If I were cold-blooded, would I be willing to supply you with opium at all, under any circumstances? You know how I feel about it.”
Suddenly thoughtful, he said, “Yes. I do.”
“Please don’t go out,” she implored. “I’ll be sick with worry.”
“Will you?” he asked. “I’d rather like that.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“She’s right, Will,” Jack said. “You’d be taking a foolish chance, leaving the house tonight. Stay here.”
“And what? Sit by the fire with my knitting?”
“Is that any worse than convulsing and hallucinating in some jail cell?” Nell asked.
He actually seemed to be thinking about it. “No, Miss Sweeney. Nothing is worse than that. You rescued me from that fate once, with bribes and paregoric, despite your misgivings. It would be ungentlemanly of me to ask it of you again—even on death row, regardless of your kind offer.”
“I wouldn’t let you go through opium withdrawal in a situation like that.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“But—”
“Tell you what,” Will said. “Just so neither of you has to fret on my account, I hereby promise to steer well clear of all gaming hells and hop joints tonight.”
“Or any night until your trial,” Nell amended.
“So sworn.”