A bucket of ashes (17 page)

“That’s the first time I’ve seen you exhibit any pain,” Nell said.

“I’m due for more of that.” He cocked his head toward the morphine. Nell was familiar enough with the drug, from her nursing experience and Will’s use of it, to know that doses low enough to keep one alert and functioning could dull the pain but not eliminate it. She realized Will’s arm must hurt constantly, especially when he used it in a normal fashion, but he’d been stiffening his backbone and carrying on as if nothing were amiss. Nell didn’t know whether to find that admirable or idiotic.

“What I want to know,” Cyril said, raising his voice to be heard from the kitchen, “is how you could have allowed the infection to progress to the point of necrosis. You’re a physician. You must have known what was happening.”

Approaching only as far as the kitchen doorway, Will said, with a disgusted sigh, “It was that bloody mail packet. It was a floating cesspool. I’d brought along a bottle of carbolic for cleaning and dressing the wound, but it fell and broke during rough seas our second day out. I was left with nothing but morphine for the pain and seawater as an antiseptic. It does help a little—that’s why I go out in the bay every evening to soak the arm, that and because it’s soothing—but it’s a poor substitute for carbolic. The arm was a curséd mess by the time I disembarked in Boston.”

“Nell, do you think you could put a pot of water on to boil?” Cyril asked as he washed his hands at the sink. “The biggest one you can find. And see if there are any Epsom salts in the cupboard. Oh, and we could use some clean napkins or towels or the like.”

Will stepped aside for Nell, who started pulling out drawers, amused that Cyril had reverted so automatically to their old doctor-nurse relationship.

Producing a roll of gauzy bandaging from his medical bag, Cyril said to Will, “I assume you
have
been using carbolic since you got back.”

“Of course, full strength. But—”

“
Full strength?
That stuff is corrosive at full strength. It can even be toxic.”

“It did cause some burning of the surrounding tissues, but I felt that was better than losing the arm altogether. I’m beginning to think it’s not quite the magic wand Lister claims, though, because it doesn’t seem to have much good.”

“The infection must be so deep-seated at this point that the carbolic just isn’t reaching all of it. And, too, pure carbolic can actually impede the healing process. Ah, just the thing,” Cyril said as Nell handed him the box of Epsom salts she’d found under the sink.

 “Surely you’re not proposing that I use
that
in place of the carbolic.”

“You’re to use it in place of the seawater. Make a strong, hot solution of it three times a day and soak your arm for an hour at a time. This,” he said, holding up a little jar of crystalline powder, “is your substitute for the carbolic.”

Coming closer so that he could read the label, Will said dubiously, “Lunar caustic? You’re going to cure me with
silver
?”

“Silver nitrate, “ Cyril said. “About a year ago, I came across an article about the inability of aspergillus niger to grow in silver vessels. I recalled our cook, when I was young, dropping silver coins into a jug of milk to keep it fresh when it couldn’t be kept in the icebox. So I started using a solution of silver nitrate on open wounds, and so far I haven’t seen a single one go bad.”

“Will these do?” asked Nell, setting a stack of tea towels on the table.

“Quite nicely. If you wouldn’t mind washing your hands, I could use your assistance.” To Will he said, “Our first priority is gaining access to the deeper infection, and to do that, I’m going to have to lance the wound where necessary, clean it out, and cut away the necrotic tissue. After that, we’ll soak it in the Epsom solution, then pack it with gauze soaked in silver nitrate. The silver will leave an indelible black stain on the wound and surrounding flesh, but over time, as new skin grows in to replace the old, it will disappear.”

He untied a leather roll and whipped it open on the table with a steely clatter, revealing a gleaming array of scalpels, bistouries, lancets, forceps, and scissors.

Will regarded the instruments in silence for a weighty moment. He looked oddly young and vulnerable in that untucked shirt and dangling suspenders, his hair drying in wavy tendrils over his forehead.

Cyril pulled a chair out from the table and gestured to it.

With a capitulatory sigh, Will took a seat and rolled up his right sleeve.

Cyril retrieved a little brown vial and a hypodermic kit. Screwing a needle onto the brass syringe, he asked Will how much morphine he could tolerate without diminished respiration. “You’ll want your maximum safe dose for this.”

With a fleeting glance at Nell, Will said, “I’ll do without, thank you. “

“She already knows you’re a hero, old man. The president himself has vouched for you.” Shaking the brown vial, Cyril said, “How much?”

“Really, I’d much prefer to keep my wits about—”

“Will, please,” Nell quietly implored. “Don’t make me watch you suffer.”

 He looked from Nell to Cyril, then sat back, letting out a long, grudging sigh. “Thirty milligrams.”

Cyril prepared the solution and filled the syringe.

“I’ll do it,” said Will, reaching for it.

Before he’d even finished giving himself the injection, his eyes grew bleary, his body slumping bonelessly in the chair. He withdrew the needle and went to lay the syringe on the table, but it slipped from his hand and fell to the floor.

“Right, then,” said Cyril. “Let’s get to work.”

“Don’t see why not,” Chief Bryce told Nell and Will the next morning when they asked to see David Quinn, but as he led them upstairs to the second floor, he warned them that they wouldn’t find the prisoner very talkative. “He’s always been a real chaw-mouth, the kind that’ll yak a blue streak just to hear himself talk, but now he’s got this greenhorn public lawyer, Edwin Thursby, who’s making him keep his mouth shut. Kid’s with him right now, trying to hash out a defense. Quinn pled not guilty at his arraignment, claims he’s an innocent man, says he was out fishing while Susannah Cunningham was getting shot.”

“Alone?” Nell asked.

With a roll of the eyes, Bryce said, “They’re always alone.”

“Will?” Nell said as he paused at the top of the stairs to lean against the wall, eyes closed. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” he said, a claim belied by his waxy complexion, the rigid set of his jaw, the tremor in his hands.

“He sick?” Bryce asked.

“He’s not contagious,” Nell said as she stroked his shoulder. He was, in fact, suffering both from his throbbing arm and from morphine withdrawal, for he had adamantly refused, since last night, to take any more. Nell had assured him there was no shame in using it as an anesthetic, but there’d been no reasoning with him. She’d told him she was perfectly capable of driving to Falmouth alone, that he should stay put and rest; he wouldn’t hear of it. She knew he was trying to prove something to her, which only exacerbated the guilt she already felt for having kept him in the dark about the divorce petition and pregnancy.

It reassured her considerably, of course, to know that he’d been using the morphine not for inebriation, but for pain relief—this time. But would there be other times? Would there be more lapses into opium smoking, more trips to Shanghai, more gambling? As far as she knew, he still had no intention of returning to Harvard, nor of disclosing to Gracie that he was her father.

She wanted to tell him everything. She
ached
to tell him. But then what?

“If you don’t mind my asking,” said Bryce as he led them through a warren of corridors, “what do you expect to gain from talking to Quinn? If you’re hoping he’ll admit it was him that fired the fatal shot, and not your brother, I gotta tell you, you’re in for a disappointment. He’s been real tight-lipped. We haven’t been able to get a peep outa him.”

“I
would
like to exonerate my brother of murder, if only posthumously,” she said, “but I’d also like to find out if Quinn is responsible for his death.”

Bryce paused, frowning, with his hand on a doorknob. “Your brother burned to death.”

“We have reason to believe he may have taken a knife to the chest before the fire started,” she said. “We’ll have a better idea tomorrow if that’s actually what he died from. We’ve just come from the Town Hall. Our application to exhume my brother’s body has been approved. The exhumation will take place tomorrow morning, and Dr. Hewitt and Dr. Greaves will perform an autopsy in the afternoon.”

“He
had
an autopsy,” Bryce said.

“A
real
autopsy,” replied Will, speaking for the first time since he’d been introduced to the constable.

Bryce swung the door open with a smirk. “Suit yourself, but you ask me, it’s a waste of time and effort. Visitors!” he announced as he waved Nell and Will into the room ahead of him.

It was a small, windowless meeting room with a hulking constable standing guard over a table stacked with papers, at which sat two men. One was a pink-cheeked fellow in a high collar with well-oiled, crisply parted hair: the lawyer, Edwin Thursby.

The other man was slight and dark, a demonic elf with a sparse moustache and bulging eyes. He wore a black coat with drooping shoulders and a collarless shirt buttoned up to the throat. In one of his manacled hands he held a half-smoked cigarette. This was David Quinn.

Thursby rose to his feet with a quizzical expression as Nell entered the room. Quinn surveyed her up and down, his mouth parting to reveal a jumble of yellowish teeth.

“David.” The young attorney nudged his client, who kept his gaze fixed on Nell as he stood. Quinn slid his tongue over his teeth as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth.

“This here’s the stepsister of your dead pal,” Bryce told Quinn as he leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “She wants to know if it was you or Murphy that shot that lady, and if you stuck a knife in Murphy’s chest.”

So much for the subtle approach,
Nell thought.

Apparently dissatisfied with that dismal excuse for an introduction, Will said, “The lady is Miss Cornelia Sweeney. I am Dr. William Hewitt. You will put that out, Mr. Quinn.”

Thursby, belatedly registering the breach of etiquette, plucked the offending cigarette from his client’s hand and stubbed it out in a yellow soup plate overflowing with butts, earning him a poisonous glare from Quinn.

Bowing to Nell, the young lawyer said, “I’m sincerely sorry for your loss, Miss Sweeney, however I’m sure you can understand that I can’t allow my client to engage in a conversation of this nature. I must therefore ask you and Dr. Hewitt to—”

“Allow?”
Quinn spun on Thursby with eye-popping indignation. “You’re my mouthpiece, Thursby, not my ma. You don’t tell me what to do. You got that?”

Seating himself as he tugged Quinn down onto his chair, Thursby leaned in close and said, in a low voice, “I’m your attorney, David. I’m here to guide and represent you. Given the circumstances of this case, it just isn’t smart to be talking to—”

“You sayin’ I’m stupid?” Quinn was quivering all over, as if he were on the verge of detonation. “You sayin’ I’m some jughead that needs to be told what he can do and what he can’t?”

“No, of course not. But—”

“I’m the boss. You work for
me
.” Quinn stabbed his thumbs into his chest. “And if I wanna talk to the lady, I’m gonna talk to the lady. You got it?”

Thursby turned away with a resigned sigh.

Quinn turned his greasy grin on Nell and gestured with his bound hands toward the chair opposite his. “Miss, uh, Sweeney, is it?”

“For the record,” said Thursby as Nell and Will seated themselves, “Mr. Quinn could not have shot Mrs. Cunningham, as he was fishing in Eel Pond at the time. And as for your brother, it is my understanding he died of—”

“I never known Jim had a stepsister,” Quinn said in his odd, nasal voice as he lounged back in his chair, his gaze crawling over Nell. “‘Specially such a tasty little bit of—”

“Be careful, Quinn,” Will said in a low, even voice. “I’ve never taken my fists to someone in manacles, but I find myself in the mood to break with tradition this morning.”

“Dr. Hewitt,” Thursby said, “if you’re going to threaten my client, I shall have to ask you to leave. This situation is trying enough for Mr. Quinn. He’s an innocent man who’s being persecuted simply because he was acquainted with James Murphy. The assumption that he was Mr. Murphy’s partner in this heinous crime has arisen from guilt by association.”

Will said, “Yes, well, according to Claire Gil—”

“Dear me, I had no idea,” Nell interrupted, shooting a glance in Will’s direction. Pitching her voice high and soft, she said to Quinn, “You’re going through all this just because you and my brother were friends? That’s dreadful! If Jamie were alive, I know he’d have something to say about that.”

“Yeah, I reckon he would, at that,” Quinn said.

Sitting forward with a conspiratorial little smile, Nell said, “You know, Mr. Quinn, I really wouldn’t mind it one little bit if you smoked. I don’t think it’s rude at all. In fact, I’ve always found cigarettes rather dashing. Some people think they’re low-class, but I think they impart a certain... virile sophistication.”