Murder in a mill town (5 page)

Ruth nudged Cora with her shoulder and said in a low voice, “Don’t be askin’ her about Bridie and Mr. Harry.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot.”

Nell must have looked confused, because Otis grinned and said, “Evie’s sweet on Mr. Harry, has been ever since she was this high. Ain’t that right, Evie?”

“Leave her be,” Ruth said, while Evie tightened her arms around her legs and looked away.

“Yeah, you leave her be,” Luther echoed, his neck reddening.

“Aw, come on, Evie knows the score,” Otis said as he set about rolling another cigarette. “Mr. Harry, he don’t want nothin’ to do with her. All’s he wants is a Bridie Sullivan, or one of them others, to lift her skirts for him up in that fancy office of his.”

“Others?” Nell asked.

“Bridie ain’t hardly the only one,” Otis said. “There’s always at least half a dozen of the girls at his beck and call. ‘Harry’s Harem,’ we call ‘em. He’s got a window on his office door with some of those what do you call ‘em...Venetian blinds on it. Whenever the blinds are drawn, you can bet everybody knows just what’s goin’ on in there.”

“Bridie’s the main one, though,” Mary said. “Or was. You shoulda seen him when she was around. Couldn’t take his eyes off her. It’s like she’d put a spell on him.”

Ruth said, “Evie, don’t listen to them. They don’t know what they’re talkin’ about.”

Otis made a sound of disgust. “You ain’t doin’ Evie no favor, tellin’ her that. For cryin’ out loud. Harry Hewitt ain’t lookin’ for no mill girl to fall in love with and take home to Mama, ‘specially some mousy little hayseed like—”

“You shut your mouth,” Luther demanded. “Just shut your mouth.”

“I ain’t sayin’ nothing Evie don’t already know,” Otis said. “Why don’t you tell your sister not to get all moony over a rich pretty boy that ain’t never gonna look twice at the likes of her? Here she is, all wrung out over Mr. Harry and eaten up with jealousy over Bridie Sullivan, when—”

“Evie!” Luther called out as his sister bolted up and raced off into the woods. Rising to his feet, his face blood-flushed now, he turned to face Otis. “You made Evie feel bad.”

“Luther,” Cora said quickly, “go after your sister. Go on,” she urged, pointing to the woods.

Luther hesitated, looming over Otis with his big hands contracting into fists as if of their own accord. Still grinning, Otis struck a match and lit his cigarette, but his hands, Nell noticed, were just ever so slightly unsteady.

“Evie needs you, Luther,” Cora urged. “She might be crying.”

Luther looked toward the woods, then back at Otis, his jaw set, rage sparking in his eyes. When he turned and ran off after his sister, everyone, Nell included, slumped in relief.

“That Luther, he’s like a big kid most of the time,” Ruth told Nell. “But when he gets riled, he don’t know his own strength. He beat a man bloody last year—almost killed him—for talkin’ lewd to Evie.”

“Otis,” Cora said, “what were you thinking, baiting him that way?”

“Me and him are friends,” Otis said through a stream of smoke. “He’d never hurt me.”

“Don’t you be so sure,” Ruth muttered.

“You done with that pitcher yet?” Mary asked Nell. “I’m achin’ all over from holding myself so still.”

“Just about,” Nell said as she added some unnecessary shading. “You know, something doesn’t make sense here. If Bridie was...well, if she and Mr. Harry were...you know...then why did he fire her?”

“Seems he didn’t like to share,” Otis said, to appreciative laughter from the mill girls.

“He found out about Virgil, then?” Nell asked.

Otis nodded as he drew on his cigarette. “Happened last Friday, when they rung the evening bell at six-thirty. Mr. Harry, he’s standing out in the courtyard, talkin’ to some fella. These ones—” he indicated his female companions “—they’re all whispering and giggling, on account of this fella’s looks. I swear, I thought they was gonna swoon dead away. They can’t resist a fella that dresses like he’s got a few shiners in his pocket.”

The girls exchanged dreamy smiles and little moans of yearning.

“It wasn’t his clothes, you bonehead,” Cora said. “That fella had a face like on one of those Roman statues, and you’re just jealous ‘cause girls don’t look at you that way.”

Pointedly ignoring her, Otis said, “So, the bell rings, and everybody come pourin’ outa the wool building, as usual. That Virgil, he was waiting for Bridie to get off work, only always before he kind of hung back where he wouldn’t attract too much notice. That evening he was waiting right up by the front door.”

“Was he often waiting for her when her shift ended?” Nell asked.

“Three, four times a week,” Otis said, “but always on Friday and Saturday. I don’t know what they did on Fridays, but—”

“Don’t you?” Ruth snorted with laughter; her friends followed suit.

“On Saturdays they left town,” Otis said. “I was talkin’ to one of the other spinners a few weeks ago—fella name of Nate. Nate had finally worked up the nerve to ask Bridie to go walkin’ with him after work one Saturday, only to have her tell him she couldn’t, on account of her fella was meetin’ her to take her to the White House.”

Nell frowned, wondering if she’d heard right.

“Not
the
White House,” Otis said. “That’s just what she called it—maybe ‘cause it’s white, I don’t know. She said it was an old farm nobody worked no more, but the farmhouse was still there, and that’s where her and Virgil went to be alone.”

 “So he was waiting right up by the front door that Friday evening...” Nell prompted.

“Right, and soon as he sees Bridie, he grabs her kisses her—but good—with everybody standing around watching, including Mr. Harry. You should of seen him. Hoppin’ mad, you could tell, but holding it in till he went all purple-like.”

“Why do you suppose he was so upset?” Nell asked. “I mean, it’s not as if they were real sweethearts or anything. From what you say, he had plenty of other girls willing to...give him what he wanted.”

“I know, it don’t make a whole lot of sense,” Ruth said. “But I’ll tell you what, he was fit to be tied. Went stormin’ back inside. Bridie and Virgil took off, but then a few minutes later, us all are headin’ back here for a smoke, when we hear her voice. Her and Virgil are havin’ a little set-to in the woods there. She was mad as a wet cat that he went and kissed her like that, in front of Mr. Harry.”

“She mentioned Mr. Harry by name?” Nell asked.

Otis grinned. “Yeah, seems he knew about Mr. Harry, but Mr. Harry didn’t know about him.”

“Until that kiss,” Mary said. “Bridie was all het up over it, tellin’ Virgil he went and ruined everything. Said, ‘We won’t get so much as a nickel five-cent piece out of him now.’”

Nell looked up from her sketchbook. “She said that? Are you sure?”

“Oh, yeah.” Otis flung his cigarette butt into the stream. “She musta decided she wanted more than just trinkets outa him. Mostly what we heard from Virgil was just him tryin’ to shush her. He talked some, but we couldn’t make it out real good. Didn’t have no trouble hearin’
her
, though. Them Irish girls, they can get riled up good.”

“Was Evie with you?” Nell asked.

“Yep.”

“When did Bridie get fired?”

“Next day,” Ruth said. “Saturday. We was waitin’ on the dinner bell, so it was near to noon. That flunky of Mr. Harry’s—Carlisle—he come down to fetch Bridie upstairs. She struts off with that
smile
of hers, like she’s somethin’ special ‘cause she spreads her legs for the likes of him. I seen her take her rouge pot outa her apron pocket as she heads into the stairwell. Ten minutes later, she’s back, red as a beet, with her eyes all swollen. Me and Evie, we asked her what happened, but she wouldn’t even look at us. Never said a word, just took off her apron and grabbed her shawl out of her cubby and left. That was the last I seen of her.”

Mary squirmed, rubbed her arm. “You done yet?”

From the direction of the mill came the pealing of the bell summoning them back from their dinner break.

“Yes, I suppose I am,” Nell said.

“Ready to go back, then?” asked Brady from the driver’s seat of the Hewitt’s glossy black brougham as Nell approached, buttoning on her gloves.

“Not quite. I need to speak to Mr. Harry before I go.”

“Take your time, miss,” he said in his raspy brogue. “I’m not mindin’ all this heavenly sunshine, I’ll tell you that.” A jovial Irishman of middle years, Brady was one of the few Hewitt retainers with whom Nell enjoyed genuinely cordial relations.

“The thing of it is...I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind coming upstairs with me.”

“To see Mr. Harry?” he asked in a tone of puzzled amusement.

“Yes.”

Brady’s smile dissolved as he got it: Nell didn’t want to be alone with Harry Hewitt. He didn’t ask why, to Nell’s relief. She liked Brady. She didn’t want to have to concoct some specious rationale for dragging him along, but she would, rather than tell him the truth. Viola Hewitt had already lost one son to Andersonville and another to the lulling embrace of Morphia. It would kill her if she were to find out what had transpired between Harry and Nell last May—to be forced to confront the beast lurking beneath her son’s urbane façade.

*   *   *

Harry Hewitt met Nell’s eyes through the glass-paned door of his opulent, sun-washed office as she waited with Brady in his secretary’s anteroom.

His burnished gold hair oiled just enough to impart the perfect patrician sheen, Harry sat perched with a cigar and a glass of whiskey on a corner of his marble-topped desk. He was nattily attired as always, in a slate-colored morning coat and paisley cravat, which he wore drawn through a signet ring so that it hung straight down his chest, rather than bow-tied—a fashion introduced by the eccentrically elegant Mr. Dickens during his reading tour last year and emulated by no one in Boston, to Nell’s knowledge, aside from Harry. He was groomed to a high polish, the only flaw in his appearance being a small scar on his left eyelid—its provenance known only to Harry and Nell—which caused that lid to droop ever so slightly.

On a coat tree in the corner there hung a cashmere overcoat, one of those awful new homburg hats, a silver-handled walking stick, and a long, pearl gray gentleman’s scarf of heavy silk twill embroidered with Harry’s distinctive, vine-framed double-H monogram. About a dozen others, in a rainbow of hues, were hung on pegs on the wall. Harry’s scarves had become, along with his unique vests and cravats, something of a sartorial signature. In Boston, one said “Harry Hewitt” the way the rest of the world said “Beau Brummel.”

Harry’s secretary, the balding and bespectacled Carlisle, was announcing Nell’s request for an audience and holding out Viola’s folded letter with
To Whom it may Concern
written on the front in the violet ink of which she was so fond. Harry barely glanced at the letter. His gaze shifted from Nell to Brady, and back again. A corner of his mouth quirked knowingly. Too late, Nell realized her mistake in bringing along a protector. She’d learned long ago not to let dangerous men sense her fear, but such hard-won wisdom was difficult to retain, given how tame and privileged her life had become.

Carlisle continued to offer the letter, but Harry made no move to take it. He raised his glass to Nell, his eyes hard, his smile grim, and tossed back its contents in one gulp, then shook his head to Carlisle and waved him away.

“I’m sorry, miss,” said Carlisle when he rejoined them, “but Mr. Hewitt is terribly busy this afternoon, so I’m afraid he won’t be able to—”

“Tell him I’ll catch up with him sooner or later.” Nell snatched the letter from his hand and left.

*   *   *

“Home now, miss?” Brady asked as he handed Nell into the big black brougham.

She settled into the front-facing seat, arranging the folds of her skirts, feeling the contours of the two letters in her pocket: Viola’s and Duncan’s.

“Miss?”

“Yes. Home.”

He shut the door, climbed up into his seat, lifted the reins.

“No,” she said through the open window.

“Miss?”

She drew in a breath, let it out slowly. “Take me to the state prison, please.”

There came a moment’s disbelieving silence. “The state—”

“It’s about a mile that way, I believe.” She pointed down the road.

“Whatever you say, miss.” He snapped the reins.

Nell reached into her pocket, pulled out Duncan’s letter, unfolded it. The paper was coarse, cheap, brownish, the penmanship immature but painstakingly inked, with no cross-outs and surprisingly few misspellings—remarkable, considering that he’d had almost no formal schooling as a child, and could barely write his name when she’d known him. Nell suspected that this letter, like the seven others he’d sent her over the past four months, had been copied and perhaps re-copied in an effort to get it just right.

Sept. 2nd 1868, Charlestown Prison

My Darling Girl (for I will never stop thinking of you that way),