Murder on Black Friday (14 page)

Harry took a long draw on the cigarette. “I don’t like people thinking he did away with himself.” He tapped his ash onto the ground; some of it fell onto his pristine white shin guard, but he didn’t seem aware of it. “What do you want to know?”

“I’m intrigued by his connection with the Bassett family,” Will said, “especially given that Noah Bassett was also found dead yesterday.”

“Yes? Well, he’d been ailing, hadn’t he?”

“It was suicide,” Will said. “There was no note, but he was ruined in the gold crash, so that would appear to provide a motive. What I’m most curious about is Munro’s relationship with Bassett’s daughters.”

“He was engaged to the one and amusing himself with the other,” Harry said matter-of-factly.

“Amusing himself?” Will asked. “Are you saying Miriam Bassett was Munro’s mistress?”

“God, no, he already had one of those. And a Brahmin princess like Marion, impoverished or no, would never stoop to being a mistress if she thought she could sugar-talk the fellow into marrying her.”

“But she already has a fiancée,” Will said. “He’s a minister, one of Martin’s professors at Harvard.”

“You don’t say. Well, perhaps she was just keeping the good reverend in reserve—a contingency plan in case she couldn’t manage to bring Phil around. Not that she had a prayer of doing that, of course. She was nothing to him but a sort of...diverting nuisance.”

“So, when you say Munro was ‘amusing himself’ with her, that means...?”

“Trying to crawl under her petticoats, and giving it quite the heroic effort, for all the good it did him. Other women, they’d tumble pretty fast for Phil, but Miriam wouldn’t give an inch. Normally he didn’t have a lot of patience for the lovesick prigs, used to flick them away and move on to likelier prospects. But he told me Miriam just refused to be gotten rid of, kept after him all summer, but with those legs locked in the closed position, which made her something of a challenge.”

“Kept after him?”

“Hounded him—that’s how Phil put it. Mostly it was little surprise visits in the evenings. Women did tend to go dotty over him, and they could become tiresome. In Miriam’s case, I suppose his reasoning was that if he couldn’t be rid of her, he may as well try to get his corn ground—so long as he could do so without any mawkish declarations or promises, of course.
He
was engaged, too, you know.”

Ah, yes, his unofficial betrothal to Becky Bassett. Had Catherine Munro actually believed what she’d said about her brother being too much of a gentleman to have carnal designs on his fiancée’s sister?
A love match it may not have been, but there are some lines one doesn’t cross.
 

“It didn’t give him pause,” Will asked, “trying to coldheartedly seduce his prospective sister-in-law?”

Harry grinned. “The willie doesn’t have much of a conscience, brother—and if ever there was a town bull, it was Phil Munro.” Almost reverently he added, “Most horn-mad fellow I ever knew.”

“Did he actually tell you all this, about Miriam?” Will asked.

Harry squinted into the smoke as he inhaled. “What he told me was that she was really getting to him, her holding out so stubbornly against all his smoothest maneuvers. He told me it wasn’t so much that he wanted her, although he did, desperately. He wanted her to want
him
—and to tell him as much. It wasn’t enough for her to just submit, not after all the waiting and all the effort he’d gone to. She had to ask for it—better yet, beg.”

“Will said, “Are you sure he wasn’t just telling you all this to enhance his reputation as a lothario?”

“I know she used to pay him those covert little nocturnal visits,” Harry said. “A few nights ago, I caught her slipping out the back door of his house. I was stopping by to see if Phil wanted to pay a visit to that swanky new jay house over on Bowdoin—Flora’s. You ever been there?”

“No.”

Harry snorted on a gust of cigarette smoke. “Wouldn’t admit it if you had, would you? Not in front of
her.
” He cocked his head toward Nell, whom he’d apparently tired of pretending to ignore. Now, it would appear, he was going to do his best to shock her.

“They’ve got the freshest meat in Boston at Flora’s,” Harry said, “sweetest little chickens you ever pegged. Phil and I used to pick out two and get a room with a nice, big bed and have us a little buff-ball. They know how to take it rough there, and they aren’t stingy with the absinthe, either.”

Will, obviously loath to chastise Harry lest he get up and walk away, merely closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. His ears, Nell noticed with some amusement, had turned a scalding purplish red.

For his part, Harry seemed to have put his anguish behind him, or nearly so. He’d always had an almost indecently resilient temperament; his tribulations tended to be short-lived.

“If it was nighttime,” Will asked, “how are you sure it was Miriam Bassett you saw?”

“There was a lamp in the kitchen window, so I got a pretty good look at her.” Harry sat back and crossed his legs. “I hid behind the coal shed while she crossed the kitchen yard. She kept looking ‘round to make sure no one saw her.”

“I take it she didn’t see you,” Will said.

“She wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t stepped out from behind the coal shed and tipped my hat to her,” Harry said with a snigger as he crushed the spent cigarette underfoot. “You should have seen her mouth drop open. She turned and fled like I was Frankenstein’s monster. I went in the house and up the service stairs, and when I get to the third floor landing, who do I see on her way down, but that sister of his.”

“Catherine?”

“She didn’t see me, ‘cause she’d turned to scream at Phil, who was still up in his office.”

“She was
screaming
at him?”

“Oh, she was fit to be tied—crying, wailing... ‘You can’t do this! It’s unspeakable!’”

“Can’t do what?” Will asked.

Harry shrugged. “Carry on with Miriam, I assume. My best guess is that she walked in on them and realized Phil was trying to seduce his fiancée’s sister. She’s a demon for propriety, you know, always worried about Phil fitting in with ‘the right sort.’”

“Was there any response from Phil to her outburst?”

“He came to the top of the stairs and saw me, which was when Catherine realized I was there. She started screaming at
me,
then—accused me of eavesdropping, called me all sorts of things. Phil very calmly told her to go to her room and take some of her medicine and lie down.” With a salacious grin, Harry said, “I should have lain down with her and given her some of the medicine she
really
needed. Those frustrated old maids, they’re aching for it, you know—they just don’t realize it. Turns them into raving bedlamites.”

Will caught Nell’s gaze. She rolled her eyes.

“I wasn’t sure Phil would be interested in a visit to Flora’s after that,” Harry said, “but he said he hadn’t gotten any in two days, so he was overdue for a poke. We had a damned fine time that night—
damned
fine.”

“This happened a few nights ago, you say?”

Harry nodded. “Wednesday, I believe.”

“So, in addition to his...amusement with Miss Bassett,” Will said, “Munro frequented the houses of assignation and had a mistress. Were there other lady friends that you knew of?”

“Scores, but they weren’t really ladies, and they weren’t really friends, and it never lasted beyond a tumble or two.”

“Who was the mistress?”

“Sophie Wallace, of course.”

Will cocked his head, as if seeking elaboration.

“Sophie Wallace,” Harry said. “Everyone knows about Phil and Sophie.”

“Since I clearly don’t, perhaps you’ll enlighten me.”

“Oh, she’s a juicy little peach, very blond, very voluptuous.” Leaning his head back, Harry ran his hands over his hair, slicking it into a semblance of the pomaded perfection it had been when he left the house an hour ago. “Light in the tail, of course, a real tart, but not your run of the mill baggage. Quite well born, really. Her father was a Cabot—a lesser branch of the family, but a Cabot nonetheless. What I mean to say is, she’s from
people
, not just some...”

“Some tart from some other branch of the animal kingdom?”

“Granted, she’s getting a bit long in the tooth—she’s forty if she’s a day—but still quite the dame. Always on heat, or with that look in her eye, if you know what I mean. A tigress in silk stockings. I swear, I thought Phil had about a hundred screws loose when he let that one slip the leash.”

Harry clasped his hands behind his head and propped an ankle on his knee, only to notice the dusting of cigarette ash on his otherwise immaculate white shin pad.
“Shit.”
He tried to brush it away, but of course that only turned it into a grayish smear. “Damn it all, these were brand new. Never even wore them in a match, and now I’ll have to throw them out.”

“Can’t you have the laundress bleach it?” Will asked.

“It’ll never look the same,” Harry groused as he rubbed at the spot.
“Damn.”

With a bemused little half-smile in Nell’s direction, Will said, “Tell me, Harry, when was it Phil ended things with Miss Wallace? Was it recently?”

“It’s
Mrs.
Wallace, and it was just
a couple of days ago.” Harry gave up rubbing the ash and sat back to pout at the stain. “Damn.”

“
Mrs.
Wallace? Is she a widow?”

“Married. The cuckold in question is Freddie Wallace, Phil’s attorney.”

F. Wallace — 3:30

That was why the name “Wallace” had seemed so familiar to Nell.
His attorney arrived for an appointment and found him on the front steps.

“Cuckold?” Will said. “Does Mr. Wallace know about his wife and Munro?”

“He didn’t for the longest time, never mind that it had been an open secret for years—decades, really. They tell me Phil had been banging her since his freshman year at Harvard. Sophie was a year or two older, but no blushing maiden. I hear they met when he walked into a professor’s office and found her bent over the desk. She was unwed at the time—didn’t marry Wallace till she was almost thirty. Got tired of waiting for Phil to ask her—that’s what I heard, and Wallace was damnably persistent with his proposals. He adored her, worshipped her like a goddess.”

Will said, “And yet, the entire time she was married to Wallace, she continued serving as Munro’s mistress?”

“That right, and Wallace, the poor lovesick mutt, didn’t suspect a thing till a couple of weeks ago, when he came home and found a diamond and bloodstone tiepin on Sophie’s night table that he recognized as Phil’s. I heard he walked away from the house in tears, clutching the damned thing—literally walked down the street that way. He moved into the Parker House and initiated divorce proceedings.”

“A couple of weeks ago, eh?” Will said. “Mrs. Wallace lost a husband and a lover in fairly short order. Why did Munro end things with her? Was it because of his engagement to Miss Bassett?”

On a little grunt of laughter, Harry said, “A man’s engagement doesn’t eliminate his need to shake the sheets now and again—I should know. If anything, one tries to get in as much as possible before the wedding, because afterward, one has to sneak about for one’s sport.” With a derisive little sneer, he added, “A married man is expected to be
discreet
, don’t you know.”

Harry asked for another cigarette; Will, of course, obliged.

“Did Wallace ever confront Munro?” Will glanced at Nell as he asked the question; it would seem he recalled the 3:30 appointment, as well.

“Oh, yes,” Harry said through a cloud of smoke, “and a most entertaining spectacle it was. He made quite an ass of himself in the dining room of the Parker House night before last.”

“Thursday?” Will said. “What did he do?”

“He barged in and stumbled over to our table—Phil and I were having dinner with Larry Pinch and Ezra Chapman. Anyway, Wallace lit in on Phil, very loudly and crudely, in front of the entire dining room. He was drunk as a lord, of course, could barely stand. Accused Phil—his most important client, mind you, the one who pays the lion’s share of his bills—of doing the old four-legged frolic with his wife.”

Will stared at his brother. To publicly name a lady as having been free with her favors was considered terribly poor form among that class of gentleman. To name one’s own wife was appalling.

“What did Munro do?” Will asked.

“Denied it, naturally. Wallace called him a liar, said he’d make him pay for humiliating him that way. He actually took a swing at Phil, but he was so soused that he ended up toppling into the next table. Larry and Ezra dragged him out of there and took him up to his room to sleep it off. I hear he woke up the next morning covered in his own sick.”

Will shook his head.

“Meanwhile, that very same night,” Harry continued with a grin as he raised his cigarette to his lips, “who do you suppose was lying in wait for Phil back home, but the wayward wife herself.”

“Sophie Wallace?”

“The four of us went back there after dinner for cognac and cigars before heading out to Fat Zack’s. You know, that little gaming hell over on—”

“I know it,” Will said.