Still life with murder Read online

  Mrs. Bouchard patted her hand. “Father Donnelly’s on his—”

  “Mrs. Hewitt. I need to speak to M-Mrs. Hew—” Annie broke off with an agonizing howl.

  Nell held her hands and comforted her until the pain had eased. Mrs. Bouchard said, “I’m sorry, Annie, but I’m not about to disturb Mrs. Hewitt at this hour. If you’ve got something to say to her, tell it to me and I’ll give her the—”

  “No!” Annie was trembling again, badly. “I have to speak to her myself, alone. Just her and me.”

  “Out of the question,” Mrs. Bouchard said resolutely. “With everything that’s befallen that poor woman of late, she doesn’t need you troubling her with—”

  “Then there will be no operation.”

  The nurse sighed with exasperation. “Annie, for—”

  “Just do as she asks,” Dr. Greaves quietly implored her.

  Mrs. Bouchard marched out with a hiss of crinoline, hands in the air as if there were a rifle to her back.

  “We can operate in the kitchen,” the doctor told Nell, “on that big tiled table. See if there’s someone who can’t improvise some sort of stretcher. I’ll need the gas jets turned up, and some lanterns hung from the rafters. Here.” He dug the square-sided bottle of carbolic out of his leather bag. “You know what to do. Get that creature out in the hall to help.”

  * * *

  “What is this stuff?” Mary Agnes winced at the tarlike stink of the rag Nell had given her to wipe off the table.

  “Carbolic acid,” Nell said as she scrubbed down a big enameled butcher tray that would hold the surgical instruments. “It’ll get that table as clean as it can get.”

  “What’s the use, if he’s fixing to cut her open on it? It’ll be a right bloody mess by the time he’s done.”

  “He says it helps.”

  “Are you a nurse, like Mrs. Bouchard?”

  “Not like Mrs. Bouchard. He’s trained me in that sort of thing, but mostly I just...help with things. I go on calls with him, keep his books, do a little cleaning and cooking...”

  “Don’t he have a wife for that?”

  “She’s been ill for some time.” That was what Dr. Greaves called it, anyway—an illness. But Nell knew that the Boston “hospital” in which his beloved Charlotte had spent the past eight years was, in fact, some sort of fancy lunatic asylum.

  “What does he pay you?” Mary Agnes asked. “Or is it just room and board?”

  “Room and board,” Nell said. “But he teaches me things, too. Not just about medicine, but about history and music and how to speak and conduct myself with people. He’s taught me how to read real books and write a proper letter and work with numbers. He—”

  Mary Agnes cleared her throat as she speeded up the pace of her scrubbing. Catching Nell’s eyes, she glanced meaningfully toward the door.

  Nell looked that way to find a woman entering the kitchen in a Merlin chair, something Nell had seen only in pictures until now. Mrs. Hewitt was wheeling the upholstered wooden chair herself despite the presence behind her of Mrs. Bouchard, who could presumably have pushed it for her. Two ivory-handled folding canes and a needlework bag were hooked to the back of the chair.

  Viola Hewitt was tall—even in the chair, you could tell that—and angular and aristocratic, with black, silver-threaded hair in a braid draped over one shoulder. In lieu of a dressing gown, she wore over her nightdress a purple and gold silk robe of Oriental design, much like those worn by the women in Dr. Greaves’s book of Japanese prints; kimonos, he’d called them. She was a handsome woman, striking even, despite being an apparent cripple, and of a certain age. But there was an aura of melancholy in her eyes, in the set of her mouth, in her very posture, that robbed her of any claim to true physical beauty.

  Mrs. Hewitt glanced once in Nell’s direction as she rolled through the kitchen toward the hallway, wheels rattling over the slate floor; Mrs. Bouchard brought up the rear.

  “That’s not what I would have expected her to look like,” Nell said when she was out of earshot. “Aren’t her sons fair?”

  “The three younger ones are.” Mary Agnes smiled dreamily. “You never saw such lovely men, like angels in a painting. They got their coloring from Mr. Hewitt. He’s the kind of blond that looks almost white. He really is going white now, but you can hardly tell the difference from before.”

  Nell shook out a tea towel to lay on the instrument tray, thinking back to one of the paintings in the greenhouse, the only one whose subject was standing. He was an older gentleman in white tie, holding an opera hat and gloves in one hand, walking stick in the other. He had hair like tarnished silver, radiant blue eyes and a grimly regal bearing: August Hewitt.

  Dr. Greaves and Mrs. Bouchard entered the kitchen, having been asked to give Annie and her employer some privacy. Mrs. Bouchard sent Mary Agnes off for three clean bib aprons and as many freshly washed towels and dish cloths as she could carry. Taking the surgical kit from Dr. Greaves, Nell gathered up the ivory-handled instruments to be doused with carbolic: scalpels, bistouries, tissue retractors, artery forceps...

  A muffled wailing, just barely audible over the pattering of rain on the windowpanes and the slight hiss of the turned-up gas lamps, made them turn toward the hallway. At first Nell thought Annie was having another contraction, but it soon became clear that she was crying.

  “That girl has no business bringing any more woe on that woman’s head,” lamented Mrs. Bouchard as she unfolded a sheet onto the table. “She’s aged a decade this past month, as it is.”

  “Why?” Nell asked. Too late, when Dr. Greaves’s cut his eyes toward her, did she realize her tactlessness. She asked too many questions; he always said so. One could often learn more, he claimed, by keeping quiet and fading into the background.

  Thankfully, Mrs. Bouchard didn’t seem to mind. “The Hewitts lost their two oldest boys, both of them, just a day apart. They were captured back in February, at Olustee—that’s in Florida—and thrown in that godforsaken hell-hole down in Georgia.”

  “You mean Andersonville?” Dr. Greaves asked. Even Nell, who had little time for newspapers, had heard about the notorious Confederate prison camp, a fenced-in sea of tents housing three times as many Union soldiers as it could reasonably accommodate. Rumor had it thousands had already starved to death or succumbed to one of the many forms of pestilence that thrived in such conditions.

  Mrs. Bouchard nodded, dabbing her eyes with the edge of her apron. “They died last month, of dysentery—Robbie and Will. Dysentery. Lord, what a wretched way to go. It isn’t right. It just isn’t right.”

  “Both sons were in the same regiment?” Nell asked as she lined up the disinfected instruments one by one on the tea towel. Dr. Greaves was asking questions; why shouldn’t she?

  “They enlisted together in the Fortieth Massachusetts Mounted Infantry, on account of being such good horsemen.” Mrs. Bouchard smoothed down the sheet with a bit too much vehemence. “Robbie, he was a regular volunteer. The older one, Will—he signed on as a surgeon.”

  Dr. Greaves, washing his hands at the sink, glanced over his shoulder. “He was a surgeon?”

  “Just finished up medical school over in Scotland. University of Edinburgh.”

  Dr. Greaves let out a low, impressed whistle.

  Mary Agnes returned with a towering stack of linens, including the three aprons, which Mrs. Bouchard distributed to herself, Dr. Greaves and Nell. “Poor Mrs. Hewitt hasn’t done much of anything since she got the news, which isn’t like her. I’ve told her she must rise above it, get on with things. After all, she still has Martin and Harry—those are the two younger ones. She was painting them when the cable came about Robbie and Will.”

  “Martin’s the youngest, yes?” asked Dr. Greaves as Nell helped him on with his apron. “The one I see at church?” The one with the champagne hair and insightful eyes.

  Mrs. Bouchard nodded. “He was all fired up to enlist next month, when he turns eighteen, but now his father’s forbidden
it. Says it’d kill his mother to lose another son. Mr. Hewitt, he pulled some strings and got Martin into Harvard so he can stay at home with his mama. He’s already gone back to Boston, so as not to miss too much of the first term.”

  “And Harry?” Nell prompted.

  Mrs. Bouchard turned away to fuss with the sheets on the table. “Mister Harry’s needed at his father’s textile mill in Charlestown.”

  It would appear that Harry Hewitt had chosen, like so many other young sons of wealthy families, to sit out the war and let his neighbors and servants—and brothers—fight it for him. Nell thought back to his image in the big unfinished painting—the beguiling grin, the lax fingers cradling the snifter.

  From the direction of the greenhouse came men’s voices. Opening the glass door, Nell greeted portly old Father Donnelly, her parish priest, and relieved him of his sodden overcoat.

  “You’ll have to wait your turn, Father,” said Mrs. Bouchard. “Mrs. Hewitt and Annie are—”

  “Mrs. Hewitt and Annie are done talking,” Dr. Greaves declared. “If I wait much longer to operate, it will be too late. Father, do you think you can...do whatever you have to do while we’re moving Annie to the kitchen?”

  “I...suppose—”

  “Good. Mrs. Bouchard, if you would give me a hand with Annie... Nell, make sure we’re all set up in here.”

  It took mere minutes to get Annie settled on the table and prepared for surgery, with Father Donnelly muttering over her all the while. The poor girl, her face red from weeping, shivered with fear despite their reassurances.

  Banishing everyone but Mrs. Bouchard, Nell and himself from the kitchen, Dr. Greaves said a brief prayer—a Protestant prayer, but Nell and Mrs. Bouchard crossed themselves just the same. He attached the drip spout to the tiny brown bottle of chloroform while Nell fitted the inhaling mask with fresh gauze.

  “Close your eyes, Annie,” Nell murmured as she placed the mask over the girl’s nose and mouth. “When you wake up, you’ll have a baby.”

  * * *

  “I say—she’s a beautiful little thing, is she not?”

  Nell, cradling the swaddled infant in her arms, smiled across the kitchen table at Viola Hewitt. “All babies are beautiful,” Nell said.

  It was well past midnight; the gas lights were low again, casting the immense kitchen into amber-tinted semidarkness as the storm continued to rage outside. Dr. Greaves and Mrs. Bouchard were down the hall with Annie, watching for post-operative complications. Mrs. Hewitt, ignoring her nurse’s exhortations to turn in, had lingered in the kitchen to oversee Nell’s bathing and diapering of the newborn.

  “They’re not all as beautiful as that one.” Mrs. Hewitt returned Nell’s smile, her melancholic fog having dissipated over the past couple of hours. She had a distinctive voice, deep-throated and a little gritty, its rough edges burnished a bit by the remnants of a genteel English accent. “She’s so plump and pretty, with that big, lovely round head. My boys all had a rather squished, stomped-upon look, as I recall.”

  “The round head is because of the Caesarean. She didn’t have to pass through the...” Nell looked away, chastising herself for having made such a reference in polite conversation, especially with the likes of Viola Hewitt; what would Dr. Greaves say?

  Mrs. Hewitt chuckled. “I’m afraid I’m not particularly easy to shock, Miss Sweeney. Mr. Hewitt is of the opinion that I ought to be a bit more prone to swooning, but I could never quite get the knack.”

  The baby yawned, quivering, then settled down again, weighty and warm in Nell’s arms; how it gladdened her heart whenever she had the chance to hold a baby. She tried to fluff the thatch of black hair, but it was still matted, despite her bath. “Is her father dark?” she asked, thinking of Annie’s golden locks.

  Mrs. Hewitt frowned slightly. “No, Mac is...sandy-haired, I suppose you’d say. But newborns are funny that way. My Martin was born with a full head of thick, black hair, but now he’s the fairest of all of my...” She trailed off, no doubt reflecting that “all of” her sons now numbered just two.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Nell said.

  “Yes. Well. We’re usually back in Boston by now, but I’ve been putting it off because—” Her voice snagged. “I’ve been saying it’s because of Annie, because she couldn’t travel in her condition—she’s part of our Boston staff, you know. But we could have gone on ahead and sent for her after the baby came. It wasn’t that. It was going back to that house on Colonnade Row, where those boys were little...”

  The baby squirmed in Nell’s arms, mewing and smacking her lips, her head jerking this way and that.

  Mrs. Hewitt watched with interest as Nell dipped her little finger in the teacup of boiled sugar water with which she was keeping the hungry infant appeased. “She’s ravenous, that one. I do hope Annie’s up to feeding her soon.”

  “Me, too,” Nell said as she slipped her fingertip in the baby’s mouth. There was fresh milk in the ice closet, and an old baby bottle to put it in, but giving it to her at this point could spoil her for the breast.

  “I would ask to hold her again, but she’d only fuss, as she did before. She’s happiest with you. I’ve rarely seen anyone handle a baby with such...tender assurance.”

  Gratified by the praise, Nell murmured her thanks as Dr. Greaves returned to the kitchen. “Our new mother is awake and doing splendidly,” he reported with a smile. “Why don’t you bring the baby to her and see if she’ll nurse? And then perhaps we should locate that Brady fellow and ask him to drive us back to East Falmouth. Mrs. Bouchard will sit up with Annie tonight, and I’ll return in the morning to—”

  “You mean to travel in this rain, and at this hour?” Mrs. Hewitt asked. “I’ve got half a dozen guest rooms, all standing empty—I can certainly spare two for the night. I’ll have you brought night clothes and whatever else you need, and then Brady will take you back to town after breakfast.”

  Dr. Greaves accepted her offer of hospitality, to Nell’s relief; why endure a late-night carriage ride in such weather?

  In the cook’s room, she found Mrs. Bouchard propping pillows behind Annie’s back. “Look who’s here,” said the nurse as Nell sat on the edge of the bed with the baby. “It’s your—”

  “Take it away,” Annie moaned, whipping her head to the side.

  Nell looked inquiringly toward Mrs. Bouchard, who appeared dismayed but unsurprised at this reaction. “Now, Annie, don’t be that way. You’re her mother, after all, and she needs—”

  “I don’t want to see her. Take her away. Please.”

  Mrs. Bouchard nodded resignedly to a stunned Nell, who left with the child, closing the door behind her. Walking down the hallway toward the kitchen, she heard Mrs. Hewitt say, “Four years? And you’ve been pleased with her?”

  “More than pleased,” Dr. Greaves responded. “Nell’s a hard worker, and clever. Nothing slips past her.”

  Nell stilled near the entrance to the kitchen.

  “She’s got a great deal of common sense, too,” he continued, “and a strong stomach. I never have to worry about her keeling over at the sight of a gruesome injury.”

  “From a good family, is she?” inquired Mrs. Hewitt.

  Nell held her breath for the long seconds it took Dr. Greaves to answer. “They were from the old country, ma’am. Both gone now, first him and then the mother, when Nell was just a child.” Nell’s father was gone, all right, but it wasn’t his Maker he’d met; it was that greasy-haired barmaid from Dougal’s Tavern.

  “And there’s no other family?”

  Nell steeled herself, wondering if he’d mention Duncan.

  “She had a number of younger siblings—that’s how she learned to care for children. Disease took most of them—cholera, diphtheria—but one brother lived to adulthood. She assumes he’s still alive, but it’s been years since she’s seen him. James—she calls him Jamie.”

  Nell released a pent-up breath.

  There came an interval of silence punctuate
d by the muted bong of a clock somewhere off in another part of the house, striking one.

  “She seems...” Mrs. Hewitt paused. “I found myself telling her things...”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Greaves; Nell could hear the smile in his voice. “She has that effect.”

  “I don’t suppose she has any Greek or Latin.”

  A pause. “No, ma’am. She’s quite proficient in French, though.”

  “Any Italian or German?”

  “None to speak of. But she’s got a better command of the three R’s than I do, and she reads whatever I put in her hands. Lovely penmanship, and a fine hand with the drawing pencil.”

  “She’s of good character and chaste habits, I take it?”

  “She’s never given me any reason to censure her, ma’am.” Which didn’t precisely answer the question.

  “That little scar near her left eyebrow—may I ask how...”

  “An old injury. I stitched it myself.” As he had the several others that weren’t so readily visible. Before she could ask him to elaborate on his vague answer, he said, “May I inquire as to the nature of your interest in her?”

  “I just... I need to consult with my husband first, and I’m not sure if he’s still up reading. If I don’t get the chance to speak to you again tonight, perhaps...after breakfast?”

  “As you like, ma’am.”

  Nell heard the wheels of the Merlin chair rolling away over the slate floor. She listened as the sound grew softer and disappeared, then reentered the kitchen to find Dr. Greaves staring at the door through which Mrs. Hewitt had just departed. He turned to look at Nell as she came up behind him, his expression contemplative, and perhaps a little sad.

  “What was that about, do you suppose?” Nell asked.

  He just sighed and turned away. “Eavesdropping, Nell? I’m surprised at you.” Before she could protest that he might have done the same had he found himself the subject of a similar conversation, he said, “Let’s finish cleaning up in here. It’s been a long night.”

  * * *

  Nell hastened to the guest room door as a second knock came, her fingers fumbling with the mother-of-pearl buttons on the dressing gown she’d found laid out for her when she was shown to this room about an hour ago.