Murder in a mill town (18 page)

“Look at this,” Nell asked, running a fingertip along a neatly seared stripe of flesh on Bridie’s palm. She checked the other hand, which bore a similar mark.

Will said, “It looks as if she burned herself lifting that skillet without using the rag.”

“Her own fingernails did this,” said Nell, pointing to a series of nicks on the balls of the dead woman’s hands. The tips of her fingers were scraped, several of the nails broken. Nell checked her feet, which were as badly abraded as her hands. “She didn’t succumb easily. She struggled at the end.”

“Yes. But not here.” Will rubbed his thumb over Bridie’s grimy palm. “This is dried mud. And there are bits of leaves and plant stems and such here and in her hair that aren’t from this field.” Rising to his feet, he looked around. “There looks to be a stream in this little patch of woods here.”

The smell of death didn’t dissipate as they made their way through the trees; if anything, it got stronger. The reason became clear when they arrived at the bank of a shallow, rocky stream flowing through a lush carpet of ferns and moss. Lying facedown in the water, his body floating on the surface, was a male corpse that was almost as distended as that of Bridie Sullivan, but not quite—probably because it was cooler here, in the shade, than out in that field.

The dead man wore a wool flannel shirt that was red on the exposed back and pinkish underwater, some of the dye having bled into the stream, and checked trousers with worn leather suspenders; no vest or shoes. He had dark brown, overgrown hair.

Will stared at the body for a long moment without looking in Nell’s direction. “I’m going to turn him over.” He took off his hat, coat, boots, and lisle stockings, then rolled up his sleeves and trousers and waded into the stream. Beneath its foot or so of crystalline water, it looked almost as if it were paved in cobblestones and gravel, but for various water weeds and the occasional boulder.

The unwieldy corpse proved difficult to budge from Will’s position to one side of it. He tried to straddle it, one foot on each of a pair of relatively flat rocks, but he instantly lost his footing. Down he went, twisting to avoid landing on the body so that he hit the streambed on his right side, grunting with the impact.

“Will! Are you all right?” Nell asked as he sat up in the waist-high water, soaking wet.

“Yes, splendid,” he said in a dryly baleful tone. “I quite like being humiliated in front of beautiful women. Improves the character.”

“Oh, Will—your arm!” His sleeve was torn and muddied, and blood seeped through in several places, staining the snowy cambric a mottled crimson. “Here, let me help you.” She lifted her skirts and prepared to cross to him via a series of rocks that formed a sort of stepping-stone bridge in his direction.

“No, Nell, don’t. These rocks are all covered with moss. They’re slick as wet ice. I’m fine, really.” He rose onto his knees and, in that position, was able to heave the body over, with the head resting on a large, flat rock as if on a pillow.

The face was that of a young man with large, filmy eyes half-concealed by tendrils of hair. Even bloated and waterlogged as he was, and ruddy with livor mortis, Nell could tell that he’d been handsome before his demise.

“Would you mind moving the hair off his forehead?” Nell asked.

He glanced up at her quizzically.

“Virgil Hines has stars tattooed there.”

“Served aboard the Kearsage, eh?” He pushed the hair back, revealing an area of bluish-red discoloration.

“Is that bruising or lividity?” Nell asked.

“Only an autopsy would tell for sure at this point.” He leaned over to peer at the blemished skin.

“Are there stars? I’m too far away to see.”

She could tell even before he spoke, because of his grimly resigned expression, what his answer would be. “Yes.” He rose to his feet, dripping water and blood, unbuttoned his vest and wrung it out. “If you think this proves Harry did it—”

“It doesn’t prove that,” she said, “but it does narrow down the field of likely candidates.” To one, but why belabor the obvious? Harry was Will’s brother. This must be excruciating for him. “You should come here and let me look at that arm,” she said, but he’d already turned and started wading downstream.

“Looks as if Virgil wanted some fish to disguise the taste of those johnnycakes.” He pointed to something caught between two rocks. Nell had assumed it was a tree branch, but as she walked downstream, she saw that it was the bottom half of a fishing pole, split in the middle.

“What’s that?” Nell asked, pointing. “There’s something on that rock—behind you and upstream about a yard from where you are.”

Will leaned over to peer at the tiny object on the rock’s concave surface, looking like the last peppermint left in a candy dish. He picked it up and brought it over to Nell.

It was a little round button covered in pink silk, a few pink threads hanging from its frayed underside, as if it had been violently ripped from the garment to which it had been attached.

Stowing the button in her chatelaine, Nell said, “I’ll tell the Salem constabulary where we found this. We’ll need to drive back into town and let them know what happened. Here—let me see that arm,” she said as she pulled off her gloves. His sleeve was as red as Virgil’s.

“It’s fine,” Will said as he sat down to put his boots and stockings back on. “Just a couple of scrapes.”

“Scrapes don’t bleed like that.” Crouching down next to him, she reached for his sleeve.

He grabbed her wrist. “I said I’m fine.”

“I’ve seen the marks already, remember?”

“They’re uglier up close.”

“I promise not to swoon from revulsion.”

Looking exasperated even as he fought a smile, Will released her wrist and pushed the sleeve up. The needle marks
were
uglier up close, but she ignored them. There were two raw abrasions, but the real bleeder was a gash just below his elbow.

“That must have hurt.” She unfolded a handkerchief—one of the set of prettily monogrammed ones Viola had given her as part of her birthday present last month, along with the pearl-tipped hair picks and a fancy new easel.

“Don’t use that. You’ll ruin it.” Reaching into his pocket, he said, “Use one of mine.”

“I’ll use yours to clean it, but mine to bandage it,” she said as she gently wiped bits of grit and gravel from the wound. “Mine is oversized. Hold still.”

He watched her as she tied her handkerchief around his arm. “You’ve got a nice touch—gentle but not tentative.”

“Thank you.” She dipped his handkerchief in the stream to rinse off the dirt and tiny pepples. “Bridie had grit like this imbedded in her hands, and the leaves she was clutching look like the ones on these plants. Then there’s that button. But if she was killed here, what was she doing in that field? Do you suppose she was mortally injured but tried to crawl back to the house?”

“If so, why was she lying flat on her back with her arms at her sides?”

Nell shook her head as she squeezed out the handkerchief. “I’ll be interested to see what theories the Salem Police come up with. For all that they call themselves a city, they’re pretty provincial. I wonder if they’ve ever investigated a murder before.”

On his feet now, Will said, “I don’t see any need to offer up more than the basic information, do you? Certainly we can tell them who these people are and what we know about them, but not...” He raked both hands through his hair. “I mean, I know you have certain opinions about the matter, certain preconceived—”

“I won’t point the finger at your brother, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

His met her gaze, looked away. “Thank you.”

“But if they conduct anything more than the most cursory investigation, it’ll lead them right to Harry—you do realize that. Everyone who works at that mill knew what was going on between him and Bridie. They all saw his reaction when Virgil kissed her. And those who didn’t overhear them arguing about Bridie’s blackmail scheme have surely heard about it by now. No one who gathers all the facts could fail to suspect him.”

“
I
don’t suspect him.”

“You’re his brother,” she said gently.

“No, it’s not just that,” he said with a grimace of impatience. “You don’t understand. Harry...yes, he’s a blackguard, he’s selfish and spoiled and lecherous and weak-willed and all the rest of it, but there are some lines even he wouldn’t cross, no matter how much absinthe he’d poured down his throat. I know it in my heart. He may or may not be salvageable as a human being—I’m a bit doubtful of that myself now, knowing what he did to you—but that doesn’t mean he deserves to be unfairly convicted of a murder he didn’t commit. A double murder,” he amended, looking toward Virgil’s body floating on the placid stream, heavy-eyed and dappled with sunlight; he looked as if he were taking the waters at Saratoga Springs.

As Will was gathering up his things, Nell said, “You go ahead. I’ll meet you at the buggy.”

He looked confused. “I thought we were done here.”

“I just...I feel it wouldn’t be right to leave without saying something.”

“A prayer, you mean?”

She looked away, blushing yet again, when it was he who should have been embarrassed, to be so godless. “You should go back. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“No, go ahead,” he said after a brief pause. “I’ll wait.”

She turned toward Virgil and made the sign of the cross, almost wishing Will
had
gone back, because it felt so strangely intimate, doing this in front of him; she could see him out of the corner of her eye, watching her with solemn interest.

Closing her eyes to block him out, she clasped her hands and said, “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen.”

“Amen,” Will said quietly.

*   *   *

Nell spoke different words over Bridie.

“Absolve, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the soul of thy servant Bridget Sullivan, that being dead to this world she may live to Thee, and whatever sins she may have committed in this life through human frailty, do Thou of Thy most merciful goodness forgive. Through our Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son who with Thee liveth and reigneth in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end. Amen.” She crossed herself.

“Amen.” Will put his hat back on, but slung his coat over his shoulder, hoping, probably, that his sodden, mud-stained clothing would dry in the sun, at least partially, on the way into Salem. “Poor Bridie,” he said as he took in her ravaged remains. “Can you imagine her as a farmwife?”

Nell thought about it for a moment. “Yes.”

Will looked at her, opened his mouth to say something, but seemed to reconsider it. Returning his gaze to Bridie, he murmured, “Take her up tenderly.”

Nell turned to look at him.

“It’s from a poem by Thomas Hood,” he said. “‘The Bridge of Sighs.’” Removing the hat he’d just put on, he recited, in that
drowsy-soft voice of his, “Take her up tenderly, lift her with care, fashioned so slenderly, young and so fair.” He paused, as if trying to recall the words. “Touch her not scornfully, think of her mournfully, gently and humanly. Not of the stains of her, all that remains of her, now is pure womanly. Make no deep scrutiny, into her mutiny, rash and undutiful. Past all dishonor, death has left on her, only the beautiful.”

“Amen,” Nell whispered.

“Amen.” He put his hat back on. “Come,” he said as he turned. “Let’s go fetch the constables.”

“Could I just...I just don’t want them to find her all...undone like this,” she said, thinking of the reaction of those constables as they gathered around her. First, they’d be appalled, sickened. Then, as the reality of the sight sank in and they struggled on a subconscious level to deal with it, would come the snickering little asides, the vulgar jokes. Thus would Bridie Sullivan be transformed from a young woman tragically murdered to a
thing
lying out in a field to be dealt with. “Would it be all right, do you think, if I just tidied her up a bit?”

Will said, “We really should leave her as much as possible as we found her.”

“You didn’t leave Virgil as you found him.”

“Point taken. Still...”

“We can tell them how we found her—how we found both of them. I could draw them a sketch.”

Will smiled and shook his head. “You and your sketches. Yes, go ahead—tidy her up.”

Kneeling, Nell pulled down Bridie’s skirt and petticoat, smoothing the rain-stiffened silk. It pained her to think of Bridie lying here half-naked in yesterday’s downpour. No one, regardless of her sins, deserved that kind of end.

She tried to rebutton Bridie’s basque, but she was so badly bloated above her stays, and most of the buttons—to which the one they’d found at the stream was, of course, a perfect match—were missing, so it was a futile effort. To cover up the dead girl’s bosom, Nell rearranged the long scarf tied around her neck, reflecting that rust was an odd color to have paired with this outfit. She thought back to the shawl and bonnet hanging in the house, which were decorated in precisely the same shades of pink and green as Bridie’s dress; the hat had probably been custom made. Why go to all that trouble to have everything match, and then ruin it with a rust-colored scarf?