Still Life With Murder (12 page)

He swung the door open after a perfunctory knock, revealing a much smaller, dimly lit room with bright pink walls. A big four-poster bed strewn with pillows and rumpled blankets stood against the back wall next to the door to the outside stairs and beneath the partially boarded-up window Nell had seen from the stable yard. “Flynn?”

“He was here, but he left,” said a red-headed sailor sitting on a straight-backed chair in the corner, smoking a cigarette. “Said he had some rats to catch.”

“He went out thataway,” added a female voice as an arm rose from the unkempt bed to point at the door on the back wall. Squinting, Nell saw that some of what she’d taken for heaped-up bedcoverings was, in fact, the disarrayed clothing of a couple locked in carnal embrace. They seemed as indifferent to the interruption as to the presence of the red-haired man, who was presumably waiting his turn.

Cook slammed the door shut, his face boiling red. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”

Biting her twitching lip, Nell spun around as if scandalized.

“Miss Sweeney, I…Dear God. I don’t know what to say.”

She cleared her throat as she turned back to face him, wishing she had the capacity to blush at will. “That would be Molly, I take it?” It struck her as funny, when it didn’t utterly exasperate her, how solicitous people could be over maiden sensibilities she’d never really possessed—such sensibilities being a luxury she could ill afford, growing up as she had. So expert had she become at feigning them, though, that they almost felt real, from time to time.

“I don’t suppose you know where Mr. Flynn would go to catch rats?” Nell asked, hoping to refocus him on their purpose for being here.

He shifted his jaw for a moment. “Come with me.”

“
J
AYSUS
, NOT YOU AGAIN!
”
SNARLED
a ruddy-faced, matted-haired man as he stepped out of a stall at the end of the stable’s central aisle, some unidentifiable tool in one hand, a roiling, squeaking sack in the other.

Seamus Flynn had a deep-chested, thick-brogued voice that reminded Nell of her father’s; the same bread-dough gut, too, despite his ropy leanness. A lantern hanging overhead illuminated the gold crucifix around his neck, as well as bits of straw clinging to his long-sleeved undershirt and sagging hemp trousers, making it look as if he’d been dusted with flecks of gold. Grinning at Nell, he said, “Don’t tell me the coppers are hirin’ birds as well as bogtrotters now. What’s this town comin’ to?”

“This here’s Miss Chapel,” Cook said. “She’s with the Society for the Relief of Criminals and Indigents.”

“
Convicts
and Indigents.”
Now
she remembered.

Cook shot an amused little glance her way. “She was praying over the fella we arrested last night, so I thought she might like to visit the scene of the crime, as it were. Give her a better idea of the sins that need forgiving.”

Straw crackled; Flynn ducked abruptly back into the stall, quick as the vermin he hunted. “There y’are, ya little bastard!” There came a series of panicked squeals. “Gotcha!”

Detective Cook, clearly fascinated, strode forward to watch. Nell followed him warily, arriving at the empty stall in time to see Flynn stuff a squirming rat into his sack with the tool, which turned out to be…

“Curling tongs?” she exclaimed.

“Nothin’ works better.” Flynn squeezed the pair of tongs to separate the hinged arms, one shaped something like a tuning fork, the other like an elongated sugar scoop. “Little buggers don’t stand a chance.”

The bag in his fist churned and squalled. Cook looked impressed. Nell’s stomach clenched. Perhaps she really
was
becoming delicate. It should have gratified her to think she might be turning into a proper lady at last, but in truth it just made her feel weak.

“Say, Flynn,” Cook began, “I wonder if I couldn’t trouble you for a list of the men who were here last night—your boarders and any visitors you happen to know by name.”

“Right, and have you pester ’em till they decide it’s just too much trouble to give Seamus Flynn their business anymore? Not likely, Detective.”

“I could force you to hand it over.”

“You’d be wastin’ your time. They was all downstairs bettin’ on the rats, ’cept for them that was rollin’ the log in the back parlor there, and they was too hopped up to be of much help to you.”

“Are you sure all the men stayed in the basement the whole time?” Nell asked. “Surely some of them availed themselves of the women who work out of here.”

“That’s right,” Cook said, having apparently forgotten his prior injunction about holding her tongue.

Flynn looked both intrigued and amused that the Bible-toting Miss Chapel had chosen to bring that up. “The girls conduct their business up on the second floor, in a room at the end of the hall. I painted it pink for ’em and put a nice big bed in there to make it more homey-like. Rat Night’s a busy night, so there’s sometimes four or five chippies waitin’ out back by the cellar stairs for fellers to come up lookin’ for a different kind of sport. The girl that gets picked, she usually just brings him up the outside stairs there. So, you see, anything takin’ place on the first floor—such as between that Ernest Tulley and whoever killed him—the dollies wouldn’t know nothin’ about.”

“What does a girl do if the pink room is already occupied?” Nell asked.

“Then they use any empty room. They like the back parlor, if there ain’t nobody smokin’ gong in there, ’cause of that mattress on the floor, and all them couches. The girls’ll double up in there if their customers don’t mind. Only place they ain’t allowed is up on the third floor, ’cause that’s where me and my daughter—”

Flynn stilled, head cocked, grinning slowly. Nell heard an almost imperceptible rustling and backed out of the stall into the aisle. Whirling around with surprising grace, the Irishman kicked the straw heaped in the corner, tongs poised. A huge rat darted out; Flynn plucked it up deftly and held it aloft as it thrashed and squealed. “Oh, what a fine big brute you are!” he praised, depositing the writhing rodent in his sack. “Mind you give my Miss Flossie a good tussle next Saturday. She gets bored when it’s too easy.”

Swallowing down her bile, Nell said, “I, uh, I understand you came upstairs yourself a few times to sell opium to your customers who were smoking it.”

Flynn nodded. “Yeah, I like to keep an eye on things in there, make sure everybody has what they need. Weren’t much to do last
night, though. That one they arrested—Toussaint—he was there all night, but he was real quiet-like. Just shoved some money in my hand, laid hisself down and lit up bowl after bowl—I rarely seen anybody go through it like him.”

“There were others in there with him, right?” Nell asked.

“Couple of sailors early on—regulars whenever they’re in port—but they just had a bowl or two apiece and left. Next time I checked, there was just Toussaint, who’d more or less dozed off—the gong does that to ’em—and one other feller. I asked him if he wanted somethin’ to smoke, but he says nah, he ain’t no hop fiend, and then I seen he was suckin’ on a bottle. The swells, they like to bring their own. The gin I sell here ain’t good enough for ’em.”

“Why did he come to your place,” Nell asked, “if not for opium or the rat pit? He could have done his drinking anywhere.”

“There’s them that’ll show up on a Saturday night for cards or chuck, not knowin’ about Rat Night, or maybe forgettin’ about it ’cause they’re already in their cups. The rats ain’t for everybody. Some of ’em take off then, and some just sit and drink. I reckon this feller just wanted to sit and drink.”

“What did he look like?” Nell asked.

“Can’t rightly say,” Flynn scratched his soft belly with the tongs. “I keep it dark in there, ’cause that’s the way them gowsters like it, and all I seen was the back of his head, ’cause he was settin’ on the couch that faces away from the door. Sounded like a swell, though, and I think I saw a top hat on the arm of the couch.”

“Do you happen to know when he left?” she asked.

“He weren’t there when I came up the last time,” Flynn said. “Nobody was—the room was empty. That’s when Kathleen screamed. I wouldn’t have heard her if I’d still been downstairs. Ain’t nothin’ noisier than a rat pit, ’cept maybe a cockfight. Blood sport brings out the howlers. I look out the window and what do I see in the alley but ol’ Ernest Tulley layin’ there in a pool of
blood.” He sketched a cursory sign of the cross with his curling tongs.

“And William Hewitt finishing him off,” Cook prompted.

“Well…” Flynn lifted his shoulders. “Can’t rightly say that’s what he was doing.”

“He was crouching over the body,” Cook said.

“With his back to me.”

The detective glowered. “Seems like lots of fellas had their backs to you last night.”

“All I’m sayin’ is I never seen him do the deed. Neither did Kathleen, when you come right down to it. And like I told you last night, there was some boyos in the house across the way who seen somebody tearin’ out of that alley and down Purchase Street
before
Kathleen screamed, so you might well be jumpin’ to—”

“Someone was seen running away?” Nell turned to face Cook. “What else haven’t you told me?”

The detective cast his weary gaze to the ceiling. “They were hooched-up on homemade bark juice, those fellas. Within minutes, just about everyone in this entire place had up and run off, so who knows what they really saw, or when?”

“Want to know what I think?” Flynn asked.

Cook said “No” as Nell said “Yes.”

Flynn scowled, his nostrils flaring. “I think nothin’s been right in my house since that Roy Noonan started comin’ here. When them others run out of money to gamble with, they borrow it from him, and they’re too ignorant—or desperate—to ask how much it’s gonna end up costin’ ’em. If they’re slow in payin’, he gives ’em a taste of those big fists of his, and promises worse.”

“I think I saw a bit of his handiwork in there,” Cook said.

“On the one hand, they look up to him like he’s Lord God Almighty, but most of ’em are scared of him, too—and if you ask me, they’re right to be. They say he killed a man aboard a whaler
couple-few years ago and dumped the body overboard, and not a crewman willing to finger him for fear he’d be next. I ast him myself if it was true, and he just grinned at me in that dead-eyed way of his.”

“If you hate him so much,” Cook asked, “how come you let him stay here?”

“The one time I tried to tell him we was full up and I couldn’t rent him a bed, he whips out a knife like you use to gut fish and starts diggin’ under his fingernails. He asks me am I sure about that? What am I supposed to say then?”

“Did Ernest Tulley owe Noonan money?” Nell asked.

“Seems to me I heard he did,” Flynn said as he knelt down to tie off the sack. “Heard he owed him quite a bit, and when Noonan demanded payment, Tulley just laughed at him. Noonan don’t like being laughed at.”

“What are you implying?” Nell asked.

Flynn raised his gaze to her. “You seem like a smart lass. You figure it out. And when you do, maybe you’d like to share it with the good detective here.”

Cook shoved his bowler on with a little too much force. “Good news for you, Mr. Flynn. I’ve had about all I can stand of this place for the time being. I don’t relish having to go back empty-handed to my captain, but I did warn him it was pointless, sending me here. If you come up with any more fascinating theories, write them down and send them to Miss Chapel, care of Station Two—assuming you can write.”

Flynn grunted something under his breath as he stood.

Nell was halfway down the aisle when she turned and said, “One thing I was wondering, Mr. Flynn. How did your daughter get that black eye?”

Hefting the bag over his shoulder, he said, “I’m thinkin’ it’s that dago she’s so sweet on.”

Cook said, “You mean Castelli?”

“Are they sweethearts?” Nell asked.

“I know she meets him in here at night,” Flynn sneered. “I say he’s the one dealt her that shiner—they’re a hot-blooded race—but it’s no more’n she deserves for gettin’ mixed up with his kind. Prob’ly brought it on herself, anyway, headstrong as she is.”

“Kathleen?” Nell thought about that childlike voice, those big eyes lingering on her hat and coat.

“She don’t look it,” Flynn said, “but believe me, she can be as much of a bitch as my Flossie when she’s riled. One of these Saturday nights I should throw
her
in the pit with the rats. She’ll set a new record—see if she don’t.”

I
T WAS A GOOD DEAL
darker when Nell and Detective Cook left the boardinghouse than when they’d entered it, in part because it had stopped snowing. They stood under a street lamp, Cook’s hands stuffed in his pockets, his expression shadowed by the brim of the bowler. “I’ve held up my end of our bargain, Miss Sweeney. Now tell me about your conversation with William Hewitt.”

“Was Ernest Tulley a heavy man, Detective?”

He cocked his head, as if thrown by the non sequitur.

She said, “Noonan called Tulley ‘that fat, miserable yellow jacket.’
Fat
. I just wondered if he actually was.”

“He was a stocky man, I’ll grant you that, but no more so than Noonan himself. They bore a certain resemblance, now that I think of it—both with that dark, shaggy hair and full beard—and that barrel chest. You might have thought they were brothers—twin brothers, even—except I understand Tulley had quite the Georgia drawl.”

“Was he as tall as Noonan?”

“Taller—he was monstrous. Dressed shabby, like all the rest of ’em.”

“I’d like to see him, if I may.”

“Ernest Tulley?” A disbelieving little huff of laughter escaped him. “You can’t be serious.”

“He’s in some morgue, I would assume.”

“You must be mad if you think I’d bring a lady into—”

“I’m a sort of nurse.” Or was at one time, if one stretched the definition of “nurse.” “I’ve seen my share of dead men.” That much was true.

“Nevertheless…”

“And afterward you can ask me anything you want about my conversation with William Hewitt.”

He regarded her sullenly, working that great jaw back and forth. “You’re really a very difficult woman, Miss Sweeney.”