Still Life With Murder (2 page)

“Brahmin?”

“The first families of Boston—the venerable old bluebloods.” Dr. Greaves answered even the most uninformed query without smirking or seeming surprised at one’s ignorance. Nell had learned a lifetime’s worth in her four years with him. “They tend to worship at the altar of high culture, and August Hewitt is no exception, though he’s unusually sanctimonious for that breed. The wife’s English, I think—Violet. No, Viola. There are some sons. The local girls would swoon for days whenever one of them showed up in town. They haven’t been round the past few summers—except for the youngest. I see him at church every Sunday, along with his father. Perhaps the rest are off fighting Johnny Reb.”

The carriage shuddered to a stop on a flagstone court behind the house, near an attached leaded-glass greenhouse with a domed roof. Passing the reins to a waiting groom, Brady unfurled the biggest black umbrella Nell had ever seen, opened the brougham’s door and handed her down. “I’d best be takin’ you folks in through the greenhouse,” he said in a wheezy Irish brogue, raising his voice to be heard over the drumming rain. “The drive’s flooded out up ahead. Watch that puddle, miss.”

Taking a lantern from the brougham, the coachman gestured them toward an imposing arched entryway. Nell followed him through the unlit greenhouse, which she’d expected to be filled with plants, but which instead housed…

Paintings?
She gawked as she wove through a forest of canvases propped on easels, each executed in loose, vibrant brush strokes. Some were seascapes featuring picturesque Waquoit Bay, and there were one or two still lifes, but most were of people—not posing formally, but lounging in opulent surroundings, exquisitely attired; jewels glinted, silks shimmered. They materialized out of the darkness, these sublime apparitions, only to dissolve back into it as the coachman’s lantern swung past. The lamplight shifted and swayed just enough to make it seem as if they were inclining their heads ever so slightly toward Nell, eyes alight, mildly curious, before looking away.

The women dazzled, but it was the young men whom Nell found most arresting. There were perhaps three who had been painted repeatedly, golden creatures with luminous skin and expressions of languid ease. A particularly large canvas, which stood half-finished near the back wall, depicted two of them. One, an adolescent with hair the color of champagne and quiet, watchful eyes, sat tucked into one end of a maroon settee, while his brother—for surely these were two of the Hewitt sons—sprawled in elegant repose across the other. This older one’s hair was a slightly darker blond, his smile more careless. Collar loose, tie undone, he had both arms draped across the back of the settee, a brandy snifter cupped lightly in one hand.

On a folding table nearby sat a palette crusted with dried oil paints, a jar of brushes, a wadded-up rag; some preliminary sketches were tacked to the easel’s crossbar. Nell detected only the faintest whiff of linseed oil and turpentine; she would have expected the smell to be stronger.

“That’s the one I see at church.” Dr. Greaves pointed to the younger brother.

“Aye, that’s young Master Martin. He’s right pious.” Gesturing them through a multipaned door into the house, Brady winked at Nell and whispered, “For an Episcopalian.”

Nell winked back. She didn’t think she looked particularly Irish, but those from the old country always knew.

“I’m to hand you over to Mrs. Mott, the housekeeper,” the coachman said as he led them into a dim, cavernous kitchen, where he pulled a bell cord. Cocking his head toward a lamplit hallway, he said, “They’ve got Annie down there in the cook’s room. That’s Annie McIntyre, the girl what’s havin’ the baby. She sleeps up on the top floor, ordinarily, with the rest of the maids. But when her time come, Mrs. Hewitt, she said to put her down here where it’s more cozy and private-like.”

There materialized before them an old woman who looked to have been rendered in hard pencil on smooth vellum, so devoid of color was she: pale bespectacled face, scraped-back gray hair, unadorned black dress with a heavily laden key ring dangling from her belt, hands like carved bone clasped at her waist.

“Evenin’, Mrs. Mott,” Brady said. “I’m to go fetch Father Donnelly now. When you’re ready for me to take you back, Doc, just—”

“We’ll find you, Brady. Thank you.”

“This way.” Mrs. Mott turned and led them down a hallway, at the end of which slumped a young woman in a black dress with white collar, cuffs and apron. Red hair frizzed out from beneath her cap—not just a rusty brown, like Nell’s, but a smoldering, red-hot red. She eyed them while gnawing on a thumbnail.

Pausing at a closed door halfway down the hall, Mrs. Mott turned to the maid. “Mary Agnes, shouldn’t you be turning down beds?”

“Mrs. Bouchard wants me here in case I’m needed.”

“You don’t answer to Mrs. Bouchard, though, do you? You answer to me. For pity’s sake, girl, stop chewing on that—”

“Oh, God.” From behind the door came a woman’s ragged moan. “Oh, God. Oh, Jesus.” She was young, her voice high and thready. Another woman started to say something, but her words were drowned out by a wail that trailed off into whimpers. Mrs. Mott shrank back from the door. Mary Agnes looked at the ceiling as she started back in on the thumbnail.

Dr. Greaves knocked. “It’s Cyril Greaves, the doctor. May I—”

The door swung open. “Thank the Lord.” Stepping aside for them was a solidly built Negro lady with a great copper bowl of a face and hair like hoar frost on gray moss. “My name is Mrs. Bouchard,” she said in a sonorous voice seasoned with a peculiar accent, not quite southern and not quite French. “I’m Mrs. Hewitt’s nurse. She asked me to help.”

“Yes, thank you.” If Dr. Greaves shared Nell’s curiosity as to why Mrs. Hewitt should employ a nurse, he gave no hint of it. Nell followed him into the room, noticing as she turned to close the door that Mrs. Mott was already halfway down the hall, her tread as silent as if she were barefooted, although Nell couldn’t imagine that was the case.

Leaning over the narrow bed, Dr. Greaves felt the forehead of the young woman lying in it, a heavily pregnant, china-doll blonde with big, panicky eyes. “How are you holding up, Annie?”

“N-not so good,” she panted. “Something’s wrong.”

Mrs. Bouchard said, “The baby’s lying transverse, Doctor. Hasn’t budged through fourteen hours of labor.” It wasn’t a servant’s uniform the nurse wore, but rather a severely unadorned black dress that looked to have been dyed from some other color. Her only jewelry was a small enameled watch pinned to her bosom. Was the household in mourning for some reason? Nell, in her faded blue basque and plaid skirt—hand-me-downs from Dr. Greaves’s niece—felt suddenly rather shabby and conspicuous.

Dr. Greaves whipped off his frock coat and handed it to Nell, who laid it, along with her shawl and bonnet, on a chair in the corner of the small, tidy room. Rolling up his shirt sleeves, he nodded toward a wash basin in the corner. “Is that water clean?” he asked Mrs. Bouchard.

“I boiled it.”

“Annie,” he said as he soaped and rinsed his hands, “I’m going to have to examine you, but it shouldn’t hurt. This nice young lady—” he nodded to Nell as she turned back the bedcovers from the bottom up “—is Nell Sweeney, my assistant. She’s about your age, I should think.”

“Let me guess.” Nell smiled at Annie as she sat on the bed next to her. “You’re…twenty?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Exactly my age, then.”

Annie grimaced, her head thrown back.
“No…”
she groaned.

“Ride it out,” Nell softly urged, holding her hand and smoothing damp tendrils of hair off her face. “This will all be over soon, and then you’ll have a lovely baby to—”

“Oh, God…oh, God.” The girl cried out hoarsely during the contraction, trembled as it subsided; she was clearly exhausted.

Noticing Annie’s wedding ring, Nell said, “Tell me about your husband.” She’d learned not to ask
Where is your husband?
in case he was lying in a grave near some far-off battlefield.

“He…he…” Annie hitched in a breath and glanced down at Dr. Greaves, who must have begun his examination.

“Annie, look at me,” Nell said gently. “What’s his name?”

“M-Michael. Only…” Annie swallowed. “Only everybody calls him M-Mac, on account of his last name—McIntyre.”

“He’s one of our drivers,” offered Mrs. Bouchard as she straightened a stack of clean sheets on the dresser. “Or was, till he signed up with the Boston Volunteers.”

“The Eleventh R-regiment,” Annie managed.

Mrs. Bouchard said, “He lost a leg at Spotsylvania in May. Been in the hospital since then, but he wrote to say he’s coming home next month.”

“Then you’ll be seeing him soon!” Nell said.

Annie’s head whipped back and forth on the pillow. “I’ll be dead. Something’s wrong.”

Dr. Greaves said, “Annie, I’m not going to lie to you. Something
is
wrong. But it’s nothing I can’t fix. Nell.” He gestured for her to stand. “I want to show you this so you’ll know it next time we run across it. See how wide her abdomen is from side to side?”

She let him position her hands on either side of Annie’s distended belly, over her linen chemise.

“Feel that?” Dr. Greaves asked. “The head’s on one side, buttocks on the other—the worst position a baby can be in for delivery. Cord’s prolapsed, too.” Folding the bedcovers back down, he asked Mrs. Bouchard, “How long since her water broke?”

“Around dawn, just as she was going into labor.”

“I’ll need to operate as soon as we can gets things set—”

“Operate!” Mrs. Bouchard exclaimed.

“Oh, Jesus,” Annie moaned. “You’re going to cut it out of me? I
am
going to die!”

“Annie.” Dr. Greaves turned her face toward him. “If you try to deliver this baby normally, your womb will very likely rupture, and you will assuredly die. Or the baby will. I’ll use chloroform. You’ll sleep through the whole thing.”

“But, Doctor…” Mrs. Bouchard cast him a look that said she knew exactly what happened to women who underwent Caesareans.

“I’ve had excellent success with this procedure,” Dr. Greaves assured her. “The secret lies in suturing the uterine wall. And no, it doesn’t cause infection to leave the stitches in, so long as you
keep things clean. Do you have any experience with surgery, Mrs. Bouchard?”

Her chin shot up. “My father was a surgeon in New Orleans. I assisted him for twenty years, through hundreds of operations. I won’t faint dead away, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Good—you and Nell can both help me, then.”

“‘Excellent success,’” Annie said. “W-what does that mean? Some of them still die, right? The mothers? When you do this operation?”

Dr. Greaves’s hesitation was telling. “It’s your only hope, child. And you’re young and strong. There’s no reason to think you won’t make it, and…well, the baby almost always does.”

“Do it,” she rasped. “But first I need to speak to…” She mewed in pain as another contraction mounted. “Send for…”

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.”

“W
HAT
IS
THIS STUFF?
” M
ARY
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.