Murder in the North End Read Free Page A

Hewitt’s favorite antique musical instruments. He picked up the pocket hunting horn, a heavily coiled brass trumpet less than a foot long, dented and tarnished with age. Viola thought it ugly, and didn’t see the point of keeping it out, but as the music room was her husband’s special haven, the instrument remained on display.
    Skinner hefted the horn as if testing its weight. “I won’t deny that it gives me a warm feeling inside to see murderers twitch at the end of a noose.”
    Nell said, “It would give you no end of glee to see Detective Cook hang, if only because he’s Irish, and a better man than you. But on top of that, he was actually rewarded when the truth came out about what you detectives were up to, while the rest of you ended up—”
    “He sold us out,” Skinner said, teeth bared. “He ratted on us in secret sessions during the hearings, just him and those big bugs that don’t have the slightest idea what it takes to deal with the foreign vermin who’ve overrun this town. Next thing you know, I end up policing Paddyland for a Paddy
captain,
of all damn things, who treats me like I’m some stray cat he’d like to drown, while that humbug-spouting mick gets bumped up to Jones’s unit. He’s earning almost twice what he used to, while I’m still making do on eight-hundred bucks a year.”
    “Surely, Constable, you’re making the job pay better than that,” Nell said with a knowing little smile.
    In a crude imitation of an Irish accent, Skinner said, “Oh, you fancy yourself quite the clever little lass, don’t you, now?”
    “I’m not stupid,” she said. “I know how you and your kind do business. As for Cook spouting humbug, what are you saying? Are you claiming he lied?”
    “He made stuff up just to get us in hot water, and they swallowed it whole and asked for more.”
    “And how would you know that,” she challenged, “if those sessions were so secret?”
    “Oh, you
are
clever, aren’t you?” He closed in on her, clutching her arm in a painful grip; she could smell the rum on his breath, the sour tang of his sweat. “You’re two of a kind, you and Cook, a couple of crafty, high-reaching bogtrotters out to get what you can over the backs of all us regular, hardworking Americans. Yeah, but I’ll bet you’re not so high-and-mighty when the good detective gets you alone, eh? Do you give him a good ride, Miss Sweeney? Do you buck and scream and—”
    “Get out.” Nell tried to wrestle free of his grip, but she was no match for his wiry strength.
    He slammed her one-handed against the door, holding her there as he tilted her chin up with the mouthpiece of the horn. In a menacing murmur he said, “I wouldn’t mind hearing you scream.”
    “Nor I you.” She wrenched the horn from his hand and whipped it across his face.
    He stumbled back into the piano with a yowl of pain, his hands cupping his nose. “You
bitch!”
he screamed in a nasal rasp. “Jesus! You goddamned—”
    “Get out.” Nell opened the door to the hallway. Two kitchen maids passing by with armloads of pots and kettles paused to gape at the constable.
    “I’m not going anywhere,” he snarled as he advanced on her.
    From the Red Room came a woman’s steely, British-inflected voice. “Oh, I think you are.”
    Viola Hewitt, seated in her Merlin chair, wheeled herself through the doorway with an expression of resolute fury. Garbed with atypical severity in a tailored gray suit, her black-and-silver hair mostly concealed beneath a square-crowned riding hat trailing a swath of netting, Viola cut a daunting, almost majestic presence, even in the wheelchair.
    Skinner stared unblinkingly at the revered Brahmin matron, blood trickling from between his fingers, before pointing a shaky finger at Nell. “She assaulted an officer of the law. I mean to have her brought up on—”
    “And I mean to have you ejected from this house by my footmen, who will bloody more than your nose in the process, unless you