Mansions Of The Dead Read Online Free

as young-looking as he’d sounded on the phone, hardly more than a teenager, but when he looked up at Sweeney, the harsh overhead lighting illuminating lines around his eyes and circles beneath them, she saw that he was probably closer to her age than she’d thought. He had dirty blond hair, cut short, thinning a little on top, and blue eyes set in a conventionally handsome face. And she noticed he was wearing a wedding ring. His good looks were those she associated with frat houses and beach parties, a blond girlfriend in a bikini. The wedding ring seemed incongruous.
    “Thanks for coming down here on such short notice,” he said. Once again, she heard the broad Boston in his voice—”he-ah” for “here,” “sho-ut” for “short.”
    “If you’ll just follow me . . . ” They went through a set of doors, out into a hallway. Another set of doors led into a small empty room furnished with filing cabinets, a low table, and a couple of chairs.
    “Sorry about the room. It’s just that I wanted you to have a quiet place to look at the . . . at the objects.” He shut the door behind them and gestured for her to sit down at the table. “Can I get you a cup of coffee or anything?” he asked. “It’s from one of those machines. Frankly I wouldn’t recommend it, but if you really need the caffeine . . . ”
    “No thanks. I’m fine.”
    “I called the MFA after I got back here,” he said, unsmiling. “Just to see if there was anyone else they would recommend to look at this stuff. They said I should call you. Spoke very highly of your work.”
    “Oh . . . Thanks.”
    He opened up a manila envelope that had been sitting on the table and took out a plastic bag. Inside were four pieces of mourning jewelry, each in its own smaller Ziploc bag, each dangling a little white tag with a number on it. Sweeney did a quick inventory—a hair-work necklace, a locket, and two brooches.
    “The jewelry was connected with a crime scene we responded to this morning,” Quinn said. “It’s mourning jewelry, isn’t it?”
    Sweeney took the bag from him and turned it over in her hands. “Yup. This is an interesting little collection. Especially that one brooch. Earlier than a lot of the stuff you see outside of Britain. Can I . . . ”
    He nodded and she took the individual pieces out to look at them, carefully examining them through the plastic. “If you had a magnifying glass—oh, and some paper and a pencil—that would be helpful,” she said. Quinn punched a number into the phone on the table and passed on the request.
    “Okay, so this is a classic hair-work necklace,” she said, showing him the first piece, which was made of twenty intricate balls of woven dark brown hair, threaded together with a piece of cord and fastened with a distinctive three-part clasp. “When I get the magnifying glass, I can tell you some more about how old it is, although you may need to ask a jeweler who specializes in antique pieces for details. But from the style of the clasp and the pattern of the braiding, my guess would be mid-1800s. That’s just a guess, though.”
    “I’m sorry, did you say
hair
?” She looked up to find Detective Quinn looking slightly pale under his tan. “I assumed it was some type of cloth or fiber.”
    “Oh no. It’s made of human hair. Hair-work jewelry was popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. People would save the hair of a loved one who had died and have it made into thesebraided necklaces and bracelets. Or they’d do it themselves. It became a popular pastime for well-bred ladies. This one would have been made by weaving the hair around a little wooden mold to form the balls, and then sewing them together and stringing them on the cord so the necklace wouldn’t stretch too much.”
    He still looked a little stunned, so she went on. “I know it sounds kind of weird to us. We don’t have as much intimate and regular contact with death anymore, but back then it