Murder on Black Friday Read Online Free Page B

actually been sired by her son.
    “Tell me if this hurts,” Will said as he slid one of the brushes into the twist of hair he’d made, pushing it through the thick knot and out the other side. He did the same with the second brush.
“Eh voila,”
he murmured, letting his hands linger on her shoulders for a moment before removing them.
    Nell patted the chignon, impressed with how solidly it held. “I couldn’t have done better myself.”
    “Surgeon’s hands,” he said.
    That comment reminded her of the autopsies he’d performed yesterday evening. She shook her head as she dipped up some more rabbit glue. “How awful about Mr. Bassett. I feel so sorry for his daughters. They were always so kind and gracious to me. Some of your mother’s callers treat me like one of the scullery maids.”
    “That’s because you have an Irish name,” Will said, “not because you’re a governess. Since a governess is usually just a well-born lady in reduced circumstances, they’re considered social equals more or less. An Irishwoman, on the other hand, is, well,
Irish.
I’ve traveled all over the world, and I think it’s fair to say the Irish are more loathed in Boston than anywhere I’ve been—more so than New York, or even London. But Bassett’s daughters like you, eh, eh?”
    “They seem to.” She skimmed the last of the glue off and turned to look at him. “Why?”
    “I’m going to be paying a call on them when I leave here, and I’m thinking it might help if you came along. You could introduce me, assure them I’m an all right sort, encourage them to answer my questions.”
    “An Irish governess vouching for a Hewitt?” Nell said as she wiped off her spatula, having sealed the entire canvas.
    “Most of my parents’ circle, except for old family friends like the Pratts and the Thorpes, have never met me. Some of them don’t even know I exist. Somehow I doubt Saint August would bring me up in casual conversation. If he does, God knows what he says. You, on the other hand, are a familiar presence to anyone who’s spent any time with my mother these past few years. And, of course, you’re now presumed to be her prospective daughter-in-law. You’ll be trading in that troublesome Irish surname for one of the oldest and most respected names in Boston.”
    “Presumably.”
    “Presumably.”
    “How long do you suppose we can keep up this sham courtship?” she asked.
    “Long engagements are
du rigeur
in Boston society. We could go on this way for years without causing comment.”
    Nell set a battered enameled bowl on her worktable. “I’ll go with you to the Bassetts. It’s best if I’m there to reassure them that you’re all right, what with everything they’re going through right now.”
    “I appreciate that. Anything I can do help?” he asked as she opened the little storage cabinet in which she kept her supplies.
    “Thanks, but I’m just mixing up a batch of gesso. It’s a one-person job.” Fetching down a jar of white pigment, she said, “You might want to keep your distance until I get this stuff bound. It’s powdered lead.”
    Backing away, he said, “You do take measures to keep from breathing that in, don’t you?”
    Nell pulled a kerchief from the pocket of her smock. “This from the gentleman who persists in inhaling tobacco smoke despite all the warnings from, let’s see...the medical journals,
Harper’s Weekly
, your good friend Isaac Foster, who happens to be a pulmonary expert...”
    “I’ve cut down substantially just to get you and Foster off my back. I only light up nowadays as a sort of...inhalable nerve tonic, something to soothe me and keep me occupied when I can’t quite abide the world and my role in it.”
    “Does that happen very often?” Nell asked.
    “Much less often than it did before I...”
Before I met you?
“Before I returned to Boston. My point is, if I quit altogether, I’ll have no bad habits left at all, and that’s far too dreary a prospect to