Death on Beacon Hill by P.B. RYAN Read Free Book Online Page B

of her bedroom. Nell had never seen anything like it in a public situation.
    The group paused before the bizarre coffin and, one by one, stood with heads bowed. Nell recognized them when they turned to seat themselves in the very first pew: Orville Pratt with his stout little wife, his two pretty, fair-haired daughters, and an older lady Nell couldn’t place. The oddly dressed one was Emily, recently home from her extended European tour. It stood to reason such a prominent attorney would attend the funeral of his late client, family in tow, if only for appearances. How would it look if he didn’t, after extolling her character during yesterday’s inquest, praise that had made its way into that morning’s
Daily Advertiser
?
    The front page article had summarized the inquest in terms that left no doubt as to the guilt of the “cunning and shiftless” Fiona Gannon, who had “schemed with an inborn craftiness” to gain possession of Virginia Kimball’s celebrated diamond necklaces.
    Brady had been more distraught than ever when Nell sought him out in his carriage house that morning.
She was framed,
he insisted,
and everybody believes it ‘cause she was Irish. “Inborn,” that means we’re all that way—you, me, all of us from the old country. I won’t rest till it’s put right.
    He’d had Fiona’s body transported to an undertaker on Pearl Street, where he viewed it yesterday evening.
Worst thing I ever seen,
he told Nell, his eyes welling with tears.
She’d been such a pretty little thing. Twenty-one years old. To see her like that, with her head all...
His words had died in his chest; his shoulders shook.
I wish to God it was me instead.
    Wanting to confirm that Fiona had been shot at point blank range, Nell had coaxed Brady into describing his niece’s head wound. The entry wound on the right temple was small, he said, and surrounded by a mottled black stain that spread over the side of Fiona’s face. The exit wound was a harrowing crater, the left side of her head having been blown entirely away.
    Solemn music blossomed forth from the most spectacular organ Nell had ever seen, its pipes soaring toward the lofty, barrel-vaulted ceiling. It was a handsome church with two rows of tall white columns separating the nave from the side aisles and upper galleries. A gentleman of about sixty in clerical robes—the Reverend Dr. Gannett, she presumed—sat in a tall-backed chair on the altar, leafing through his notes. Having never before set foot in a Protestant church, Nell felt glaringly out of place, and—although she knew it was absurd—conspicuously Irish Catholic.
    A man strolled past her and down the length of the center aisle before pausing at the coffin, one hand stuffed in a trouser pocket, the other holding a bowler at his side. After a moment, he turned and surveyed the church, his gaze lighting one at a time on the assembled mourners. He was slightly built, with close-cropped gray hair—prematurely so, Nell could tell, given the smoothness of his sharp-featured little face. In contrast to the other gentlemen, all in identical black frock coats, he wore a charcoal gray sack suit buttoned over a plaid vest, his feet clad in humble brown brogans.
    Nell had no doubt whatsoever that this was Detective Charlie Skinner. She smiled to herself.
I can still pick out the coppers.
    Her smile waned when Skinner fixed his pale-eyed gaze on her for a brief but penetrating assessment. To be stared at by a cop, even fleetingly and from such a distance, made her want to turn and dart out the front door.
    That impulse grew stronger as the detective strode toward her with an air of purpose, but when he was about twenty feet away, he turned and slid into one of the rear pews. Stiffening her spine, Nell walked toward the front of the church, her pace slowing as she approached the strange coffin and saw that its closed lid was one thick sheet of plate glass, offering a head-to-toe view of the deceased. It called to mind