Read Online Still Life With Murder by P. B. Ryan - Free Book Online

people respond to you.
Men
respond to you. You’ll have no trouble getting in to see Will.”
    Nell pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, feeling trapped and woozy and increasingly resigned. If not for Viola Hewitt, she would still be in East Falmouth, wearing frayed castoffs as she tended round-the-clock to Cyril Greaves’s every need. Not that she’d begrudged him any of it, God knew. She’d been fond of Dr. Greaves, very much so. He’d quite literally saved her life—only to remake her into the kind of woman who could function in a world of glittering privilege. He’d let her go regretfully, but with a measure of grace that had touched Nell deeply, because she’d known he was doing it for her. For all that, she would be eternally grateful; but she was grateful to Viola Hewitt as well, exceedingly so, for having invited her into this world—and for giving her Gracie, the only child she would ever have.
    In a quiet voice still rusty with tears, Viola said, “You’re lucky in a way, you know that?”
    “Know it? I think about it every morning when I awaken and every night as I’m falling asleep.”
    “I don’t mean that. I mean…You’re so much freer than I am, really—freer than any woman of rank. We’re all kept shrouded in cocoons of propriety lest we somehow bring scandal upon our families—and there are more ways of doing that than you can imagine. The governess, however, occupies a singular niche in our world, neither servant nor pampered gentlewoman, but something quite apart. Do you have any idea how blessed you are tobe able to come and go as you please? The demands of my class have crippled me more surely than the affliction that put me in this chair. You, on the other hand, have no cocoon to bind you.”
    Reaching out, Viola stroked Nell’s cheek. “You’re a butterfly. How I do envy you.”

CHAPTER TWO

    “A   LADY TO SEE YOU , T OUSSAINT ,” announced the pockmarked guard through the iron-barred door of the holding cell.
    “I don’t know any ladies.” The voice from within—drowsy-deep, British-accented and vaguely bored—did not belong here. It was a voice meant for the opera box, the ballroom, the polo field…not this fetid little police station cage.
    Nell’s view of William Hewitt was limited by her position against the wall of the cramped visitor’s alcove and the fact that it was only the cell’s door that was comprised of open grillwork; the walls were solid brick. From her angle, all she could make out through the barred door were two long legs in fawn trousers, right ankle propped on left knee. A hand appeared and struck a match against the sole of a well-made black shoe. The hand was long-fingered, capable—a deft hand with a scalpel, she would guess.
    Or a bistoury.
    “Her name is Miss Chapel,” said the guard as he hung Nell’s snow-dampened coat and scarf on a hook. “She’s from the Society for the Relief of Convicts and Indigents.”
    The aroma of tobacco wafted from the cell. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to point out that I am neither a convict nor an indigent.”
    “You’ll be a convict soon as they can manage to drag your sorry…” the guard glanced at Nell “…drag you in front of a jury. And then you’ll be just another murdering wretch swinging from a rope over at the county jail.”
    Nell clutched to her chest the scratchy woolen blanket and Bible she’d brought. She hated this. She hated being in this monstrous brick box of a building, surrounded by blue-uniformed cops who all seemed to stare at her as if they knew who she really was and why this was the last place she should be. She hated the way Gracie had cried and reached for her, squirming in Paola’s arms, as she’d put on her coat to come here. And she
really
hated having to confront this man who may or may not have cut another man’s throat last night in a delirium born of opium—or lunacy.
    “You can give him them things, ma’am, but I’ll have to check