Free Still Life With Murder by P. B. Ryan

back against the wall, coughing tiredly as he puffed on the cigarette, his face sheened with perspiration.
    “Are you sick?” Nell asked.
    “Not strictly speaking.”
    “It’s been my observation that surgeons are ill-equipped to diagnose themselves.”
    “If I were still a surgeon, I suppose that might be a consideration.”
    “You’re not a surgeon anymore?”
    “Christ, look at me!”
    Rattled by his vehemence—and by the blasphemy, which her ears were unused to of late—Nell turned and busied herself righting the bench. She sat, smoothing her skirts just to have something to do with her hands.
    “As I said, Miss Sweeney, when one is hopeless at something, the wisest course is to just give it up. Better for all concerned.”
    She decided to redirect the conversation to her reasons for coming here. “Your mother really is very distraught over your arrest, Dr. Hewitt. She sent me here to…well, among other things, to find out what actually happened last night.”
    He regarded her balefully. “If I didn’t tell the men who did this to me—” he pointed to his face “—why on earth would I tell you?”
    “For your mother’s sake?”
    A harsh burst of laughter precipitated another coughing fit. “You will have to do much,
much
better than that, Miss Sweeney.”
    Why, oh why couldn’t Viola have found someone else to do this? Changing tack, Nell said, “She intends to hire an attorney to represent you.”
    “A singularly idiotic notion.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    He covered another yawn with the hand holding the cigarette, which was quivering, she noticed. “Why waste the fellow’s time?”
    “A rather nihilistic outlook, considering your life is at stake.”
    “Nihilistic?”
Dr. Hewitt regarded her with amused incredulity. “Where the devil does a girl like you learn about
nihilism
?”
    Nell sat a little straighter, spine and corset stays aligned in stiff indignation. “It isn’t only surgeons who learn to read, Dr. Hewitt. The writings of the German philosopher Heinrich Jacobi—”
    “Yes, I’m familiar with his work—it was assigned to me when I was reading philosophy at Oxford. What I’m wondering is why
you
read it.”
    “The physician I was apprenticed to—the one who trained me in nursing—he took it upon himself to tutor me in various disciplines.”
    “Did he, now.” Before Nell could ponder what he meant by that, he said, “What’s this fellow’s name? I know most of the physicians in the city, at least by reputation.”
    “He lives on Cape Cod, near your parents’ summer cottage in Waquoit. His name is Cyril Greaves.”
    “Is that where you’re from, then? Waquoit?”
    “Near there—East Falmouth. Dr. Hewitt, I didn’t come here to talk about myself.”
    “Yet I find you suddenly fascinating, given your unexpected dimensions, and I’ve been so frightfully bored. Was he an older man, this Dr. Greaves, or…”
    “Forty-four when I left his employ.”
    “Not that old, then. How long were you apprenticed to him?”
    “Four years, starting when I was eighteen.”
    “And before that?”
    Nell lifted the Bible from the bench next to her and placed it on her lap like a talisman, all too aware of how defensive she looked. “I’m afraid I don’t really see the point of—”
    “Indulge me. I’ve been quite starved for conversation in this place.” He took a thoughtful pull on his cigarette. “You had a family, presumably. Parents? Brothers and sisters? What did your father do?”
    What didn’t he do? “He worked on the docks, mostly—cutting fish, unloading ships, that sort of thing.”
    “A day laborer, was he?” The lowest of the low, taking whatever job was available for whatever pittance was offered.
    “That’s right,” Nell answered with a carefully neutral expression.
    “A hard life, I daresay.”
    “You’ve no idea.” Nell had the disquieting sense, as he questioned her, that he was slipping an exploratory scalpel into her mind, her