Free Still Life With Murder by P. B. Ryan Page A

memories, her very self—a dangerous proposition,given what he might unearth if he ventured deeply enough. Too much was at stake—far too much—for her to permit that.
    She said, “Let me save us some time here, if I may. I had a family. They’re gone now. The details are really none of your concern. I’m sorry if you’re bored because you’ve ended up here after taking your wonderful life with all of its blessings and tossing it in the trash bin. That was your choice to make, though, and I hardly think it should now be my responsibility to provide jail-house entertainment for you at the expense of my privacy.”
    Sticking the cigarette in his mouth, Dr. Hewitt clapped listlessly. “What a very impassioned speech, Miss Sweeney. Have you ever considered the stage as a vocation?”
    She looked away, disgusted.
    “No? I suppose I’m not surprised. Actresses have to be willing to bare their souls—and somewhat more than that, from time to time.” His gaze skimmed down to the knifelike toes of her black morocco boots, just visible beneath the hem of her skirt, and back up. “If there was ever a woman buttoned up more snugly than you, I’ve yet to meet her.”
    “Must you keep turning the conversation back to me?” she asked.
    “And yet I sense, if you loosened just one or two of those buttons, the most extraordinary revelations would burst forth. That’s the last thing you want, though, isn’t it? To be exposed. It terrifies you.”
    “As I said,” Nell continued tightly, “your mother plans on hiring a lawyer to—”
    “Go away.” Sitting up, he hurled the cigarette into the bowl of gruel, where it sizzled, and tugged his blanket more tightly around himself. “Just go away, if that’s all you can prattle on about. And tell Lady Viola to abandon this foolish notion of getting a lawyer. Some people are meant to hang.”
    “Guilty people are meant to hang.”
    “Precisely.” Sweat trickled into his eyes; he wiped it away with the blanket. “Not that I’m too keen on that particular method of execution. I saw six men hanged at the same time once. It took a full ten minutes for them to stop writhing. One of them broke his neck, but he still struggled. Hellish way to go. I wouldn’t mind a firing squad—or perhaps a syringe full of morphine. Quick, fairly painless…”
    “Are you saying you killed that man?”
    “Boorishly put, Miss Sweeney. You’re cleverer than that.”
    “Your mother believes in your innocence, Dr. Hewitt.”
    “Why, for God’s sake?”
    “Because you’re her son,” Nell said quietly. “Because she loves you. Why else would she have sent me here?”
    He laughed wheezily, and without humor. “Because she’s addicted to philanthropic projects—it helps to ease her remorse over her lack of a soul. Trust me when I tell you that woman is incapable of maternal love. You think you know my parents, Miss Sweeney, but you really have no idea.”
    Rising from the bench, Nell retrieved Viola’s letter from the petit-point chatelaine bag hanging from her waistband—a practical alternative to a mesh reticule—and reached through the bars to hand it to Dr. Hewitt. “She asked me to give this to you.”
    “Still using the violet ink, I see.” Turning the envelope over, he rubbed his thumb across the dab of sealing wax. “She always did like to do things handsomely.” He crushed the letter in his fist and tossed it into the chamber pot.
    Gasping in outrage, Nell clutched the iron bars that separated them. “Your mother
wept
as she wrote that,” she said with jittery fury, feeling close to tears herself on Viola’s behalf. “She
sobbed
. And you just…” She shook her head, appalled at the sight of the crumpled-up letter in the stoneware pot. “Then again, I don’tknow what else I would expect from a man who would walk away from his own family—his own mother—at Christmas, without even saying goodbye. Not to mention letting them think you’ve been dead all this time.