Free Murder in a mill town by P.B. RYAN Page A

front gate, his scarf snapping smartly as a breeze wafted across the boulevard. His servant bowed as he held the gate open, then trotted to the hack to get the door, bowing a second time. “Good luck with the cards tonight, Mr. Hewitt.”
    Harry didn’t so much as grunt a response. He settled into the seat, looking faintly bored, as Speck said to the driver, “He’s going to Orlando Poole’s.”
    “What’s that?” the young driver asked. “A restaurant?”
    “Christ,” Harry growled from inside the hack. “Province Street. Corner of Bosworth.”
    Flicking his reins, the driver guided the coach in an about-face on the wide, granite-paved street and headed back toward Arlington.
    Nell waited until Edwin Speck had reentered the house to walk up to the corner and wave down another hack.
    “Orlando Poole’s,” she said as the driver handed her into the shabby brown Landau. “It’s on Province and—”
    “I know where it is,” he said in a gruff, whiskey-scented Irish brogue. “Patrick Nulty’s been drivin’ this hack enough years that he don’t need to be spoon-fed no addresses, thank you very much.” He stared at her a moment. “I must say, though, you don’t quite seem the type.”
    Before she could summon a response to that, he shook his head in evident bemusement, climbed up onto his box and snapped the reins.
    *   *   *
    The Landau clattered to a stop on the narrow cobblestone lane, eerily dark save for a single ornamental lamp—oil, not gas—suspended from an iron arch over the stone steps that led from Province Street to Bosworth. Brick buildings loomed on either side, their ground level shops well-shuttered, a scattered handful of upper windows faintly lit. It reminded Nell of the illustrations in Dr. Greaves’s book about medieval London.
    “Um...where exactly is Orlando Poole’s?” Nell asked Patrick Nulty as he helped her out of the coach.
    “Right there.” He cocked his head toward a set of stone steps that led to a partially belowground door. “Ain’t you never been to Poole’s hell before?”
    “I...no, but I...”
    “You do know what kind of a place it is.”
    “It’s a gaming hell,” she said with feigned confidence as she paid him.
    “You ain’t goin’ in there to pray over ‘em, are you? They’ll laugh you out of there so fast—”
    “No, I just... The truth is, I need to talk to someone, and the only way I can do it is to go in there.”
    “Hmph. Tell you what. Business is slow on Thursday nights, and I could use a little break. Why don’t I just wait right here so’s I can take you back home when you’re done with your business inside?”
    “I actually don’t live very far from here,” she said. “Just three blocks that way—Tremont and West. I can walk.”
    His eyes betrayed his surprise that she hailed from Colonnade Row, but all he said, as he climbed back up into his box, was, “It ain’t good for a lady to be wanderin’ the city alone at night. I’ll be right here. And if you happen to need a helpin’ hand in the meantime, you’ll know where to find me.”
    Nell thanked him, descended the stone steps and knocked on the door, which bore no street number or other identification of any kind. She was about to knock a second time when it swung inward, courtesy of a burly, plainly dressed colored man who looked from her to the hack, and back again. “Yes?”
    “I, um...I’m looking for Orlando Poole’s.” Nell glanced behind this man to the hallway in which he stood, which was dimly lit and unfurnished.
    “Sorry, miss,” he said as he stepped back from the door. “There’s no one here by that name.”
    “Um, wait,” she pleaded as he shut the door in her face. She stared at it for a moment, then turned and climbed back up to the brick sidewalk, to find Nulty chuckling as he raised a flask to his mouth. “Why are you laughing?” she asked. “That was very embarrassing. You sent me to the wrong door.”
    “I sent you to the right