Murder in a mill town Read Online Free PDF Page B

him. “He’s just saying that ‘cause it’s what everyone else says.”
    “We knew what she was from the get-go,” Ruth said. “Very first day she come to the mill, I says to Evie, ‘this one’s trouble.’ All laced up tight, with that mountain of red hair. Thought she was better than us, bein’ as she’d lived in Boston and all.”
    “When all she really was,” Mary interjected, “was cheap Irish trash.”
    Nell continued sketching, her expression carefully neutral. It was only those from the old country who recognized her Irishness without hearing her name. There followed a flurry of complaints about no-account foreigners taking over their jobs at the mill, but soon their attention returned to Bridie Sullivan. Nell heard all about Bridie’s face paint and flirty ways, her suspiciously fine clothing and hair combs and boots—the latter being a particular sore point. Evie, she noticed, had fallen silent again.
    “Never did go to church with us,” Mary said, “and she’d raise holy hell about havin’ the tithes taken out of her pay.”
    “On account of she’s a cat-lick,” Ruth added.
    “The church is Protestant,” Cora explained. “Congregationalist. And she didn’t even live here—she lived with her folks. If you ask me, she had a point.”
    “Evie and Luther are cat-licks,” Ruth said. “They go to their own church on Sundays, but they don’t get all het up about the tithes.”
    “They should.” Cora said.
    Evie shrugged and plucked at a blade of grass. Her brother just looked confused.
    Ruth said, “You’re a spooler, Cora. You never did have to work with that Bridie Sullivan, otherwise you wouldn’t be makin’ excuses for her.”
    Redirecting the conversation yet again, Nell asked them how Bridie had come by all her fine trappings.
    “Men give ‘em to her,” Ruth said. “For, you know, makin’ free with herself. That’s the kind she was.”
    “She had this sweetheart, Virgil,” Cora said. “Good looking fella.”
    “‘Cept for them stars,” Ruth said with a shudder.
    “I liked them stars,” Mary said. “Made you wonder about him.”
    Ruth laughed. “I’ll say they did.”
    “If he’d been ugly to start with, I might have felt different about the stars,” Cora said, “but he was so well-built, you know, with shoulders out to there. Dark hair but real fair skin, and the biggest blue eyes you ever saw. The other girls used to try and catch his eye sometimes, till they found out he’d just got out of the calaboose.”
    “What was he in for?” Nell asked.
    “Nobody was on good enough terms with Bridie to ask,” Cora replied.
    “He wasn’t the only one she was dallyin’ with,” Ruth said. “Everything in trousers came sniffin’ around sooner or later, and they didn’t usually leave disappointed, if you know what I mean—so long as they made it worth her while.”
    Mary said, “The really fancy stuff—the bonnets and ear bobs, and most of them dresses—it was Mr. Harry give her them.”
    “Harry Hewitt?” Nell asked, looking up. “Were he and Bridie...did they...?”
    “Every chance they got,” Ruth said. “He’d have that little lickfinger Carlisle come pull her off her shift and bring her up to his office. She’d come back with her hair done different, and this
look
on her face.”
    “He pulled her off her
shift
?” Cora asked. “Evie, is that true?”
    Evie, sitting next to her brother with her arms around her updrawn legs, her gaze on the patch of grass at her feet, answered with a shrug.
    Ruth nudged Cora with her shoulder and said in a low voice, “Don’t be askin’ her about Bridie and Mr. Harry.”
    “Oh yeah, I forgot.”
    Nell must have looked confused, because Otis grinned and said, “Evie’s sweet on Mr. Harry, has been ever since she was this high. Ain’t that right, Evie?”
    “Leave her be,” Ruth said, while Evie tightened her arms around her legs and looked away.
    “Yeah, you leave her be,” Luther echoed, his neck