Medical Examiner
Suffolk County Mortuary
North Grove Street
Boston, Massachusetts
Dec. 1, 1919

Unbelievable! When I arrived this morning at 7 AM the telephone was ringing off the wall. Usually my assistant would answer but he has classes at Harvard Medical School today. Can’t complain, I insisted he enroll. He, at least, will be qualified eventually.

Not like the police. What are they thinking over there? The call was from a funeral home in East Boston about woman’s body delivered by police. They said she was on her back porch hanging laundry and fell to her death. Wrong. She was shot. Somehow the police missed that. How, I ask you?

I’ll tell you how. Incompetence plain and simple. I can’t fault the lowly patrolman who was called first, but a detective with a gold badge? Impossible to believe. Turns out he’s a Harvard man who hasn’t even completed a degree. He answered the call to volunteer from the president of Harvard in September when the Boston Police went on strike. A scab! But a scab with a Yankee name like Attwood and relatives on Beacon Hill. Taking the place of veterans striking for a living wage. Not allowed to unionize. It’s a crying shame Sullivan died last year. He’d never have let it go that far.

That idiot Peters finally fired all the strikers and blackballed them. Then he hires anybody off the street, gives them a raise and the city finally pays for their uniforms but he won’t hire back any strikers. Instead, he gives a gold badge to a wet behind the years Brahmin scion. Fools.

Fanny Lee showed up before young Attwood. I told her to bring her drawing pad. She returned to the city in the fall determined to learn about legal medicine. Not sure how to deal with the enthusiasm that resulted from the case she helped with last winter. Her dollhouse crime scene helped to solve the crime, and now she’s all worked up. Doesn’t want people to think she’s a rich woman with not enough to do…

East Boston. So near and yet so far. You could swim across the inner harbor from Long Wharf to Eastie. Of course, you might be run down by a ship. The ferry ride is shorter than an hour-long roundabout land route. It was cold. We drove off the ferry and down Border Street along the docks. In an alley between two warehouses, we saw the rear of a three-decker where the woman died.

Who should be sleeping on a porch but Mack, Detective Michael McNally that was. Before the strike. Blacklisted. Men like him are gone and I have to work with the dregs who are left.

Just to make my day, we found a second corpse in a storage box beside one of the warehouses. Beaten to death.

I dealt with the woman’s body on my return. I’ll deal with the man in the morning. My only hope is that Mack will stay involved. He hitched a ride back to the city with us and enjoyed seeing the rookie Attwood react to the autopsy. It’s a crying shame he’s been blacklisted. He’ll never be on the force again.

Three-Decker Murder In A Nutshell, A Nutshell Murder Mystery Book #2
Genre: Historical Mystery
Release: January 2024
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

In November 1919 a woman is found dead. Police assume she fell from the back porch of a three-decker in East Boston. At the funeral home, they discover she was shot. Medical examiner Magrath is furious at newly hired police detective Peter Attwood for the mistake. Since the police strike in September, experienced Irish detectives like McNally have been blackballed and inexperienced men like the Harvard student have been hired. Frances Glessner Lee is determined to help both Magrath and young Peter who is grandson to her widowed friend. Lives of Boston Brahmins and Irish clash as they hunt for the truth.

This is the second in a series of fictional stories roughly based on the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Over twenty miniature crime scenes were used from the 1940s to the present to train police detectives. Set in the 1920s, these stories imagine Frances Glessner Lee working with Dr. George Magrath to learn about “legal medicine” as forensic science was known at the time. Working with Magrath provided the foundation for the miniatures for which Frances Glessner Lee has become known as the “Mother of Forensic Science.”

About the author
Frances McNamara retired from the University of Chicago Library. She is the author of nine Emily Cabot Mysteries, set in Chicago, and the Nutshell Murder Mystery series set in Boston. Three-Decker Murder In A Nutshell is book 2 in the series that features historical characters Frances Glessner Lee “Mother of Forensic Science” and Dr. George Magrath. She lives in Boston and Cape Cod.