Mister Slaughter (6 page)

"A precedent, yes," Matthew agreed, "but every slave granted manumission was so approved before Lord Cornbury came. I'm wondering if he can be induced to sign a writ."

"First things first. Put your money up. You're done, aren't you?"

Matthew's hesitation spoke volumes, and Greathouse leaned back in his chair with a whuff of exhaled breath. "Don't tell me you have no money.
Again
."

"I won't, then." Matthew almost shrugged but he decided it would be risking Greathouse's wrath, which was not pretty.

"I shouldn't stand for you," Greathouse said as Evelyn came to the table. "This will be the third time in a week." He smiled tightly at the waitress as he took the bill, looked it over and paid her the money. "Thank you, dear," he told her. "Don't take any wooden duits."

She gave that little bell-like laugh and went about her business.

"You're spending too much on your damned clothes," Greathouse said, standing up from his chair. "What's got your money now? Those new
boots
?"

Matthew also stood up and retrieved his tricorn from its hook. "I've had expenses." The boots were to be paid off in four installments. He was half paid on his most recent suit, and still owed money on some shirts from Benjamin Owles. But they were such fine shirts, in chalk white and bird's-egg blue with frills on the front and cuffs. Again, the latest fashion as worn by young men of means. Why should I not have them, he thought, if I wish to make a good impression!

"Your business is your business," Greathouse said as they walked through the tavern toward the door. "Until it starts taking money out of my pocket. I'm keeping count of all this, you know."

They were nearly at the door when a middle-aged woman with thickly-curled gray hair under a purple hat and an exuberant, sharp-nosed face rose from the table she shared with two other ladies to catch Matthew's sleeve. "Oh, Mr. Corbett! A word, please!"

"Yes, madam?" He knew Mrs. Iris Garrow, wife of Stephen Garrow the Duke Street horn merchant.

"I wanted to ask if you might sign another copy of the
Earwig
for me, at your convenience? Sorry to say, Stephen accidentally used the first copy I had to kill a cockroach, and I've boxed his ears for it!"

"I'll be glad to, madam."

"Any new adventures to report?" breathlessly asked one of the other ladies, Anna Whitakker by name and wife to the Dock Ward alderman.

"
No,"
Greathouse answered, with enough force to shake the cups of tea on their table. He grasped Matthew's elbow and pushed him out the door. "Good morning to you!"

Outside on Nassau Street, in the cool breeze with the silver sunlight beaming down, Matthew reflected that one might be a celebrity one day and the next have cockroach entrails smeared across one's name. The better to wear nice clothes, hold your head up high and luxuriate in fame, while it lasted.

"There's one more thing," Greathouse told him, stopping before they'd moved very far from Sally Almond's door. "I wish to know the extent of Zed's intelligence. How much he can grasp of English, for instance. How quickly he might be taught. You can help me."

"Help you how?" Matthew instantly knew he was going to regret asking.

"You know a
teacher
," Greathouse answered. When Matthew didn't immediately respond, he prodded: "Who helps Headmaster Brown at the school."

Berry Grigsby, of course. Matthew stepped aside to get out of the way of a passing wagon that pulled a buff-colored bull to market.

"I want her opinion. Bring yourself and your lady friend to City Hall at four o'clock. Come up to McCaggers' attic."

"Oh, she'll love that!" Matthew could picture Berry up in that attic, where McCaggers kept his skeletons and grisly relics of the coroner's craft. She'd be out of there like a cannonball shot from a twelve-pounder.

"She doesn't have to love it, and neither do you. Just be there." Greathouse narrowed his eyes and looked north along Nassau. "I have an errand to run, and it may take me awhile. I presume you have something to do today that doesn't require the risk of your life?"

"I'll find something." There were always the detailed reports of past cases that Matthew was scribing. Once a clerk, always so.

"Four o'clock, then," said Greathouse, and began to stride north along the street, against the morning traffic.

Matthew watched him go.
I have an errand to run
. Something was up. Greathouse was on the hunt. Matthew could almost see him sniffing the air. He was in his element, a wolf among sheep. On a case, was he? Who was the client? If so, he was keeping it a secret from Matthew. Well, so was Matthew keeping a secret. Two secrets, really: the blood card and the amount of debt he was carrying.

A third secret, as well.

Your lady friend
, Greathouse had said.

Would that it were more, Matthew thought. But in his situation, in his dangerous profession, with the blood card laid upon him . . .

Lady friend
would have to do.

When he'd watched Greathouse out of sight, Matthew turned south along Nassau. He walked toward Number Seven Stone Street, where he would spend the morning scribing in his journal and from time to time pausing to mark what might have been the faint laughter of distant ghosts.

Clouds moved across the blue sky, and the sunlight shone down upon villages and hills daubed with red, gold and copper. As the day progressed, so did the affairs of New York. A ship with its white sails flying came in past Oyster Island to make fast at the Great Dock. Higglers selling from their pushcarts a variety of items including sweetmeats, crackling skins and roasted chestnuts did a lively business, drawing an audience for their wares with young girls who danced to the bang and rattle of tambourines. A mule decided to show its force of will as it hauled a brickwagon along the Broad Way, and its subsequent stubborn immobility caused a traffic jam that frayed tempers and set four men to fighting until buckets of water poured on their heads cooled their enthusiasm. A group of Iroquois who had come to town to sell deerskins watched this entertainment solemnly but laughed behind their hands.

Several women and the occasional man visited the cemetery that stood behind a black iron fence alongside Trinity Church. There in the shade of the yellow trees, a flower or a quiet word was delivered to a loved one who had journeyed on from this earthly vale. Not much time was taken to linger here, however, for all knew that God accepted the worthy pilgrims with open arms, and life indeed was for the living.

Fishing boats in the rivers pulled up nets shimmering with striped bass, shad, flounder and snapper. The ferry between Van Dam's shipyard on King Street and the landing over the Hudson in Weehawken was always active for travellers and traders, who often found that the winds or currents could make even such a simple trip a three-hour adventure.

Across the city the multitudinous fires of commerce—be they from blacksmith's furnaces or tallow chandler's pots—burned brightly all the day, sending their signatures of smoke up through a mason's delight of chimneys. Closer to earth, workmen labored at new buildings that showed the northward progress of civilization. The boom of mallets and scrape of sawblades seemed never ceasing, and caused several of the eldest Dutch residents to recall the quiet of the good old days.

Of particular interest was the fact that the new mayor, Phillip French, was a solid, foursquare individual whose aim was to put his shoulder to the wheel and get more of the city's streets paved with cobblestones; this enterprise, too, was directed northward past Wall Street, but as it cost money from the treasury, the task was being currently stalled in paperwork by Governor Lord Cornbury, who was seldom seen in public these days outside the walls of his mansion in Fort William Henry.

All these events were of the common clay of New York. In one form or fashion, they were repeated as surely as dawn and dusk. But one event happening this afternoon, at four o'clock by Matthew's silver watch, had never before taken place: the ascent of Berry Grigsby up a narrow set of stairs in City Hall, toward Ashton McCaggers' realm in the attic above.

"Careful," Matthew said lest she lose her footing, but with an-other step it was he who stumbled behind Berry and found himself grasping a handful of her skirt to prevent a fall.

"Excuse you," she told him crisply, and pulled her skirt free at the same time as his hand flew away like a bird that had landed on a griddlecake iron. Then she gathered her grace and continued up the rest of the steps, where she came to the door at the top. She glanced back at him, he nodded, and she knocked at the door just as he'd instructed.

These days their relationship was, as a problem-solver might say, complicated. It was known to both of them that her grandfather had invited Berry to come from England in order to find her not necessarily a position, but a proposition. Up at the zenith of the list of eligible marriage candidates, at least in Marmaduke's conniving mind, was a certain citizen of New York named Corbett, and thus had Matthew been invited to make the dairyhouse his own miniature mansion, and to enjoy meals and companionship with the Grigsby clan, they being only a few steps from his own front door.
Just show her around the town a little
, Marmaduke had urged.
Escort her to a dance or two. Would that kill you
?

Matthew wasn't sure. Her last escort, his friend and chess companion Effrem Owles, the tailor's son, had stepped into a muskrat hole while walking Berry home beside the East River one evening, and his dancing days were over until the swelling of his ankle subsided. But whenever Matthew saw his friend lately, either sitting at the Trot Then Gallop or limping along the street on a crutch, Effrem's eyes widened behind his round spectacles and he wanted to know what Berry was wearing today, and where was she going, and did she ever say anything about him, and all such buffle-headed chatter as that.

I certainly don't know
! Matthew had answered, a bit too stridently.
I'm not her keeper! And I don't have time for even talking about her, anyhow.

But Matthew, Matthew!
And it really was pitiful, the way Effrem hobbled on that crutch.
Don't you think she's the prettiest girl you ever saw
?

Matthew wasn't sure about that, either, but he did know that standing this close to her, here in the narrow little stairway awaiting an answer to the knock on McCaggers' door, she smelled very nice. It was perhaps the scent of the cinammon soap with which she washed the curly tresses of her coppery-red hair, or the faintly-sweet aroma of the blue wildflowers that adorned the rim of her straw hat. She was nineteen years old, her birthday being in the last week of June; it had been celebrated, if one was to put it suchly, aboard the ill-fated vessel that had brought her across the Atlantic and deposited her as a moldy mess staggering down the gangplank in midsummer, which was the first sight Matthew had had of her. But that was then and now was now, and so much the better. Berry's cheeks and her finely-chiselled nose were dusted with freckles, her jaw firm and resolute, her eyes dark blue and just as curious about the world as those of her esteemed grandfather. She wore a lavender-hued dress with a lace shawl about her shoulders, for last night's rain had brought a chill to the air. Before their initial meeting, Matthew had expected her to be a gnome to match Marmaduke's misshapen proportions, yet she stood almost at his own height and was anything but gnomely. In fact, Matthew did find her to be pretty. And more than that, actually. He found her to be interesting. Her descriptions of London, its citizens, and her travels—and misadventures—across the English countryside kept him enthralled during their mealtimes together at Marmaduke's table. He hoped to someday see that enormous city, which appealed to him not only for its variety but for its atmosphere of intrigue and danger gleaned from his readings of the
London Gazette
. Of course, he hoped to live long enough to get there, as he had intrigues and dangers enough in New York.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Berry asked.

"Like what?" He'd let his mind wander and his eyes linger, and so he immediately brought himself back to the business at hand. In answer to Berry's knock, a small square aperture in the door flipped up and an eye-glassed dark brown eye peered out. The first time Matthew had visited up here, he'd been witness to McCaggers' experiments with pistols on Elsie and Rosalind, the two dress-maker's forms that served for target practice. Not to mention the other items behind that door. In another minute or two, Berry was going to be beating a hasty retreat back down the stairs.

The door opened. Ashton McCaggers said, in a light and pleasant voice, "Good afternoon. Please come in."

Matthew motioned for Berry to enter, but she was paying no attention to him anyway and had already started across the threshold. Matthew followed her, McCaggers closed the door, and then Matthew had almost run smack into Berry because she was standing there, quite still, taking stock of the coroner's heaven.

The light through the attic's windows streamed upon what hung suspended from the rafters above their heads. McCaggers' "angels", as he'd once described them to Matthew, were four human skeletons, three adult-sized and one a child. Adorning the walls of this macabre chamber were twenty or more skulls of different sizes, some whole and some missing jawbones or other portions. Wired-together bones of legs, arms, ribcages and hands served as strange decorations that only a coroner could abide. In the room, which was quite large, stood a row of honey-colored file cabinets atop which were arranged more bone displays. There were animal skeletons as well, showing that McCaggers gathered bones for the sake of their shapes and variety. Next to a long table topped with beakers of fluid in which objects of uncertain—but certainly disturbing—origin floated was McCaggers' rack of swords, axes, knives, muskets, pistols and cruder weapons such as clubs studded with frightful-looking nails. It was before this assortment of things that turned human beings into boneyards that Hudson Greathouse stood, holding in one hand an ornately-decorated pistol he was in the process of admiring.