The Queen of Bedlam (21 page)

Matthew easily sidestepped the strike. “Stop it,” he said.

“You don’t command me! How dare you!” Again the stick was lifted and swung, but this time Ausley lost his balance and fell back against Jansen’s wall. Ausley stood there enraged, his chest heaving, but his liquid amusements had put lead in his legs. “I’ll kill you,” he managed to croak. “See you dead and buried before I’m done!”

“I don’t think so,” Matthew answered. He thought that if he liked he could wrest that stick away from Ausley and give him some bruises to count tomorrow. He could beat the man over the head so hard people would think his new wig was purple and lumpy. He could knock Ausley’s legs out from under him and smash that ugly face with a good, soul-satisfying kick.

But the problem was, his soul didn’t need that kind of satisfaction.

There were no stomperboys around. No constables either. This was Matthew’s chance to take revenge on behalf of all those who’d suffered at the orphanage. Revenge for himself, too, for being too weak to do anything when he’d walked out of the Sainted John Home for Boys in the employ of Magistrate Woodward. Now he could have what he’d thought about and planned for so long; he could take a pound of flesh for all of them, including Nathan Spencer.

“I saw you following me!” Ausley seethed, unsteady on his feet and in his senses. “Back there when I left the Admiral! Well here I am, then! What the hell do you want?”

It was a good question, but Matthew felt the need to address the accusation first. “I haven’t been following you. And I haven’t even been near the Old Admiral tonight.”

“You dirty liar! I saw you step back around the corner!”

“I doubt you can see straight, but it wasn’t me. In fact,” said Matthew, “I don’t really care to waste any more time on you.” He realized it was true even as he spoke it; he had a direction now, and a purpose with the Herrald Agency. Why should he spend a moment longer even speaking to this vile animal?

But Ausley pulled himself up to his full height, be that still considerably shorter than Matthew, and he attempted some dignity. He thrust his collection of chins out and forced his thin mouth into a replica of a smile. “Just so you know,” he said, “and bear well the fact, that I have beaten you, boy. No one will witness against me. Not yesterday, not today, nor tomorrow. And why might that be? Possibly because they all know-all of them, they all do-that they deserved what they got? That they took themselves to be more mighty than they were, and I brought them back down to size. Well, someone had to do it! Had to teach those boys a lesson, and one they won’t ever forget! That’s what my job is, that’s my profession!”

Matthew couldn’t even begin to respond to this tipsy tirade, so he remained silent. The old anger of even two days before had faded, though. He had begun to realize that his life was ahead of him, with all its opportunities and adventures, and Eben Ausley was part of his past. Maybe the man had escaped proper justice and maybe that was neither fair nor right, but Matthew had done all he could. He was ready now, after all this time, to let it go.

“Beaten you,” Ausley repeated, his mouth wet with saliva. “Beaten you.” He nodded, his eyes glazed and heavy-lidded, and then he lurched away from Matthew and staggered west along Barrack Street, steering himself with his walking-stick and his lantern flickering at his side. For a moment Matthew thought he was truly a pathetic spectacle. And then he came to his senses, spat on the ground to clear the bad taste out of his mouth, and continued on his northward trek.

He was shaking a little from the encounter. A solid blow from that stick would’ve crowned him good and proper. He pulled his mind away from Ausley and looked ahead, thinking about what he was going to say to John Five. Maybe he should refuse to make a comment on the man’s destination until he followed Reverend Wade a second night. He wondered what Mrs. Herrald would suggest. After all, she was the expert in such-

He took one more pace and stopped.

He listened carefully to the night, his head cocked. Was it his imagination, or had he just heard glass break?

Behind him a distance. He looked back.

The street was deserted.

If he’d indeed heard glass break, the sound had come from Barrack Street.

Ausley’s lantern, Matthew thought. The drunken fool had dropped his lantern.

I saw you following me, he’d said.

I saw you step back around the corner.

A dog was barking a few streets over. From somewhere else, a man was singing in a ragged and incomprehensible voice, the noise fading in and out as if carried by the whims of the night breeze.

Matthew stared back toward the corner of Barrack Street.

I saw you following me.

“Ausley?” he called, but there was no reply. He walked to the corner and looked up the dark length of Barrack. And louder: “Ausley!”

Leave the bastard, Matthew thought. Lying drunk up there, that’s all. Just leave him and go home.

It was amazing how alone one could feel in a town of five-thousand souls.

Matthew’s throat clenched. He thought he saw something moving in there. A darkness against the darkness, hard at work.

He put his hand on the dirty lantern that hung from the cornerpost and lifted the lamp off its nail. He had an instant of thinking that he ought to be right now shouting for a constable but he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. His heart slamming, he began walking cautiously along Barrack Street.

There the dim light found Eben Ausley lying on the sidewalk on his back, the broken lantern nearby. A little red flame still burned in a puddle of wax. Next to Ausley’s right hand was the walking-stick, as if it had slipped from a nerveless grasp.

Matthew tried to say Get up but at first he couldn’t speak. He tried again and still only managed a hoarse whisper.

The man did not move, and as Matthew stood over him and shone the blue eye of light down upon the body it was clear-terribly, bloodily, throat-cuttingly clear-that Eben Ausley had seen his final turn of cards.

As repulsed as Matthew was, as much as panic wanted to shoot along his nerves and send him running, the cool analytical center of himself took control. It sharpened his senses and steeled his will, and so he stood looking down at the body and taking impressions with the same clinical and almost distant judgment as did him well at his games of chess.

Ausley’s throat had been brutally slashed, that much was perfectly clear. The blood was still jumping. So too were Ausley’s hands, which involuntarily shivered as if finding that the banisters on the stairs leading down to Hell were icy. His mouth was open in shock, as were his eyes, which had become bloodshot and gleamed like sea-damp oysters. A knife had been at work on Ausley’s face as well as throat, for Matthew saw the glistening red shapes around his eyes as the blood oozed down. If not fully expired the man had only seconds to live, as his flesh was taking on that chalk-colored waxy look so popular among corpses. There was nothing to be done for him short of sewing his head back on his shoulders, and Matthew doubted even Benjamin Owles could save this suit.

As Matthew stared down at the dying man, himself in a kind of trancelike state, he was aware of a slow, almost liquid movement in the dark beyond.

Matthew saw it then: a shape, all black and black within black, sliding out of a doorway twenty feet up Barrack Street. Matthew lifted his lantern, caught the white blur of a face, and saw that the man-or was it a man?-wore a midnight-hued cloak with a high collar and a black stocking-cap covering the head. In that instant of realizing he was looking at the Masker, he saw the object of his attention begin running with a burst of speed toward the Broad Way, and it was only then that Matthew got his throat working and the cry came up into the night: “Help! Help! Constable!”

The Masker not only killed quickly, but he was quick on the run. By the time a constable got here, the Masker would be in Philadelphia. “Help! Somebody!” Matthew shouted, but he was already reaching down for Ausley’s walking-stick. He let out one more “Constable!” so Dippen Nack might hear it in his bedchamber, and then he had to save his breath because he shot forward in pursuit.

Sixteen

At a full run the Masker wheeled to the left at the corner onto New Street and Matthew followed, narrowly missing banging his knee against a watering-trough.

It was true that Matthew was neither a sportsman nor a swordsman, but it was equally true that he could run. This skill had probably been refined during his days as a waterfront urchin before he was forcibly taken to the orphanage, as it took the fleet of foot to steal food and dodge billyclubs. Now it served him well, as he was catching up to his quarry; also paramount in his mind was the fact that it was safer to keep the Masker in front of him, yet he was ready at any second for the man to whirl around with an outstretched blade. Ausley didn’t need the walking-stick any longer, but Matthew clung to it like life.

“Constable!” Matthew shouted again, and now the Masker took a severe turn to the left and, cloak flying, disappeared into the space between the silversmith’s and the house next door. Matthew lifted the lantern with its paltry light; his pace faltered and he had only seconds to decide whether to go in or not before the Masker would be lost.

He held up the stick to ward off an attack, took a breath, and darted to the chase. The little passageway was so narrow it nearly scraped his shoulders. He came to another opening and found himself in someone’s garden. A brick pathway led off to the right, with a white wall and a gate on the left. A dog began barking furiously to the right and in that direction the voice of some frightened citizen shouted, “Who’s there? Who’s there?”

Matthew could hear shouts also from over on Barrack Street. Ausley’s body had been discovered. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought. He began running again along the pathway and in a moment passed under a rose arbor. Then there was another wall ahead of him with the wooden gate open, and when Matthew went through this there was a holler, “I see you, damn you!” from the house on his right. With a flash and a bang a pistol discharged from an upper window and a lead ball shrieked past Matthew’s ear. He didn’t wait for further introductions; he took to his heels, went over a waist-high picket fence, and then the dog that had been barking lunged at him with snapping teeth and wild eyes but its night-chain yanked it back before flesh could be served.

Now Matthew didn’t fear the Masker so much as whatever else lay in wait, but going through another gate he came around a privy where the lantern’s light picked out a dark shape climbing over a stone wall about eight feet high. The Masker had dragged a barrel over to stand on, and as Matthew shouted again for a constable the dark figure secured the heights, paused to kick over the barrel, and then dropped onto the other side. Matthew heard footsteps running on stones, heading toward the docks.

He righted the barrel, climbed up, and also went over. He landed on the uneven stones of a narrow alley that ran behind the houses and shops of New Street. This was an excellent place to twist an ankle, a fact he could only hope the Masker had already discovered. He continued on along the alleyway but at a walk. His light was almost out, he was breathing hard, and unless the Masker had circled around behind him with intent to claim a second victim this night, the man was gone.

From the sounds of the yelling on Barrack Street, the barking of more dogs, and the calling of neighbors one to another, the entire town was coming awake. If I were the Masker, Matthew thought, I’d call a finish to this night and go to my secure place, wherever that might be. Still, there were many places the Masker could be hidden in ambush as Matthew approached. On the left was a barn. Beside it lay a jumble of debris, old broken buckets, coils of rope, wagon wheels, and the like. On the right was the rear of a store and a root cellar. Matthew tried the root cellar’s door but it was bolted from within. He went on, shining his fading lamp to both sides. Most of the houses and shops had root cellars, and here and there were gates that led either into more Dutch gardens or out to the right onto New Street or to the left onto Broad Street.

As Matthew walked on, his lantern uplifted and the walking-stick thrust out like a rapier, he kept watch for any trace of movement beyond the edges of light. From the noise on Barrack Street, the demise of Eben Ausley had caused either a riot or a party.

The end of the alleyway, which was about as wide as a horse-cart, was not far distant. It opened onto Beaver Street, where Matthew could see the shine of a cornerpost lamp on a glass window. He kept moving his lantern from side to side, looking at the stones for anything the Masker might have dropped in his haste to escape. It would be a good idea, he decided, to retrace the path he’d come. But then again, that was best left to daylight for he was not about to be shot at twice in one night.

And then, quite suddenly, the light showed him something that stopped him in his tracks.

On the handle to a root cellar door on his left was a dark red smear.

He bent over it and examined it more carefully. His heart, which had not had an easy time of it during the last few minutes, began to pound anew. It was a small smear, yes. But it was wet and fresh, and it might have come from a bloody glove.

He hooked a finger under the door’s handle and tried to lift it, but it was locked. He stepped back and looked at the structure. A two-story brick house or a shop of some kind? It was hard to tell from here. No lights shone in any of the windows. He found a pathway to the front and a wrought-iron gate that opened onto Broad Street. Just as he was about to go through, two men with lanterns came running past on their way to, presumably, the murder scene. He decided to give them time to make some distance, as he didn’t wish to be either interrupted or assaulted by some terrified constable. When the men were gone, Matthew emerged through the gate onto Broad Street and looked up at the building before him.

Now he could see illumination, two or three candles’ worth it appeared, up in a room on the second floor. He could also make out the sign on its hooks above the door.

Pollard, Fitzgerald, and Kippering, Attorneys.

Matthew went up the three front steps and used the brass knocker, which sounded equally as loud as the gunshot.

He waited, looking south along Broad Street in case anyone else came running past. There was no reply from within the lawyers’ office, yet upon an appraisal of the upstairs window it did appear that at least one of the candles had moved. Matthew hated to knock again, as the noise sounded as if it could wake the dead, but he was determined to get in.

Perhaps ten seconds passed, with no response. He was about to use his fist when he heard a latch being undone. The door opened, and at that instant the last light of Matthew’s lantern fizzled out.

Another candle was thrust almost into his face.

“You? What the hell do you want?”

Matthew squinted in the glare of a fresh wick. He knew the voice. “I hate to bother you, sir, but I assume you’ve heard a little noise just lately?”

“I have,” said Kippering. “Fools shouting the town down, and what sounded like a gun going off. What’s happened?”

“Haven’t you been curious enough to venture out to see?”

“Should I have been?”

“Do you make a habit of answering a question with a question?”

“When the question is from a clerk at my office door near midnight, yes.” Kippering lowered the candle, which was set in a pewter holder. Matthew noted that the man was wearing the same rather tatty black suit he’d worn at the Thorn Bush, and now Kippering’s appearance matched his clothing. He looked haggard and tired with dark circles under his eyes, his mouth slack and his blue eyes more watery than icy. At that moment three men and a woman were going past on the sidewalk, heading north. Two of the men were armed, one with a musket and the other with an axe. “Here!” Kippering called to them. “What’s happened?”

“Another murder,” answered one of the men. “The Masker’s cut somebody’s head off!” They rushed on, almost gleefully.

“A little exaggeration,” Matthew said, “but centrally true. The Masker has killed Eben Ausley. He’s lying up there on Barrack Street.”

“Who?” Kippering blinked heavily. “The Masker or Ausley?”

“Ausley. Are you ill?”

“A matter of conjecture, I’m sure.” Kippering ran a hand through his thick and unruly hair, and the black comma fell back onto his forehead. “So Ausley’s dead, is he?” He seemed to look at Matthew fully for the first time, and then his gaze found the walking-stick. He took it from Matthew’s hand and examined it more closely in the light. “If I’m not mistaken-and I’m not-this belongs to Ausley. He had it at the Thorn Bush. Almost brained Tom Fletcher. May I ask what you’re doing in possession of it?”

“You may, but first I have to ask if I might inspect your cellar.”

“Inspect my cellar? What are you going on about?”

Matthew said, “I was first on the scene when Ausley was killed. I saw the Masker, just as he’d finished his work. I took the stick as a weapon and chased after him. He led me here.”

“Here?” Kippering scowled. “You’re the one who’s ill, boy.”

“He led me to the alley behind your office. On the door to your root cellar is a blood smear. From a glove, perhaps. I should like to have a look down there.” Matthew reached out and grasped the stick. When he tried to pull it away, he met a little resistance; then Kippering released his grip and gave it up. “Will you show me, or shall I go for a constable?”

“The cellar door’s bolted from within. It’s always bolted.”

“That may be so, but someone left blood on the doorhandle. I’d like to take a look.”

“What are you saying? That I’m the Masker?” Kippering offered up a crooked grin. “Oh, certainly! After the night I’ve had, I surely gathered up the energy to go out prowling the streets and ended my festivities by murdering another of our clients. At this rate we’ll be out of business in a week.”

“Ausley was your client? I didn’t know.”

Kippering seemed to be listening to the noise over on Barrack Street. A few more people rushed past the office door. He gave a long, weary sigh. “I suppose I ought to go represent the estate. Keep the fools from trampling him flat.” He refocused his gaze on Matthew. “You saw the Masker?”

“I did. Not his face, unfortunately.”

“There’s blood on the cellar door?”

Matthew nodded.

“Come in.” Kippering opened the door wider, and Matthew entered. When Kippering started to close the door, Matthew said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave that open.”

“I can assure you that the only thing I’ve killed tonight is half a bottle of brandy and a lot of time.”

“Please leave the door open,” Matthew insisted in a calm voice, and Kippering shrugged.

“This way.” Kippering led him past a narrow staircase to another door. He paused to light a second candle in a pewter holder that was sitting atop a stack of books on a table and this he gave to Matthew, who laid aside the dead lantern. “I hope you’re not afraid of spiders,” he said. He unhooked a latch and opened the door into the cellar’s darkness. “Watch your step, these stairs are older than my grandmother.”

Before they descended, Matthew requested that Kippering also leave that door open and go down first. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” Kippering asked, but then he took appraisal of Matthew’s expression and obeyed. As he followed down the rickety old stairs, Matthew thought that sometimes it did pay to carry a big stick.

The candles seemed to throw more shadows than illumination. It was a large cellar with a dirt floor and brick walls. The old yellowish-white bricks, Matthew noted, that had originally come over as ballast on some of the first Dutch ships. Filling the place almost up to the raftered ceiling were battered wooden shelves full of decaying law books, parcels of papers wrapped in twine, and stacks upon stacks of more yellowed documents. Matthew thought that, though there was a sea dampness to the air, if a fire ever got loose in here it would burn steadily for a month. Discarded buckets, two broken chairs, a desk that looked as if it had been chewed by a beaver, and other odds-and-ends of office decor littered the chamber. Matthew went directly to the cellar door and inspected the bolt.

“Anything there?” Kippering asked.

“No,” came the answer. There was no blood on this side of the door. But that didn’t stop Matthew from shining his candle around to check the steps and the floor. There were many footprints in the dirt, but why would there not be? He continued searching around boxes of papers. “What is all this?” he asked.

“The underbelly of the legal profession.” Kippering sat down on a large wooden trunk. “This is where the old deceased records lie in rotting perpetuity. Most of it dates back to before Charles Land took the firm over from Rolf Gorendyke. He left it all here for us to clean up, except Bryan thinks there’ll be value to it someday as history and he wants to keep it. If Joplin and I had our way, we’d toss it tomorrow.”

“Toss it where?”

“Yes, well that’s the problem, isn’t it? We’ve thought of burning it, but…” He shrugged. “Maybe Bryan’s right. Someday someone might give a damn about what went on here.”

Matthew was still poking around and finding nothing but a rat’s nest, both figuratively and literally. “You say Eben Ausley was your client?” he asked as he explored the room. “You don’t seem so concerned that he’s lying dead over on the next street.”

“I had limited dealings with him. Joplin handled most everything. Records of contributions. Contracts for supplies and labor. Paperwork when the orphans found homes. Things such as that.”