The Queen of Bedlam (19 page)

“It was a gift. It is nice, isn’t it?”

“Somethin’ I’ll likely never have. Can I hold it?”

Matthew gave it to him and prepared a dish of shaving soap while John Five listened to the watch at his remaining ear.

“Ticks pretty, huh?” John Five asked.

“It does.”

John set the watch down on the bedside table and sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”

“Yarrow oil. I have a sore shoulder.”

“Oh. I could’ve used that, many a time.”

Matthew applied the soap to his stubble and began to shave with his straight-razor. He could see John Five standing behind him in the small round mirror over the basin. John kept looking around the room, his brow knit. Something was coming, but Matthew had no idea what it was.

John cleared his throat. “Take you to supper.”

Matthew turned around. “I’m sorry?”

“Supper. I’ll take you to supper. My coin.”

Matthew continued his shaving, scraping his chin clean, but he watched John Five in the mirror. “What’s this about, John?”

A shrug was the first reply. John walked over and peered out the window onto the Broad Way. “Doesn’t fit you, holdin’ a grudge,” he said. “You know what I’m talkin’ at.”

“I know you’re referring to our disagreement over a certain course of action. But I want you to know as well that I’ve thought a lot about what you’ve said. About Nathan and all the rest of it.” Matthew paused with the razor at his upper lip. “Even though I wish things might be different, I know they can’t be. So I’m doing my best to let that go, John. I really am.”

“Does that mean you don’t hold a grudge?”

Matthew finished the lip before he answered. “It does.”

“Whew!” said John Five, with visible relief. “Thank God for that!”

Now Matthew was really curious. He washed the blade off and put it aside. “If your visit is just to discern if I hold a grudge against you, I can promise I don’t. But I’d say that’s not exactly why you’re here. Is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

Matthew began to wipe his face with a clean cloth. When it was obvious John Five was not going to advance without prodding, Matthew said, “I’d like to hear it, if you’d like to tell me.”

John nodded. He rubbed his hand over his mouth and stared at the floor, all signs that Matthew took to be the steadying of nerves. Matthew had never seen John Five so jittery, and this alone doubled his curiosity.

“Take you to supper,” John said. “I can tell you about it there. Say the Thorn Bush, at seven?”

“The Thorn Bush? Not my favorite place.”

“Food’s good and cheap there. And they let me run a bill.”

“Why not just tell me about it now?”

“Because,” John said, “I eat supper every Thursday evenin’ at five-thirty with Constance and Reverend Wade. Tonight, especially, I wouldn’t be wantin’ to not show up.”

“And why is tonight so special, then?”

John drew in a long breath and slowly let it out. “Because,” he said quietly, “it’s the reverend I need to talk to you about. Constance thinks…she thinks…” He hesitated; it was something he couldn’t quite force himself to spit out.

“Thinks what?” Matthew urged, just as quietly.

John lifted his gaze to Matthew’s. His eyes looked sunken and haunted. “Constance thinks her father is losin’ his mind.”

The sentence hung between them. Outside, a woman-Mrs. Swaye, from two houses down-was calling for her little boy Giddy to come to supper. A dog barked and a wagon creaked as it was pulled past the window.

“More than that,” John continued. “Things she can’t understand. I’ve got to go, Matthew. I’ve got to go sit at that table and know what Constance is thinkin’, and I’ve got to look in Reverend Wade’s face and wonder what I’m seein’. Please meet me at the Thorn Bush at seven. You’ve got to eat somewhere, don’t you?”

Matthew had planned to eat with the Stokelys, but this put a new coat of paint on the fence. The rough-edged Thorn Bush was certainly not the place Matthew would have chosen, though he realized John Five probably wished to go there for one reason other than his credit, which was more easily obtained at the Thorn Bush than at any other tavern in town: you could be faceless in there, if you pleased. The gambling tables and roaming prostitutes focused all attention upon themselves. And it was surely not an establishment into which Reverend Wade nor any of the minister’s friends might wander.

“All right,” he said. “If you wish, seven o’clock at the Thorn Bush.”

“Thank you, Matthew.” John started to clap Matthew on the right shoulder, but he saw the slick shine of the yarrow oil and stayed his hand. “I’ll see you there,” he said, and Matthew lifted the trapdoor to let him descend the ladder.

After John Five was gone, Matthew pondered the startling statement he’d just heard. Losing his mind? And how was this condition revealing itself? he wondered.

We have to leave him, Wade had said to Vanderbrocken, over the dead man in the street.

Had they been travelling separately, or together? And if together, to what destination?

One step at the time, Matthew thought. First, to listen to what John Five had to say, and then to determine what it might mean.

He carefully folded his razor and put it away, thinking that the most dangerous edges often lay close at hand.

Fourteen

John Five was waiting for Matthew outside the Thorn Bush when he got there just before seven. It was the beginning of a fine night in New York. The stars were showing, the breeze was warm, candles burned in the street-corner lamps, and a man with a bloody nose sat in front of the tavern throwing curses at everyone who passed by.

“Damn you!” hollered the man at Matthew. “Think you’ve got me whipped, do you?” Obviously he was drunk as well as battered. He struggled to get to his feet, but John Five placed a boot at his shoulder and nonchalantly shoved him back down on his ass.

Beyond the door with its five triangular glass panes-three of them cracked-and a depiction of thorns and leaves carved into the wood, the place was lit by dirty lanterns hanging from the ceiling beams. The smoke from a thousand pipes had turned the beams as black as printer’s ink. A current haze thickened the air. The front room, where the bar was prominent, held tables where sat a dozen or so men all in various degrees of intoxication while feathered and buckled women swooped and cawed around them. Matthew had seen this picture before, during his nights of tracking Eben Ausley. He understood that the more attractive of these ladies-the better dressed and better mannered, if manners counted for anything-came from Polly Blossom’s rose-colored house on Petticoat Lane, while some of the others who seemed unkempt and desperate had come over on the ferry from New Jersey.

At once four women aged probably from seventeen to forty-seven converged upon John Five and Matthew with lip-licking expressions of seduction on their painted faces so ridiculous that Matthew might have laughed had he not been a gentleman. Anyway, business was business and the competition was fierce. Still these ladies knew who was buying and who was not; when John Five shook his head and Matthew said, “No, thank you,” they turned away almost as one, shrugged their bared shoulders, and life went on.

Now the noise of men yelling came from a second room. Matthew knew the gambling fiends were in their element. A drowsy-looking barmaid carrying a pitcher of wine approached, and John Five said, “We’re going all the way back. My friend wants some supper.”

“Mutton pie with turnips and beef brains with boiled potatoes,” she answered, reciting the evening’s fare.

“May I have mutton pie with boiled potatoes?” Matthew asked, and she speared him a look that told him he might get what he wanted and then again he might not.

“Two glasses of wine,” John added. “The port.”

She went off to the kitchen and Matthew followed John into the gambling room, where the smoke of Virginia’s finest was truly dense. The men in here at first appeared to be more shadows than flesh, either sitting at tables where cards were being slapped down or hovering over boards where dice clattered as they were thrown toward a series of painted numbers. Then another uproar went off like an explosion and someone slammed a fist against wood and yelled, “Fuck it all, Hallock! Everything on the black!”

Matthew wondered if some madhouses-bedlams, as they were called-weren’t more sane than this. Certainly more peaceful. The yelling died down, the cards were turned or the bones were tossed and then again the throat of Hell seemed to open to allow out a quick hot breath of chaos. Matthew thought that for some of these men winning or losing was not really the attraction; it was that chaotic instant of joy or terror, both made so pure in their intensity that all else of life paled in their shadows.

“Look here!” someone said to Matthew’s left as he was going through a group of men in the gambling room. “It’s Corbett, isn’t it?”

Matthew looked in the direction of the voice and found himself standing alongside a dice table in the presence of the two young lawyers Joplin Pollard and Andrew Kippering. Both had ale tankards in their hands and appeared a bit woozy. Of special notice was the dark-haired and not unattractive prostitute of about twenty years of age hanging on to Kippering’s left arm, her ebony eyes deep-sunken and vacant as the burned-out houses on Sloat Lane.

“See, Andrew?” Pollard said, with a wide grin. “It is him. He. Whatever. The one and only, eh?”

“I am who I am, I suppose,” Matthew replied.

“Good man!” Pollard hit his sore shoulder with the tankard. Worse than that, he slopped some ale on the light-blue shirt Matthew wore, which was the last clean shirt in his possession. “Always be who you are. Eh, Andrew?”

“Always,” Kippering said, with a lift of his tankard and then a long drink. The prostitute pressed forward and Kippering obliged her by pouring some of the stuff down her throat as well.

“And who’s this, then?” When Pollard motioned toward John Five, Matthew was able to step back and avoid another spillage. “Hold a minute!” Pollard turned toward the dice table and the men who were wagering there. “I’m in on this one too, damn it! Three shillings on anchor!”

Matthew saw they were playing the popular game of Ship, Captain, and Crew, in which the shooter had five throws with a pair of dice to come up with a six, five, and four in that order, which stood for the ship, captain, and crew. Others could bet on any variation of success or failure. Pollard had just wagered on “anchor,” which was a three to show up in the first throw.

“My friend John Five,” Matthew said when Pollard had returned his attention. “John, Misters Joplin Pollard and Andrew Kippering, both of whom are attorneys.”

“First throw! Crew without a ship and an ace!” came the call from the table, with its resulting moment of chaos. Four and one. Then the wagering began once more at the pitch of frenzy as silver coins were tossed into an iron pot.

Pollard just shrugged. “To hell with it. John Five, did you say?”

“Yes sir.” John was a bit distracted, as the prostitute had begun chewing on Kippering’s left ear. “I’ve seen you both around town.”

“You’re Constance Wade’s beau,” Kippering said, trying carefully to get his ear free.

“Yes sir, I am. May I ask how you know about that?”

“I don’t think it’s a secret. I was speaking to the reverend just lately and he mentioned your name, in passing.”

“Are you a friend of the family?”

“Double anchors!” cried the caller. Once more the gamblers hollered or cursed and the entire room with its whirling smoke, brays of laughter, and shouts for liquid courage made Matthew feel he was on the pitching deck of a rudderless ship. He had noted that the prostitute’s left hand was crawling down toward Kippering’s crotch.

In the tumult of noise before Kippering’s response to John’s question, Matthew had the chance to sum up what he knew about the two attorneys. Joplin Pollard-boyish and clean-shaven, his reddish-blond hair close-cropped and his brown eyes large and sparkling with good humor-was in his early thirties and had come to the colony in 1698 to join the older and established lawyer Charles Land. Hardly a year later Land had inherited a large sum of money from a family estate in England and returned to the home country with his wife to become, as Matthew understood from Magistrate Powers, a rich art patron and dabbler in politics.

Thus Pollard-a “green gent,” Powers had called him-had been forced to sink or swim in his own firm, and had hired Bryan Fitzgerald from a Boston partnership soon afterward. He was obviously doing well enough now, though, as attested by his taste in his fine light-gray linen suit, his ruffled royal-blue cravat and expensive black boots polished to a gloss.

Completing the trio of blazing youth was Kippering, who’d come from England two years ago with an excellent reputation as a business lawyer but who had, as the magistrate had heard from Pollard, dallied with one banker’s wife too many and paid for his sins by expulsion from the gentlemen’s club. It was assumed he was doing penance in the colony until he might attempt a comeback in the grander arena, but at the ripe age of twenty-eight Kippering-lean and wolfishly handsome, two days past a shave, a comma of thick black hair fallen over his forehead and his eyes so icy blue the expression from them was nearly fearsome-was obviously not ready for the embrace of a leather armchair when there were painted dollies prancing about and the wine flowed smooth and dark from tavern casks. Neither was he in a hurry to join the best-dressed list, for his plain black suit, simple white shirt, and scuffed black shoes had seen better years.

Kippering caught the young woman’s hand before it reached his jewels and firmly but gently confined it with his own. “I’ve given advice to the reverend. Not anything concerning his daughter. But he felt compelled for whatever reason to inform me of the impending situation.”

“You mean our marriage?”

Kippering shuddered. “Please restrain the profanity.”

“This isn’t a place the good reverend might approve of for his future son-in-law,” said Pollard, as his mouth spread into a sly smile. “Do you think?”

“Probably not,” Matthew spoke up, “but the food’s good and cheap. I’ve eaten here many times. Besides, my friend and I are seeking privacy, which I believe can be found in the back room.”

“Of course. I would inquire what might be so furtively private between a magistrate’s clerk and a reverend’s future son-in-law, visiting the back room of a den such as this, but then I’d be over-stepping my bounds, wouldn’t I?”

“Come off your horse, Joplin!” Kippering scowled. “The young man’s not married yet! Since he’s so determined to go down the road to disaster, he ought to be praised for his courage. Hell, I wouldn’t have the guts to ask that crow for his daughter’s hand. Would you?”

“Sir!” said John, with a heat in his voice that made Matthew think violence might be imminent. “I’d ask you not to refer to Reverend Wade in that disrespectful manner.”

“Apologies, no harm meant.” Kippering lifted his tankard. “It’s the ale talking.”

“Yes,” said Pollard, “and that loquacious ale is going to get you skewered someday. But listen, Corbett. About Robert Deverick. He was my client, you know.”

“Our client,” Kippering amended.

“Yes, our client. And I might add our best client. You saw him stretched out there in the street. Terrible way for a man of his means to go.”

“A terrible way for any man to go,” Matthew said. He winced as another holler and harumpdedoo from the dice table blasted his eardrums. Across the way, someone was cursing a foul blue streak at one of the card games.

“Any ideas about it?” Pollard asked. “I mean, your being so fresh on the scene, according to Lillehorne. And since you seemed to have such an opinion on the enforcement of law before our dandy new governor.”

“No ideas other than the obvious. I would ask if you knew of any enemies Mr. Deverick had.” It was a shot in the dark since he doubted Deverick would have greeted an enemy with a handshake, but it was at least a starting-point.

“We’ve already covered that one with Lillehorne.” Kippering was trying to hold the prostitute back from going through his coat pockets; it was like trying to get a firm grip on a weasel. “Deverick has had his business enemies, yes. In London, though. He’s had supply problems from some unreliable merchants whom we’ve had to threaten with lawsuits, but nothing went beyond the point of sword-rattling. That’s all.”

“There must be something else.”

Pollard said, “You must be wondering then if Dr. Godwin had enemies, if indeed as I understand it the same maniac murdered both men. But then again, does a maniac need a reason for murder?” He answered his own question: “Absolutely not!”

“I’m wondering,” Matthew said, “if the Masker may be not so much a maniac as a clever individual hiding a motive.”

“What kind of motive?” Kippering asked, though his attention was divided. Being unsuccessful at looting her companion’s pockets, the prostitute now began to kiss and lick his neck.

“I have no idea, but I’d like to know if there is some connection between Dr. Godwin and Mr. Deverick. Do you know of any?”

Another uproar came from the gamblers, some bitter loser slammed a hand down on a card table, a prostitute wearing a high crimson wig and white facepaint slid past Matthew like a jungle cat and pinched his behind on the way, and then Pollard turned back toward the dice game and shouted over the noise of wagering, “Don’t roll those ’til I get my bet in! Who’s got the throw? Wyndham?”

“I can’t think of a connection,” said Kippering, who had his hands full with his squirmy minx. “They weren’t doctor and patient, if that’s what you’re assuming. Neither was Dr. Godwin a client of ours.”

Matthew shrugged. “I didn’t think it would be that simple, anyway. We’d best go. Good evening to you.”

“Evening to you both,” he managed to respond. “And good luck with…whatever your business might be.” Then he got a lockhold on the girl and also turned to rejoin the hubbub.

The room at the back of the Thorn Bush was at the end of a short corridor where a sign was posted on the wall reading No Gambling, No Women Allowed. It was the tavern’s stab at a “dining-room” for gentlemen where business might be discussed in relative quiet. True, the noise from the gamblers still carried in, but it was at least tolerable. The room was dimly lit by a few lanterns. Three other men sat together at one of the six tables, which were set far apart for the sake of privacy. The trio were all puffing long clay churchwarden pipes and were wreathed with smoke, their conversations serious and muted; none of them even glanced up as the new arrivals entered. Matthew and John Five sat at a table on the opposite side of the room, furthermost from the door.

Before they got completely settled, the barmaid came in with their glasses of port and left again. Matthew spent a moment rubbing what looked like a dried clump of food off the rim of his glass. He hoped it wasn’t the beef brains.