The Queen of Bedlam (44 page)

“The…sick girl?”

“Consumption. Gotten worse and worse these last few days. Becca says she’ll be passin’ soon. Why she’s got the biggest room in the house, I don’t know.”

“Oh…I’ve been stupid,” Matthew said in almost a gasp. He stood up, and to her credit Missy Jones did not back away. “I’ve been very, very stupid.”

“Stupid about what?”

“The meaning of things.” He leveled his gaze at her. “Miss Jones, can I get in to see Grace Hester?”

“The door’s kept locked. Grace is a rounder. Even sick, she wants to go out to the Thorn Bush and cull a trick. Last time she got out, Andy had to go bring her back.”

Matthew knew now. He knew, and it had been there in front of him the very night Eben Ausley’s stomperboys had introduced his face to a mound of horse apples. “Is there any way I can get in to see her? Just for a moment.”

“Door’s locked, as I say.” She had begun to look nervous again. “Why do you want to see her? You don’t…uh…favor sick girls, do you?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s honorable, I promise you.”

“I don’t understand it,” Missy said, but then she chewed on her lower lip and stroked her doll and said, “I…suppose…I can trust you. Can’t I?”

“You can.”

She nodded. “The old dragon won’t like it. Neither will Becca. You’ll have to be quick.” Then she hugged her doll close and said with her eyes downcast, “The key’s up on top. The sill over the door. If anybody catches you, you’ll be in for it. And me too.”

“Nobody’s going to catch me,” he assured her. “And even if they did, I can promise you that neither one of us will be harmed in any way. Do you believe that?”

“No,” she said. Then, with a frown that brought her brows together: “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Matthew went to the door, and she quickly moved aside. “Thank you for your time, Miss Jones. And thank you for your help.”

“It’s no matter,” she answered. His hand was on the doorlatch when she said, “You can call me Missy, if you like.”

“Thank you,” he said again, and he offered her a smile. He might have wished for a smile from her in return, but she was already crossing the room to her waterbowl to wash the makeup off her face and the doll was pressed up against her cheek. He wondered what she looked like underneath the powder, and what story was hidden in her soul. He had no time to linger; he went out, quietly closed the door, and walked down the hall.

He found the key quick enough. As he started to push it into the lock, he thought that a scream from the real Grace Hester would bring the house down upon him, but if this were a game of chess he held a bishop against a pawn. He heard Becca still singing in the parlor, this time a happier West Indies tune. He slid the key home, turned it, and opened the door.

This bedroom was practically the same as Missy’s, though perhaps a few feet wider. On the floor was a wine-red rug. Two candles burned, one upon the bedside table and another atop the chest-of-drawers.

The sheets moved and the girl who lay there, her face pallid and her dark hair sweat-damp, sat up with an obvious effort. She had high cheekbones and a narrow chin, and in some long-ago time she might have been pretty but now she was wrecked on the coast of desolation.

The heavy makeup had masked her sickness, and the strong drink had given her false strength. She was the girl Matthew had seen stagger out of the Thorn Bush in the company of Andrew Kippering, that night the stomperboys had darkened Matthew’s complexion.

Grace Hester stared at him, her mouth open. Becca sung in the parlor and the gittern played its lilting, sunny notes.

“Father?” the girl asked, her voice slurred and weary yet…hopeful.

Matthew said quietly, “No,” and he backed out of the room before his heart might break.

Thirty-Three

He was fishing in his favorite spot, at the end of Wind Mill Lane on the west side of town, just where John Five had said he would be.

Along the lane were a few houses, a carpentry shop, a cornfield, and a new brewery in the first stage of construction. The Thursday morning sun shone on the river and a wind stirred the green woods of New Jersey on the far side. The fisherman sat amid a jumble of gray boulders at the shore, his line trailing from an ash-wood rod into the water. Just beyond him was the hulk of an old merchant vessel that had been shoved by a storm into the rocks and, its hull impaled and broken, was slowly collapsing before the infinite progress of time and currents. Up on a hill, and near enough to cast its shadow upon the fisherman, was the tall windmill for which this lane was named; its revolving head atop a stationary tower had been positioned to take advantage of the breeze, and its canvas sails billowed along the slowly turning vanes.

Though Matthew took care to be quiet as he came along the rocks, he knew his presence had been noted. The reverend had glanced at him and then quickly away again without a word. Wade didn’t look much like the erudite minister of Trinity Church this morning. He wore gray breeches patched at the knees and a faded brown shirt with the sleeves rolled up. On his head was a shapeless beige cloth hat that had evidently seen many summer suns and rainshowers alike. His fishing clothes, Matthew thought. Beside the reverend was a scoopnet and a wicker basket to hold his catch.

Matthew stopped ten yards away from the man. Wade sat perfectly still, waiting for a bite.

“Good morning, sir,” said Matthew.

“Good morning, Matthew,” came the reply in a voice from which no hint of emotion could be read. Neither did he look in Matthew’s direction.

A silence stretched. A breath of wind furrowed the river and made the windmill’s vanes creak.

“I fear I’m not having much luck this morning,” Wade said at last. “Two small fellows, not sufficient for a pan. They fought so hard it seemed wrong to land them. I’m after a carp I’ve seen here before, but he always foxes me. Do you fish?”

“I haven’t for a long time.” He once caught fish to live on, in the rough days before he went to the orphanage.

“But you do catch things, don’t you?”

Matthew knew his meaning. “Yes sir, I do.”

“You’re a very intelligent young man. You wished to be a lawyer, Andrew tells me?”

“I did. More than anything, at one point. Now it hardly matters.”

Wade nodded, watching the floating red fly where his line met the river. “He says you’re very strong on the concept of justice. That’s to be commended. You’ve impressed me as a young man of high character, Matthew, and therefore I’m puzzled why you should wish to throw yourself into the low business of blackmail.” His head turned. His eyes were somber and dark-rimmed. Sleep must have been a stranger last night. “I’ve been expecting you, ever since Andrew told me. And to think that John is part of this, when he professed to love Constance and I came to regard him as dear as a son. What do you think that does to my heart, Matthew?”

“Do you really have a heart?”

Reverend Wade didn’t reply, but looked out again upon the river.

“I told Kippering an untruth. John Five doesn’t know anything about the girl. He came to me for help because Constance thought you were losing your mind. Did you think you could go out and about at night without her wondering sooner or later where you went? I followed you myself, to Polly Blossom’s. I saw what I would term a pitiful sight. And the last time you went out-just Tuesday night-Constance followed you.”

The reverend’s face had paled under the shapeless hat.

“She saw where you went. She saw Andrew Kippering come out and speak to you. Oh, she didn’t see his face, but I’m sure it was him. He is the go-between, isn’t he?”

There was yet no answer.

“Yes, he is,” Matthew went on, as a swirl of wind whipped around him. “I presume the money to keep Grace in that room comes from you and passes through Kippering? And his good relationship with Polly Blossom has convinced her to let the girl die in the house? Yes? I presume also that Madam Blossom was the first to discover that one of her doves was the daughter to the reverend of Trinty Church? Did Grace tell her, when she realized she was going to die?” He gave Wade a space to speak, but nothing came forth. “I’d think you might look upon Madam Blossom as a saint, because if anyone was going to blackmail anyone it would have started with her. What’s her reward for this? A place in Heaven for a woman who fears Hell?”

Wade lowered his head slightly, as if in an attitude of prayer. Then he said in a care-worn voice, “Madam Blossom is a businesswoman. Andrew framed the agreement as a matter of business. It’s what she understands.”

“I’m sure it also doesn’t hurt Madam Blossom to have a minister on her side. If, say, certain socially powerful members of the church might wish to shut her house down.”

“I’m sure,” Wade answered, his head still bent forward. “But I had no choice, Matthew. The upward path-the right path-was too dangerous. What I always have preached…I could not practice, when called upon. I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my days, and don’t think it will be easy.”

“But you’ll still be a reverend,” Matthew said. “Your daughter will be dead, without having heard her father’s forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?” Wade looked at him with a mixture of incredulity and anger that passed across the minister’s face like a stormcloud. He cast aside his fishing-rod and stood up, his chest thrust out as if in readiness to fight the world. “Is that what you think she wants? It is not, sir! She has no shame and no regrets for the life she’s led!”

“Then what is it she wants?”

Wade ran a hand over his face. He looked as if he might sink down to the stones again, and lie there like a rag. He pulled in a deep breath and let it slowly out. “Always the impulsive child. The girl who must have all the attention. Who must wear the bows and bells, no matter what sin buys them. Do you know why she wishes to die in that house? She told Andrew she wants to die in a place where there’s music and laughter. As if the gaiety in that house isn’t forced through the teeth! And her lying in there, on that deathbed, with me standing outside on the street…” He shook his head.

“Weeping?” Matthew supplied.

“Yes, weeping!” The answer was harsh and the anger had returned. “Oh, when Andrew first told me what he’d found out from Madam Blossom, you should have seen me! I didn’t weep! I nearly cursed God and sent myself to Hell for it! What was in my mind might have cast me into eternal fire, but there it was and I had to deal with it! I thought first of Constance, and only her!”

“She doesn’t know?”

“That her elder sister is a whore? Certainly not. What was I to tell Constance? What was I to do?” He stared at nothing, his eyes dazed. “What am I to do?”

“I think that the situation will take care of itself soon enough. Isn’t that what you said to Constance?”

“Dr. Vanderbrocken tells me…that there is nothing he can do except try to keep her comfortable. She may have a week or two, he says, and how she’s holding on he doesn’t know.”

“She may be holding on,” Matthew said, “because she’s waiting for a visit from her father.”

“Me, go in that place? A man of God in a whorehouse? That would be the end of me in this town.” Wade’s expression was pained, and now he sank down to sit upon the boulder again. For a moment he watched the breeze moving across the hills, and then he said quietly, “I have wanted to go in. I have wanted to see her. To speak to her. To say…I don’t know what. But something to comfort her, or bring her some peace if that is possible. Evidently…when she arrived here in May she was sick, of course, but she hid her condition very well from Madam Blossom and Dr. Godwin as well. She always had a silver tongue, even as a child. I’m sure she talked her way right through that odious examination. Then, according to Andrew, the exertions of her…occupation…wore her down. She collapsed in that house, Dr. Godwin was summoned…and to keep from being thrown out into the street, she told Madam Blossom who she was. I presume Andrew was taken into confidence because of his credentials. As a lawyer, I mean, not as a whore-monger.”

Equally qualified in both areas, Matthew thought, but said nothing.

“An agreement was drawn up,” the reverend continued. “Andrew kept me informed of Grace’s condition, and as I understand he even went out after her a few times when she managed to talk someone into setting her loose. She particularly liked the Thorn Bush, he told me.”

Matthew had realized this: Kippering thought Matthew had seen the lawyer and Grace together inside the Thorn Bush on one of those occasions, instead of just staggering out the door that night, and had put together in his mind the idea that somehow Matthew, the sammy rooster, had discovered her identity.

“The night of Mr. Deverick’s murder,” Matthew said. “You were summoned by Dr. Vanderbrocken because Grace had taken a turn for the worse? And he feared Grace might die that night?”

“Yes.”

No wonder, then, that Wade had said he and the doctor were travelling to different destinations, Matthew thought. It would have been hard to explain to High Constable Lillehorne where they were going together on such an urgent mission.

“And one of Madam Blossom’s ladies went to Vanderbrocken’s house to tell him?”

“Yes. She came with him to fetch me, and waited at the corner outside my house.”

That accounted for the woman Constance had seen, but it raised another question. “You said Andrew Kippering was the go-between. Where was he that night?”

“I have no idea. I do know he enjoys his liquor far more than a Christian man ought to.” Wade took off his hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. His dark brown hair was thinning on top and gone to gray at the temples. “Yes,” he said, as if thinking of something he should have reacted to but had let pass at the moment. “I did say to Constance that the problem would be solved, soon enough. And it will be, by the strong hand of God.”

Matthew decided he wasn’t going to let the reverend off so easily, and may the Lord forgive him for his audacity. “Did you think that, all those nights you stood outside Madam Blossom’s house? Knowing that your daughter was on her deathbed in there, and at any time she might pass? I saw you shed more than one tear, Reverend. I know you were trying to gather the courage to go inside. Did you think that one night you might free yourself of the social bridle? Of what the church elders would say, if they knew a father could still love a daughter who was a prostitute?” He paused, to let those wasp-stings settle. “So I believe that even if the strong hand of God does solve this problem-soon enough, as you say-a broken man may be left behind, if you fail to see her.”

“I’ll be broken if I do see her,” came the firm reply. “If I stepped into that house, I would be putting at risk everything I’ve devoted my life to. You don’t know how some of those Golden Hill families would swoop down on me, if they were to find out.”

“You couldn’t do it in secret?”

“I’m already keeping one secret from my flock. You were present at the church, weren’t you, when I had my little moment up there? I couldn’t bear to keep another secret. I’d be no good for anyone or anything.”

Matthew sat down on a boulder near the reverend, but didn’t wish to crowd him too closely. “May I ask how your daughter came into her profession?”

“She was born with a willful spirit.” Wade looked Matthew full in the eyes, his cheeks reddened, and Matthew wondered if this willfulness wasn’t inherited. “Early on she delighted in disobeying, and in running with boys day and night. What more can I say? I don’t-and never did-fully know her heart.” He clasped his hat between his hands and stared downward, a vein ticking at his temple. “Grace was the first child. Eight years older than Constance. We had a boy, in between, who died. Hester-yes, that was my wife’s name-passed a few days after Constance was born. A complication, the doctor said. Something unforeseen. And there I was, with two daughters and my Hester gone. I tried. I did try. My sister helped, as much as she could, but after Hester died…Grace became more and more undisciplined. At ten she was out in the streets, throwing rocks through storefront windows. At twelve, caught with an older boy in a hayloft. And me, trying to advance my career and the word of God. The plans for success that Hester and I had made…they were coming apart, because of Grace. How many times did someone come to my door with a complaint against her, or a demand for money because she’d lifted an item from a shop and taken to running!”

Wade was silent, lost in his memories, and Matthew thought for a moment that the reverend looked eighty years old.

“When she reached the age of fourteen,” Wade said, “I had to do something. I lost a position at a church because Grace attacked another young girl with a knife. In a more primitive time, she might have been considered demonic. She was beyond control, and her spiteful attitude was affecting Constance, too. God protect Constance, she was never fully aware of all the problems. I tried to shield her, as best I could. A six-year-old child should be shielded from wickedness, shouldn’t she?” Wade glanced at Matthew, who remained quiet. “I…arranged for Grace to be sent to a boarding school, a few miles out of Exeter. It was the most I could afford. Barely a year went by before I received a letter from the head-mistress to the effect that Grace had taken her belongings and left in the middle of the night…unfortunately, according to another girl, in the company of a young man of dubious reputation. A few months later, I received a letter from Grace with three words: I am alive. No address, no intent to seek reconciliation or intent to return to either school or my house. Just those words, and then nothing else.”