The Queen of Bedlam (52 page)

“Of course, sir, and Mr. Primm has your reputation foremost in his mind.” The clerk opened the door for the crusty old man’s exit and said quickly and rather acidly to Matthew, “Go up.”

Matthew picked up his valise, climbed the stairs, and at the top faced another door. He started to knock but decided it was a waste of time. He was expected. He took a fast deep breath for courage, gripped the doorhandle, and turned it.

The man beyond the door, sitting at a central desk before a wide multi-paned window that overlooked the river, did not lift his head nor otherwise acknowledge the visitor. Before him, spread out on a dark green blotter, was the likeness of the Queen of Bedlam. The office was either a tribute to the triumph of order or, as Berry might have said, a monument to a tight-ass. In fact, two of those dreaded gray-fleshed portraits of constipated noble-men hung upon the walls. There were shelves of dozens of thick leatherbound books that looked as if they’d been recently waxed. Three granite busts of unknown but obviously revered gentlemen stood on pedestals along the right-hand wall, their faces turned toward the door as if measuring the value of whoever crossed that august threshold. On the floor was a dun-colored carpet and in the silvery light that spilled through the window not one mote of dust dared float. A spare and uncomfortable-looking chair had been positioned in front of the desk. Standing in the corner just behind Mr. Primm, and casting a shadow across his desk, was a granite life-sized statue of the blindfolded goddess Justitia, holding a sword in one hand and balancing scales in the other. It was fitting for this mausoleum, Matthew thought, for the man at the desk might also be mistaken for a statue.

Primm wore a black suit with thin gray pinstripes and a white shirt buttoned to the throat. A black ribbon-tie was wound around the collar and tied with a small ugly knot that looked like a strangler’s joy. Atop Primm’s high forehead sat a white wig of tight curls, which went very well with the white powder that adorned his gaunt and solemn face. Matthew thought Primm had the longest nose and smallest mouth of any man he’d ever seen; it was not so much a nose as a boulevard, and not so much a mouth as a trinket.

Therefore Matthew was not surprised when Primm spoke in a high-pitched, hushed voice that did not seem to require his mouth, for the tiny compressed lips barely moved.

“I will give you five minutes.”

“Thank you. I regret to have interrupted the admiral’s complaint.”

“An honorary title. We humor him.”

“Ah,” Matthew said, and waited for an invitation to sit that was clearly not going to be offered.

Still Primm had not lifted his gaze from the paper. Long thin fingers touched the surface, meandering over the charcoaled features.

“I’d like to know who she is,” Matthew said.

“And who are you?”

“My name is Matthew Corbett. I’ve come from New York.”

“In what capacity?”

“I’m an associate with the Herrald Agency.”

Primm’s fingers stopped moving. “Their nearest office is in London.”

“No sir, that’s incorrect. Our new office is Number Seven Stone Street, New York.”

“You have a card?”

Matthew felt a little twinge in the stomach. A card! Why hadn’t Mrs. Herrald given him an official card before she’d left? Maybe it was up to Greathouse to have them printed. “The cards have been delayed,” he countered.

Now Primm did tear his attention away from the portrait, and his pallid face with small marbles of piercing black deepset within it lifted to look at Matthew as one would consider the vilest dockside roach. “No card? Therefore no proof of identity?” He spoke that last word as if he were biting his teeth against a bone.

Getting me off-balance, Matthew thought. Attacking, when he should be defending. “No card,” Matthew answered flatly. “As far as identity, I’m sure the doctors Ramsendell and Hulzen might vouch for me.”

“They are not present.”

“Present or not, they’ve hired the agency-and me-to find out who their patient is. They believe they can help her, if they know-”

“How dare you come here,” Primm interrupted, and though there was coiled anger in his voice his face was devoid of emotion. “Are you a lunatic who has escaped the asylum? Are those so-called doctors deserving of a cell in their own Bedlam? Their instructions were concise and complete.”

“I’m telling you, the doctors feel they can help this lady if they-”

“Get out of this office,” hissed Primm. “Get out and be sure their careers will be wrecked, the lady in question moved within the week, and your own cardless and witless career dashed on the rocks of contract law.”

Matthew didn’t know what to say. He felt heat rising in his face, but then he realized Primm wanted him to lose control. Indeed, Primm was banking on it. Matthew swallowed his anger, waited a few seconds, and then said, “That’s a load, sir. You’re not going to move the lady. She’s in the best possible place. Your client wouldn’t want her moved, would he?”

Primm gave no response. He had again become a statue, in emulation of Lady Justice.

“If I have three remaining minutes,” Matthew went on, “allow me to use them constructively. Please look at this.” He reached down into his valise and brought out the most recent issue of the Earwig, with its article about the death of Pennford Deverick. This he placed atop the Queen’s portrait on Primm’s desk. “Your client, for all his good works concerning the lady, may be involved in this murder.”

“The Masker?” Primm’s mouth squeezed in disgust and almost disappeared up his nostrils. “What nonsense is this?”

“No nonsense. In fact, your client may well be the Masker. Wanted now for three murders, by the way. Is your client named Andrew Kippering?”

“Who?”

“Yes, I’ve used that trick, too. To stall while you think. If Mr. Kippering is your client, sir, he may have murdered three people. I’d like to know why, and I think finding out who this mystery patient at the Westerwicke asylum is could go a long way in providing a motive. Do you agree with that?”

“I agree,” said the lawyer, “that you need a rest in Westerwicke yourself.”

“I’m informing you that your client may be a murderer. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“The only thing that has any meaning for me, sir, is proof.” Primm’s jaw thrust forward. “Do you know what proof is? It’s not conjecture, nor is it fantasy. As long as I serve the law and this embodiment of justice you see standing behind me, I consider proof to be the alpha and omega of my profession. And proof you do not have, sir, so I will tell you to go back to New York, leave the lady in question alone, and I shall deal very promptly with perhaps the good-intentioned but legally uneducated doctors.”

When Matthew was sure Primm’s tirade was done, he said quietly, “She can be helped. It’s wrong for her to sit there locked up in herself, day after day.”

“Are you a doctor now, as well?”

“I just want to know her name and her story.”

“Ask for the moon to come down and play the fiddle while you’re at it.”

“I really hoped you’d help me,” Matthew said. “But if you refuse, I intend to take that portrait to every tavern in Philadelphia until I find one person who recognizes her. Or to every boarding house. Or to every church. I intend to find out her name and her story before I leave here in the morning, if I have to walk the streets all night.”

“Ah, then. I suppose I really should help you, since you wish it so ardently.” With a smile that looked like a razor cut, Primm picked up the paper, ripped it in half, and then rapidly began to tear the halves to pieces. Matthew almost lunged forward to save what he could, but he realized it was too late. The fragments of a face fell from Primm’s hands. “There! Now you can get to bed early!”

Forty

Matthew stood on the street outside Primm’s office, wondering where to go next. He counted himself lucky that on the way out he hadn’t been kicked in the bottom by that self-superior clerk.

One interesting thing, Matthew thought, is that when he’d reached down to retrieve the Earwig Primm had snapped it off the desk amid the pieces of Berry’s drawing and with beady rattlesnake eyes had dared Matthew to try for it. That told him something, at least. Primm obviously didn’t want it shown to anyone else.

The question remained: where to go next?

The sun was warm now. The mist had burned away. Two young damsels with parasols paraded past and they gave Matthew a glance but he was in no mood for flirtations. A slight breeze ruffled the shade trees along Market Street. He paused, looking to left and right. Across Third Street and north about a halfblock was a sign reading The Good Pye with a depiction of a piece of pie and an ale tankard. He decided that might be the place to begin, and started walking in that direction. At least he might get himself a drink to settle his nerves. As he waited for a carriage to go past before he crossed the street, he caught a movement of white from the corner of his eye.

Icabod Primm had just emerged from his office and was walking quickly and bow-leggedly south along Third Street. Matthew watched the small-framed man hurry away. Primm’s right hand clutched the broadsheet in a death-grip.

Ah ha, Matthew thought. I have smoked the powdered rattler from his hole.

He gave Primm a few more strides, and then he began to follow at a careful distance.

In another moment Primm had turned left at the corner of Chestnut Street, heading away from the river. Matthew stood on the corner, watching the white wig bob along among the other citizens who travelled the sidewalk. He again followed, realizing that Primm was too fixed on where he was going to bother casting a backward glance. Then, half another block ahead, the lawyer abruptly turned into a doorway under a sign that announced The Lamplighter.

It was just an ordinary tavern, Matthew thought as he stood at the door. Several hitching-posts at the curb. A window made of the round bottoms of glass bottles, some clear and some green. He opened the door without undue haste and entered, his eyes having to adjust from the bright sunlight to the dim greenish interior where lanterns burned from hooks on the ceiling beams.

Nothing special, really. A long bar where several well-dressed gentlemen congregated over ale tankards and eight tables each set with the stub of a candle. Only three of the tables were occupied, as it was a bit early for lunch. It was no problem to spy Icabod Primm, sitting at the back of the room bent over the Earwig by candlelight.

Matthew approached, but at an oblique angle. Primm didn’t know he was coming until he was there. Then the lawyer’s black eyes spat fire, his toy mouth chewed the air, and what came out was “You again!”

“Guilty,” Matthew said.

“Of following me. Yes, I got that part.”

“You were going in my direction.”

“Please continue then, all the way to New York.”

A burly, black-bearded man with a lion’s mane of ebony hair came up beside Matthew carrying a brown bottle and a small glass. As the man filled the glass to the brim, Matthew caught the nostril-prickling aroma of stout apple brandy.

“Leave the bottle, Samson,” Primm said, and the man set it down and started back to the bar.

It occurred to Matthew that if Primm drank an entire bottle of what was usually a highly combustible mixture, not only would the lawyer’s lamp be lit but his wig would burst into flame.

“Having a liquid lunch?” Matthew prodded. “It is unsettling to realize your client’s a murderer, isn’t it?”

Primm took a deep and needful drink. His eyes watered and gleamed.

“I think she’s his mother,” Matthew went on. It was a shaky guess, for why would the lady not have reacted to her son’s name? “He hid her away in Westerwicke, and then he plotted the deaths of three men. But my real question is: what happened to his father?”

“Samson!” Primm rasped after another swallow of fire had scorched his throat. The black-bearded behemoth returned to the table, his strides making the planks squeal. “This young man is annoying me. If he speaks one more word, I’d like you to throw him out on his New York bum.”

“Yes, Mr. Primm,” Samson replied in a biblical basso while staring into Matthew’s face from the distance of four inches. He also cracked the knuckles of one huge hand like the walls of Jericho.

Matthew decided that one more word was not worth the loss of many good teeth. He gave Primm a brief smile and bow, turned around, and got out before his own lamp was extinguished. Farther down the street he saw the sign of another tavern, this one titled The Harp and Hat. He approached its door, but before he went in he stopped to open his valise. He removed from it another rolled-up piece of paper, which was the second portrait of the Queen of Bedlam that Matthew had asked Berry to draw, just in case Primm’s fingers didn’t like the first one.

Matthew entered the tavern, carrying the lady’s picture and in hopes that someone here might recognize it.

Soon he emerged with hopes dashed, for no one in the place had any idea who she might be. Just across Chestnut Street was the Squire’s Inn, which Haverstraw had mentioned. Matthew went in there with the picture ready, and was accosted by a drunken wag who said the lady in question was his mother and he’d not seen her since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Since the man was over sixty, that was quite impossible. The tavern’s owner, a friendly enough gent in his late twenties, said he thought the woman looked familiar but he couldn’t put a name to her. Matthew thanked one and all for their trouble and continued on his way.

By the time he reached a third tavern, this one called The Old Bucket on Walnut Street, it was nearing lunch and a dozen persons were celebrating the noon hour. A young man with a brown mustache and goatee and wearing a russet-colored suit took the drawing and examined it pensively while he stood at the bar drinking a glass of port and eating a plate of sausages and fried potatoes. He called to a friend rather more rustic than himself to come look, and together they regarded the picture as other customers ringed around to see. “I think I saw this woman on Front Street this morning,” the young man finally decided. “Was she collecting coins while a girl was playing the tambourine?”

“No!” his friend scoffed, and pulled the paper away so fast Matthew feared it was going to be ripped asunder just as the first had been. “You know who this is! It’s the widow Blake! She was sittin’ up in her window watchin’ me when I went past her house today!”

“I know that’s not the widow Blake!” said the heavy-set tavern-keeper as he put an empty pitcher under the spigot of the wine cask behind the bar and filled it. “The widow Blake’s got a fat face. That one’s thin.”

“It is her, I say! Looks just like her!” The rustic with the rough manner had angled a suspicious gaze at Matthew. “Hey, now. What is it you’re doin’, carryin’ around a picture of the widow Blake?”

“Not her,” said the tavern-keeper.

“She’s not in any trouble, is she?” came the question from the young man with the goatee. “Does she owe money?”

“I’m sayin’, it’s not the widow Blake. Lemme see that.” The tavern-keeper nearly tore a corner off it when one of his big hands yanked it away. “No, she’s too thin to be her. Anybody else thinks this looks like the widow Blake?” He held the picture up for the assembly to judge. “And if you do, you’re already way too drunk!”

Matthew counted himself fortunate to get out of the place with the drawing intact and no one chasing him with a cudgel for being a bill collector. He’d told the group he was trying to locate a missing person, and was informed by the grinning rustic that everyone knew where the widow Blake lived, so why should she be missing?

Matthew took to stopping a few passersby on the street to show them the picture, but none recognized the face. Farther on along Walnut Street, past an area where farmers had pulled their wagons up to offer fruit and vegetables for sale, he came to two taverns almost across the street from each other. The one on the right was the Crooked Horse Shoe and the one on the left the Seven Stars Inn. He didn’t care for the luck of a crooked horse shoe, so he chose to cast his fate to the stars.

Again the lunchtime crowd-mostly a dozen or so men in business suits, but also a few well-dressed women-had come in for drinks and what Matthew saw to be a menu of baked chicken, some kind of meat pie, and vegetables probably fresh from the farm wagons. The place was clean, the light through the windows bright, and the conversations lively. On the wall behind the bar was a painted depiction of seven white stars. It was the same kind of welcoming tavern as the Trot, with its immediate feeling of belonging. Matthew made his way toward the bar, pausing to let a serving-girl with a tray of platters pass, and almost at once the tall gray-haired man who was pouring wine for a customer came down the bar to him. “Help you, sir?”

“Yes, please. I know you’re very busy, but would you look at this for me?” Matthew put the Queen’s portrait down before the man.

“Why, may I ask, am I looking at this?”

“I’ve come from New York. I represent a legal agency there.” A white lie? It was all in the interpretation. “Our client is trying to identify this woman. We think she at least has roots in Philadelphia. Would you tell me if you recognize the face?”

The man picked the portrait up. “Just a moment,” he said, while he fished spectacles from a pocket. Then he angled the drawing into sunlight that reflected off the bar’s polished oak.

Matthew saw the man frown, and his gray eyebrows draw together.

“From New York, you say?” the man asked.

“Yes, that’s right. I arrived this morning.”

“You’re a lawyer?”

“Not exactly a lawyer, no.”

“What, then? Exactly.”

“I’m…” What would be the right word? he wondered. Deducer? No, that wasn’t it. Deductive? No, also wrong and hideous to boot. His role was to solve problems. Solvant? No. He might be considered, he thought, as a sifter of clues. A weigher of evidence. A detector of truth and lies.

That would do. “I’m a detector,” he said.

The man’s frown deepened. “A what?”

Not good, Matthew thought. One should at least sound professional, if one was to be taken professionally.

He made up a word on the spot and spoke it with forceful assurance: “I mean to say, sir, that I am a detective.”

“As I said before…a what?” The man’s attention was mercifully diverted by a handsome gray-haired woman about the same age as himself who had just come behind the bar through another doorway. “Lizbeth!” he said. “Look at this and tell me who you think it is.”

She put aside the wine-pitcher she’d come to refill and examined the portrait. Matthew saw her also respond with a frown, and his heart jumped because he thought she must know something. She looked at him with searching brown eyes, and then at the man. “It’s Emily Swanscott.”

“That’s who I thought. This young man says he’s come from New York. Says he’s a…a…well, a legal person. Says his client is trying to identify the woman in the picture.”

“Emily Swanscott,” Lizbeth repeated, speaking to Matthew. “May I ask who your client is, and from where you got this drawing?”

“I fear I have to plead confidentiality,” Matthew replied, trying to keep his voice as light as possible. “You know. It’s a legal condition.”

“Be that as it may, where is Mrs. Swanscott?”

“One moment. Are you absolutely certain you can identify this woman as being Emily Swanscott?”

“As certain as I’m seeing you. Mrs. Swanscott didn’t get out very much, but I met her in the Christ Church cemetery one afternoon. I was there to see to my sister’s grave, and Mrs. Swanscott was putting flowers on the graves of her sons.”

“Flowers?” He’d really meant to say graves but the word had stuck in his throat.

“That’s right. She was very kind. She was telling me what sort of flowers attract butterflies. It seems her eldest boy, the one who drowned, liked to catch them.”

“Ah,” Matthew said, half-dazed. “Her eldest boy.”

“A terrible accident,” the man spoke up. “Eleven years old when he died, as I understand.”

“How many sons did she have?”

“Just the two,” Lizbeth said. “The younger one died of fever when he was…oh…”

“Not even six,” the man supplied. Matthew thought he was probably Lizbeth’s husband, and that they together owned the Seven Stars.

“Tom and I had heard that Mrs. Swanscott was ill.” Again the brown eyes searched Matthew’s face. “Up in her house. Then she just disappeared overnight. Do you know where she is?”

“I do,” Matthew said, with both relief and caution.

“Then why should you need the portrait identified?” Tom asked. “If you know where she is, I mean.”

“Wine, please!” said another customer, bellying up to the bar. Which suited Matthew just fine, for the tavern-keeper had to go tend to his trade and that question could be avoided.

But then again, maybe not. “Where is Mrs. Swanscott?” Lizbeth asked.

“She is indeed ill,” said Matthew. “Unfortunately, her ability to communicate has been impaired.”