The Queen of Bedlam (12 page)

“Father…” Robert’s voice faltered. His eyes glittered, but if there were tears it was hard to tell. “Father…who could’ve murdered my father?”

“Please. Where had he been?”

The young man continued to stare at the corpse, transfixed perhaps by the violence that had been inflicted upon human flesh. Matthew thought how much difference twelve hours could make; yesterday afternoon at the meeting Penn Deverick had been vibrant, boastful, and arrogant-his usual self, or so Matthew had heard-and now he was as cold and insensate as the clay underfoot. Matthew watched Robert trying to gain control of himself. Veins in the throat twitched, a muscle in the jaw jumped, the eyes narrowed and swam. Matthew understood that remaining in London were an elder brother and two sisters. Deverick had been a goods broker there, as well, and Robert’s brother now ran that business.

“Taverns,” Robert managed at last. Grigsby slid past him, ignoring Lillehorne’s look of absolute scorn, and sidled up next to the corpse. “He went out. Before eight o’clock. To make the rounds of the taverns.”

“For what reason?”

“He was…infuriated…about Lord Cornbury’s opinion…that the taverns should be closed early. He intended to fight the governor. With a petition. Signed by all the tavern owners and…” Robert drifted off, for the deep and hideous wound that had been his father’s throat was being fully revealed to the light. McCaggers, his face slick with sweat and his hands trembling, leaned over and measured the cut with his calipers. Matthew saw that in McCaggers’ eyes was the mad gleam of a terror no one should have to endure, yet he carried on.

“Go on, please,” Lillehorne urged.

“Yes. I’m sorry…I’m…” Robert put his hand to his forehead to steady himself. He closed his eyes. “The taverns,” he said. “He wished to get support…to fight Lord Cornbury’s edict, should it be made official. That’s where he was tonight.”

“It would be beneficial,” Matthew offered before he thought better of it, “to find out the last tavern he visited, what time, and who he might have-”

“Already in mind,” the high constable interrupted. “Now Robert, let me ask you this: do you have an idea-any inkling-of who might have wished your father harm?”

Again with grim fascination the young man watched McCaggers at work. McCaggers was using a probe to examine the exposed tissues, after which he gagged and leaned over his bucket once more yet nothing came up. When McCaggers went back to his examination his face was as gray as a whore’s sheet and his eyes behind the spectacles were two small black bits of coal.

“My father,” said Robert, “used to have a credo. He said…business is war. And he fervently believed it. So…yes, he had enemies, I’m sure. But in London, not here.”

“And how can you be so sure?”

“Here he had no competition.”

“But then, perhaps he did. Perhaps someone wanted him out of his position, so-”

“That’s a stretch,” McCaggers said, as Zed wiped his forehead with the moist clean cloth. “Did someone also wish Dr. Godwin out of his position? I’m telling you, the same person has committed these crimes.”

“Really?” Grigsby might not have had a notebook at hand, but he was eager to record. “You’re positive of that?”

“Don’t speak to him, McCaggers!” Lillehorne warned. Then, to Grigsby, “I’ve told you to get out! If you linger one more minute, you’ll stay in the gaol for a week!”

“You don’t have that authority,” Grigsby said, in an easy voice. “I’m breaking no law. Am I, Matthew?”

The furious sound of McCaggers drawing something on the easel-paper caught their attention. When he stepped back, they saw he’d used the red crayon to indicate the throat wound on the black-outlined figure. “Here is my answer,” he said, and then he drew a red triangle framing each eye. When he marked the cut connecting them across the bridge of the nose, it was with such force that his crayon snapped.

“The Masker,” Grigsby said.

“Call him what you please.” McCaggers’ face was nearly dripping in the yellow light; he looked almost dead himself. “It was the same hand.” He changed to the black crayon and began writing notations alongside the body-figure that Matthew was unable to decipher.

“You’re saying…the same person who murdered Dr. Godwin murdered my father?” Robert asked, stricken anew.

“We’re not certain of that.” Lillehorne fired a glance at McCaggers that said hold your tongue. “There’s still work to be done.”

“I’ll keep the body through tonight,” McCaggers said, speaking to all and to no one in particular. “Then to Mr. Paradine tomorrow morning.”

Jonathan Paradine was the town’s funeral master, whose business stood on Wall Street near Trinity Church. When the corpse left here, wrapped in sailcloth, it would be delivered to Paradine for proper shrouding and fitting to a suitable casket of the Deverick family’s choice.

Matthew had noted that, even as strong as he was, Zed was not required to carry the body up those steps. Instead, above the chute there was a system of pulleys and ropes constructed by the town’s engineer for the purpose of hauling the deceased up the way he or she had arrived. By no means did all the dead of New York come to the cold room; most by far went directly from deathbed to Paradine. This was a place solely for the investigation-such as it was-of foul play, of which there’d been four instances since Matthew had been working with Magistrate Powers: the fatal beating of a woman by her peddler husband, the knifing of a sea captain by a prostitute, the murder of Dr. Godwin, and now Mr. Deverick.

“I’ll have my report for you this afternoon,” McCaggers said to the high constable. He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. His hands were still shaking. Matthew reasoned that he would never overcome his dread of blood and death, even were he to examine forty corpses a year.

“May I see that report as well?” Grigsby asked.

“You may not, sir.” Lillehorne turned his attention once more to the young Deverick. He handed over the wallet and gold pocketwatch. “These are yours now, I think. I’ll go up and speak to your mother with you, if you like.”

“Yes, I’d appreciate that. I wouldn’t know what to say by myself.”

“Gentlemen?” Lillehorne motioned Matthew and Grigsby up toward the door.

Without turning from the notes he was writing, McCaggers said, “I’ll speak to Mr. Corbett.”

Lillehorne’s backbone went rigid, his lips so tight he could hardly squeeze a word between them. “I don’t think it wise to-”

“I’ll speak to Mr. Corbett,” came the reply, both an order and a curt dismissal. It was obvious to Matthew that in this lower realm McCaggers was king and the high constable at best a jester.

Still, Lillehorne had his ton of pride. “I shall have a word with Chief Prosecutor Bynes over this misplacement of loyalty to the office.”

“Whatever that means, you may do so. Goodnight to you. Rather…good morning.”

With no further protest other than a little angry exhalation of air, Lillehorne escorted Grigsby and the young Deverick up the stairs. At the top, Grigsby reached back and firmly closed the door.

Matthew stood watching McCaggers write his notes, look at the body, write again, check with the calipers, write, and have his sweating face mopped with a wet cloth by the silent and impassive Zed.

“I attended the meeting today,” said McCaggers, when Matthew thought the man’s concentration had forced out all memory of his being there. McCaggers continued to work as if indeed he, Zed, and the corpse were a trio. “What do you make of Lord Cornbury?”

Matthew shrugged, though McCaggers didn’t see it. “An interesting choice of hats, I’d say.”

“I know some of his history. He has a reputation as a meddler and a buffoon. I doubt he’ll be with us very long.” McCaggers paused to take another drink from his bottle of courage, and he allowed Zed to once more blot the sweatbeads from his forehead. “Your suggestions were well-put. And well-needed, too, I might say. I hope they’ll be implemented.”

“As do I. Especially now.”

“Yes, especially now.” McCaggers leaned over to peer closer at the corpse’s face, and then he gave an involuntary shudder and returned to his writing. “Tell me, Mr. Corbett. Is it true, what’s said of you?”

“What’s said of me?”

“The witchcraft business, in the Carolina colony. That you resisted the will of a magistrate and sought to have a woman freed from a death sentence?”

“It is.”

“Well?”

Matthew paused. “Well what, sir?”

McCaggers turned to look at him, the candlelight sparking on his spectacles and his damp cheeks. “Was she a witch?”

“No, she was not.”

“And you just a clerk? How is it you had such conviction?”

“I’ve never cared for unanswered questions,” Matthew replied. “I suppose I was born that way.”

“A freak of birth, then. Most accept the easiest answer to the most difficult question. It’s more comforting, don’t you agree?”

“No sir, not for me.”

McCaggers grunted. Then: “I presume Mr. Grigsby wishes to write another article in his sheet? On ‘The Masker,’ as he so colorfully states?”

“He does.”

“Well, he missed half of what I told him last time.” McCaggers put down his crayon and turned, with an agitated look, toward Matthew. “How can a man publish a sheet if he has tin ears and his eyes can’t see what’s in front of him?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Matthew, becoming a little disturbed at McCaggers’ sudden vivacity. Or perhaps more disturbing was the fact that Zed was staring at him with those black and fathomless eyes. Matthew understood that Zed had arrived tongueless at the marketplace; if one knew the slave’s history, it might be a tale for a night’s horror.

“I told him it wasn’t an ordinary knife. It was a knife with a hooked blade. A backhanded strike, drawn from left to right.” McCaggers placed a finger on the red crayon of the throat cut to demonstrate the motion. “This is a knife designed to slice through the throat of an animal. Drawn with no hesitation and with full strength. I would look for someone who has experience in a slaughterhouse.”

“Oh. I see,” said Matthew.

“Pardon me.” McCaggers, who had gone pale with his own recitation of violence, stopped to press the wet cloth up against his mouth.

“The cuttings around the eyes,” Matthew ventured. “Do you have any idea what-”

McCaggers shook his head and held up a hand palm-outward to beseech Matthew’s silence.

Matthew waited uneasily as McCaggers composed himself and Zed stared at him like the living visage of some massive and ominous African carving.

“A statement, of course,” McCaggers said quietly when he lowered the cloth and took a breath. “Exactly the same as delivered to Julius Godwin. In the Italian tradition, carnival masks are sometimes decorated with colored diamond or triangle shapes around the eyes. Particularly the harlequin masks of Venice.” He saw that Matthew was waiting for more. “That’s all I have, concerning the marks. But come closer and look here.”

Matthew walked nearer the corpse and the immobile Zed. McCaggers stayed where he was beside the easel. “Look at the left temple. Here is the place.” He chose another red crayon from the jar and drew a circle on the outlined-figure’s head. Matthew looked at the body at that spot and saw on the swollen flesh a black bruise about three inches long.

“That blow to the head began the play,” McCaggers explained. “Mr. Deverick was dazed and unable to cry out, but not dead. I believe the killer lowered him to the ground on his back, put away the cudgel-a small one, easily concealed-took hold of Mr. Deverick’s hair to steady the target, and did his work. Then the marks around the eyes saved for last, is my best guess. Mr. Deverick was left laid out; your friend got the blood on his hands and then onto that wretched shirt of yours. Am I correct?”

“The part about the shirt, for certain.”

“The whole thing probably took only a matter of seconds. As I say, he is an experienced cutter. Also, by way of Dr. Godwin, an experienced murderer.”

Matthew was staring closely at the imprint of the cudgel, the dead face before him now simply an item of clinical interest and a question unanswered. “You say his throat was cut from the front? A backhanded motion?”

“I can tell that from the depth of the wound. Deep to shallow, the severed cords and clots of tissue pushed to the killer’s right. Hold a moment.” McCaggers swayed and trembled and stared down at the floor until his fit of dread had passed. Zed offered the wet cloth, but McCaggers shook his head.

“How do you know his throat wasn’t cut from behind?” Matthew asked.

“The killer would have had to be left-handed. I think he was-is-right-handed. If he’d come up behind Mr. Deverick, he likely would’ve used his cudgel to squarely strike the back of the skull. And look at Mr. Deverick’s right hand.”

Matthew did. The rigid hand that lay across the belly, the fingers and thumb spread. Acceptance, he’d thought at the scene of the crime. It came clear to him in an instant. “He was about to shake his killer’s hand.”

“The shock of the blow splayed his fingers. Should we be looking for a gentleman? Someone Mr. Deverick knew and respected?”

The impact of this brought something else clearly to Matthew’s mind. It was chilling, in its implication of evil. “Whoever did this wished Mr. Deverick to see his face. To know, perhaps, that he was about to die. Yes?”