The Queen of Bedlam (24 page)

A bookcase held a dozen thick ancient-looking tomes bound in scabby leather. Medical books? he wondered. Anatomy? He couldn’t make out the titles. Near it stood a massive old black chest-of-drawers, next to which was a cubbyhole arrangement that held rolled-up scrolls of white paper. Over on the far side of the attic, past shelves on which were folded various items of clothing, was a simple cot and a writing table. Obviously there was no fireplace here, so McCaggers would have to take all his meals in the taverns unless-as was more likely, due to his penchant for privacy-he had an arrangement with a local household.

“The Herrald Agency,” McCaggers said, and Matthew saw he was reading the notice. “Letters of inquiry to go to the Dock House Inn. Well, that’s interesting.”

“It is?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of them before. Didn’t know they were over here yet. Their motto used to be ‘The Hands and Eyes of the Law.’” McCaggers looked up from the sheet. “Private investigators. More muddy water ahead for the high constable, if these people open an office.”

“Really,” Matthew said, trying to sound unconcerned one way or the other.

“Grigsby missed the night’s news, didn’t he?” McCaggers handed the Earwig back to Matthew. “I presume you’ve heard?”

“I have.”

“Another nasty throat-cutting. The same blow to the head, the same shapes carved around the eyes. Oh.” McCaggers’ face had begun to blanch at the memory of what he’d seen in the cold room. He pressed one hand against his mouth as if to stem a rising tide. “Pardon,” he said after a moment. “I do let my weakness get away from me.”

This seemed the right time for Matthew to clear his throat and ask, “What weakness, sir?”

“Now you’re being obtuse!” McCaggers lowered his hand. “You know exactly what I mean. Everyone knows, don’t they?” He nodded. “They know, and they snigger about it behind my back. But what am I to do? I’m cursed, you see. Because I was born for this profession, yet I despise the…” He abruptly stopped. A faint glimmer of sweat had surfaced on his cheeks. He paused, waiting for his gullet to sink again. Then he forced a twisted smile upon his mouth and motioned up toward the skeletons. “You see my angels?”

“Angels, sir?”

“My unknown angels,” McCaggers corrected. He gazed up at them as if they were the most splendorous objects of art. “Two-the young man and woman-came with me from Bristol. The other two-the older man and little girl-were found here. My angels, Matthew. Do you know why?”

“No,” Matthew said. And he wasn’t sure he wished to know, either.

“Because they represent everything that to me is fascinating about life and death,” the coroner went on, still staring up at his possessions. “They are perfect. Oh, not to say they don’t have bad teeth, or a cracked knuckle or an old knee injury, but just those minor things. The two from Bristol hung in my father’s office. He was a coroner, too, as was my grandfather. I remember my father showing them to me in an afternoon’s twilight, and saying, ‘Ashton, look here and look deep, for all of life’s joy, tragedy, and mystery are here on display.’ Joy, he said, because they were children of purpose, as are we all. Tragedy, he said, because we all must come to this. And mystery…because where does the light go, from those houses, to leave only the foundations behind?”

Matthew saw a shine in McCaggers’ eyes that some might have mistaken for madness, yet he had seen it in his own eyes in a mirror in Fount Royal when presented with a problem that seemingly had no solution.

“None of them,” McCaggers said, “should have died. I mean, yes of course, eventually they would have passed, but I recall my father saying about those first two that they were simply found dead and no one could identify them. No one ever claimed them. The same with my two. The older man was found dead in the back of a tinker’s wagon, but the tinker didn’t know when or where he’d climbed aboard. The little girl died aboard a ship. And the astonishing thing, Matthew, is that there was no record of her ever being a passenger on the ship. No one knew her name. She slept on the deck and took food with the others, but no one ever asked about her or her parents. For all those many weeks, no one cared to know. Did she make herself invisible? Did she simply have a way about her that caused others to assume she was taken care of? Fourteen years old, she was. Where did she come from, Matthew? What was her story?”

“Of what did she die?” Matthew asked, gazing up at the smallest skeleton.

“Ah, now that’s the question.” McCaggers rubbed the point of his chin. “I studied her. The older man, too. I used my books and my notes. I used all the material my father had left to me, and that my grandfather had left to him, and I came up with…nothing. No injuries, no illnesses that I could identify. Nothing. And nothing left of them now but those foundations, for their lights have gone. But I’ll tell you what I believe, Matthew. What I’ve put together as must be the only answer.

“I believe,” he said quietly, as he regarded his angels, “that human beings need friends, and love, and the touch of humanity. I believe that if those things are denied long enough, an older man or a young girl might crawl into the back of a tinker’s wagon or steal onto the gangplank of a ship and find their destination is still the same lonely path. I think these people died of something not found in my books, or my father’s and grandfather’s. I think somewhere their hearts were broken, and when all hope was extinguished they died, for they simply could not bear to live anymore.”

“But look at the bones,” McCaggers whispered. “How they fit together, how they protect what they hold within. The foundations of our houses are magnificent, Matthew, even if our hearts become darkened or our minds clouded. It was always the bones that drew me to this profession. The clean, precise geometry of them, the noble and unerring purpose. The bones are miracles of creation.” He blinked, and seemed at that instant to return to the hard floor of reality. “It’s the jelly I can’t bear. The cracked clay, and what comes out.” Again his hand pressed to his mouth, the lips drawn tight.

“I assume,” Matthew said to change the subject, “that your father is still in Bristol?”

“Yes.” It was spoken in a strange, faraway voice. “Still in Bristol. He will always be in Bristol.”

This subject, too, seemed fraught with danger, for suddenly McCaggers gave a shudder and said, “Please. I’m not feeling well.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You wished to ask me something?”

“Yes. Uh…” Matthew hesitated, for he didn’t wish to further sicken the coroner, yet he had to know. “It has to do with Ausley,” he said. “Do you mind?”

“It’s my job,” came the answer, with a bitter edge.

“I’ve heard that a blood mark was found last night. On a root cellar door near Barrack Street.”

“Yes, so Lillehorne’s told me. Found on the root cellar door of the office belonging to the three lawyers Pollard, Fitzgerald, and Kippering. What of it?”

“I was just wondering if it was true.” What Matthew had really wanted was to make sure the information had gotten to the high constable. “Do you know if there were any other blood marks found nearby?”

McCaggers turned toward Matthew and stared at him without blinking. “A curious line of questioning, I think. Why not ask Lillehorne yourself?”

“He…uh…was in a meeting this morning. With Lord Cornbury.”

“I’ve only heard of the one mark,” McCaggers said. “Evidently the Masker tried to get into their root cellar. If you’re really intrigued, Lillehorne’s already searched the cellar and found nothing.”

“Why their root cellar?” Matthew had to ask. “I mean, Beaver Street is right there at the end of the alley, isn’t it? Why would the Masker try to get into a root cellar when he could have easily turned either left or right onto Beaver Street?”

“It may have been that he was undone by the shouting, which I understand was profuse, and he feared the constables were converging on him.” McCaggers picked up one of the swords from the rack and used a white cloth to wipe the blade. “You know, there is a question Lillehorne posed to me last night. I couldn’t answer it. Why is it, do you think, that the person who started the alarm hasn’t come forward?”

Before Matthew could think of a reply, McCaggers replaced the sword and picked up a second one to wipe down. “Lillehorne’s very interested in finding this person. He’s found any number of people who heard the shouting, but not the person who began it. What do you make of that?”

Matthew took a deep breath and said, “With three murders to investigate, I’d think the high constable would save his interest for the Masker, not an innocent witness who may have happened onto the scene.”

McCaggers nodded and returned the sword to the rack. “Four murders,” he said.

Matthew wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “Sir?”

“Four,” McCaggers repeated. “Murders. In the past three weeks. Ausley was the fourth, not the third.”

“I don’t think I’m following you.”

McCaggers went to the series of cubbyholes and pulled out one of the paper scrolls. He opened it and studied the drawing of a body and the notes written there in black and red crayon. “As you’re so adept at both questions and answers, I’ll tell you that four days before Dr. Godwin was killed, a body washed up from the Hudson River on the property of a farmer named John Ormond. His farm is about ten miles out of town. The body was that of a young man, aged eighteen or nineteen, twenty at the oldest. Here, see for yourself.” He gave Matthew the paper and then stepped back as if distancing himself from the scene.

Matthew wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at, for some of the coroner’s notations seemed to be in a scrivener’s code unknown to him. He did note first and foremost the red crayon drawn in the eye sockets. “The man’s eyes were injured?” Matthew asked.

“His eyes were gone. You see the stab wounds to the body?”

Matthew counted the red lines. “Eight?”

“Three to the chest. One to the base of the neck. Three to the back and one to the left shoulder. From what I could tell, the blades were all different shapes and widths. You’ll also see in my notations that his wrists were bound behind him with cords.”

“He was murdered by a mob?” Matthew asked.

“Actually, the frontal and nasal bones of his skull were shattered and three of the vertebrae in his neck broken. I think he fell from a considerable height along the river. Bear in mind, he was in the water at least five days before Ormond found him.”

That would have been a pleasant picture, Matthew thought. The river, a warm summer day, and a decayed, eyeless corpse with eight stab wounds must have been McCaggers’ idea of a picnic in Hell. “This was certainly a vile work,” Matthew said. An understatement, he decided. Even the Masker didn’t tie a man’s hands behind the back before he struck. The victim would have had to know what was about to happen to him, once the cords were knotted.

“Four murders within three weeks,” said McCaggers. “That is a new and very disturbing fact for the colony’s book of records.”

Matthew handed the document back. “I can understand why Lillehorne wanted to keep this one quiet. Who was he?”

“No idea.” McCaggers rolled up the paper and returned it to its cubbyhole. “The body was…not suitable for travel. Neither was anything-pardon me a moment-was anything left of the…uh…left of the-”

“The face?” Matthew finished for him.

“That, exactly. Fish and turtles. They…probably took the eyes first.” McCaggers looked a little fish-eyed himself, but he carried on. “The clothes were inspected but the pockets were empty. After I finished my notes, Lillehorne ordered Zed to dig the grave. The case remains open, but so far no one has reported anyone missing.”

“And he had no wallet? Nothing at all?”

“Nothing. Of course he might have been robbed, by either his murderers or the river.” McCaggers lifted a finger, as if something had come to mind. “I have something to ask you. I’m to understand you grew up in the orphanage?”

“I did.” Matthew surmised the coroner had gotten that information either from Magistrate Powers or Lillehorne.

“Did you know Ausley very well?”

“No, not well.”

McCaggers crossed to the large black chest and pulled open a drawer. In it, Matthew saw, was a bundle wrapped in brown paper. Also in the drawer was a cheap brown cloth wallet, a pencil wrapped with string, a set of keys, a small pewter liquor flask, and what appeared to be a vial half-full of oily amber-colored liquid.

“I was wondering,” McCaggers said, “if you’d ever heard Ausley speak of his next-of-kin.”

Ah, Matthew thought. Here they were, then. The last possessions of Eben Ausley as he was carved out of the earth to reap his reward. His clothes wrapped in the paper. The vial had to be the sickening cloves cologne. The keys to the locks of the orphanage. The pencil to record Ausley’s gambling losses, meals, comings-and-goings, and whatever else lay in his mind’s brackish swamp.

“I haven’t, no,” Matthew answered. He felt a little itch at the back of his brain.

“I presume someone will come along, eventually. The second-in-charge at the almshouse, perhaps. Or I’ll just put all this in a box and store it away.” McCaggers closed the drawer. “Did he never talk about a family?”

Matthew shook his head. And then he realized what was making his brain itch. “Pardon me, but would you open that again?”

McCaggers did, and stepped aside as Matthew approached.