Matthew had stood listening to this with his face downcast, staring at the floor. Now he drew in a deep breath, his cheeks mottled with red, and he walked purposefully to the end of the table. Something in his pace or demeanor alerted Bidwell to danger, because the man started to push his chair back and rise to his feet—but before he could, Matthew had reached Bidwell’s side and with one sweep of his arm sent the breakfast platters off the table to the floor in a horrendous echoing crash.
As Bidwell struggled to stand up, his distended belly jiggling and his face dark with rage, Matthew clamped a hand on his right shoulder and bore down with all his weight, at the same time thrusting his face into Bidwell’s.
“That man you call a wretch,” Matthew said, in what was barely more than an ominous whisper, “has served you with all of his heart and soul.” Matthew’s eyes blazed with a fire that promised to scorch Bidwell to a cinder, and the master of Fount Royal was for the moment transfixed. “That man you call a wretch lies dying because he has served you so well. And you, sir, for all of your wealth, fine clothes, and pufferies, are not worthy to clean the magistrate’s boots with your dung-dripping tongue.”
Bidwell suddenly laughed, which made Matthew draw back.
“Is that the worst insult you can construct?” Bidwell lifted his eyebrows. “Boy, you are a rank amateur! On the matter of the boots, however, I’ll have you recollect that they are not the magistrate’s. Indeed, every item of your own clothing was supplied by me. You came to this town near-naked, the both of you. So remember that I clothed you, fed you, and housed you, while you are flinging insults in my face.” He noted the presence of Mrs. Nettles from the corner of his eye, and he turned his head toward her and said, “All’s well, Mrs. Nettles. Our young guest has shown his tail, that’s—”
The noise of the front door bursting open interrupted him. “What the bloody hell?” he said, and now he brushed Matthew’s hand aside and hoisted himself to his feet.
Edward Winston came into the dining room. But it was a different Winston than Matthew had seen; this one was breathing hard, as if he’d been running, and his face was drawn and pale in the aftermath of what seemed a terrible shock.
“What’s the matter?” Bidwell asked. “You look as if you’ve—”
“It’s Nicholas!” Winston put a hand up to his forehead and appeared to be fighting a faint.
“What about him? Talk sense, man!”
“Nicholas…is dead,” Winston answered. His mouth gaped, trying to form the words. “He has been murdered.”
Bidwell staggered as if from a physical blow. But instantly he righted himself and his sense of control came to the forefront. “Not a word about this!” he told Mrs. Nettles. “Not to a single servant, not to anyone! Do you hear me?”
“Yes sir, I do.” She appeared just as stunned as her master.
“Where is he?” Bidwell asked Winston. “The body, I mean?”
“His house. I just came from there.”
“You’re sure of this?”
Winston managed a grim, sickened half-smile. “Go look for yourself. I promise you won’t soon forget such a sight.”
“Take me there. Clerk, you come too. Remember, Mrs. Nettles: not a word about this to a single soul!”
During the walk in the early sunlight, Bidwell maintained his pace at a quick clip for a man of his size. Several citizens called a morning greeting, which Bidwell had the presence of mind to answer in as carefree a voice as he could manage. It was only when one farmer tried to stop him to talk about the forthcoming execution that Bidwell snapped at the man like a dog at a worrisome flea. Then Bidwell, Winston, and Matthew reached the whitewashed dwelling of Nicholas Paine, which stood on Harmony Street four houses northward of Winston’s shuttered pigsty.
Paine’s house was also shuttered. Winston’s pace slowed as they neared the closed door, and finally he stopped altogether.
“Come along!” Bidwell said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I…would rather stay out here.”
“Come along, I said!”
“No,” Winston answered defiantly. “By God, I’m not going in there again!”
Bidwell stared at him openmouthed, thunderstruck by this show of impudence. Matthew walked past both men, lifted the door’s latch, and pushed the door open. As he did, Winston turned his face and walked away a few strides.
Matthew’s first impression was of the copious reek of blood. Secondly, he was aware of the buzzing of flies at work. Thirdly, he saw the body in the slanting rays of vermilion light that entered between the shutter slats.
Fourthly, his gorge rose and if he had eaten any breakfast he surely would have expelled it.
“Oh…my Jesus,” Bidwell said softly, behind him. Then Bidwell was overcome by the picture. He hurried outside and around the house to vomit up his blood sausage and pickled melon where he would not be seen by any passing citizen.
Matthew stepped across the threshold and closed the door to block this sight from view of the street. He stood with his back against the door, the fresh sunlight reflecting off the huge pool of blood that surrounded the chair in which Paine was sitting. Indeed, it appeared that every drop had flowed from the man’s veins onto the floor, and the corpse had taken on a waxy sallow color. Matthew saw that Paine had been tied in an upright position, ropes binding his arms behind him and his ankles to the chair legs. His shoes and stockings had been removed, and his ankles and feet slashed to sever the arteries. Likewise slashed were the insides of both arms beginning at the elbows. Matthew shifted his position to see that the deep, vein-slicing cuts continued down the forearms to the wrists. He moved a little closer to the corpse, careful that he not step into the crimson sea of gore.
Paine’s head was tilted backward. In his mouth was stuffed a yellow cloth, possibly a pair of stockings. His eyes, mercifully, were closed. Around his neck was knotted a noose. On the right side of his forehead there was a vicious black bruise, and blood had flowed from both nostrils down the white of his shirt. A dozen or more flies crawled over the gashes in Paine’s corpse and supped from the bloody banquet at his feet.
The door opened and Bidwell dared enter. He held a handkerchief pressed to his mouth, his face gleaming with beads of sweat. Quickly, he closed the door at his back and stood staring numbly at all the carnage.
“Don’t be sick again,” Matthew warned him. “If you are, I shall be as well and it will not add to this prettiness.”
“I’m all right,” Bidwell croaked. “I…oh dear God…oh Christ…who could have done such a murder as this?”
“One man’s murder is another man’s execution. That’s what this is. You see the hangman’s noose?”
“Yes.” Bidwell rapidly averted his eyes. “He…he’s been drained of blood, hasn’t he?”
“It appears his arteries have been opened, yes.” Matthew walked around to the back of the body, getting as close as possible without sinking his shoes into the quagmire. He saw a red clump of blood and tissue near the crown of Paine’s head. “Whoever killed him beat him first into insensibility with a blunt object,” Matthew said. “He was struck on the head by someone standing behind and above him. I think that would be a requirement because otherwise Paine would be a formidable opponent.”
“This is the Devil’s work!” Bidwell said, his eyes glassy. “Satan himself must have done it!”
“If that is so, Satan has a clinical eye as to the flow of blood. You’ll notice that Paine’s throat was not slashed, as I understand was done to Reverend Grove and Daniel Howarth. Whoever murdered Paine wished him to bleed to death slowly and in excruciating fashion. I venture Paine might have regained consciousness during the procedure, and then was struck again on the forehead. If he was able to return to sensibility after that, by that time he would have been too weak to struggle.”
“Ohhhh…my stomach. Dear God…I’m going to be sick again.”
“Go outside, then,” Matthew directed, but Bidwell lowered his head and tried
to ward off the flood. Matthew looked around the room, which showed no other signs of tumult, and fixed his attention on a nearby desk. Its chair was missing, and probably was the chair in which Paine had died. On a blotter atop the desk was a sheet of paper with several lines written upon it. An inkpot was open, and on the floor lay the quill pen. A melted stub in a candlestick attested to his source of light. Matthew saw drops and smears of blood on the floor between the desk and where the chair was positioned. He walked to the desk and read the paper.
“I, Nicholas Paine,” he recited, “being of sound mind and of my own free will do hereby on this date of May eighteenth, sixteen hundred and ninety-nine, confess to the murder of…” And here the writing ended in a blotch of ink. “Written sometime after midnight, it seems,” Matthew said. “Or close enough that Paine scribed today’s date.” He saw something else in the room that warranted his attention: on the bedpallet was an open trunk that had been partly packed with clothing. “He was about to leave Fount Royal, I think.”
Bidwell stared with dread fascination at the corpse. “What…murder was he confessing?”
“An old one, I believe. Paine had some sins in his past. I think one of them caught up with him.” Matthew walked to the bed to inspect the contents of the trunk. The clothes had been thrown in, evidence of intention of a hurried departure.
“You don’t think the Devil had anything to do with this? Or the witch?”
“I do not. The murders of the reverend and Daniel Howarth were—as I understand their description—meant to kill quickly. This was meant to linger. Also, you’ll note there are no claw marks, as in the other killings. This was done with a very sharp blade by a hand that was both vengeful and…shall we say…experienced in the craft of cutting.”
“Oh my God…what shall we do?” Bidwell lifted a trembling hand to his forehead, his wig tilted to one side on his pate. “If the citizens find out about this…that we have another murderer among us…we won’t have a soul in Fount Royal by the end of the day!”
“That,” Matthew said, “is true. It will do no good to advertise this crime. Therefore, don’t expose it.”
“What do you suggest? Hiding the corpse?”
“The details, I’m sure, are better left to you. But yes, I propose wrapping the corpse in a bedsheet and disposing of it at a later date. The later, of course, the more…disagreeable the task will be.”
“We cannot just pretend Paine has left Fount Royal! He has friends here! And he at least deserves a Christian burial!”
Matthew aimed his stare at Bidwell. “It is your choice, sir. And your responsibility. After all, you are his employer and you direct his comings and goings.” He walked around the body again and approached the door, which Bidwell stood against. “If you’ll excuse me?”
“Where are you going?” A flare of panic leaped in Bidwell’s eyes. “You can’t leave!”
“Yes, I can. Don’t concern yourself with my speaking about this to anyone, for I vow I shall not.” Except for one person, he might have added. The person he now intended to confront.
“Please…I need your help.”
“By that, if you mean you need a pair of hands to strip the pallet, roll Paine up in the sheet, and scrub the floor with ashes and tar soap…then I must deny your noble request. Winston might help you, but I doubt if any amount of coercion or threat will make him cross that threshold again.” Matthew smiled tightly. “Therefore…speaking to a man who so abhors failure…I sincerely hope you are successful at your present challenge. Good day to you, sir.” Matthew thought he was going to have to bodily pry Bidwell away from the door, which might have been a labor fit for Hercules, but at last the master of Fount Royal moved aside.
As Matthew started to open the door, Bidwell said in a small voice, “You say…ashes and tar soap, then?”
“Some sand, too,” Matthew advised. “Isn’t that how they scrub blood off the deck of a ship?” Bidwell didn’t answer, but stood looking at the corpse with his handkerchief pressed against his mouth.
Outside, the air had never smelled sweeter. Matthew closed the door again, his stomach still roiling and what felt like cold sweat down the valley of his spine. He approached Winston, who stood in the shadow of an oak tree a few yards away.
“How did you come to find him?” Matthew asked.
Winston still appeared dazed, his color not yet returned. “I…intended…to ask Nicholas to escort me to Charles Town. On the pretense of negotiating for supplies.”
“After which, you intended not to return here?”
“Yes. I planned on leaving Nicholas while I went to see Danforth. Then…I would simply lose myself in Charles Town.”
“Well, half of your intent has come to fruition,” Matthew said. “You are indeed lost. Good day.” He turned away from Winston and walked back along Harmony Street in the direction they’d come, as he had seen the infirmary in passing.
Presently Matthew stood before the door and pulled the bell-cord. There was no response to the first pull, nor to the fifth. Matthew tried the door, found it unlatched from within, and entered the doctor’s domain.
The parlor held two canaries in a gilded cage, both singing happily toward the shafts of light that filtered through the white shutters. Matthew saw another door and knocked at it, but again there was no reply. He opened it and ventured into a hallway. Ahead there were three rooms, the doors of the first two ajar. In the initial room stood the barber’s chair and leather razor-sharpening strop; in the second room there was a trio of beds, all of which were neatly made and unoccupied. Matthew continued down the hallway to the third door, where he knocked once more.
When there was no response he pushed the door open and faced what appeared to be the doctor’s chemistry study, judging from all the arcane bottles and beakers. The chamber held a single shuttered window through which the rays of bright sunlight streamed, though hazed by a pall of blue-tinged smoke.
Benjamin Shields sat in a chair with his back against the wall, holding a small object in a clamplike instrument in his right hand. The object was smoldering, emitting a thin smoke plume. Matthew thought the clouded air smelled of a combination of burnt peanuts and a rope that had been set afire.
The doctor’s face was veiled by shadow, though stripes of contaminated light lay across the right shoulder and arm of his tan-colored suit. His spectacles had been placed atop a stack of two leatherbound books that sat on the desk to his right. His legs were crossed at the ankles, in a most casual pose. Matthew didn’t speak. He watched as the doctor lifted the burning object—some kind of wrapped tobacco stick, it appeared—to his lips and pulled in a long, slow draw.
“Paine has been found,” Matthew said. Just as slowly as he had drawn the smoke, the doctor released it from his mouth. It floated in a shimmering cloud through the angled sunrays.
“I thought your creed was to save lives, not take them,” Matthew went on. Again, Shields drew from the stick, held it, then let the smoke dribble out.
Matthew looked around at the vessels of the doctor’s craft, the glass bottles and vials and beakers. “Sir,” he said, “you are as transparent as these implements. For what earthly reason did you commit such an atrocity?”
Still there was no reply.
Matthew felt as if he’d entered a tiger’s den, and the tiger was playing with him like a housecat before it bared its fangs and claws and sprang at him. He kept firmly in mind the position of the door behind him. The savagery of Paine’s death was undeniable, and therefore the ability of savagery lay within the man who sat not ten feet away. “May I offer a possible scenario?” Matthew asked, and continued anyway when the doctor refused to speak. “Paine committed some terrible offense against you—or your family—some years ago. Did he murder a family member? A son or a daughter?” A pause did not coax a reaction, except for a further cloud of smoke.
“Evidently he did,” Matthew said. “By a gunshot wound, it seems. But Paine was wounded first, therefore I’m inclined to believe hi
s victim was male. Paine must have had cause to find a doctor to treat his injury. Is that how you followed his trail? You searched for the doctor who treated him, and tracked Paine from that point? How many months did it take? Longer than that? Years?” Matthew nodded. “Yes, I’d suspect several years. Many seasons of festering hatred. It must have taken that long, for a man of healing to give himself over so completely to the urge for destruction.”
Shields regarded the burning tip of his tobacco stick.
“You learned the circumstances of the death of Paine’s wife,” Matthew said. “But Paine, in wishing to put the past behind him, had never told anyone in Fount Royal that he’d ever been married. He must have been astounded when he realized you knew his history…and, Paine being an intelligent man, he also realized why you knew. So you went to his house sometime around midnight, is that correct? I presume you had all the ropes and blades you needed in your bag, but you probably left that outside. Did you offer to keep your silence if Paine would write a confession and immediately leave Fount Royal?”
Smoke drifted slowly through the light.
“Paine never dreamt you’d gone there to kill him. He assumed you were interested in unmasking him before Bidwell and the town, and that the confession was the whole point of it. So you let Paine sit down and begin writing, and you took the opportunity to bash him in the head with a blunt instrument. Was it something you had hidden on you or something already there?”
No response was forthcoming.
“And then came the moment you relished,” Matthew said. “You must have relished it, to have performed it so artfully. Did you taunt him as you opened his veins? His mouth was gagged, his head near cracked, and his blood running out in streams. He must have been too weak to overturn the chair, but what would it have mattered? He probably did hear you taunting him as he died, though. Does that knowledge give you a feeling of great joy, sir?” Matthew raised his eyebrows. “Is this one of the happiest mornings of your life, now that the man you’ve sought so long and steadfastly is a blood-drained husk?”
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