The Queen of Bedlam

by Robert R. McCammon

  I was jus’ practisin’, Silas had said.

  For what future purpose? Surely not just shilling crimes; those were beneath Professor Fell. No, these would be more monumental, more grandiose in their evil. The theft of a key to a box where a diplomatic pouch lay, with the fate of kings and nations in the balance? The theft of business letters, or of guarded seals of state, or of perfume-touched messages between lovers that might lead to scandals, executions, and the overnight collapse of an empire…if the right price was not paid for the return?

  This contract was underwritten by the professor, the Blind Boy had told Kirby.

  Because, Matthew thought, the professor was interested in seeing the orphans in action.

  A new world, Mrs. Herrald had said, calls for new names.

  Not just new names, Matthew realized.

  New blood.

  Kirby was waiting. Matthew closed the notebook. He said with grim certainty, “Professor Fell is financing a school for criminals. North along the Hudson, about fifteen miles from here. It’s run by a man named Simon Chapel. I don’t think he’s the professor. I may be wrong. But what better place to find potential ‘students’ than an orphanage full of boys who’ve already known hardship and violence? Diamonds in the rough, wouldn’t you say?”

  Kirby nodded. The light of understanding had also dawned on him, though his actions had doomed him to a prison’s darkness.

  Matthew drew himself up tall. Again, he marked the distance between where he stood and the stairs. “I’m going to take this notebook to City Hall,” he said, in a voice that fortunately did not betray his gut-clenched fear. “I’m going to give it to Lillehorne, and I’m going to tell him everything.” He hesitated, while that sank into the lawyer’s blood-fevered brain. The only thing that moved about Kirby was a quick twitch of the mouth. “I’d like you to come with me.”

  forty-four

  SOMEWHERE THE FERRY WAS CROSSING the river under the bright blue sky. Somewhere birds sang in the green Jersey hills. Somewhere children played, in all innocence and happiness, a game of Jack Straws.

  But in the gloomy cellar of the attorneys’ office on Broad Street, the Masker wore a smile full of pain. “You know I can’t do that, Matthew.”

  “I know you have to. What good is the notebook without your testimony?”

  Kirby stared at the floor. “You said…this tragic story had hope in it. May I ask where it might be?”

  “The hope,” Matthew said, “is that if you give yourself up today—right now—I can promise you that I and influential people will make certain you see your mother before you go to prison.”

  “Oh. You and influential people.”

  “That’s right. It’s my promise.”

  “Well.” Kirby grinned tightly. “I should feel so much better now, shouldn’t I?”

  “What did you think you were going to do, Trevor? Did you think that I was going to uncover the headmaster of this scheme and you would get a chance to murder him, too, before he went to the docket?” Matthew scowled. “You must be truly mad, to think it would end there. Don’t you want to kill all the orphans who were involved? What about Ives? Don’t you thirst to slash his throat, too?” He let that hang because Kirby had given him a hollow-eyed, dangerous glare that made him think he’d gone a slash too far. Still, he pressed on. “I think if you took up shaving again and viewed yourself in the mirror, you’d see what effect murder has had on you. You’re not a killer at heart! Far from it! Even Andrew Kippering, for all his vices, isn’t a killer. It’s time to let this go, and for the law to finish what you’ve begun.”

  “Oh, now you’re going to tell me about the power of the law! The majesty of the courts! How justice, that blindfolded whore, always wins the day!”

  “No, I’m not,” said Matthew. “As a lawyer, you know better than that. Mistakes can be made and wrong decisions delivered by even the most auspicious court. That’s life. But what I’m telling you is that your testimony could bring more villains to justice than your knife. You can’t kill them all. I don’t think, in your heart, you would want to. But your testimony could put them all behind bars. Yours is a compelling story, Trevor. Don’t sell the truth so short.”

  “The truth. I can prove nothing.”

  “This is a beginning,” Matthew told him, and held up the notebook.

  Kirby wavered on his feet. He blinked heavily, stared up at the lantern, and then focused on empty air. “I…have to think.” A hand drifted to his forehead. “I’m tired. I’m so tired.”

  “I know you are,” Matthew said, and then gave the man his last cannon shot. “Your mother sleeps, even with her eyes open. I think she dreams of hearing that the King’s Reply has arrived, and of seeing you walk through the door. That’s what she’s waiting for, Trevor. Her son, to come wake her up. If you walk to Lillehorne’s office with me, right now, you’ll get that chance.”

  A tremor passed over Kirby’s face. Just that quickly, tears leaped to his eyes. It was like watching a shored-up house be torn apart under a bitter storm, so fast did Kirby’s face contort and the wretched sob burst from his mouth. Matthew thought it was not a sound any human should ever have to utter; it was the cry of the damned, cast out from Heaven. As the tears streamed down Kirby’s cheeks and his face truly became a mask—though this one of agony far beyond any punishment known to Man—his knees buckled, he crumpled to the dirt, and amid the boxes and papers of the profession’s underbelly he crawled like a dying animal to crush himself against the unyielding bricks.

  Matthew had to steel himself, lest he too be overcome. Kirby had given up everything. His position, his bride-to-be, his life. He had fought to avenge a terrible injustice, and had lost his soul in that unwinnable fight. For it seemed now to Matthew that vengeance, in the end, always consumed the innocent as well as the guilty, and burned them both into only so much cold ash.

  But, Matthew thought, there was one thing no one could ever doubt about Trevor Kirby.

  He was a good son.

  “I’m going to go now,” Matthew heard himself say, and the man’s sobbing quietened. “Will you follow me, when you’re able?”

  There was no answer. Kirby remained pressed against the wall, his face hidden.

  “Please,” Matthew added. “For the both of us.” Then he retrieved his tricorn and put it on, held the notebook close and firm at his side, and turned away to climb the stairs. He flinched as he heard Kirby move, but no attack ensued. Matthew went through the door at the top of the steps, then out the front door into the same bright light where the ferry sailed, the birds sang, and children played their joyful games.

  He started walking north along Broad Street toward City Hall, his pace neither brisk nor particularly slow. He was simply giving a good but misguided son the chance to make up his mind. The air smelled of salt sea and the occasional puff of tobacco as pipe-smoking gentlemen walked past him. He kept his focus on the building ahead, putting together in his mind what his first words would be to Gardner Lillehorne. How was he to explain this, if Kirby failed to appear? It would be so much chaff to the wind. Constable Lillehorne, will you listen while I tell you about an insidious plot to mold orphans into professional criminals in service to—

  The hard grip of a hand against his right shoulder jarred him out of his thoughts. Startled, he looked to that side and into the sunken-eyed, vulpine face of Bromfield, who wore the same wide-brimmed leather hat and similar rustic clothes as he’d been wearing that day on Chapel’s estate.

  “Look here!” A second hand snatched the notebook from Matthew’s grip. “An added reward, I’d say!”

  Bromfield put his arm around Matthew’s neck like an old friend bending in to tell a secret and pushed him off the sidewalk into the shaded alcove of a doorway.

  “Careful, careful,” said the second man, who held the notebook. “All geniality and lightness, please. Mr. Corbett?”

  Matthew blinked, stunned, and looked into the smiling face of Joplin Pollard.

  The b
oyish lawyer leaned close; his mouth retained the smile, but his large brown eyes were sparkling not with grand good humor but with the razor-sharp glints of cruelty. “I want you to be very quiet now, all right? No trouble. Show it to him, Mr. Bromfield.”

  The hunter brought up his other hand and displayed a terribly familiar straw hat. He couldn’t help himself; he took Matthew’s tricorn off and pushed Berry’s straw topper down around the younger man’s ears.

  “Your lovely friend has been taken on ahead.” Pollard kept a hand pressed against the center of Matthew’s chest. “Sadly, she gave Mr. Carver a kick to the shin that rattled even my teeth. So when you see her again she may be a bit bruised, but you should know that her life depends on what you do and say—or rather, not say—in the next few minutes.”

  “What’s this…what’s…” But Matthew knew, in spite of his mental fumbling. It hit him in the face like freezing water. Charles Land, the attorney whose practice Pollard had taken over, had supposedly inherited a large sum of money and returned to England to become an art patron and a dabbler in politics. That had been Professor Fell’s method of clearing the way for a new investment.

  Pollard is the one with ambition, the widow Sherwyn had said.

  “You.” The word came bitterly from Matthew’s mouth. “You’re in charge of everything, aren’t you?”

  “Everything? A large blanket, I think. No, not everything. Just making sure people do what they’re paid to do, and all goes smoothly. That’s my job, really.” He showed his teeth. “To smooth the rough roads and make sure they all connect. Thank you for the notebook, Mr. Corbett. I didn’t expect to get hold of this today.”

  “Can I tweak his nose, sir?” Bromfield asked hopefully.

  “Certainly not. Let’s keep our decorum on the public street. Mr. Corbett, you’re going to come with us and do it without protest or drawing attention. If you’re not delivered to Mr. Chapel’s estate within a reasonable number of hours, the very lovely Miss Grigsby will die a death I can’t begin to explain to you without losing my breakfast. Therefore, I’d suggest you follow my instructions: keep your head down, move quickly, do not speak to anyone else even if you’re spoken to. Ready? Let’s go, then.”

  Whether he was ready or not was beside the point. Matthew, with Berry’s hat obscuring most of his face, was pushed along between the two men, who steered him left onto Barrack Street and past the place where he’d found Ausley’s body.

  “We’ve been searching all over for you this morning,” said Pollard as they kept a steady clip. “I met Bryan on the street a little while ago. He told me you were in to see Andrew. Would you mind telling me what that was about?”

  Matthew did, so he didn’t.

  “No matter,” the lawyer answered to Matthew’s silence. “I’ll have a little talk with Andrew and we’ll get to the bottom of it. Am I right to feel a little uneasy around Andrew these days? What say you?”

  “I say, you can put your head up your—” That gallant but foolish statement was censored by a pair of rustic knuckles that drove into his ribs through coat, waistcoat, and sweat-damp shirt.

  “Easy, Mr. Bromfield. No need for that yet. Ah, here we are.”

  Ahead at the corner of Barrack and the Broad Way sat a coach with four horses. It was very different from the vehicle that had carried Charity LeClaire and him to the estate. This one was dusty and ugly, meant to look more like the regular, road-weary landboats that travelled the hard track between New York and Boston, and so would not gather as much notice amid the movement of pedestrians, cargo wagons, farmers’ carts, and higglers’ wheelbarrows.

  A driver and whipman, both boys about fifteen or sixteen years old, sat up top. “Get in,” said Pollard, guiding him forward. Quickly Bromfield tossed the tricorn through the window into the coach and unlatched the door. As Matthew was about to enter, he glanced to the right and saw his friend and chessmate Effrem Owles approaching along the sidewalk not twenty feet away. Effrem’s head was lowered, his eyes lost in thought behind the spectacles. It came to Matthew to cry out for help, but just that fast the thought perished for not only might these men take Effrem as well, but Berry’s life hung by a slender thread. Effrem passed by, so close Matthew could have touched him.

  Then Matthew felt Bromfield’s hand balled up in the small of his back, and he let himself be pushed into the coach. Already within sat the wiry, long-haired youth whose job had been to pour the wine at Chapel’s feast. Jeremy, Chapel had called him. Pomade glistened in his hair. He had drawn a knife as soon as the door had opened, and greeted Matthew with its blade.

  Matthew sat on the bench seat facing him. Bromfield sat beside Matthew, reached over, and pulled the canvas sunshade down over the opposite window.

  Pollard leaned in through the door and gave the notebook to Bromfield, who instantly tucked it down in his leather waistcoat. “Good man,” Pollard said to Matthew. “No need for unpleasantries. Mr. Chapel just wants to speak to you.”

  “To speak to me? You mean, to kill me, don’t you?”

  “Relax, Mr. Corbett. We don’t waste talent, even if it is misguided. Our benefactor keeps a nice village in Wales where people can be educated as to the proper meaning of life. I would like to know, though: how did you come upon the notebook?”

  Matthew had to think fast. “McCaggers was wrong about it not being with Ausley’s belongings. His slave, Zed, had moved some of the stuff to another drawer. I went back to McCaggers and he’d found it.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hm.” Pollard’s eyes, much more alert than Matthew had ever seen them, examined Matthew’s face. “I’ll have to ask Mr. McCaggers about that. You trouble me, sir, just as you trouble Mr. Chapel. It’s time something is done.”

  “The girl’s not part of this.”

  “Part of what, sir?” Pollard kept the thin smile. “Oh, you mean your intrigues with Mr. Greathouse, is that correct? We know all about your going to dig up a certain grave on a certain farm. Mr. Ormond was glad to talk to a young representative from the coroner’s office who wished to tie up some loose ends.”

  “I have no idea what—”

  “Spare me. Good, dependable, and stupid Bryan has a little game he plays with his laundress. He tells her a secret, she tells him a secret. I think that’s his only vice, God pity him. On Tuesday Bryan tells me his laundress has heard that there have been four murders instead of only three. A corpse was found washed up out of the river onto a farm about ten miles out of town. A young man, still unidentified. The body pierced by multiple stab wounds. And this mysterious informant has actually seen it. Well, Mr. Ormond saw our young representative yesterday and provided the names of the two men who came to dig up the grave. Hudson Greathouse and—lo and behold—his associate Matthew Corbett. How about those apples?”

  Sour, Matthew thought.

  “Be sure we’ll deal with Mr. Greathouse in due time. First you. Goodbye, sir.” Pollard withdrew from the coach and shut the door. “Drive on!” he called up, as Bromfield reached across Matthew to draw the second canvas sunshade down with a definitive snap.

  A whip was applied and the coach began to roll. In the yellow-tinged cabin, Matthew was sweating. He heard the workaday sounds of New York passing as the coach trundled north on the Broad Way. His eyes kept going to the knife in Jeremy’s hand. It looked very eager.

  He had to figure a way out of this. Unfortunately, there was no way out. He reached up to take off Berry’s hat and at the same time the knife flicked toward him like a rattlesnake’s tongue and Bromfield clasped an iron hand to his shoulder. Then the two rapscallions realized what he was doing and allowed him to de-hat. He put it on his lap, thinking that if he were a real hero pressed from the mold of Hudson Greathouse he would wait for a particularly vicious pothole, flick the straw topper into the boy’s eyes, seize the knife, and plunge it into the largest target, which would be Bromfield’s chest. Of course, getting through that leather waistcoat and the notebook tucked beh
ind it might prove an ill adventure. He decided there was only one Hudson Greathouse, and no place for a hero in this coach.

  They were moving faster now, turning onto the Post Road and leaving the town behind. The whip was striking left and right and the four horses were hauling ass.

  A nice village in Wales, Pollard had said. Just the place for Berry and I to spend our old age, Matthew thought. If we live long enough to have one.

  We, he realized. He had not thought of anyone that way, in conjunction with him, since the incident with Rachel Howarth at Fount Royal. He imagined he’d loved Rachel, when instead he’d wished to be her champion. Love was something he wasn’t sure he yet understood. He knew desire, and the need for companionship…but love? No. He was far too busy for even the idea of it.

  Now, however, he looked to be facing a long period of—at the best—retirement. He wished suddenly that he’d been a little less serious and a lot more…how did Marmaduke put it…merry-making. Less chess, perhaps, and more dancing. Or, at the very least, more appreciation of the pretty girls in New York, and yes there were quite a few. It was interesting how a knife pointed at you could direct one’s mind to things that a few weeks ago seemed frivolous and now seemed only sadly lost.

  But wait, he told himself firmly. Just wait. He was still alive, and Berry was still alive. Hopefully. There might come a time, and unfortunately very soon, for wailing and lamentations. Now was not that time. He had to remain calm, focused, and ready to act if the situation presented itself.