A Study in Revenge: A Novel

by Kieran Shields

  “Who’d have thought a professional thief could make such a horrific mess of so easy a task?” Jerome said.

  “Tell me about the cellars of Thomas Webster’s former properties. What convinced you of the need to dig?” Grey asked Marsh.

  “Vitriol, Mr. Grey. Pure vitriol.”

  Grey stared, awaiting a further explanation.

  “Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem,” Jerome said, then translated himself. “ ‘Visit the interior of the earth and purifying you will find the hidden stone.’ ”

  “The motto is from L’Azoth des Philosophes, a fifteenth-century work of the alchemist Basilius Valentinus,” explained Leadbetter in a cautious voice. “It’s a reference to the philosopher’s stone.”

  “The Great Work,” Grey said.

  “Very good, Grey. You do pay attention,” Marsh said.

  “Yes, insane statements uttered by a man who looks like he ought to know better do tend to stick in one’s mind.”

  Marsh chuckled, a cold and bitter sound. “I’m also glad to see you’ve kept your wit. It makes you slightly less annoying.”

  “I … I don’t understand,” Leadbetter stammered. “What’s this to do with the philosopher’s stone?”

  “It appears that your old friend thinks he’s close to actually getting his hands on it,” Grey said.

  “What? That’s ridiculous,” Leadbetter answered.

  Grey watched as Leadbetter stared at him and then turned to study Jotham Marsh’s face. The former minister’s expression flickered from incredulous to stunned, then to appalled.

  “Impossible. The stone—the Great Work—it’s not … It’s only a principle, an ideal to be pursued. It can’t actually be obtained!”

  There was a hint of genuine disappointment in Marsh’s voice as he spoke to Leadbetter. “You taught me a great many things when I was younger. But the most valuable lesson you had to offer was that a man who abhors greatness will never achieve anything.”

  “You can’t achieve something that’s impossible,” Leadbetter said, “that doesn’t exist.”

  “You’ve forgotten your history, my poor fellow. The Count de St. Germain uncovered the mystery and completed the work.”

  “Anecdotes and rumors—never proved,” Leadbetter said.

  “The accounts of his wondrous life are rather convincing,” Marsh said.

  “It’s always easy to convince one of something he deeply desires to believe,” Grey said.

  “And virtually impossible to convince a man with knowledge that he lacks wisdom. Since I have no need to convince you of anything, Grey, I won’t waste my time trying.” Marsh folded his hands, with a satisfied smile.

  For a moment it seemed the man would let the matter lie, but then he could no longer deny himself the luxury of relishing his victory.

  “Suffice it to say that there exists in nature a force immeasurably more powerful than anything man can create or you can comprehend. With it a single man, possessing the knowledge of how to direct it, could change the world. This force was known to the ancients, a universal agent having equilibrium for its supreme and only law. Its control is dependent upon a mastery of the great arcanum of transcendental magic. The Count de St. Germain possessed a device to channel this power, and soon it will be mine.”

  The train’s whistle sounded two warning blasts; it must have been approaching a crossing. Grey waited until he was sure no more blasts would follow, then turned to the older man seated next to him.

  “Father Leadbetter, didn’t you tell me before that this Count de St. Germain was seen at the various European capitals and royal courts throughout the 1700s?”

  “According to various tales and anecdotes. You have to piece them together, since he reputedly operated under assumed names.”

  “Until his death in 1784, I believe,” Grey said.

  Leadbetter nodded.

  “So explain to me, Dr. Marsh, if you’d be so kind, how is it that someone in possession of this supposed philosopher’s stone, this elixir of life, goes about dying?” Grey asked.

  “Yet another example of how you fail to comprehend the true nature of things. Digging up this bit of history is like piecing together a discovery of broken pottery shards. You can fit most of them to the shape of a vase. But you, Grey, see a missing piece that leaves a hole at the bottom. Today water would drain from that hole, so you blindly conclude it must never have served as a vase. But I recognize the missing piece and see the true meaning of it all.

  “You say he died, so he could never have held the secret of the philosopher’s stone. I, however, say he only died because the secret of the stone was taken from him and his existing supply of the elixir could sustain him only until 1784.

  “The count caught the attention of many famous and noble men and women of the age. Casanova’s memoirs describe him as an accomplished charlatan. He was arrested in England in 1745 as a spy, and the Duke of York was reportedly obsessed with the mysterious man. He was a confidant of Louis XV and undertook secret missions on his behalf. He was present in St. Petersburg and had an active hand in the 1762 coup that raised Catherine the Great to the throne. He escaped arrest under suspicious circumstances in Amsterdam in the early 1760s. The matter was discussed in letters from Voltaire to Frederick the Great. The man who never dies and knows everything, he was called. After Amsterdam he fled to England.

  “It was there that he attracted the particular attention of a man neither famous nor noble: Thomas Webster. Webster entered the count’s service, and soon enough he stole the secret to the philosopher’s stone. The count’s agents chased Webster to the West Indies and then to Boston and finally to Portland, just prior to the Revolution.”

  “I see,” Grey said with an exaggerated nod. “You’re saying that Captain Mowat was acting under orders from this infamous Count de St. Germain when he razed the town and fanned the flames of the American Revolution.”

  Marsh shrugged. “The details are murky, but someone with authority was acting on the count’s behalf. In any event, a revolution in a single nation is a small price to pay in order to recover the secret of the Great Work. St. Germain was still alive, but faltering, when a final, desperate attempt to recover the secret was made in 1783.”

  “When the stranger, Clough, came looking in Portland and Webster killed him,” Grey said.

  “Precisely,” Marsh said.

  “Yet, like the count, Webster died.” Grey allowed himself to smirk at the absurdity of it all. “I must say, this wondrous elixir of life is leaving me thoroughly unimpressed.”

  “Webster was unprepared. He didn’t have sufficient understanding to use it—to access the vast power and knowledge contained within.”

  “Wait a moment,” Leadbetter urged, his rapt eyes fixed on Marsh, “I don’t follow you. Even if the secret was written down and stolen, St. Germain would still possess the knowledge. Why would he pursue Webster? Why not simply use his mastery of alchemy to reproduce the stone?”

  “It’s not mere knowledge, though that is certainly required.” Marsh grinned, reveling in the demonstration of his own superior knowledge. “What St. Germain had acquired, somewhere in his worldly travels to Persia or India, was an actual mechanism. A self-contained distilling and transmuting and collecting apparatus. The ultimate perfection of an alchemist’s alembic, though that word does no true justice to the genius of this device. Germain’s alembic is something like a lock and something like a key. Made of pure gold and inscribed in coded terms with the process to produce the philosopher’s stone. It’s hollow, and when the proper elements are added, in the proper order and with the proper processes followed, each one in turn, it functions in alchemical terms akin to the tumblers inside a lock turning, opening. Until the final step is achieved and the stone—or rather its grains are produced. It is that matter that can transform metals to gold. Or, when consumed, give eternal life. And with it true and ultimate understanding.”

  The train’s whistle sounded, an
d the train began a gradual deceleration.

  “Well, Grey, it seems I have rattled on, but at least my explanation has sufficed to keep you entertained and docile until I can be safely on my way. Thank you for your efforts.” Marsh stuffed the folded papers filled with arcane symbols into his own jacket pocket. “Much appreciated. It may comfort you to know that when I decipher Tom Webster’s riddle and locate Count de St. Germain’s alembic, you will have played a small part in revealing the ultimate understanding of mankind and the universe.”

  “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” Grey said.

  “More than something, Grey. It’s all that’s left for you. I don’t want your death to be even more inconvenient to me than your life has been. So I will take my leave of you at this stop and return to Boston. My never having been on this train, there will be no way for your tiresome bulldog Lean or any of your Pinkerton friends to tie me to your impending misfortune.”

  Marsh stood and exited the cabin. Jerome followed him into the passageway. The gunman standing in the aisle reentered the compartment with his pistol drawn.

  “You promised he wouldn’t be harmed,” Leadbetter protested.

  “It’s these small lies that give us an even greater appreciation of the higher truths,” Marsh said from the doorway to the compartment.

  “What about him?” The gunman pointed at Leadbetter.

  Marsh regarded the minister with contempt. “There was a brief time when I looked to you for learning. I suppose you may still be of some limited use to me.” He then spoke to the gunman. “Once matters are resolved here, bring our old friend on to Portland. Keep him at the house, under watch.”

  The stocky, mean-faced man nodded. He took a seat opposite and aimed his pistol squarely at Grey’s chest. The whistle sounded again, and the train slowed. Marsh and Jerome disappeared from view. Grey, Leadbetter, and Marsh’s armed henchman remained seated in the isolated compartment.

  Leadbetter looked at Grey with bitter defeat in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Mr. Grey. They forced me—”

  “Shut your mouth, old man,” the gunman ordered.

  “Whatever Marsh is paying you, I’ll sweeten the pot,” Grey said.

  “You shut yours, too.” The man waggled the gun at Grey. “Shows how smart you are. He pays me fine. But it ain’t the money anyway. He can do a hell of a lot worse to you than any lawman ever could. You were stupid to ever cross him.”

  Five minutes later the train was under way again. The three men in the compartment sat in stony silence for another ten minutes before the gunman stood and backed out into the hall of the empty railcar. He motioned at Leadbetter with the pistol.

  “You stay here, old man. I don’t want any trouble from you.” He aimed at Grey again. “Hurry up, smart guy, on your feet.”

  Grey was about to stand when Leadbetter threw himself to the floor and clutched Grey’s knees.

  “May God have mercy on your soul,” he pronounced. Then, in a whisper, barely audible above the muffled churning of the train’s wheels along the rails, he added, “The stone—you can’t let him get it. Ever.”

  “All right already. Come on!” The gunman motioned to Grey, who stood and joined him in the aisle.

  Grey glanced back at Leadbetter; the old man’s face was even paler than usual.

  “Go ahead,” the gunman said to Grey, “out to the back of the train.”

  No more than a dozen steps would deliver them to the rear exit. In the narrow aisle, Grey could sense that the man was several steps behind him, leaving plenty of space in order to avoid any sudden movements by Grey.

  He was almost to the rear door when he heard a desperate, furious growl of a noise. Grey looked back to see Leadbetter in the aisle charging the gunman from behind. Leadbetter rammed into the man, and the two of them collapsed in a heap as the gun went off. Grey took two steps toward them, then watched as the old man’s body slumped away from the gunman. A dark stain spread across Leadbetter’s shirtfront. Grey waited a second to see the man move, but he was lifeless. Marsh’s thug still gripped his pistol.

  Grey bolted to the door and pushed it open. He stepped out onto the small exterior platform at the rear of the train and ducked to the side. The gunman fired twice. One of the bullets splintered the doorframe as the door swung closed. Grey stood against a short railing that kept him from falling off the platform’s edge.

  With one hand against the back wall of the car and the other on a pole that rose to the small roof, Grey lurched up onto the thin railing. The door to the rear compartment started to swing open. He knew he should just jump, but anger over Leadbetter’s death surged up in him. Grey held tight to the pole and slammed his foot into the door. There was a satisfying grunt of pain as it smashed into the gunman’s face. Grey looked back at the dark blur of the earth hurtling by below him. He picked his spot and leaped.

  [ Chapter 49 ]

  HELEN HELD THE OLD BLACK WOMAN’S ARM EVEN THOUGH she was very steady on her feet for her age. They left behind them the Portland Alms House. It was where the woman, Dastine LaVallee, had spent the last several years of her life. The main structure, along with its few scattered outbuildings, had seen better days. Helen imagined that the same was true of the talkative lady next to her. She gazed sideways at Dastine as they walked. It took a long look at her face to see past the ravages of many decades and find hints of the pretty teenage girl who had once charmed the heart of a young Horace Webster. The left half of Dastine’s face sagged under an old scar that started at her clouded-over eye and ran down to her jaw. Only the faint outline of an iris could be seen beneath the milky surface of the damaged eye.

  On their walk up North Street the other day, Archie had mentioned his frustration in trying to find any trace of the woman. He’d been focusing his search on the records located in City Hall. Helen had instead wondered what type of life such a woman, one who’d suffered the early hardships Lean described, would have had. If indeed she was still alive and in the city, where would she actually be living? If she was not fortunate enough to be in her own family home, the choices would be limited. It had taken just a few telephone calls to locate the woman.

  Helen made a polite reference to having enjoyed lunch, and now Dastine was fully engrossed in her litany of meal-related complaints.

  “I was late to the table by an hour last Friday, fish day. I went to the kitchen and asked the cook for my dinner. She’d forgot me, offered me the leavings of the table. I went to Mr. Thompson and told him I wanted my dinner, and he came to the kitchen. Now, I don’t know what he said to the cook, but it must not have been much. She only brought me a plate of small, soggy potatoes. I told her that no fish was with it. She went back and put on a thin piece no bigger than my two fingers, without any fat. I told her to take it away, and I made a little stew of some hard crusts of bread and two apples for dinner.”

  “The almshouse does appear rather mean in its comforts. Wouldn’t you be happier at the Home for Aged Women up on Emery Street? I searched for you there first.”

  “Oh, perhaps you’re right. Let me just take a peek in my purse—I’m sure I have that hundred-dollar entry fee in here somewhere.” Dastine released a delighted cackle, then gave Helen’s arm a slight slap to let her know she was in on the joke.

  After waiting for several carriages to go trotting past, they crossed the street and entered the western edge of Deering Oaks.

  “I don’t normally see the park during the middle of the day anymore. I like to come just after sunrise or else later in the evenings. When there aren’t so many souls around. When I won’t see so many children.”

  “I suppose they can be rather loud and bothersome.”

  “Oh, heavens no, Mrs. Prescott.”

  “Helen, please.”

  “Helen. It ain’t that at all. Children are right to be loud. I’m afraid it’s me that bothers them. Can’t blame them for being scared. It took me years to get over this scar on my face. More years than some of the children have even been alive. And
though I’ve lived long enough to see just about everything one person can do to another, seeing fear on a child’s face when she looks at you, that never gets easier.”

  They crossed a forty-foot wooden bridge spanning a short gully. Below the structure a slow spring produced a thin trickle of muddy water that seeped down toward one of the long fingers of the park’s duck pond a few hundred feet away. Archie Lean was waiting on a bench there and rose to meet them as they approached. Helen had already told Dastine about the deputy and now completed the introductions. Dastine eased herself down onto the bench overlooking the thin strip of springwater that couldn’t quite earn the title of a brook.

  “So, Mr. Lean, what makes a sharp young man like yourself come searching out an old woman like me anyway? Helen said it had something to do with Horace Webster.” She motioned for them to sit beside her. “I was sad to hear about his passing. Is that what this is about, something of Horace’s?”

  She looked at him with a curious glint in her one good eye. Helen wondered if Dastine thought they’d come at an attorney’s request. Maybe they’d tracked her down to bestow some money or else a sentimental item from their old romance that Horace had kept tucked away all these years.

  “Not exactly,” Lean said. “I’m sorry to say I haven’t brought you anything from the late Mr. Webster. In fact, all I’ve brought is some questions about an old news article from the 1830s. It said you caused something of a stir by discovering some strange markings carved into a rock ledge along the Presumpscot River. Do you remember that at all?”

  “Hah! Yes, I surely do remember, as clear as if it were yesterday. Maybe clearer, if you can believe it. The old days are still there, still sharp.”

  “So you stumbled upon the markings and then what? The newspaper got wind of the story?” Lean asked.

  “Not exactly. I went right up to a newsman to tell what I knew. And I’d known about the carvings for a long while before I ever mentioned them.”

  “Why’d you wait so long?” Lean asked.