The Queen of Bedlam Read online

  Dr. Godwin unfortunately also suffered cuttings around the eyes that Master Ashton McCaggers has mentioned in his professional opinion appeared to form the shape of a mask.

  Matthew watched while Lillehorne bent over the body, taking care not to get his boots in the blood. Lillehorne waved away the flies with his bell-hand. It would just be a few seconds before…and yes, there it was.

  Matthew saw the high constable’s head give a slight jerk, as if he’d been struck by a fist somewhere in the area of the upper chest.

  He knew, as Matthew clearly did, that the Masker had claimed a second kill.

  seven

  TUESDAY NIGHT BECAME Wednesday morning. Thirteen steps down, Matthew stood in the grim domain of Ashton McCaggers.

  The cold room, reached by a door behind the City Hall’s central staircase, was lined with gray stone and had a floor of hard-packed brown clay. Originally an area to store foodstuffs in case of emergency, the chamber was deemed by McCaggers cool enough, even in the heat of midsummer, to delay the deterioration of a human body. However, no reckoning had yet been taken of how long a corpse might lie here on the wooden slab of a table before it broke down into the primordial ooze.

  The table itself, at the center of the twenty-two-foot-wide chamber, had been prepared to host the body of Pennford Deverick by being covered with a sheet of burlap and then a layer of crushed chestnut hulls and flax and millet seeds so as to soak up the fluids. Matthew and the others commanded to be present by Gardner Lillehorne—including Effrem and Benjamin Owles, a still-woozy Phillip Covey, Felix Sudbury, and the onerous first-constable-on-the-scene Dippen Nack—had stood under a wrought-iron chandelier that held eight candles and watched as the corpse had slid down a metal chute from a square opening at the rear of the building. Then McCaggers’ slave, the formidable bald-headed and silent man known only as Zed, had come down the thirteen stone steps after his task of wheeling the body-cart along Smith Street and had proceeded to lift the dead man onto another wheeled table. After this, Zed then prepared the examination table, pushed the body over, and lifted Deverick—still fully clothed so that the master of investigation might see the corpse as it was discovered—onto the bed of hulls and seeds. Zed worked diligently and without even glancing at his audience. His physical strength was awesome and his silence absolute, for he had no tongue.

  To say the least, it was disturbing to all to see Pennford Deverick in such condition. His body was stiffening, and beneath the yellow candlelight he looked to be no longer truly human but rather a wax effigy whose facial features had melted and been re-formed with a mallet.

  “I’m going to heave again, Matthew,” Covey croaked. “I swear I am.”

  “No, you’re not.” Matthew caught his arm. “Just look at the floor.”

  There was nothing wrong with Zed’s ears, but he paid the visitors no heed. All his attention was directed to the dead. He went about lighting four candles with tin reflectors behind them, and these he placed on the table one on either side of the corpse and one above the head and below the feet. He next opened the lid of a barrel, scooped two buckets into it, and placed the buckets—full of ordinary water, Matthew saw—on top of the wheeled table. A third bucket, empty, was placed along with them. From a cupboard he brought several pieces of folded white linen and placed these also beside the three buckets.

  Next, he brought an artist’s easel from its place in a corner and set this up alongside the corpse, as well as a pad of white document sheets and a clay jar that held black and red wax crayons. After this was done, he seemed to go to sleep standing up, his thick arms at his sides and his eyes half-closed. Under the candlelight, the strange upraised tribal scars that covered his face were deep purple against the ebony flesh, and somewhere in those markings were the stylized Z, E, and D shapes for which McCaggers had named him.

  The death-jurists didn’t have much longer to wait. Lillehorne came down the stairs, followed by a pale young man of medium height, whose light brown hair was receding from a high forehead and who wore an unremarkable suit of nearly the same hue. McCaggers, who was only three years Matthew’s senior, carried a brown leather case with tortoise-shell clasps. He wore spectacles, had deep-set dark eyes, and was in need of a shave. As he descended the stairs he was the picture of cool and poised professionalism, but Matthew knew—as they all knew—what would happen when he reached the floor.

  “He’s a mess,” Lillehorne said, referring to the corpse and not to McCaggers, though he well could be. “The blade almost took his head off.”

  McCaggers didn’t reply, but as he came off the bottom step and his eyes found the body the sweat beads leaped from the pores of his face and in a matter of seconds he was as wet as if he’d been dowsed. His entire form had begun to shiver and quake, and when he put his toolcase up onto the table beside the buckets he had so much trouble with the clasps that Zed quickly and with practised grace opened it for him.

  From the leather case gleamed and glinted calipers, forceps, little saws, knives of various shapes and sizes, tweezers, probes, and things that resembled many-pronged forks. The first item McCaggers chose, with a trembling hand, was a silver bottle. He uncapped it, drank down a good chug, and waved it under his nose.

  He gave a quick glance at the corpse and then away. “We are absolutely certain the deceased”—his frail voice cracked on that word, which he repeated—“deceased individual is Mr. Pennford Deverick? Does anyone wish to verify?”

  “I’ll verify,” said the high constable.

  “Witnesses?” asked McCaggers.

  “I’ll verify,” Matthew said.

  “Then…I pronounce Mr. Deverick dead.” He cleared his throat. “Dead. Verify?”

  “Yes, I verify,” said Lillehorne.

  “Witnesses?”

  “Dead as a fish in a frypan,” said Felix Sudbury. “But listen, shouldn’t we wait for his wife and boy? I mean…before anything else is done?”

  “A messenger’s been sent,” Lillehorne said. “In any case, I wouldn’t want Mrs. Deverick to see him as he is, would you?”

  “She may wish to see him.”

  “Robert can make that decision, after he”—Lillehorne was momentarily interrupted by the noise of McCaggers vomiting into the empty bucket, but then he forged ahead—“views the body.”

  “I’m feelin’ awful faint,” Covey said, his knees starting to sag.

  “Just hold up.” Matthew was still supporting him. He watched as Zed dipped one of the linen cloths into a water bucket and moistened his master’s pallid, agonized face. McCaggers took another snort and sniff of his stimulant.

  It was the town’s fortune—for good or otherwise—to have a man who was so skilled in anatomy, art, and memory as Ashton McCaggers, for it was said McCaggers could speak to you on Monday and on Saturday recite to you the exact time of day you’d spoken and virtually every line of your speech. He had been a promising art student, that much was clear, as well as a promising medical student—up until the moment of dealing with anything having to do with blood or dead flesh, and then he was a carriage wreck.

  Still, his skills outweighed his deficiencies in the position the town had given him, and though he was no physician—and never would be, until blood became rum and flesh cinnamon cake—he would do his best, no matter how many buckets he filled.

  This, Matthew thought, looked like a four-bucket job.

  Zed was staring solemnly at his master, waiting for a signal. McCaggers nodded, and Zed went to work cleaning the clotted blood away from the dead man’s face with another cloth dipped into the second water bucket. Matthew saw the point of the bucket trio now: one for the water to clean the body, one for water to revive McCaggers, and one for…the other.

  “We are all in accord, then, as to the cause of death?” McCaggers asked Lillehorne, the sweat bright on his face once again.

  “A blade to the throat. Say you?” The high constable regarded his jurists.

  “Blade to the th’oat,” croaked Dippen Nac
k, and the others gave either a nod or a vocal agreement.

  “Duly noted,” McCaggers said. He watched the cloth Zed used becoming dark with gore, and then he gave a lurch and turned once more to the bucket of other.

  “This one picked Mr. Deverick’s pockets, sir!” Nack put his billyclub up against Matthew’s chin. “Caught him redhanded with the booty!”

  “I told you, Reverend Wade gave this to me to hold. He and Dr. Vanderbrocken were examining the body.”

  “Therefore, what became of the good reverend and doctor?” Lillehorne lifted his thin black eyebrows. “Did anyone else see them?” he asked the group.

  “I saw someone,” Sudbury offered. “Two men, over the body.”

  “The reverend and the doctor?”

  “I couldn’t really tell who they were. Then of a sudden, with all that crowd around, I didn’t see them anymore.”

  “Corbett?” Lillehorne peered into Matthew’s eyes. “Why did they not stay on the scene? Don’t you think it odd that both of those illustrious men should…shall we say…slip away into the crowd as they’ve supposedly done?”

  “You’ll have to ask them. Perhaps they had somewhere else to go.”

  “Somewhere more important than where Pennford Deverick lay dead on the ground? I should like to hear that story.” Lillehorne took the wallet and gold watch from Matthew’s hand.

  “May I point out that this wasn’t a robbery?” Matthew asked.

  “You may point out that it might have been an interrupted robbery, yes. Covey!”

  Phillip Covey almost shot out of his shoes. “Yes sir?”

  “You say you were drunk and you almost tripped over the body, is that correct?”

  “Yes sir. Correct, sir.”

  “You were coming from which tavern?”

  “The…uh…the…I’m sorry, sir, I’m a bit nerved about all this. I was coming from…the…uh…the Gold Compass, sir. No, wait…it was the Laughing Cat, sir. Yessir, the Laughing Cat.”

  “The Laughing Cat is on Bridge Street. You live on Mill Street, don’t you? How was it that you’d gone completely past Mill Street and were walking up Smith Street in the opposite direction of your house?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I suppose I was on my way to another tavern.”

  “There are many taverns between Bridge Street and where you supposedly almost tripped over the body. Why did you not go into one of those?”

  “I…I guess I was—”

  “How did you find the body resting?” McCaggers suddenly asked.

  “Resting, sir? Well…on its back, sir. I mean, his back. I nearly stepped on him.”

  “And you got the blood on your hands how?”

  “I tried to wake him up, sir.” What came out next was in frantic haste. “I thought it was…you know…another drunk, lying there asleep. So I got down with him, trying to wake him up. Just for somebody to pal with, I guess. I took hold of his shirt…and then I saw what I’d gotten into.”

  McCaggers paused to dip a hand into the water bucket and cool his forehead. “Did you search this young man for a knife, Gardner?”

  “I did. Nothing was found, but he could easily have tossed it.”

  “Did you find anything else on him?”

  “Some coins, that’s all.” Lillehorne frowned. “Should I have found anything else?”

  McCaggers must have felt something rising, for he hurriedly leaned over the bucket. He made a retching noise, but it was clear he was coming to the end of the second tasting of his supper. “Gloves to guide a slippery knife handle,” McCaggers said, when he could manage it. “A blade-sheath. Anything of value belonging to the victim. A motive. The young man didn’t kill Mr. Deverick. Nor did he kill Dr. Godwin.”

  “Dr. Godwin? What are—”

  “No need to play at denial. The same person who did this murdered Dr. Godwin.”

  There was a long silence during which Lillehorne watched Zed as the cleaning progressed, cloth to blood, to bucket, wrung out, back to blood once more. Now Deverick’s face was almost scrubbed.

  Lillehorne’s voice was hollow when he finally spoke. “Go home, all of you.”

  Dippen Nack was first up the stairs, followed by Covey. As Matthew started to go up after Mr. Sudbury, Effrem, and Mr. Owles, Lillehorne said, “All except you, clerk.”

  Matthew stopped. He’d known he wasn’t going to get out of here that easily.

  “Hello? Hello? May I come down?”

  The voice was unmistakable. Lillehorne winced. Marmaduke Grigsby appeared at the top of the stairs, his shirtsleeves rolled up to say he was ready for work.

  “You’re not needed here, Grigsby. Go home.”

  “Pardon, sir, but there’s a frightful rabble of people out front milling about. I did my best to escort Mrs. Deverick and Robert through the crowd. Shall I bring them down?”

  “Just the boy. I mean…send him down, and keep Mrs. Deverick—”

  “The high constable wishes to see your son first, if you please, madam,” they heard Grigsby say to the family beyond the door. Then young Robert—looking shocked and wan, his eyes puffed from sleep and his curly dark brown hair in disarray—came into view and slowly, dreadfully descended the stairs. Grigsby followed like a bulldog. “Shut that door!” Lillehorne commanded. “From the other side!”

  “Oh yes sir, how disrespectful of me.” Grigsby closed the door with a solid thunk but he remained on the cold room side. He came down, his face resolute.

  Matthew saw that now Zed was cleaning the throat wound. McCaggers, who was still beset by fits of trembling, had regained some composure and with a black crayon was drawing on a sheet of paper a precise outline of the body as it lay on the table.

  Robert Deverick, wearing a dark blue cloak studded with gold buttons over a blue-striped nightshirt, stopped at the foot of the stairs. His eyes moved from Lillehorne to the table and back again, and his lips moved but made no sound.

  “Your father was murdered on Smith Street,” Lillehorne said quietly but with force. “It happened”—he opened the watch, having the same idea as Matthew—“between ten o’clock and ten-thirty, it appears. Can you tell me where he’d been tonight?”

  “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.