The Providence Rider Page 9

  On this morning Matthew had not been interested in any spirit but the live one of oversized build and sometimes bullying nature sitting behind his desk writing a letter to a certain Mr. Sedgeworth Prisskitt of Charles Town who—

  “—is asking for a courier to escort his daughter Pandora to the annual Cicero Society Ball at the end of March,” Hudson explained. “She must be—shall we say—not so much in the area of looks, if her father has to pay for an escort.” He frowned. “I wonder what the Cicero Society is. Ever heard of it?”

  “No, I haven’t.” Matthew busied himself hanging his fearnaught up on a hook.

  “Want to take this one on? The money’s good.”

  “No.”

  “Not at all curious?”

  Of course he was, but he was on a mission. “Not at all,” he lied.

  “Liar!” Greathouse put his quill into its rest. “All right then, what’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing in particular. Other than buildings being burned and my name being painted around.”

  Greathouse grunted and grinned. “At least they got the spelling right! So pull your face off the floor and smile sometime, won’t you?”

  Matthew walked past the polite fire that crackled in the small hearth of rough gray and tan stones. He went to the pair of windows that afforded a view of New York to the northwest, the wide river and the brown cliffs and gray hills of New Jersey. A boat loaded with crates of cargo on its deck was moving north along the river, the wind spreading its brown sails wide. Another smaller boat held two fishermen, sitting back-to-back. Like Hudson and myself, he thought as he surveyed the scene. Our hooks in the water, and we have no idea what’s down there waiting to bite.

  “This is becoming a habit,” Greathouse observed.

  “What is?”

  “Your lack of joy. Why don’t you go to Charles Town? Take the packet boat. Escort Pandora Prisskitt to the ball. Eh? Go have some fun for a change.”

  Matthew heard a murmur, but no words. He was watching the fishermen, and he was deciding how to begin what he had planned to say to his friend. He decided it was to be: The Mallorys are behind the burnings. I know this to be true. And I didn’t want to drag you into this, but—

  “Matthew!” said Greathouse emphatically, and the younger man redirected his attention. “Let me ask you. What do you think of Abby Donovan?”

  The question was so unexpected that Matthew could think of no possible response.

  “Go ahead,” Greathouse urged. “Tell me what you honestly think.” He nodded when Matthew yet hesitated. “Go ahead!”

  “Well…I think she’s—”

  “Yes, and you would be correct!” If possible, Greathouse’s grin broadened. He leaned back, precariously so, in his chair. “She is one hell of a woman!” Matthew thought the great one might be in danger of breaking his jaw if he grinned much broader. “Yes, she is! And kind, Matthew. Really she is. An angel. But…she’s a devil when she needs to be, I’ll tell you.”

  “I don’t think I want to hear this.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a prude! Are you twenty-three or fifty-three? Sometimes I can’t tell. But listen…about Abby. She and I are getting along very well, Matthew. Very well. I’m saying, sometimes when I’m with her I’m not quite sure where she stops and I begin. Do you know what I mean?”

  Looking into Hudson Greathouse’s grinning face, with its left charcoal-gray eyebrow sliced by a jagged scar, Matthew knew all too well what his companion in problem-solving meant. Though Greathouse had already had his share of women, and perhaps many other men’s shares too, he was falling in love with Abby Donovan. Not to be bothered that the scar through his left eyebrow had been made by a broken teacup thrown by his third wife. Not to be bothered that there were likely scars on his heart made by several women, and more scars on their hearts than his. Not to be bothered by any of that, because Hudson was falling in love.

  “I do know,” said Matthew, and with that short sentence he put aside what he was going to tell the great one, for this was not Hudson’s business. No, today—and perhaps tomorrow too, and the day after that—the man’s business was love.

  “Things may happen,” was the next comment, made by an excitable boy where a rough-assed man had been sitting a moment before. “Really, Matthew. I mean it. Things may happen.”

  “You mean…marriage?”

  The sound of that word in the room seemed to knock a little of the wind from his sails, and he blinked as if he’d just been slapped with a wet rag but quickly he recovered from whatever thought of reality had intruded. “She is one hell of a woman,” he repeated, as if Matthew needed to hear that again.

  But the hellish woman and her equally hellish male partner down at the end of Nassau Street still had to be dealt with. Perhaps a cloud passed over Matthew’s face, because Greathouse’s mood changed just as quickly and he asked with true concern, “Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

  Matthew shook his head.

  “This thing will clear up, don’t worry yourself.” Greathouse picked up his quill and started to continue with his letter of regret to Mr. Sedgeworth Prisskitt. “It’s a lunatic, I think. Or someone with an axe to grind against you. Now…I don’t know how they’re blowing those buildings to pieces, but don’t let it burden you because that’s exactly what they want.”

  “Agreed,” said Matthew, in a quiet voice.

  “I doubt there’ll be any more of that. The point’s been made, I suppose. Some lunatic doesn’t like you. Maybe because of all that hero-worship the Earwig gave you last summer. Oh.” A thought hit him like a musket ball from the blue. The lines across his forehead deepened. “You don’t think it could be one of Fell’s people, do you?”

  The moment of truth, Matthew thought. It stretched, as he wondered if the truth was worth putting at risk the life of a man who was so enamored of one hell of a woman. Marriage, indeed!

  “I think it’s a lunatic,” spoke Matthew, “just as you say.”

  “Right. Probably one of your friends escaped from the asylum down there.” Greathouse blew a breath of relief, now that Matthew had turned the discussion away from Professor Fell. “Don’t fret, the constables are on watch.”

  “Now I will fret,” Matthew said.

  “Absolutely positive you don’t wish to meet Pandora Prisskitt?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, “and pardon me, but I’m going to go to Sally Almond’s for breakfast.”

  “But you just got here!”

  “True, but my correspondence can wait and besides, I’m hungry.”

  “I’ll go with you, then.”

  “No,” said Matthew, as gently as he could. “I have some things to think about. I believe this morning I should secure a table for one.”

  Greathouse shrugged. “Suit yourself. And don’t be running up a bill over there, hear me?”

  “Yes, father,” Matthew replied dryly, and when Greathouse gave him a startled look the younger problem-solver took his black coat from its hook, threw it over his shoulders like the wings of a raven and left the office for the street below.

  Matthew shivered a little, in the cold alley across from the darkened house. After the sea chest had been lugged in, the two burly men had emerged from the house followed by the so-called Mallorys. Doctor Jason was carrying a leather case and a fabric bag, and Aria a larger fabric bag. Their belongings? Matthew wondered. Were they leaving for good? They had talked for a few minutes, and one of the men had motioned in the direction of the sea. Matthew could hear no words, only the hushed current of conversation. He couldn’t see everything because the coach and horses were in the way. But then the two men had gotten back up on the driver’s bench of the coach, the false Mallorys had climbed into the more comfortable seats, and the coach had been driven off. His teeth near chattering, Matthew longed for the mercies of a warm blanket, yet if the snakes had departed—even for a short time—this was the night to search for a letter.

  Matthew found it hard to believe t
hat they weren’t coming back at some point. Though possibly not tonight? He had the sensation of emptiness about the house. Of desolation. And…something else, as well?

  Tonight, as last night, he’d brought a shielded lantern, its candleglow guarded by metal ribs that could be folded down or pushed open over the glass. He picked it up from the alley’s ground and pressed a spring-driven lever that made the ribs open like the petals of a flower. Illumination spread. The lantern was held by a polished walnut pistol-grip at its base. In fact, it was a flintlock pistol, and could fire a ball through a barrel secured underneath the candle. It was currently loaded and powdered, ready for firing. A very nice invention, purchased from Oliver Quisenhunt of Philadelphia, among other items of interest to problem-solvers who might need to extricate themselves from problems of a particularly dangerous nature.

  His heartbeat had quickened. He knew what his next move must be. He would have to leave his place of relative safety, cross Nassau Street and go to the door of that darkened house. He looked along the street, in search of the coach returning, but there was no sign of it. Time was not to be wasted. As he approached the door he was thinking how he might get inside. He could break a window on the other side of the house, he decided. But first he must try the door. He hadn’t been able to see if the Mallorys had used a key or not. Because life in New York was not a idyllic paradise all locks were used quite regularly, unlike the situation that had existed in that paragon of community virtue called Fount Royal. But still, the door must be tried.

  It was, as he’d expected, locked tight. Matthew walked around the house and behind a shoulder-high white picket fence. He was searching for a window to break with the pistol grip of his lantern. Have to be careful with that, as the sound of breaking glass would carry. Already a dog was barking stridently a few houses away. He managed a grim smile against the cold that pressed at his face; he was about to add house-breaker to his list of accomplishments.

  On the other side of the house was a short flight of wooden stairs leading to a narrow back door. A window was set on either side of the door. One of those appeared a likely candidate for breakage. Matthew went up the stairs and chose the window on his right. He hesitated, listening. Did he hear the sound of horse hooves on oyster shells? No, it was his imagination. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, enough to make him hear horse hooves that were not there.

  A quick pop with the grip and it would be done. Careful not to shoot oneself with this device, though the hammer was not cocked. Before Matthew took aim at the glass he reached out with his other hand to try the door…

  …and the knob easily turned. The door opened, and it seemed to Matthew that darkness rolled out to meet him.

  He held the lantern before him and entered the house, closing the door at his back. Now his heart was a true runaway. Steady, he told himself. Steady. He breathed in and out a few times. He smelled pipe smoke and perfume. Smelled things that had a medicinal odor, as this dwelling also held the doctor’s treatment room. Matthew crossed the planked floor of a nicely-ordered kitchen. Yes, Aria would be an orderly cook, would she not? Ashes in the kitchen hearth still smelled of a fire not long past. A hallway beckoned on the left. Matthew eased into it, and the lantern’s glow showed a trio of doors, one on the right and two on the left. The doctor’s office was what Matthew sought. Anywhere there might be papers. Of course, the letter he was looking for might have been ashes in that kitchen hearth months ago, but still he had to seek. It was his nature.

  He opened the first door on the left. Candlelight fell upon a bedroom. A woman’s frills and finery. A little writing desk and a broad chest of drawers, upon which were several bottles of what Matthew assumed was fragrance. The bedspread of woven pink and lavender. Aria sleeps alone? Matthew wondered, noting the bed for one. He went to the writing desk and found the solitary top drawer was empty. The chest of drawers likewise held nothing but some woolen lint. Matthew opened a closet and found three very lovely and intricately-fashioned gowns hanging there on pegs. Also two pairs of Aria’s shoes remained on the floor. So…were the snakes slithering back tonight, or not?

  He crossed the hall to the door on the right. The treatment room with a trio of beds. No windows in here. Matthew recalled this room; he’d been in here in the autumn, laid low from a poison dart. He had sweated rivers in the third bed, having consumed a thick coca-based concoction Doctor Jason had given him to defeat South American frog venom. A long story, that had been, with a happy ending: he had survived. Various vials of medicines and what-not stood on shelves, along with several important-looking leatherbound tomes. Matthew turned his attention toward the doctor’s desk that stood across the room. As he walked toward it, following his candle, the toe of his right boot hit something that nearly tripped him. He aimed the light downward. A small red throwrug was crumpled up around an object of some kind. Matthew pushed the rug aside with his boot and stood staring down at an iron ring. It lifted, he saw, a wooden trapdoor set in the floor, which in this room was made of brown bricks. He grasped the ring and pulled up; the trapdoor opened with a creak of hinges, and there yawned a square of more darkness. A ladder led down. How far down, and what was down there? His light couldn’t tell. But that was best saved for later. He left the trapdoor open and continued on to the desk.

  Again, hands had not been idle in this house. The desk was nearly empty but for a few squares of paper. Upon examination, they appeared to be bills for treatments signed by various personages. Nothing unusual about them, save for the one signed by Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury for the administration of medicine for…did that scribbling say anal warts?

  Matthew returned the bills to the desk and wiped his fingers on his coat. Then he took stock of the trapdoor once again. What was down there, and why? Old files, perhaps? A bundle of letters? Perhaps the letter he sought?

  Possibly. And possibly he had best check the next room on the left first, before he started descending ladders into dark holes. He had a sense of urgency now, and he was listening intently for the sound of horse hooves and coach wheels. He left the trapdoor open and went to the next chamber.

  One step in, and a shiver of fear paralyzed him.

  This obviously was Doctor Jason’s bedroom. It held a black chest of drawers, an oval full-length mirror on small wheels, a black leather chair and a canopied bed.

  And on that bed lay, pressed together side-by-side, two naked bodies.

  It suddenly occurred to Matthew what had been inside the sea chest.

  He caught his breath and stepped forward. His light revealed gray flesh. The bodies were of a man and a woman. The woman’s sagging breasts and dark-haired vagina were pitiful. It was a skinny corpse, each rib showing. The man’s body was also ill-fed, and had the tattoo of an eagle just below the collarbone. Two toes were missing from the left foot. The hands were stiffened into claws, which seemed to be reaching in agony toward the canopy above.

  But the thing that made Matthew recoil in true horror was that neither corpse had a head.

  The heads had been cut off. The neckstumps were all ragged flesh and old brown crust. Matthew smelled the dried blood and the dusty sweet reek of flesh on the edge of decay, yet it was obvious these souls were not very long-departed from this earthly realm. He wanted to lower the lantern, yet lowering the lantern meant he would be giving the corpses over to the dark and if he imagined that one of them gave a sudden jerk of arm or leg he would puddle himself quite soggily.

  He backed away, keeping the lantern up and the flintlock’s barrel aimed at the dead as if he might have to kill them again. Where were the heads? he wondered. In the leather case carried out by Doctor Jason? And what in the name of God were two headless bodies doing lying in the man’s bed?

  “…pay for this dirty business,” someone said.

  Matthew’s hair might have stood up under his cap. He froze at the doorway, a heart-pounding, vein-throbbing, near-puddling wreck of nerves.

  Two men were speaking in the kitchen. “Should’ve got mor
e, I say. Dirty and dangerous, too. You saw them shorts on there!”

  “Aw, shut your hole! Bullett knows his trade.”

  Matthew heard footsteps. Rough men wearing rough-heeled boots. They were coming back along the hallway. He peered through the door’s crack and there they were, each carrying a lantern. One man was lugging a burlap sack over his shoulder.

  “Damnable job, this is,” said the complainer with the burden, who was met with a snort either of derision or accord.

  Matthew realized with a fresh start of alarm that they were coming to this room. He saw only one place to retreat to: the other side of the bed, where he might lie flat on the floor. He quickly got into position and pressed the lever that dropped the lantern’s ribs and closed off all illumination.

  “You hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Somethin’ made a noise.”

  They pushed through the door. “It’s the echo inside your fuckin’ head,” came the retort. Then: “Ewww, ain’t they pretty all laid out like lovers? Kinda tugs at your heart-strings, don’t it?”

  “It don’t. Help me with these and let’s get out.”

  Matthew heard the thump as the sack was laid down on the floor perhaps five feet from his hiding-place. Something was dumped out, and made its own noise. He heard one of the men say, “Come on, hurry it up!” after which there was a hissing sound. A second hissing followed. Truly, this was a den of snakes. Acrid smoke stung Matthew’s nostrils. You saw them shorts on there, the complainer had said.