The Queen Of Bedlam Part 47

"Oh, the two sons-Toby and Michael-died, it's true enough, but this boy was found working in a slaughterhouse. He was unofficially adopted by the Swanscotts. They raised him as their own, sent him to school. Everything that parents could do."

"Really?" Chapel drew closer, almost nose-to-nose. His eyes bored relentlessly into Matthew's.

"Yes sir. He's made quite a bit of money. He's disguised himself. I think he put it as...a high ball playing low."

Chapel scratched his chin. "Go on."

"He made some inquiries in London. Put money on the street for information. He knows all about it. The poisoned wine, and all the rest."

"Is that so?"

"Yes sir. He did give me the notebook. Wanted me to figure out the meaning of that page. What the grades meant. I mean, the numbers."

"Very good." A slight smile surfaced. "They were grades. At least, from Ausley's limited point-of-view. He used them to d.i.c.ker over prices. I gave my own marks later."

"He did hope that I might lead him to you. I told him he ought to give himself up, that he has a compelling story to tell."

"And did he give himself up?" Chapel correctly read Matthew's expression. "Of course he didn't. He's come all this way, he's probably near insane by now. Why should he give himself up? And you've told this story to who else? Hudson Greathouse and Mrs. Herrald, I presume?"

"Neither of them. This is my investigation."

"But you and Greathouse dug up the body of Billy Hodges, didn't you? Why?"

"McCaggers told me about it. High Constable Lillehorne didn't want anyone else to know. I thought...it might have some bearing on the Masker."

"In a roundabout way," Chapel said. "Poor Billy. An excellent forger, but unfortunately a weak mind. You know, he was the screever who forged the inspection label in Swanscott's warehouse. It's intriguing that very often a person who has to learn to write with an unnatural hand can more easily master the art of forgery. He was a wonder, that Billy. Did some work for us in Boston, as well, but just minor items on the order of deeds and such. He was an instructor for the younger lads for several years...then, sadly, he wished to leave us. Ah, that Billy."

"I'd rather you not tell me, sir," Matthew said.

"Oh, it's all right! I'm not angry with you!" Chapel slapped Matthew's left knee. "Lord, no! I understand this is just business! You wished to make a name for yourself with the Herrald Agency, am I right? But tell me...how did you feel about helping a murderer plan a murder?"

"I suppose..." Matthew swallowed. "It was just business."

"There's the spirit!" Chapel smacked his hands together and looked at the others in the room, as Berry thrashed and writhed to no avail. He was beaming. "True industry at work, friends! The ultimate commingling of what some would call the angelic and the demonic! He wants to get ahead in life, so he plots with an insane murderer! Can you beat it?"

"Very humorous," said Lawrence Evans, with no trace of humor.

Chapel turned his face back toward Matthew, again almost nose-to-nose. His smile was gone. Matthew could see his own face, scared witless, in the lenses. "The name."

"His name is..." Matthew hesitated, his heart pounding. No one was going to save either Berry or him. He had to do what he could, to buy them some time and figure a way out of this.

"Mr. Ripley is waiting," Chapel whispered.

Matthew said, "His name is Dippen Nack. He's a constable."

The room seemed frozen.

Chapel looked at Evans. "Dippen Nack? What kind of name is that? Do you know him?"

"No sir."

"Bromfield?"

"No sir," said the hunter.

Chapel returned his attention to his prisoner and began to fidget with the silver b.u.t.tons of Matthew's waistcoat. "Mr. Evans, get the census book and find out if indeed there's a Mr. Dippen Nack included on the list. Beautiful b.u.t.tons, by the way."

Evans removed the eye clamp from Berry's...o...b.. which must have been nearly dried out. She blinked rapidly, as if trying to push it back into its socket without benefit of her fingers. Evans went to the desk and opened a drawer. He came out with a thin brown leather book. Matthew recognized it. A copy of the New York census, undertaken last year by order of the late lamented Mayor Hood. Matthew felt the sweat dripping under his arms. If Nack had a wife and a houseful of kids or lived with his mother, it was all up.

"Dippen Nack is an alias," he said, to relieve his steam. "I don't know his real name."

Evans' index finger was searching. "Here he is, sir. Dippen Nack. Lives on Na.s.sau Street." He brought the book over to display the name and address.

"Very good. Well, there is such a man. No wife or children, I see. Tell me, Lawrence, do you recall the names of the Swanscott boys? Were they Toby and Michael?"

"I think they were, but it'll just take a moment to look up the file. I'm sure we have that jotted down somewhere."

"Go ahead, then."

Evans went to the file cabinet, opened a drawer, and began going through papers.

Matthew squirmed in his chair, as much as he was able. He heard Berry make a m.u.f.fled sound between a cry of pain and an oath. Her hair was still being gripped by Miss LeClaire's pitiless hands. "Please, sir," he said to Chapel, "won't you let her go?"

"No," came the reply. "But I suppose we needn't be so harsh. Charity? One hand only."

"Found it, sir!" Evans announced. He leaned forward, reading something. "Yes, that was their names. But hold on!" He paused. "Now that's interesting," he said, in a voice that sent a coursing of fresh terror through Matthew. "It seems the Swanscotts had-"

Matthew decided to take a chance, and if he was wrong it might be the last thing he ever spoke. "A third son, yes I know. An infant who died right after birth."

Evans was silent, still reading.

"Well?" Chapel asked.

"He's correct, sir. There's a small notation here. An infant who died soon after birth, according to the medical copy from London." He held up the yellowed parchment. "Care to see it?"

"No." Chapel grinned. "Dippen Nack, eh? The only way Matthew could have known about that dead infant was from a family member. A fourth son! Unofficial, of course. It makes sense, doesn't it? The Masker being a constable? He could creep around all night, stalk his victims, and then..." A finger across the throat completed his point.

Someone was climbing the stairs. It sounded like a pegleg. Matthew looked to the side as Carver, the sandy-haired, thick-set, and heavy-lidded second hunter and sometime stomperboy, limped into the room.

"Mr. Chapel!" he said. "Pardon, but the fellas want to know if we're havin' a game today."

"Yes, we certainly are." Chapel stood up. "Tell them, and tell Edgar and Hastings to get everything ready. Oh...wait. After you've done that, I want you and Mr. Bromfield to take your horses and ride back to town. Go to the stable there and secure a third horse. Then proceed to..." He checked the census book. "Number Thirty-Nine Na.s.sau Street. Wait until dark if you have to, but bring back a man named Dippen Nack. Be careful, as he may be very dangerous and quite mad, but do not-I repeat-do not injure him in such a way that any further injury would be redundant and ineffective. All right?" He glanced at Evans. "Who's on the gate today?"

"Enoch Speck, sir."

"On the way out, tell Mr. Speck he may join in the game after he locks up tight. Go, the both of you!"

When the two hunters had gone, one in obvious distress from a bruised s.h.i.+n, Chapel made a motion to Jeremy, who cut the cords binding Berry to the chair. Miss LeClaire released Berry's hair, but Matthew noted she had many red strands stuck between her fingers.

"Up, the both of you." Chapel extended his hands and motioned them to their feet with a waggling of his fingers. "Get that out of her mouth, please."

Berry turned toward the elegant b.i.t.c.h to have the glove extracted. Matthew saw it before Miss LeClaire did: a crimson glare in Berry's eyes, like the distant watchfire on a rocky coast proclaiming Danger, many s.h.i.+ps have perished here.

Before the glove was halfway out, Berry suddenly leaned her head back and then swiftly crashed her forehead into the slim bridge of Miss LeClaire's nose. There was a noise Matthew equated to what a melon might sound like if it fell from a one-hundred-storey building, if indeed such an edifice was possible. Even as Chapel reached to restrain Berry and the pale torturer-in-training Mr. Ripley gave not a cry but an emotionless hiss of alarm, Miss LeClaire fell back with eyes already turned inward toward a world of long sleep and painful recovery. The bridge of her nose was flattened, as if smacked by a skillet. Her head crunched into the wall behind her, her hair seemed to explode into a ma.s.s of writhing blond Medusa snakes, and as she sank down to the floor the blood shot in two fine arcs from the small holes of her nostrils onto her lacy dress and a black bruise spread across her twitching face as quickly and hideously as the plague.

Berry spat out the rest of the glove. It landed square atop Miss LeClaire's head, like a new style of Parisian hat.

It occurred to Matthew that Grandda Grigsby was not the only one in his family who could crack walnuts on an iron forehead.

Chapel spun her around, but kept an arm up in case Berry tried for a double score. A red blotch of anger had surfaced on each cheek, but because he was a man of firm self-control and perhaps also fatalism they cleared just as rapidly. He even managed a guarded smile of approval as he regarded the collapsed dolly. "Nicely done," he said.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" Berry seethed to the room at large. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Language, please," Chapel cautioned. "We can always find another glove." His arm was still up, protecting his brainpan.

Matthew didn't like this talk about a game. In fact, it made his knees weak and his bladder throb even more than having his hands nearly dead from the pressure of the cords. "They're going to send us to a nice little village in Wales," he said, by several shades too brightly. "Aren't you, Mr. Chapel? The village the professor keeps?"

The emotion drained from Chapel's face. It was now a wax replica. "Hold this vixen, Lawrence." When Evans had cautiously taken the position, Chapel entertained himself with two more sniffs of snuff. At length he said, "For all his worth in keeping the affairs in order, Mr. Pollard has demonstrated a very large and disorderly mouth. Our benefactor's business is not any of yours, sir. In fact, it is up to my discretion whether you should be pa.s.sed on further into the system or if you should not. Be," he added, for clarification. "I have decided on the latter course." A bell began ringing in the distance. Ringing and ringing. He gazed at Matthew and behind the square-rimmed spectacles his hard eyes softened. He seemed to wear a little gray cast of regret. "You have the mind, Matthew. You have the resources. You might have been very useful to our benefactor, in time. But I fear-and the professor would agree-that you're too far gone."

Chapel shook his head. His decision had been painfully made. "You should at least have let us take one eye before you ratted out Mr. Nack," he said. In Matthew's stunned and apprehensive silence, Chapel returned to his desk, picked up the notebook, and put it into the top drawer. The bell was still ringing. A merry sound for a funeral, Matthew thought. Berry was looking at him for some kind of rea.s.surance, but he had none to give her.

"Let her sleep," Chapel instructed when Jeremy bent down to tend to his source of that which starts with p and ends in y. "G.o.d knows we all could use the rest. You first down the stairs, Jeremy. Don't step in blood and get it on my carpet, for the sake of Christ! All right, move along. You next, Mr. Ripley." Matthew noted that even Chapel drew back from the young creeper. "After you, miss," he told Berry, who started to plant her feet obstinately but was pushed forward by Lawrence Evans with a hand gripped to her neck. "Mr. Corbett and Count Dahlgren, please proceed."

In the dining-room, the group waited for Chapel to descend the stairs. He came down as a whistling, convivial spirit. All was right with Simon Chapel's little world. Matthew watched as he closed the office door behind him, took a key from a coat pocket, locked the door, and returned the key to its home. Miss LeClaire probably wouldn't wake up until September.

Matthew threw a glance at Berry, who caught it and returned one of her own that said, in quite explicit language: What the h.e.l.l are we going to do?

He didn't know. What he did know, he didn't intend sharing with Berry. The cords around their wrists, at once lighter and more strongly woven than regular barn or household rope, were the same as had bound the wrists of Billy Hodges.

"We're off," beamed Chapel, as the bell kept ringing.

"Sir," Matthew said before Count Dahlgren could shove him along again, "don't you think we ought to wait? I mean, just to be sure I've told you the truth about Dippen Nack?"

"Why?" Chapel's face loomed, moonlike, into Matthew's. "Was it not the truth?" To Matthew's contemplation of how to respond to this knitting-needle of a question, Chapel laughed explosively and clapped his prisoner's shoulder. "Your problem," he said with d.a.m.nable good humor, "is that you're much too honest. Come along, now."

Forty-Six.

It was a long walk to a bad end, with the bell pealing a spritely dirge.

Matthew and Berry were side-by-side as they progressed along the road toward the vineyard. Ahead of them strode Chapel, deep in conversation with Evans. Arrayed around the hapless prisoners in a dangerous triangle were Jeremy, Ripley, and Count Dahlgren. And keeping pace were the boys, hooting and laughing with joyful glee, jostling one another for closer looks at Berry, darting in and plucking at Matthew's coat or Berry's dress and then being chased back by an almost playful feint from Jeremy's knife or a backhanded threat and Prussian yell from the count. No one bothered Ripley and Ripley reacted to no one; he'd put on dark-tinted spectacles to s.h.i.+eld his eyes from the sun and walked with a solemn but inexorable forward motion.

"What are they going to do to us?" Berry pressed up close beside Matthew, flinching as a yellow-haired boy of about fourteen ran in and pulled at her dress. She started to turn and shout at him, as she'd done to several others, but as that had just brought about a storm of laughter she decided it was wasted breath.

Matthew wanted to say I don't know but the time for that lie was well and truly done. After all, he was so d.a.m.ned honest. "They're going to kill us," he said.

Berry stopped. She stood gaping at him, her blue eyes scorching holes through his head, until Dahlgren gave her a shove that almost propelled her into Matthew. Oh, how the boys did convulse themselves! One-a little brown-haired imp not over twelve-started ma.s.saging the front of his breeches and grinningly pranced a jig, his boots kicking up dustpuffs.

"Kill us?" she gasped when she could speak. "Kill us? What have you got me into?"

"An adventure," he replied. "I thought you liked those."

"I like adventures I can live through!" Her mouth was so close to his right ear Matthew thought she was going to bite it off. Her hair was wild and tangled and whitened by dust. She looked desperately around and saw only woods beyond the laughing faces and capering figures. "We can run, can't we?"

"Not faster than they can catch us."

"They're not going to kill us!" Her mouth twisted. Her eyes were wet. "They're just going to frighten us, aren't they?"

"I don't know. I don't think I could be any more frightened."

"You're supposed to do something!" she insisted, again right up at his ear.

Matthew just grunted. What are you going to do, moonbeam?

He could cry, he thought. Break down in tears and let them see his real courage. Let them see what happens when a chess-loving moonbeam plays...what was that word he'd conjured up in Philadelphia? Detective. Ho, ho, what a joke! One has to survive his first investigation, Matthew thought grimly. He gave another pull at his bonds, as he'd done at least half-a-dozen times, but the cords were only going to come off when his wrists had thinned a little more.

"Someone's coming, aren't they?" Berry pleaded. Her voice cracked and she caught herself. "Tell me. Someone's coming."

"No one's coming. And the gate's locked." Was he being too cruel? He thought to put an arm around her, but found how quickly he had forgotten about the cords. His mind was swimming in the blood of the future. The very near future. Well, his heart might explode and he might fall down and die without further injury.

But not further insult, for he realized he had just stepped into a pile of manure left by the coach horses on their way to the stable. The laughter and hollering swelled up and someone called him a "s.h.i.+tfoot." Could someone actually die of embarra.s.sment? he wondered. Regrettably, no.

"Mister!" Berry shouted. Then, louder to be heard over death-bell and merriment, "Mister Chapel!"

Chapel interrupted his discussion with Evans and drifted back. "Yes, miss?"

"We won't say anything!" she told him.

"That's right," he agreed.

"I mean it! We'll be quiet! Won't we, Matthew?"

"Yes, you'll be very quiet," Chapel said.

Berry suddenly sat down on the ground. At once Chapel motioned for help and a swarm of boys rushed in to oblige. Matthew thought Berry's clothes were going to be torn off, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and private area squeezed and felt by every hand on an arm. She got up red-faced, swollen-eyed, and fighting, until Count Dahlgren came forward, grabbed a handful of her hair, shook her head back and forth, and hollered, "You vill valk!" into her ear. His fist was ready to strike before her forehead could. Matthew saw her eyes go blank and her mouth slack, and a pain beyond agony pierced his heart as she staggered forward and the little parade marched on.

"She's not doing well," Chapel remarked as he walked at Matthew's side.

"This is her first time to be murdered," he answered, in a stronger voice than he'd ever imagined he could summon up, if he'd ever imagined such a situation at all.

"Just don't run very far," Chapel advised, in the manner of a friendly confidant. "Far enough to give them some exercise. Then just lie down and let them have at it. It won't take long."

"Am I being murdered or having a tooth pulled?"