“Thank you, sir.”
The lady Haverstraw gave her husband a quick prod in the belly with her elbow, which Matthew pretended not to notice. “Oh, yes!” Haverstraw said, a bit of color blooming in his cheeks. “I meant to ask you. Are you a married man?”
“No, sir.”
“Ah. Well, then. Any…um…ladyfriend of note?”
Matthew knew where this was heading. The lovely daughter of a friend’s friend who had just turned sixteen and was interested in matrimony and seven children if the right young man presented himself. Matthew smiled and said, “At the moment, I am perfectly free and intend to remain so.”
Some of the shine went out of the lady’s eyes. Haverstraw nodded. “If you’re ever up our way, come say hello.” Then when his wife turned away, he gave Matthew a quick thumbs-up.
The Mercury’s lines were thrown and secured and along with the other passengers Matthew walked across the gangway onto the wharf planks. He saw that a fiddler was playing for coins in a tin cup and farther on two little girls were dancing for money as their presumed mother and father beat out a rhythm on drums. The same as in New York, so as in Philly.
Matthew set out for the intersection of Walnut and Fourth streets, which was where Haverstraw had said he might find Mrs. Fontaine’s house. The river’s mist yet shrouded the entire picture, but before him the town was not unlike New York, being houses and shops of red brick and gray stone, churches with wooden steeples, pedestrians going about their business, and wagons trundling on their routes. A nice touch was that trees had been planted regularly along the sidewalks. He quickly realized also that the streets were laid out quite differently here than in New York. It seemed to be an orderly grid pattern, as opposed to New York’s often chaotic arrangement.
He discovered within another block, however, that there was a downside to this otherwise pleasing pattern. Out of the mist a haywagon with two horses went flying past him at a speed that would have taken him under the hooves if he’d not been paying attention, and he drew himself back up to the curb thankful for no broken bones. The grid meant long, flat, and unobstructed streets, and woe to pedestrians for Matthew noted that the drivers of some vehicles took advantage of that fact to let their horses run.
Having secured a room at Mrs. Fontaine’s, shaved, and then eaten a light breakfast, Matthew headed back at midmorning with his valise toward Market Street in search of Icabod Primm’s office. The sun was beginning to shine through the murk. Thanks to the help of a tailor on the corner of Market and Fourth, it was no difficult matter to find the building, which was just a block to the east and near the very beautiful and elm-shaded Christ Church.
I. Primm, Attorney-At-Law, read a brass plate on the front gate. Matthew ascended six stone steps to the slab of a door, opened it, and faced a young clerk at a reception desk. The place was as quiet and serious as a crypt, the walls the color of dark tea. The clerk waited until Matthew had closed the door behind him and approached the desk.
“May I help you, sir?”
“Yes. I’d like to see Mr. Primm, please.”
The young man’s eyes behind his spectacles were two bits of uncaring coal and were certainly not impressed by either Matthew’s suit or new hat. “And this is concerning…?”
“I just need to see him for a few minutes.”
“Well,” said the clerk, and folded his thin hands together. Matthew knew the signs when a person who had no power suddenly got a gift of it. “Mr. Primm has a very busy schedule, sir. In fact, he’s with a client now and I doubt he’ll be free within the hour. Let me see.” He opened a ledger book and made a show of tapping his finger down a list of appointments. “No, no…unfortunately, no. Mr. Primm will not have time to see any new clients today.” He looked up and gave a cheerless smile. “Might you come back tomorrow afternoon, say?”
“I’m afraid I’m taking the packet boat back to New York tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, New York, is it? I thought something about you seemed different.”
“Be that as it may,” Matthew said, keeping his voice pleasant, “I would appreciate five minutes with Mr. Primm. Today. Would that be impossible?”
“Yes sir, I’m afraid it is. Impossible.” The clerk picked up his quill and started to pretend to do whatever it was he’d been pretending to do when Matthew had opened the door.
Matthew had hoped it would not come to this, but here it was. And so quickly, too. He opened the valise, took out a rolled sheet of paper, and put it on the desk in front of the clerk’s face. “If you value your position,” he said calmly, “you’ll take that to Mr. Primm. I’ll wait.”
The young man unrolled the paper and looked at the drawing there. In an eyeblink Matthew knew the clerk had no inkling who the woman was. “This has some meaning, I assume?”
“You may. Assume,” Matthew answered, with a little more grit in his voice. He decided to approach this irritating roadblock as Hudson Greathouse might. “Now get your ‘assume’ up out of your chair and take that drawing to Mr. Primm. I don’t care who he’s with, and he won’t care either in about two minutes.” For effect, he produced his silver watch and snapped it open.
It was either the tone or the watch, for the clerk took Berry’s drawing and was off like a rabbit up a set of stairs behind him and to the left.
Matthew waited, and wound his watch while he was at it. One minute later, there came the sound of a door opening and closing and boots on the risers. A voice boomed along the stairway: “I should say I couldn’t sit there like a muffin and let that man strike me, could I? And right in broad daylight at my favorite tavern! I ought to challenge the old fart to a duel, is what I should do, and to blazes with the courts!”
“I’m sure that would not be the best course of action, Admiral,” came the clerk’s voice, now more nettled than powerful. He appeared guiding a man of about seventy wearing a huge cockaded bicorn and dressed in some kind of military uniform with a row of medals pinned to his chest. The old man’s right eye was blackened.
“Mr. Primm promised me an hour! Either I’m more senseless than I thought or my hour has shrunken into ten minutes!” the affronted admiral protested as he was escorted to the door.
“Yes sir. But I’m sure Mr. Primm has the situation under control and, besides, as Mr. Primm says, your time and money are best spent more wisely than sitting in his office talking about a minor scuffle.”
“A minor scuffle? That old seabeast strikes me, near blinds my eye, and it’s called a minor scuffle? See here, I have a reputation to uphold!”
“Of course, sir, and Mr. Primm has your reputation foremost in his mind.” The clerk opened the door for the crusty old man’s exit and said quickly and rather acidly to Matthew, “Go up.”
Matthew picked up his valise, climbed the stairs, and at the top faced another door. He started to knock but decided it was a waste of time. He was expected. He took a fast deep breath for courage, gripped the doorhandle, and turned it.
The man beyond the door, sitting at a central desk before a wide multi-paned window that overlooked the river, did not lift his head nor otherwise acknowledge the visitor. Before him, spread out on a dark green blotter, was the likeness of the Queen of Bedlam. The office was either a tribute to the triumph of order or, as Berry might have said, a monument to a tight-ass. In fact, two of those dreaded gray-fleshed portraits of constipated noble-men hung upon the walls. There were shelves of dozens of thick leatherbound books that looked as if they’d been recently waxed. Three granite busts of unknown but obviously revered gentlemen stood on pedestals along the right-hand wall, their faces turned toward the door as if measuring the value of whoever crossed that august threshold. On the floor was a dun-colored carpet and in the silvery light that spilled through the window not one mote of dust dared float. A spare and uncomfortable-looking chair had been positioned in front of the desk. Standing in the corner just behind Mr. Primm, and casting a shadow across his desk, was a granite life-sized statue of the blindfolded goddess
Justitia, holding a sword in one hand and balancing scales in the other. It was fitting for this mausoleum, Matthew thought, for the man at the desk might also be mistaken for a statue.
Primm wore a black suit with thin gray pinstripes and a white shirt buttoned to the throat. A black ribbon-tie was wound around the collar and tied with a small ugly knot that looked like a strangler’s joy. Atop Primm’s high forehead sat a white wig of tight curls, which went very well with the white powder that adorned his gaunt and solemn face. Matthew thought Primm had the longest nose and smallest mouth of any man he’d ever seen; it was not so much a nose as a boulevard, and not so much a mouth as a trinket.
Therefore Matthew was not surprised when Primm spoke in a high-pitched, hushed voice that did not seem to require his mouth, for the tiny compressed lips barely moved.
“I will give you five minutes.”
“Thank you. I regret to have interrupted the admiral’s complaint.”
“An honorary title. We humor him.”
“Ah,” Matthew said, and waited for an invitation to sit that was clearly not going to be offered.
Still Primm had not lifted his gaze from the paper. Long thin fingers touched the surface, meandering over the charcoaled features.
“I’d like to know who she is,” Matthew said.
“And who are you?”
“My name is Matthew Corbett. I’ve come from New York.”
“In what capacity?”
“I’m an associate with the Herrald Agency.”
Primm’s fingers stopped moving. “Their nearest office is in London.”
“No sir, that’s incorrect. Our new office is Number Seven Stone Street, New York.”
“You have a card?”
Matthew felt a little twinge in the stomach. A card! Why hadn’t Mrs. Herrald given him an official card before she’d left? Maybe it was up to Greathouse to have them printed. “The cards have been delayed,” he countered.
Now Primm did tear his attention away from the portrait, and his pallid face with small marbles of piercing black deepset within it lifted to look at Matthew as one would consider the vilest dockside roach. “No card? Therefore no proof of identity?” He spoke that last word as if he were biting his teeth against a bone.
Getting me off-balance, Matthew thought. Attacking, when he should be defending. “No card,” Matthew answered flatly. “As far as identity, I’m sure the doctors Ramsendell and Hulzen might vouch for me.”
“They are not present.”
“Present or not, they’ve hired the agency-and me-to find out who their patient is. They believe they can help her, if they know-”
“How dare you come here,” Primm interrupted, and though there was coiled anger in his voice his face was devoid of emotion. “Are you a lunatic who has escaped the asylum? Are those so-called doctors deserving of a cell in their own Bedlam? Their instructions were concise and complete.”
“I’m telling you, the doctors feel they can help this lady if they-”
“Get out of this office,” hissed Primm. “Get out and be sure their careers will be wrecked, the lady in question moved within the week, and your own cardless and witless career dashed on the rocks of contract law.”
Matthew didn’t know what to say. He felt heat rising in his face, but then he realized Primm wanted him to lose control. Indeed, Primm was banking on it. Matthew swallowed his anger, waited a few seconds, and then said, “That’s a load, sir. You’re not going to move the lady. She’s in the best possible place. Your client wouldn’t want her moved, would he?”
Primm gave no response. He had again become a statue, in emulation of Lady Justice.
“If I have three remaining minutes,” Matthew went on, “allow me to use them constructively. Please look at this.” He reached down into his valise and brought out the most recent issue of the Earwig, with its article about the death of Pennford Deverick. This he placed atop the Queen’s portrait on Primm’s desk. “Your client, for all his good works concerning the lady, may be involved in this murder.”
“The Masker?” Primm’s mouth squeezed in disgust and almost disappeared up his nostrils. “What nonsense is this?”
“No nonsense. In fact, your client may well be the Masker. Wanted now for three murders, by the way. Is your client named Andrew Kippering?”
“Who?”
“Yes, I’ve used that trick, too. To stall while you think. If Mr. Kippering is your client, sir, he may have murdered three people. I’d like to know why, and I think finding out who this mystery patient at the Westerwicke asylum is could go a long way in providing a motive. Do you agree with that?”
“I agree,” said the lawyer, “that you need a rest in Westerwicke yourself.”
“I’m informing you that your client may be a murderer. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“The only thing that has any meaning for me, sir, is proof.” Primm’s jaw thrust forward. “Do you know what proof is? It’s not conjecture, nor is it fantasy. As long as I serve the law and this embodiment of justice you see standing behind me, I consider proof to be the alpha and omega of my profession. And proof you do not have, sir, so I will tell you to go back to New York, leave the lady in question alone, and I shall deal very promptly with perhaps the good-intentioned but legally uneducated doctors.”
When Matthew was sure Primm’s tirade was done, he said quietly, “She can be helped. It’s wrong for her to sit there locked up in herself, day after day.”
“Are you a doctor now, as well?”
“I just want to know her name and her story.”
“Ask for the moon to come down and play the fiddle while you’re at it.”
“I really hoped you’d help me,” Matthew said. “But if you refuse, I intend to take that portrait to every tavern in Philadelphia until I find one person who recognizes her. Or to every boarding house. Or to every church. I intend to find out her name and her story before I leave here in the morning, if I have to walk the streets all night.”
“Ah, then. I suppose I really should help you, since you wish it so ardently.” With a smile that looked like a razor cut, Primm picked up the paper, ripped it in half, and then rapidly began to tear the halves to pieces. Matthew almost lunged forward to save what he could, but he realized it was too late. The fragments of a face fell from Primm’s hands. “There! Now you can get to bed early!”
Forty
Matthew stood on the street outside Primm’s office, wondering where to go next. He counted himself lucky that on the way out he hadn’t been kicked in the bottom by that self-superior clerk.
One interesting thing, Matthew thought, is that when he’d reached down to retrieve the Earwig Primm had snapped it off the desk amid the pieces of Berry’s drawing and with beady rattlesnake eyes had dared Matthew to try for it. That told him something, at least. Primm obviously didn’t want it shown to anyone else.
The question remained: where to go next?
The sun was warm now. The mist had burned away. Two young damsels with parasols paraded past and they gave Matthew a glance but he was in no mood for flirtations. A slight breeze ruffled the shade trees along Market Street. He paused, looking to left and right. Across Third Street and north about a halfblock was a sign reading The Good Pye with a depiction of a piece of pie and an ale tankard. He decided that might be the place to begin, and started walking in that direction. At least he might get himself a drink to settle his nerves. As he waited for a carriage to go past before he crossed the street, he caught a movement of white from the corner of his eye.
Icabod Primm had just emerged from his office and was walking quickly and bow-leggedly south along Third Street. Matthew watched the small-framed man hurry away. Primm’s right hand clutched the broadsheet in a death-grip.
Ah ha, Matthew thought. I have smoked the powdered rattler from his hole.
He gave Primm a few more strides, and then he began to follow at a careful distance.
In another moment Primm had turned left at
the corner of Chestnut Street, heading away from the river. Matthew stood on the corner, watching the white wig bob along among the other citizens who travelled the sidewalk. He again followed, realizing that Primm was too fixed on where he was going to bother casting a backward glance. Then, half another block ahead, the lawyer abruptly turned into a doorway under a sign that announced The Lamplighter.
It was just an ordinary tavern, Matthew thought as he stood at the door. Several hitching-posts at the curb. A window made of the round bottoms of glass bottles, some clear and some green. He opened the door without undue haste and entered, his eyes having to adjust from the bright sunlight to the dim greenish interior where lanterns burned from hooks on the ceiling beams.
Nothing special, really. A long bar where several well-dressed gentlemen congregated over ale tankards and eight tables each set with the stub of a candle. Only three of the tables were occupied, as it was a bit early for lunch. It was no problem to spy Icabod Primm, sitting at the back of the room bent over the Earwig by candlelight.
Matthew approached, but at an oblique angle. Primm didn’t know he was coming until he was there. Then the lawyer’s black eyes spat fire, his toy mouth chewed the air, and what came out was “You again!”
“Guilty,” Matthew said.
“Of following me. Yes, I got that part.”
“You were going in my direction.”
“Please continue then, all the way to New York.”
A burly, black-bearded man with a lion’s mane of ebony hair came up beside Matthew carrying a brown bottle and a small glass. As the man filled the glass to the brim, Matthew caught the nostril-prickling aroma of stout apple brandy.
“Leave the bottle, Samson,” Primm said, and the man set it down and started back to the bar.
It occurred to Matthew that if Primm drank an entire bottle of what was usually a highly combustible mixture, not only would the lawyer’s lamp be lit but his wig would burst into flame.
Matthew Corbett 02 - The Queen of Bedlam mc-2 Page 52
