A Study in Revenge

by Kieran Shields

  “She would still be alive. As would those four needless victims of the reservoir’s breach. Yes, I am painfully aware of those facts.” Grey paused, gathering his thoughts. “Add to this the fact that Jotham Marsh will remain at large, once again unaccountable for his wrongdoings. With Phebe and Jason Webster gone, only his own fanatical followers have any knowledge of Marsh’s crimes. And they’ll never testify against him. He’s got the entire criminal element in the city frightened of his occult powers.”

  “He’s even tried to kill you twice. What do you plan to do about him?”

  “I’m not immediately concerned that he’s planning any further harm against me, you, or anyone else. He still thinks that St. Germain’s alembic, the device that Old Tom Webster supposedly stole and later buried, is somewhere under the reservoir. He’ll likely be devoting his full efforts over the coming weeks and months to trying to find it. But your point is well taken. There will come a time, sooner rather than later, when I will need to obtain inescapable proof against him of one crime or another. He’s too great a threat to be allowed to escape justice for very much longer.”

  “You know that if there’s any way I can help …” Lean left the offer hanging in the air.

  The door opened, and a stern-faced nurse in an overly starched uniform barged into the room.

  “How are we doing, Mr. Grey?” The nurse didn’t wait for an answer before announcing, “Time for me to change those bandages.”

  Lean stood by silently while the nurse unwrapped the old bandage, revealing a small bump and some dried blood on the side of Grey’s head. Grey ignored her actions; he was instead regarding Lean with his full attention. Finally he gave Lean a solemn nod.

  The nurse rambled on. “Mr. Grey, I’ll have to insist you get some rest soon, but you do have one more visitor, if you feel up to it. Any new complaints?”

  “The décor is numbingly bland, the air in here is stagnant, and that cup of tea you brought tasted as though it were wrung from an old dishrag.”

  “Isn’t he just the dearest thing?” the nurse said to Lean.

  “And to think I was worried about how your recovery would go. Well, I’ll be off, since you have someone else who actually wants to spend a few minutes with you.”

  “Who knew I was so well liked?” Grey said.

  “Trust me, you’re not.” Lean headed out the door, saying, “I’ll check in again when I get a chance.”

  The nurse finished wrapping a new bandage. “Should I show her in?”

  “Give me a few minutes, please. I’d like to dress first.”

  “Whatever for? You can’t go anywhere yet.”

  “Oh, I’m quite sure I can manage,” Grey said.

  “The doctor won’t allow it.”

  “I’ll gladly disabuse him of his concerns after I see my visitor. Thank you.”

  A few minutes later, there was a quiet rapping at the door and Helen Prescott eased into the room.

  “Mrs. Prescott. This is a surprise.” Grey slipped on his coat.

  “Hello”—she paused for half a second, unsure of how to address him—“Mr. Grey. I just wanted to stop in. I can’t stay long. Delia’s waiting.”

  “Quite all right. I’m preparing to leave myself.”

  “Already? Well it’s good to see you’re feeling better. Are you sure you’re well? Does it hurt?”

  “Only when I speak, or look at something, or think.” He took a step from the center of the room, moved closer to his bed, and laid a hand on the footboard.

  “I’m sorry,” Helen said. “It’s really quite awful, everything that happened there by the reservoir. All those poor people. I saw Archie on the way out. He told me something of what happened.” She worked herself closer to Grey’s side table, where she busied her hands rearranging a vase full of flowers that didn’t need tending.

  “He said Phebe Webster was among the … that she was at the reservoir. You’d pursued her there. That she was involved with this whole matter. He thinks you may have suspected her all along. Even …” Helen sounded as if the words were physically lodging in her throat. “Even that morning, when we met outside your house.”

  Grey didn’t speak right away, and Helen finally met his gaze.

  “Is that true?” she asked.

  “What can I say to you, Helen? I would offer some kindness or comfort if I knew how. Did I truly have strong feelings for her? Or did I suspect her of being part of a criminal conspiracy all along and only sought to gain her trust in order to uncover her actions and motives?”

  Grey studied Helen’s face for a moment as if he were trying to see inside her.

  “Which answer would you honestly care to hear from me? Which one would make you despise me less?”

  She stared at him there, supporting himself with a hand on the hospital bed, his gaze foggy and pained.

  “I don’t despise you, Perceval. Not at all.” She wondered whether he shared any of her sentiments at that moment. “I’m … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come now. Maybe some other time we could talk. Later, once you’ve had a chance to … When you’re feeling better.”

  Grey managed only the faintest of nods, and Helen quickly turned and left the room. He glanced out through the gap in the curtains before shielding his eyes from the light and turning away again to face the empty room.

  [ Chapter 58 ]

  GREY ARRIVED A FEW MINUTES EARLY AT THE EASTERN Cemetery. He’d chosen it as a convenient, open location for the meeting. It was only a short walk from the site of the reservoir disaster, and Grey had wanted to get his first look at the destruction he’d been unable to prevent two nights earlier. Dozens of gawkers still lingered there at the fatal site. The swath of destruction was startling. A massive wall of earth and mud had sloshed down the slope. The two houses and a barn that had stood in the way were pushed along, crumpled, and smashed as if they’d been no bigger than children’s toys. Mud remained piled up close to the empty second-story windows. Apart from Phebe and Jason Webster, four other souls, including a mother and her two young daughters, had perished beneath the wall of water, with its onslaught of earth, massive paving blocks, and heavy piping.

  He remembered the last moments before he’d lost consciousness, the shouts and screams coming from those houses. That water, the idea of its weight, pushed down on Grey’s mind, and he barely recalled just having walked downhill to the cemetery. He ended up a short way past the headstones of Thomas Webster and his kin. He stood there, deep in thought, as still as one of the monuments. In his coat pocket, he felt a single sheet of paper, the original bequest of the thunderstone written by Thomas Webster eighty years earlier. Attorney Dyer had been livid when Grey had lied and explained that the document had been lost in the reservoir flood. However, Grey had calmed the man by telling him that if the document were forgotten, Grey would keep quiet as to the Webster family’s role in that disaster. He even managed to turn Dyer’s annoyance into a smile when he informed him that the attorney could keep half the five-hundred-dollar commission owed Grey for locating Madeline Webster. Dyer was to spend the remaining half relocating Dastine LaVallee from her sparse room at the Portland Alms House and paying her entry fee to the more comfortable surroundings of the Home for Aged Women. There would even be spending money left over for her.

  Grey’s thoughts turned to Thomas Webster’s riddle—his play on words, as it turned out. The bequest in his pocket had been the key. It had allowed Grey to break the code of the twenty-four symbols etched by Webster. Allowed him to sound out the seven Greek letters represented on the thunderstone that gave the location of Webster’s buried treasure. Een-eff-ogg-ay: in effigy. Those words were the name that hid the Count de St. Germain’s alembic, the golden key to the supposed philosopher’s stone. He glanced at the earth covering Thomas Webster’s grave. Nearby was Thomas’s son George. Lean had reported that both men’s graves had been disturbed sometime last year. The seemingly inexplicable act had been marked down to desperate grave robbers hoping to find a bit
of jewelry or some such.

  Of course, that wasn’t the case at all. Jotham Marsh, with the likely assistance of Jason Webster, would have been behind the attempted grave robbery. They had surmised that the reputed treasure was buried, but they didn’t know where. One of the old graves was a natural guess. It fit with the mythos of the Rosicrucians, the legend of their founder Christian Rosenkreuz’s own secret burial chamber, and the society’s motto of VITRIOL: “Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem.” Jerome Morse had translated it for him on the train: “Visit the interior of the earth and purifying you will find the hidden stone.” Grey smiled at Marsh’s failure. If only the man had realized how close he’d been to unearthing the true location.

  The faint scratch of an approaching step on the gravelly surface of Funeral Lane sent those thoughts fleeing to the corners of Grey’s mind. He looked up and shielded his eyes. His headache persisted, and the sunlight only made the piercing sensation in his brain worse.

  “Looks like your luck hasn’t gotten any better since the last time we met,” Chief Jefferson said, pointing toward the side of Grey’s head. The bandage there poked out from beneath the edge of his hat.

  “It could be worse. I could be your man, Louis.”

  “That’s true enough.” The faint smile on the chief’s lips faded.

  “About that,” Grey said, eager to break the awkward silence he’d just created. “It would never stand in court, but I know it was Euripides Webster who sent that sharpshooter up Katahdin.”

  “I wondered if it might be.” Chief Jefferson tugged at his unshaven chin. “What are you expecting I’ll do with that information?”

  “Nothing, if you’re wise.”

  “Not many have accused me of that. Louis Beauchamp was as good a man as any you’ve ever met. Deserved better than to be murdered. A hard injustice to swallow, that.”

  Grey nodded. “And revenge is sweeter than life itself. Or so say fools and madmen.”

  “I wonder which one am I.”

  “A madman wouldn’t think to wonder.”

  Chief Jefferson chuckled. “That’s a bit of comfort, I suppose. Well, I thank you for the information in any event. I’ll have to think hard on it.”

  “You might do better to think long on it. I’m sure it’s no secret that you’ve quarreled harshly with Euripides. If any suspicious harm were to befall him in the near future …” Grey finished the sentence with a shrug.

  The chief nodded as he considered that angle. “Yes, I’d count myself lucky to have a solid alibi for my whereabouts on that unfortunate day—should it come to pass.”

  The chief shifted his feet about, looking like he was ready to move on before Grey stopped him.

  “That’s not the only reason I asked to meet. My driver’s there.” Grey nodded toward Mountfort Street. “He’s waiting to hand over the thunderstone to you.”

  The chief’s mouth dropped at the unexpected news.

  “You were right, in a sense. It does hold a great power. One that men were willing to kill for, even when they were only hoping and guessing at what its power might truly be. It’s a very dangerous stone.”

  “Not when it’s in the right hands,” the chief said.

  “I agree. So promise me one thing,” Grey added.

  “Anything you like,” the chief said.

  “Carry on with your original plan. Put that stone on Katahdin or somewhere else where no white man will ever find it. Not for a hundred years at least.”

  Chief Jefferson’s eyes narrowed, and he tried to read Grey’s face, but he was having a hard time keeping himself from peering at the carriage, where his long-sought treasure waited.

  “Of course.” The surprise started to wear off, and Chief Jefferson shook Grey’s hand. “Thank you, Grey. This means so much to me. And to our people.”

  As if the older man felt a sudden urge to reciprocate Grey’s act of goodwill, he finally seemed to take in their immediate surroundings. His eyes focused in on the shabby-looking knee-high stone directly next to Grey.

  “Stone that small, whoever lies there must have been the shame of the Webster family. And that takes some doing.”

  Grey could feel his own facial expression flinch. The chief must have seen it, too.

  “Not to speak ill of the dead at all. That poor young woman seemed a kind soul.”

  Both men looked away from each other, trying to end the suddenly uncomfortable exchange. The little headstone served as a magnet to distract each one’s attention.

  “Not actually a Webster buried there,” Grey pointed out.

  “Oh, one of your folks, is it? That’s a mighty coincidence, so close by all these Websters.” Chief Jefferson bent low to read the name on the small grave marker.

  “No relation of mine, I promise you,” Grey said.

  “ ‘Here lies N. F. Agee,’ ” the chief read the name out slowly.

  “N. F. Agee.” Grey repeated the name a second time, sounding out the syllables more quickly: “ ‘In effigy.’ ”

  Chief Jefferson almost grimaced, as if he’d suffered a sour taste or a rotten joke. “An unfortunate use of initials for a dead man. ‘In effigy’—do you suppose he was burned or just hanged?” The chief grinned.

  “Neither, I think. Simply buried.”

  “Simply buried. What more is there to say?”

  “Nothing,” Grey said. “Best to leave it as it lies.”

  He requested a cigarette from the chief. The man handed one over, then struck a match for Grey, who gave a few hesitant puffs and offered his thanks. Chief Jefferson tipped his hat and gave Grey a smile before heading off alone, a sudden vigor in his step as he made for the waiting thunderstone.

  Was it truly best to let it lie? Too many lives, innocent or otherwise, had already been lost during Jotham Marsh’s mad, desperate search for whatever was buried in the false grave of N. F. Agee. Marsh would be preoccupied for months to come, searching beneath the ruins of the reservoir to locate the mystical alembic, the Count de St. Germain’s secret mechanism for producing the philosopher’s stone. But eventually Marsh would realize the truth: that it wasn’t there. Then what? There was no way to predict what course he’d take next and how many more might suffer as a result. Grey decided on what he would have to do. Not now, when he was still likely being watched. Sometime in the months ahead, he’d have to come back and dig up the alembic himself. And when he had it in his hands, this alleged key to unlocking limitless wealth and the secrets of the ages, what then? The thought made his head hurt even worse.

  Grey glanced about and saw no one taking note of him from either of the streets running along the Eastern Cemetery. He drew Thomas Webster’s bequest from his pocket and held the cigarette to a corner of the ancient, yellowed page. He puffed a few times. The brittle paper smoldered briefly, then caught fire. Grey watched the flames devour the final written words of Thomas Webster. When the heat threatened to scorch his fingertips, he set the burning page on the grass in front of the pathetic little tombstone of N. F. Agee and waited until the fire died away, leaving only the blackened, crumbling remnants of the page.

  Grey stepped down on it and twisted his shoe, obliterating the sole copy of Thomas Webster’s bequest of his precious thunderstone. The heart of the old alchemist’s last testament, and the key to his riddle, joined the earth beneath Grey’s foot. The edges of the paper exploded into small black flecks that scattered on the wind, chapter and verse.

  [ EPILOGUE ]

  October 13, 1893

  MIRA WALKED UP TO THE SECOND FLOOR AND ALONG THE hallway, past the tall windows that framed the sight of a slow-churning mass of dark gray clouds. Though she’d been longing for the return of sunlight, she didn’t pause to consider the view. The parcel in her hands had monopolized her attention. She could feel a box inside the plain brown paper wrapping, and she was intrigued; it felt heavier than its size would suggest. Urgent voices leaked from Jotham Marsh’s study, but she eased the door open without knocking.r />
  Marsh was seated behind his desk, poring over a selection of old and new maps. Jerome stood just to the side, also peering over the material as he was expected to do. It was a familiar sight in the past two months, as Marsh had grown ever more focused on the exact location of Thomas Webster’s single acre of land beneath the ruins of the Munjoy Hill Reservoir. This time a third man joined them, a heavyset fellow in dusty work clothes. His mud-encrusted boots had been removed downstairs, just inside the front door. Left standing here in his stocking feet, he looked like a little boy—though swollen to grotesque proportions and sporting a thick mustache—being scolded by his father.

  “You’ve missed it, then,” Marsh declared. “Moving too quickly these past couple weeks.”

  “The men are thorough, sir, just as instructed. It’s the heavy rains—they’ve softened the earth. Made it easier to cover more ground,” the portly workman explained.

  Not wanting to acknowledge the reasonableness of that answer, Marsh shifted his attention to the parcel in Mira’s hands. He questioned her with a glance.

  “Just delivered. No return address on it.” Mira caught a glimpse of herself in the large mirror on the far wall behind Marsh’s desk. She tried to control the look of undue interest she saw on her face.

  “Well, go on, open it.” Marsh returned his attention to the maps spread out before him.

  Mira set the package on the corner of the desk and used a letter opener to slice away the string that bound the wrapping.

  “It has to be there. I know it is,” Marsh muttered. “The old survey was wrong. We’ll just have to move the southern corner’s starting point farther in. Twenty yards more both to the northeast and the northwest.”

  Mira opened the box and lifted the single page set atop the contents. She unfolded it and read aloud: ‘My good doctor, it’s been such a pleasure to observe your current efforts from afar. After witnessing the dedication and thoroughness you’ve brought to bear on this endeavor, I felt compelled to pass along this small token of my appreciation. It’s the least I can do after all the kindness you’ve displayed in letting me live this long. As you put it.’ ”