The Queen Of Bedlam Part 37

The pitiless grenadier, Matthew thought. He nodded at the man, who watched him but did not return the gesture.

"Allow me to introduce Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren," said Chapel, as he steered Matthew toward the head of the table. The blond-haired man now gave the slightest nod, but his relaxed and almost somnolent posture said he was not interested in introductions. He continued eating an apple slice with small birdlike pecks and staring at Matthew as Matthew took the seat across from him.

Chapel sat down again, the grin fixed in place. "I fear Count Dahlgren doesn't speak much English. He's come over from Prussia and he's very...well...Prussian, if you know what I mean. Yes?" That last word was directed to Dahlgren.

"Yas," came the quiet reply in an accent as thick as the Black Forest, with a brief show of gray teeth. "Var' Prussian."

Chapel picked up a little silver bell next to his platter and rang it. "Let's eat, shall we? Matthew, I hope you're hungry?"

"I am, sir." If he could get anything into his stomach, which was so tense amid this crew that it felt squeezed by iron bands.

Presently through a door at the right side of the room came the first wave of this feast: a procession of bowls, platters, and trays filled with sliced melons, stewed apples, honeyed strawberries, green salads, and other enticements brought in by three boys about fourteen or fifteen years of age, dressed in white shirts and black breeches, and two older women wearing kitchen ap.r.o.ns. Wine red and white was poured into gla.s.ses and Chapel proposed a toast with his gla.s.s lifted high: "To new friends and new prosperity!" Everyone drank. The gla.s.ses were immediately filled again by one of the boys, a wiry youth with shoulder-length brown hair that looked to have been brushed back from his face with bee's-wax pomade. His purpose seemed to be standing nearby over a cartful of wine bottles, ready to pour when a gla.s.s showed its bottom.

The meal progressed, as candlelight flashed off the fine silver and was reflected upon the walls like streaking comets. Matthew was aware of the swords at his back while he carried on a conversation about the weather with Miss LeClaire, Chapel offered some observations about the size and shape of clouds, Evans borrowed a remark or two and reworked it so it sounded as if he'd come up with it on his own, and Count Dahlgren drank a gla.s.s of white wine and watched Matthew over the brim. The conversation then turned to the beauty of Chapel's silverware, and when he stated between sips of wine that his father had impressed upon him the idea that no gentleman was a true gentleman without fine silver on the dinner table Miss LeClaire clapped her hands as if he'd made a p.r.o.nouncement of discovering a medical cure for dropsy.

Then came the second wave, this one a flotilla of bowls bearing soups and chowders: mushroom and bacon, oyster and corn, she-crab and cream. Chapel took pinches of pepper from a mound in a silver bowl and threw them with gusto into his food, so much so that the lady had a fit of sneezing that a napkin could hardly contain. Evans went the salt route, while Dahlgren ignored his spoon and drank directly but delicately from the bowl in what Matthew thought must be the Prussian way.

Matthew was waiting for the first sound of a blade sliding out of its sheath, and twenty minutes into the feast Chapel cleared his throat with a peppery rumble.

Evans and Miss LeClaire had been chattering about the value of oysters to a healthy diet. Both of them suddenly went mute.

Chapel reached into his coat, brought out an object, and laid it on the table in front of Matthew, after which he returned to his pepperpot.

It was Ausley's notebook. Matthew's heart twisted on its root. He feared the book might have been the one in his possession, and stolen from the dairyhouse even as he'd been brought here today. But no...compose yourself, he thought. He could see there was no dried blood on it. This was one of Ausley's less recent books, but identical in every way to the one Matthew had.

"You know what this is, I presume?" Chapel asked. There was a little ting as Dahlgren tapped the rim of his winegla.s.s with a fingernail.

Matthew had had his fill of mushroom-and-bacon soup. He pushed the bowl aside. "I do." Careful! he cautioned himself. "I've seen Ausley writing in it."

"Not this particular one, maybe. He had a box full of them, under the bed in his room. A strange b.a.s.t.a.r.d, wasn't he? Scribbled notes on everything under G.o.d's sun. You know, I once knew of a lunatic in London who made b.a.l.l.s of dust. Hundreds of them. Kept them in his attic. It was in the Gazette, wasn't it, Lawrence?"

"Yes sir."

Chapel nodded his conical head with satisfaction that his memory had been served. "I think Ausley was one notebook away from dust b.a.l.l.s. All that about his gambling debts and his bowel habits...ridiculous. Of course you suspect by now that dear Charity here is not in any way related to Ausley, unless you consider nymph's itch as a kind of lunacy." He showed his peg-teeth to the lady, who looked straight ahead and continued drinking her white wine with no sign of perturbance except for a metallic glint of the eyes. "We found the box of notebooks when we searched his room," Chapel went on, speaking to Matthew again, "but as he was known to always carry one on his person, there was-and remains-the notebook missing from his personal belongings." He smiled faintly. "Do you have any idea where it might be, Matthew?"

"No sir," came the steady reply.

"I'm sorry to hear that, for it would have made things so much easier. Now we have to go about searching for it. And where to begin? With his murderer? Do you think his murderer might have taken the notebook, Matthew?"

"I have no idea."

"Oh, but you must have an idea! An opinion, at least. Why would his murderer have taken the notebook but left his wallet? Eh?"

Matthew knew Chapel was waiting for a response, so one must be given. "I suspect Ausley's killer wished to read it."

"Exactly!" Chapel lifted a thick forefinger. He was grinning as if all this was the most wonderful merriment, but the topaz eyes were stone-hard. "So this was someone who killed Ausley for a purpose, just as he's killed Dr. G.o.dwin and Mr. Deverick. Their wallets were likewise left undisturbed? Lawrence, the sheet please." He held out a hand. Evans reached into his own coat with an eagerness that bordered on the frantic; from an inside pocket he brought out a many-times-folded sheet of paper that Matthew already knew was the Earwig. Evans unfolded it, smoothed it out, and slid it past Matthew and Count Dahlgren to the smiling host.

"A long way to go, to match the Gazette," Chapel said as he looked over the article on Deverick's murder. "But a good beginning, I'd say. I suppose there'll be another sheet out soon with an article about Ausley? Or is he old news by now?"

"I'm sure there'll be another sheet out within a few days. Mr. Grigsby has to gather enough news to fit first."

"Of course. Economy must be observed, and why would Ausley rate a sheet all to himself? You know, we found your name in several of those notebooks. He had a very interesting combination of respect for your intellect and hatred for your principles. I think actually he was afraid of you. In any event, he was glad to be rid of you to that Magistrate Woodward."

Matthew was shocked. "He was keeping notebooks that long ago?"

"Indeed. Only he didn't write as much in them or go through them as quickly as later, when he went off the pier's end with his gambling and personal lecheries. But as I say, he was afraid of you." Chapel returned to his soup and dabbed a little she-crab from his chin with a white napkin. "He feared you were going to get another boy as witness to tell everything to Magistrate Powers and then the church might step in. Also, you made him nervous just following him around like that, night after night. He made a convincing argument for my help, so that's why I let him use Carver and Bromfield, my hunters. I think you saw Bromfield this afternoon?"

Matthew glanced quickly at Evans but said nothing.

"Oh, don't mind what Lawrence told you. It's no matter. I would've been highly disappointed in you if you hadn't gotten out and exploring. You did take a risk, though. Bromfield has a nasty streak. Are we ready for the main course, friends? Let's be at it, then!" He rang the little silver bell again, as Count Dahlgren held out his winegla.s.s to be refilled.

More platters and trays were brought to the table. This time the offerings were substantial: grilled lamb with dill pickles, sweetbreads in mustard sauce, a hunk of red meat that Matthew thought must be a calf's tongue, and thickly sliced ham with a burnt sugar glaze. Accompanying these stomach-busters was wild rice, creamed corn, and a pile of biscuits. Matthew looked in vain for the hares. Who had Bromfield been hunting for?

But it was all Matthew could do to keep his mind about him, for this scene of feast coupled to the strange conversation with Simon Chapel was more like a dream than reality. He was full already, and the serving boys were loading up another plate for him. Then, quite suddenly, one of the boys spilled wild rice over the front of Matthew's breeches and cried out, "Pardon, sir! Pardon, sir!" as he wiped the offending food away with a napkin. Matthew stood up from the table as the boy's hand rapidly darted here and there to clean off the debris and Matthew finally said, "It's all right. Really. I'm fine." He brushed the last bits off himself and returned to his seat, while the boy-a small-boned lad with a ma.s.s of curly brown hair and the fast movements of a weasel-wadded up the napkin in his fist and started toward the door that presumably led to the kitchen.

"Silas, Silas, Silas!" Chapel said, with an air of exasperation. "Stop where you are, please!"

The boy obeyed and, turning around toward the master, had a crooked grin on his red-cheeked face.

"Give it up," Chapel instructed. "Whatever it is."

"Give it up, Silas!" jeered the young wine-guardian.

"Now." Chapel's voice had begun to lose its humor.

The boy's grin faded. "I was jus' practisin'," he said. "Gonna put 'em back later."

"Return them to Mr. Corbett. This moment, or you and I will have some difficulties."

"Awwww," Silas said, in the manner of any boy caught redhanded at a mischief. He approached Matthew, opened the napkin, and deposited from it both the silver watch and the dairyhouse key onto the table next to Matthew's plate. Instinctively and with abject amazement Matthew checked his pockets, which had been picked so quick and cleanly he'd had no sensation of looting fingers.

"Go about your business, Silas," Chapel instructed, as he began to slice the calf's tongue. "No more nonsense, now."

"No more nonsense," smirked the wine-boy, who flinched as Silas balled up a fist and made a threat of striking him, but then Silas thought better of it and went out through the door to the kitchen.

"Silas has a little habit." Chapel pushed the tongue platter toward Matthew. "We indulge him sometimes, as he does no harm. He is quick, isn't he?" His gaze locked on the watch. "Very fine, that is. How come you to have such an expensive time instrument?"

"It was a gift," Matthew answered, aware he was again edging on shaky ground. "From..." His wits failed him.

"Oh, it's not Mr. Deverick's watch, is it?" Chapel made a wide-eyed expression of mock horror that was almost comical. "You're not the Masker, are you?"

"No." His mind started up again, like Sa.s.safras running on the treadmill at Micah Reynaud's barbershop. "It was a gift from the man who founded the town of Fount Royal, in the Carolina colony. Given for clearing up an important matter."

"The witchcraft thing? Yes, Ausley told me. I might mention that my Carolina source says Fount Royal dried up and blew away last summer, so sad to relate. But life goes on, and so does time. Ah, what's this?" Chapel plucked up the dairyhouse key even as his mouth was gobbling tongue.

Matthew, who felt as if Dr. G.o.dwin's breeches were already about to burst at the belly, had pa.s.sed the tongue on down to Miss LeClaire, who stabbed herself a piece. Evans was intent on his small portion of ham and across from Matthew, Count Dahlgren put a fork to the grilled lamb and chewed steadily while watching Chapel inspect the key.

"This is an antique," Chapel remarked once his mouth was clear. "Charity tells me you live in an outhouse."

"A dairyhouse," Matthew corrected.

He shrugged his ma.s.sive shoulders. "Outhouse, dairyhouse..."

"Wh.o.r.ehouse," the lady sn.i.g.g.e.red, with a shiny look that skimmed past Matthew. One of her blond curls had come unpinned and was hanging down over a chocolate eye. Her winegla.s.s was empty. The wine-boy poured another.

"Here, mind she doesn't get too much!" Chapel told the boy. "She'll have us all on the table devouring us like Sunday sausages!" He returned his attention to Matthew. "Why does a young man of your apt.i.tude live in an outhouse?"

"My apt.i.tude, sir?"

"Your brains. Your gumption. You're not lazy, I know. Also I know you have curiosity and you're not afraid to strike out on your own. Why an outhouse, then? Do you have no ambition?"

"I have ambition. I am where I am, for right now."

"Where you are right now," Chapel said as he set the key down beside Matthew's silver plate, "is here. It's where you're going tomorrow morning that I think shameful."

"Sir?"

"Back to that noxious town. Full of those cretins and clodfoots. Pigs in the streets and horse manure...well, need I mention that to you? I think you have such potential, Matthew! Such a mind as yours should not be put to waste..." He paused and took a sip of wine.

"To waste, sir?" Matthew asked.

"Doing menial labor," came the reply. "Isn't that right, Lawrence?"

"Yes sir." The s was perhaps a shade slurred.

"Listen to him, for Lawrence was once a legal clerk himself. Drowning in ink and debts. But look at him now, Matthew. Dressed in such finery and performing tasks more suited to his skills. And with a great future yet ahead of him!"

Matthew was watching Dahlgren, who watched Matthew. "Does the Count also work for you?"

"In a sense. He's a guest, but he's also my fencing instructor. I'm a bit late in taking it up, I fear, but I'm trying to learn. It's d.a.m.ned hard, though."

"Hard?" Miss LeClaire stirred and seemed to be rocking back and forth in her chair, her eyes flicking from one man to another. Her voice was thick. "Who's hard?"

"Hush," Chapel said. "I meant to say difficult, Matthew. One must take care around Miss LeClaire, lest her condition leap out and romp us to death."

Matthew finished his gla.s.s of wine and put a finger to the rim, allowing no more, when the boy rushed forward to pour again. Sense had to be made of this strange cornucopia, and he knew of only one way in the situation to start finding some answers. The frontal a.s.sault. "Mr. Chapel," he said, and at once the man was listening attentively, "may I ask exactly why Ausley's notebooks are so important to you?"

"Of course. They hold, amid his ravings and chamber-pot tribulations, the names of the orphan boys he's sold to me."

"Sold to you?"

"Well, I suppose rented is a better word. You know. To work here, as grounds and house staff and in the vineyard. Good help is so difficult to find. We clean them up, of course. Educate them and give them a trial period. If they fit in, they stay. If they don't, they return to the orphanage." Chapel continued eating. "A simple solution to my needs. I suppose I could have bought slaves, but I don't wish black hands on the grapes."

"Black hands," Miss LeClaire slurred, both eyes now obscured by fallen curls. "On the grapes." And then she snorted a laugh that made clear threads of snot shoot out of both nostrils.

"Dear Lord! Lawrence, do something about her, will you? Mind your stones, she's got a claw of iron. Where were we? Oh, the orphans! Well, this arrangement's been going on since I-Lawrence in my stead, I mean-approached him...oh, back in 1696, I suppose. And when did you leave the orphanage? 1694, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Matthew tried not to look as Evans cleaned the lady's nose and tried to make her stop rubbing herself back and forth on the chair's seat. The nymph's itch, indeed.

"We just missed you. It works well for us, and well for Ausley...until he was murdered, I mean. Now we've got all the books but the last one, and we really must find it."

"Why?" Matthew asked. "What's so important about the names?"

"Actually, there's only one name I care about in the books. My own." Chapel offered an apologetic smile and a tilt of the battering-ram. "You see, Ausley was not removing the names of his charges from the rolls after they were sent to me. Therefore he could continue to get the same amount of money from the charities and the churches because his numbers stayed the same. I suppose I paid for much of his gambling adventures, plus he took the extra charitable funds. Now that the poor wretched b.a.s.t.a.r.d is dead, I'd think someone in a position of responsibility will be going over the official ledgers and records of placement. The notebooks, you understand, are highly unofficial."

Chapel leaned toward Matthew in an att.i.tude of sharing a secret. "I told him, through Lawrence, not to write my name down anywhere. I wanted there to be no trail of paper leading to me. Hate those. Well, what do we find when we get the notebooks from under his bed? Yes, there it was, all right! My name, in glorious scribble! I had a suspicion, after Bromfield and Carver told me they got a glimpse of one of those d.a.m.ned books the night they hired out to him, that my name was in them somewhere. Now it may have been true that just my family name is there and possibly no one would ever have connected me to the scheme, but still...care saves trouble, as my father used to say. I have not advanced to my present situation by lack of planning, I promise you."

Matthew nodded. This information didn't surprise him in the least. But what of the numbers? The code Ausley had written down? Of course he couldn't ask, though he nearly had to lock his teeth together.

"I'm not a monster," Chapel continued. He knifed b.u.t.ter from a silver tray and bathed a biscuit with it. "The boys here are all volunteers. No one has to stay if they don't like it. How many are here presently, Lawrence?"

"Nineteen, sir." Evans was trying to free himself from the hands that were earnestly working at the b.u.t.tons of his breeches front.

"Many various ages, from twelve on up," Chapel said. "They live in a very comfortable building at the vineyard. When they reach the age of eighteen, they are free to go out into the world on their own if they choose. I had a ready source of labor, Ausley got his money, and all was right with Simon Chapel's little world." His visage darkened. "Until this Masker came along. And who the devil is he, anyway? Why these three men, Matthew? Does anyone have any ideas?" His gray eyebrows went up. "Do you?"

It wasn't right, Matthew thought as he pushed his plate aside and folded his hands on the table. Something...was...not...right. Why should the Masker be interested in Ausley's scheme with Chapel? He remembered that before Dippen Nack had scared the Masker away, there'd been a whispered Eben Ausley was...

What was the finish of that declaration to be?

Eben Ausley was selling orphans as vineyard workers? As household and grounds staff?

Why in the world should the Masker have a care for what Ausley did with the orphans?

It wasn't right, Matthew thought. No.

"Tell me about this, then," said Chapel, as he slid the Earwig toward Matthew. His index finger tapped a small item. Matthew saw the broadsheet had been turned to its second page, and Chapel's finger was on the lines of print that read The Herrald Agency. Problem-Solving. Letters of Inquiry to go to the Dock House Inn.

Thirty-Six.

"The printmaster's your friend, isn't he?" Chapel looked at his fingertip and found it was marred by a small darkening of ink. He wiped it on his napkin. "Do you know who brought that item to him?"

Matthew was startled as Count Dahlgren suddenly got up from his chair, walked across the room with a half-gla.s.s of white wine in his left hand, and with his other pulled a sword from the display on the right side of the fireplace. It came out with a shrieking sound.

"Tell me," Chapel said, his intense topaz gaze fixed upon Matthew. The reflection of orange candleflames on his spectacle lenses made it appear that his eyeb.a.l.l.s were burning.

Behind Matthew, Dahlgren began to thrust and parry at a phantom opponent. Matthew dared not turn around, but could hear the sword's high whicking noise as air was cleaved left and right.

"Do you know these agency people yourself, Matthew? Have you met them?"

"I..." What a pit had been opened for him! Would that it not become a grave where he might lie rotting and filled up with roaches. He swallowed hard as Dahlgren swung his blade through a candle and the waxen stump flew over Matthew's head into the wild rice. "I have-"

He didn't know what he was going to say, but before he could say it a drunken load of woman jumped into his lap, driving the breath out of him and almost causing him to spew forth sliced melons, stewed apples, salad, mushroom-and-bacon soup, and every other foodstuff deposited in his belly-bank. This leap of wanton faith was accompanied an instant later by a tongue-of the feminine human variety-winnowing itself into his mouth like a river eel. He tried to push her off but she was stuck fast, her arms going around his neck and her fleshy red rag nearly down his throat. He had the feeling that he might strangle on it, while as if in some nightmare formed from bad codfish Count Dahlgren lunged around the room whacking candles, Evans grabbed the itching nymph to give Matthew some air and Chapel said sourly, "Well, d.a.m.n it all," and beckoned the wine-boy over for another gla.s.s.