Damned right Matthew was nearly running, and he did break into a run the final twenty yards.
He slammed his fist on the door. He had expected no answer, and therefore was immediately prepared to do what he next did: open the door and enter.
Before he could cross the threshold, Matthew was struck in the face.
Not by any physical fist, but rather by the overwhelming smell of blood. He instinctively recoiled, his mouth coming open in a gasp.
These were the things he saw, in a torrent of hideous impressions: light, streaming between the shutter slats and glistening off the dark red blood that had pooled on the floorboards and made large brown blotches on the pallet's sheet; Lancaster's corpse, lying on its right side on the floor, the left hand gripping at the sheet as if to pull itself up, the mouth and icy gray eyes horribly open in a slashed and clawed face, and the throat cut like a red- lipped grin from ear to ear; the formerly meticulous household ravaged as if by a whirlwind, clothes pulled from the trunk and strewn about; desk drawers wrenched out and upturned, cooking implements thrown hither and yon; hearth ashes scooped up and tossed to settle over the corpse like grave dust.
Smythe had also seen. He gave a choked moan and staggered back, and then off he ran along Industry Street in the direction of his companions, his face bone-white and his mouth trailing the shattering cry, 'Murder! Murder!'
The shout might have alarmed everyone else who heard it, but it served to steady Matthew's nerves because he knew he had only a short time to inspect this gruesome scene before being intruded upon. He realized as well that the sight of Lancaster lying dead and so brutally disfigured must have been the same sight viewed by Reverend Grove's wife and by Jess Maynard, who had discovered Daniel Howarth's body. Little wonder, then, that Mrs. Grove and the Maynards had fled town.
The cut throat. The face savaged by demonic claws. And, it appeared, the shoulders, arms, and chest also slashed through the bloody ribbons of the man's shirt.
Yes, Matthew thought. A true Satan had been at work here.
He felt sick to his stomach and scared out of his wits, but he had time for neither debility. He looked about the wreckage. The desk's drawers, all the papers and everything else dumped out, the inkwell smashed. He wished to find two items before Mr. Green surely arrived: the sapphire brooch and the book on ancient Egypt. But even as he knelt down to negotiate this mess of blood, ink, and blood-inked papers he knew with a sinking certainty that those two items, above all else, would not be found.
He spent a moment or two in search, but when he suffered the smear of blood on his hands he gave up the quest as both impossible and unreasonable. He was fast weakening in this charnel house, and the desire for fresh air and untainted sunlight was a powerful call. It occurred to him that Smythe had been correct: Lancaster would indeed not be caught dead in his ratcatcher's rags, as he wore what had once been a white shirt and a pair of dark gray breeches.
And now the need to get out was too much to withstand. Matthew stood up and, as he turned to the door— which had not opened to its full extent, but rather just enough to allow his entry—he saw what was scrawled there on its inner surface in the clotted ink of Lancaster's veins.
My Rachel Is Not Alone
In the space of a hammered heartbeat Matthew's flesh prickled and the hairs rose at the back of his neck. The first words that came to his mind were Oh... shit.
He was still staring numbly at that damning declaration a moment later when Hannibal Green came through the door, followed by the other rustic with whom he'd been working. At once Green stopped in his tracks, his red- bearded face twisted with horror. 'Christ's Mercy!' he said, stunned to the soles of his four-teen-inch boots. 'Linch?' He looked at Matthew, who nodded, and then Green saw the clerk's gore-stained hands and hollered, 'Randall! Go fetch Mr. Bidwell! Now!'
In the time that ensued, Green would have thought Matthew a bloody-handed murderer had not David Smythe, pallid but resolute, returned to the scene and explained they'd both been together when the corpse was discovered. Matthew took the opportunity to wipe his hands on one of the clean shirts that had been so rudely torn from the trunk. Then Green had his own hands full trying to keep people who'd been alerted by Smythe's cry— among them Martin and Constance Adams—out of the house.
'Is that Lancaster?' Matthew asked Smythe, who stood to one side staring down at the corpse.
Smythe swallowed. 'His face is... so... swollen, but... I know the eyes. Unforgettable. Yes. This man... was Jonathan Lancaster.'
'Move back!' Green told the onlookers. 'Move back, I said!' Then he had no choice but to close the door in the gawkers' faces, and thereupon he saw the bloody scrawl.
Matthew thought Green might go down, for he staggered as if from a mighty blow. When he turned his head to look at Matthew, his eyes seemed to have shrunken and retreated in his face. He spoke in a very small voice, 'I shall... I shall guard the door from the outside.' So saying, he was gone like a shot.
Smythe had also seen the bloody writing. His mouth opened, but he made not a sound. Then he lowered his head and followed Green out the door with similar haste.
Now the die was well and truly cast. Alone in the house with the deadly departed, Matthew knew this was the funeral bell for Fount Royal. Once word got out about that declaration on the door—and it was probably beginning its circuit of tongues right now, starting with Green—the town wouldn't be worth a cup of cold drool.
He avoided looking at Lancaster's face, which had not only been severely clawed but had become misshapen from such injury. He knelt down and continued his search for the brooch and book, this time using a cloth to move aside blood-spattered wreckage. Presently a wooden box caught his attention, and he lifted its lid to find within the tools of the ratcatcher's trade: the odious long brown seedbag that had served to hold rodent carcasses, the stained deerskin gloves, the cowhide bag, and various wooden jars and vials of—presumably—rat bait. Also in the box was the single blade—wiped clean and shining—that had been secured to the end of the ratcatcher's sticker.
Matthew lifted his gaze from the box and looked around the room. Where was the sticker itself? And—most importantly— where was that fearsome appliance with the five curved blades that Hazelton had fashioned?
Nowhere to be seen.
Matthew opened the cowhide bag, and in doing so noted two drops and a smear of dried blood near its already-loosened drawstring. The bag was empty.
To be such a cleanliness fanatic, why would Lancaster have not wiped the rodent blood from the side of this bag before putting it back into the wooden box? And why was the five-bladed appliance—-that 'useful device' as Lancaster had called it—not here with the other utensils?
Now Matthew did force himself to look at Lancaster's face, and the claw marks upon it. With a mind detached from his revulsion he studied the vicious slashings on the corpse's shoulders, arms, and chest.
He knew.
In perhaps another fifteen minutes, during which Matthew searched without success for the appliance, the door opened again—tentatively, this time—and the master of Fount Royal peered in with eyes the size of teacup saucers. 'What... what has happened here?' he gasped.
'Mr. Smythe and I found this scene. Lancaster has left us, ' Matthew said.
'You mean... Linch.'
'No. He was never truly Gwinett Linch. His name is— was—Jonathan Lancaster. Please come in.'
'Must I?'
'I think you should. And please close the door.'
Bidwell entered, wearing his bright blue suit. The look of sickness contorted his face. He did close the door, but he remained pressed firmly against it.
'You ought to see what you're pressing against, ' Matthew said.
Bidwell looked at the door, and like Green he staggered and almost fell. His jerking away from it made him step into the bloody mess on the floor and for a dangerous instant he balanced on the precipice of falling alongside the corpse. His fight against gravity was amazing for a man of his size, and with sheer power of determination—and more than a little abject, breeches-wetting terror—he righted himself.
'Oh my Jesus, ' he said, and he took off both his bright blue tricorn and his gray curled wig and mopped his
