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.
“Having a liquid lunch?” Matthew prodded. “It is unsettling to realize your client’s a murderer, isn’t it?”
Primm took a deep and needful drink. His eyes watered and gleamed.
“I think she’s his mother,” Matthew went on. It was a shaky guess, for why would the lady not have reacted to her son’s name? “He hid her away in Westerwicke, and then he plotted the deaths of three men. But my real question is: what happened to his father?”
“Samson!” Primm rasped after another swallow of fire had scorched his throat. The black-bearded behemoth returned to the table, his strides making the planks squeal. “This young man is annoying me. If he speaks one more word, I’d like you to throw him out on his New York bum.”
“Yes, Mr. Primm,” Samson replied in a biblical basso while staring into Matthew’s face from the distance of
