He realized he was caught strictly on the defensive. A bad place to be, according to Greathouse.
Other things. The raid on Chapel’s estate had netted two men, one in his forties and the other nearly sixty, who had evidently been employed as instructors. The younger man had confessed an aptitude in both the art of blackmail-“priming the pigeon,” he called it-and the usage of various methods of extortion. The older man was a financial expert, whose only crime seemed to be that he could discourse on international monies, exchange rates, and patterns of market behavior in such things as hog bellies and rare jewels until his questioners wished to seal his mouth with a hot poker. Both men confessed to witnessing many killings at the estate and would show Lillehorne the cemetery where the bodies lay, but the story of their employment was a tangled web that could not be followed without travelling to London’s underworld…and even then, no sure thing.
The problem, Matthew thought as he stared at the chessboard, was that he’d seen four people whom he’d taken to be instructors. Of the third man and the woman with the blue parasol, there was no trace.
Effrem made a mistake. A simple one, but telling. Matthew leaped a knight upon the black bishop and saw a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
Effrem shook his head. “Oh, I should’ve moved that rook!”
Misdirection, Matthew thought. He’s trying to get me to go after the rook. Well, I won’t unless I have to.
And then there was Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren.
This was another set of teeth that bit him. When Matthew had left Trevor Kirby in the shade of the tree that afternoon, he’d gone back into the house, through the wrecked dining-room and out onto the terrace where, armed with a rapier, he’d intended to go down the steps, and pull Dahlgren from the garden’s goldfish pond.
The curtains had still been in the pond, but Dahlgren was gone.
Four men and Matthew searching the manse, the buildings, and the stable came up with nothing. The evil grenadier might have spread his own leathery wings and flown back to Prussia, so cleanly had he vanished. It was amazing to Matthew-almost incredible-how someone so badly battered could have gotten away so quickly. Again, the word demonic came to mind.
Effrem started to move his rook and hesitated. “You know, I asked you to meet me here for a particular reason, Matthew.”
“Right. Dinner and chess.”
“Well…not exactly.” He moved the rook, which threatened Matthew’s knight. “I wanted to know if…” He shifted in his chair. “If…”
“Go ahead and spit it out.”
Effrem cleared his throat. “If I were to ask Berry Grigsby to go with me to the Young Lions Ball a week from Friday, do you think she’d go?”
“What?”
“Berry Grigsby,” Effrem repeated. “The Young Lions Ball. A week from Friday. Do you think?”
Matthew sat back. “The Young Lions? Since when are you a member?”
“I joined last month. The day after I turned twenty-one. Well, don’t look at me like that, Matthew! The Young Lions are a really fine group of fellows! All of them the sons of various craftsmen…”
“I know who they are.”
“And they have these really fine dances. They’re holding this one at the Dock House Inn.”
“Wonderful.” Matthew moved his king.
“I can’t believe you did that! What’s wrong with you?” The black rook captured Matthew’s last knight.
“I’m trying to get it through my mind that you’ve joined a social club. I thought you were so dead-set against those! I thought you said they were a foolish waste of time!”
“No, Matthew,” Effrem replied. “That’s what you said. Your move.”
“Now wait a minute, just wait. You want to ask Berry? Why?”
Effrem laughed. “Are you insane, Matthew?”
“I wasn’t before I sat down at this table.”
“Listen.” Effrem slid a pawn forward. “Haven’t you looked at Berry? Haven’t you talked to her? She’s a beautiful girl, and she’s got a lot of…a lot of…well, I don’t know exactly what it is that she’s got, but whatever it is I like it. She’s different, Matthew. She’s…exciting, I suppose is what I’m trying to say.”
“Exciting,” Matthew said. He countered the pawn with one of his own.
“Yes, absolutely. I saw her sitting there on the wharf one morning, doing her drawing. That was the morning I stepped on that damned black cat and fell in the drink, thank you very much for laughing, but it was what brought us together. She helped me climb out. I sat…we sat…for a long time, just talking. I like the way she laughs, I like the way she smells, I like-”
“Well when the hell did you smell her?”
“You know what I mean. You just get a whiff sometimes of a girl’s hair, or her skin. It’s a nice smell.”
“The last time I smelled her, it wasn’t so nice.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.” Matthew tried to force his concentration back to the game and failed miserably. Suddenly he seemed not to be able to tell any difference at all between pawn, rook, or king.
“My original question,” Effrem plowed on, “is whether or not you think she’d go with me if I asked her.”
“I don’t know. How should I know?”
“You live in the house right behind her! You take almost every meal in the kitchen with her sitting across the table! What’s wrong with you?” He smacked the rook down. “Checkmate.”
“That is not!” Matthew objected, but then his vision cleared and he saw the deadly triangle trap of black pawn, rook, and knight that had converged upon his king. “Damn!”
“I’m thinking of giving her flowers when I ask her,” said Effrem. “Do you think she might like that?”
“I don’t know! Give her weeds, for all I care!” And then Matthew took a good long look at Effrem. He realized why his friend was suddenly so well-dressed in his nice dark blue suit, white shirt, and waistcoat and his brown hair with the gray streaks at the sides was no longer such a bird’s-nest but so well-combed and he had the scrubbed appearance of a young lion with places to go and a bright future as a New York tailor.
If Effrem was not yet in love with Berry Grigsby, he was on the way.
“Pah!” Matthew said. He grabbed his cider and swigged it.
“What? Really, Matthew, you’re not making any sense. The flowers, now. What kind of flowers should they be?”
“Flowers are flowers.”
“Granted, but I thought she might have…possibly…told you what kind she liked. Roses, or carnations, or lilies, or-” He shrugged, lost. “I have no idea.” A quick adjustment of his glasses, and he leaned forward. “What kind would you get her, Matthew?”
“I don’t know anything about flowers.”
“Just think. Surely there’s something she might like.”
Matthew thought. It was ridiculous, asking this of him. Absurd. He rubbed a hand across his forehead and winced because some of the scratches there were still tender. “I suppose…I might get her…” What? he asked himself. “Wildflowers.”
“Wildflowers?”
“Yes. Just pick them from a field somewhere. I think she’d prefer wildflowers to roses, or carnations, or…any of those.”
“That’s a grand idea!” Effrem slapped his palm down on the table for emphasis. “Wildflowers it is, and they won’t cost any money, either. Now: what color would you suggest?”
“Color?”
“Color,” Effrem said. “Blue, yellow, red…what color might she like?”
Matthew considered that in his years of knowing Effrem this was the strangest conversation they had ever shared. Still, one could tell from Effrem’s expression-his shining excitement, as it were-that for some reason Berry Grigsby had impressed him and come to have a meaning for him. As outlandish as that was. Those two together! A couple! Dancing at a Young Lions Ball! And maybe more than dancing, given time and the curve of Cupid’s bow.
“Any ideas?” Effrem urged.
“Yes,” Matthew said after a moment’s reflection. He stared at the chessboard, at the pieces that had trapped
