a pewter holder that was sitting atop a stack of books on a table and this he gave to Matthew, who laid aside the dead lantern. “I hope you’re not afraid of spiders,” he said. He unhooked a latch and opened the door into the cellar’s darkness. “Watch your step, these stairs are older than my grandmother.”
Before they descended, Matthew requested that Kippering also leave that door open and go down first. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” Kippering asked, but then he took appraisal of Matthew’s expression and obeyed. As he followed down the rickety old stairs, Matthew thought that sometimes it did pay to carry a big stick.
The candles seemed to throw more shadows than illumination. It was a large cellar with a dirt floor and brick walls. The old yellowish-white bricks, Matthew noted, that had originally come over as ballast on some of the first Dutch ships. Filling the place almost up to the raftered ceiling were battered wooden shelves full of decaying law books, parcels of papers wrapped in twine, and stacks upon stacks of more yellowed documents. Matthew thought that, though there was a sea dampness to the air, if a fire ever got loose in here it would burn steadily for a month. Discarded buckets, two broken chairs, a desk that looked as if it had been chewed by a beaver, and other odds- and-ends of office decor littered the chamber. Matthew went directly to the cellar door and inspected the bolt.
“Anything there?” Kippering asked.
“No,” came the answer. There was no blood on this side of the door. But that didn’t stop Matthew from shining his candle around to check the steps and the floor. There were many footprints in the dirt, but why would there not be? He continued searching around boxes of papers. “What is all this?” he asked.
“The underbelly of the legal profession.” Kippering sat down on a large wooden trunk. “This is where the old deceased records lie in rotting perpetuity. Most of it dates back to before Charles Land took the firm over from Rolf Gorendyke. He left it all here for us to clean up, except Bryan thinks there’ll be value to it someday as history and he wants to keep it. If Joplin and I had our way, we’d toss it tomorrow.”
“Toss it where?”
“Yes, well that’s the problem, isn’t it? We’ve thought of burning it, but…” He shrugged. “Maybe Bryan’s right. Someday someone might give a damn about what went on here.”
Matthew was still poking around and finding nothing but a rat’s nest, both figuratively and literally. “You say Eben Ausley was your client?” he asked as he explored the room. “You don’t seem so concerned that he’s lying dead over on the next street.”
“I had limited dealings with him. Joplin handled most everything. Records of contributions. Contracts for supplies and labor. Paperwork when the orphans found homes. Things such as that.”
“I assume those more current documents are kept in better circumstances?”
“File cabinets upstairs.”
Matthew kept looking, but this path was showing no promise. “Aren’t you at all curious?” he asked.
“About what?”
“Two things. Who killed Ausley, and what the smear of blood on the door looks like?”
Kippering grunted and smiled thinly. “I hear,” he said, “that Ausley had lost a lot of money on the tables. He’d borrowed heavily, and lost most of that as well. The man was what you might call a gambling fanatic. In case you don’t know, there are individuals in this town who lend money and aren’t pleased when it’s not promptly repaid. Ausley unfortunately did not have the most charming personality, either. I think it was only a matter of time before someone either beat him to death or cut his throat, so this Masker person may have simply cheated the pawnbroker. As for the blood smear, I’ve seen them before. Still, I’ll take your bait.” He stood up with his candle, walked to the door, and threw back the bolt. Then he pushed the door open and stuck his head out to see.
Suddenly Matthew heard a frightened voice call from outside, “Hold there! Hold!”
“I’m just having a look around,” Kippering explained to the unseen person.
“Just hold right there, I said! Do you have a weapon?”
“Settle down, Giles. It is Giles Wintergarten, isn’t it? It’s me, Andrew Kippering. Look.” Matthew envisioned him holding the light nearer his face.
“Dear God, Mr. Kipperin’, you scared the shit into my drawers pokin’ your head out like that! Don’t you know there’s been another murder right up the way? I might have run you through!”
Matthew got the picture. A constable had been in the alley when the cellar door had opened. Carrying a sword, too, by the sound of it.
“The Masker’s been at work, yessir!” said Wintergarten. “Cut the life out of Eben Ausley and left him like a bloody bag up there on Barrack! But he got his, too, he did! Ol’ Emory Coody shot him good and proper!”
“Emory Coody?” Kippering asked. “The one-eyed weather-spy?”
“That’s him! Lives right up the way!”
As the two spoke, Matthew found himself staring at the trunk upon which Kippering had been sitting. He walked to it, saw that there was no lock, and lifted the lid. His light fell upon what was inside, and after the jolt of surprise had subsided he thought, Now I’ve found you.
“Look here, Giles,” Kippering was saying. “On the doorhandle. Blood. See it?”
“Yessir. Yessir, that does ’pear to be blood, don’t it?”
“I think the Masker came along here and left his mark. Possibly he tried to open the door, but it was locked from the inside. You might want to take a careful stroll up and down the alley and check all the other cellar doors, yes?”
“Yessir, that would be the thing to do. I ought to go get some help, though.”
“All right, but be careful. Oh, and listen: will you inform High Constable Lillehorne of this, and tell him I’d be happy to help him in any way possible?”
“I will, sir. You ought to get in yourself now, Mr. Kippering. Work such as this ought to be left to the professionals.”
“My thoughts exactly. Goodnight, Giles.”
“’Night, sir.”
Kippering closed the door, rebolted it, and turned to face Matthew. “As I said, all blood smears look the same.” He glanced at the open trunk. “What are you searching for now? Costumes for the dance?”
“There are clothes in here,” Matthew said, his voice tight.
“Yes, there are.”
“There are gloves in here.” Matthew held up a pair. They were black and made of thin cloth.
“Your powers of observation are stunning. You might also observe that those are women’s gowns and underclothing.” He held up a large hand, took two strides forward, and demonstrated how small the glove was. It looked to fit a child. “Women’s gloves. I think there may be some men’s shirts and a coat or two down there at the bottom, but I haven’t gone all the way through. You’ll note that everything is moldering and musty and is probably over twenty years old.”
Matthew was flustered. He was so eager to believe he’d found the Masker’s hidden cache of clothes that the first black gown on top had addled his brain. “Well…where did all this come from?”
“We’re not sure, but we think one of Gorendyke’s clients used the trunk as payment for legal services. Or it might have come from the estate of someone who died aboard ship on the way over. We’re going to throw it out, sooner or later. Are you done?”
Matthew nodded, his brow furrowed.
Kippering closed the lid. “If you didn’t hear, I showed Giles Wintergarten the blood smear and I told him to inform Lillehorne. I think the Masker either really did try to get in-though I didn’t hear anything as I’ve been upstairs for at least an hour-or being such a clever murderer as you feel him to be, he deliberately left a mark for your benefit.”
“For my benefit? Why?”
“Well, he stopped your following him, didn’t he?”
“He couldn’t have known I would see the mark,” Matthew said.
“No, but he might have reasoned the odds were on his side that you would.” Kippering gave a smile, which on his usually handsome but now dark-shadowed face seemed a little ghastly. “I think the Masker might also be a gambler. Don’t you?”
Matthew cast his eyes down. He didn’t know what to think. As he was pondering what to him was an appalling lack of mental acuity, he saw his candlelight gleam on an object that leaned against one of the shelves. It was a strange object to be down here, he thought. A pair of hammered-brass firetongs, yet there was certainly no fireplace in the cellar.
