“What may I do for you?”
“I’d like to come in, if I might.”
“Well…I am busy at present. Perhaps later this afternoon?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I probably won’t be coming back to City Hall today. Make that definitely not coming back. Won’t you spare me a few minutes?”
“All right then, a few minutes.” A bolt was unlocked, the doorgrip turned, and Matthew found himself granted entrance to what had been a cryptic area of the building.
He crossed the threshold and McCaggers, who wore a pair of brown breeches and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, closed the door at Matthew’s back. The bolt was thrown again, which Matthew thought demonstrated McCaggers’ desire for privacy. He realized in another moment, by the smoky golden light streaming through the attic windows, that McCaggers had created a world for himself up here, in the uppermost of the tallest building in town, and not all of this creation was easy to look upon.
The first items that caught Matthew’s attention were the four human skeletons, three adult-sized and one a child, that hung suspended from the rafters. Also adorning the walls were perhaps thirty or more skulls of various sizes, some whole and some missing lower jawbones or other portions. Here and there, as macabre decorations, were the wired-together bones of legs, arms, hands, and ribcages. Atop a row of honey-colored wooden file cabinets were more complete skulls and skull fragments. On the wall behind the cabinets was a display of what appeared to be frog and bat skeletons. It was a veritable boneyard, yet everything was spotless and sterile. The pride of the collector, Matthew thought. McCaggers collected human and animal bones as he himself gathered books.
That wasn’t all of the surprises in McCaggers’ realm. Next to a long table topped with beakers of fluid in which things of uncertain origin floated, there stood a rack of swords, axes, knives of many sizes, two muskets, and three pistols as well as fierce-looking weapons such as wooden clubs studded with nails, brass knuckle-dusters, and crude spears. Amid the items were two spaces where pistols were missing, and Matthew smelled the sharp tang of burned gunpowder.
“I expect you heard my shots,” McCaggers said. He picked up two pistols that were lying amid a stack of books on a desk at his side. “I was shooting at Elsie.”
“Elsie?”
“Yes, that’s her.” He motioned toward a dress-maker’s form standing about twenty feet away. The thing was shot full of holes. “Elsie today. Sometimes Rosalind.” He indicated a second form that was in even more pitiful shape. “She’s not feeling well lately.” He looked up, as did Matthew, at a hatch in the roof through which showed the blue sky. A rope ladder was hanging from it. Gunsmoke was still drifting out, and Zed’s ebony face with its purplish upraised tattoos was peering down into the attic. “We have a visitor,” McCaggers announced, revealing that Zed knew at least some English. “Mr. Corbett.”
Zed withdrew, his expression impassive. Matthew wondered if he lived up there on the roof, and what the socialites of Golden Hill would say if they knew a slave commanded the highest point of New York.
“I have some new pistols I’m testing,” McCaggers explained. He put the guns back in their proper places. “From the Netherlands. More power than the ones I’ve seen before. I’ll dig the balls out of Elsie and measure the wounds. I mean, of course, the impressions. I do enjoy keeping notes, and one never knows when the information might be useful.” He came back to the desk, where Matthew saw a notebook lying open and a quill pen next to an ink bottle. “Today the weapon of choice is the blade,” McCaggers said as he made a few notations in his book. “Tomorrow it will be the pistol, once it’s made small enough to conceal and able to fire multiple balls without reloading.” He glanced up and caught Matthew’s skeptical expression. “Both those conceits are being studied in Europe as we speak.”
“I sincerely hope you don’t literally mean tomorrow.” Matthew couldn’t imagine a pistol that would fire more than one ball. It would be the most dangerous weapon ever created.
“There are already pistols with multiple barrels in Prussia. As far as the reduction in size and weight to afford concealment, I’d venture fifty years, more or less. Barring the appearance of a new technology, of course, but the gunsmiths are nothing if not inventive.” McCaggers saw the broadsheet in Matthew’s hand. “Ah! The latest news?”
Matthew gave it over. “Just out this morning. I regret that Mr. Grigsby painted me as an interviewer. I tried my best to be selective in what I told him.”
“I see you were.” It only took a few seconds for McCaggers to get the gist of the story. “Oh, that part about the ‘town nobles’ will vex some people. Lillehorne, most particularly. It won’t go over well with Bynes, either. A face familiar to many of us hides a murderer’s rage. Grigsby doesn’t shy from frightening the citizens, does he?” He turned the sheet to its second side and began to read as Matthew cast a wandering eye over the rest of the attic chamber.
A bookcase held a dozen thick ancient-looking tomes bound in scabby leather. Medical books? he wondered. Anatomy? He couldn’t make out the titles. Near it stood a massive old black chest-of-drawers, next to which was a cubbyhole arrangement that held rolled-up scrolls of white paper. Over on the far side of the attic, past shelves on which were folded various items of clothing, was a simple cot and a writing table. Obviously there was no fireplace here, so McCaggers would have to take all his meals in the taverns unless-as was more likely, due to his penchant for privacy-he had an arrangement with a local household.
“The Herrald Agency,” McCaggers said, and Matthew saw he was reading the notice. “Letters of inquiry to go to the Dock House Inn. Well, that’s interesting.”
“It is?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of them before. Didn’t know they were over here yet. Their motto used to be ‘The Hands and Eyes of the Law.’” McCaggers looked up from the sheet. “Private investigators. More muddy water ahead for the high constable, if these people open an office.”
“Really,” Matthew said, trying to sound unconcerned one way or the other.
“Grigsby missed the night’s news, didn’t he?” McCaggers handed the Earwig back to Matthew. “I presume you’ve heard?”
“I have.”
“Another nasty throat-cutting. The same blow to the head, the same shapes carved around the eyes. Oh.” McCaggers’ face had begun to blanch at the memory of what he’d seen in the cold room. He pressed one hand against his mouth as if to stem a rising tide. “Pardon,” he said after a moment. “I do let my weakness get away from me.”
This seemed the right time for Matthew to clear his throat and ask, “What weakness, sir?”
“Now you’re being obtuse!” McCaggers lowered his hand. “You know exactly what I mean. Everyone knows, don’t they?” He nodded. “They know, and they snigger about it behind my back. But what am I to do? I’m cursed, you see. Because I was born for this profession, yet I despise the…” He abruptly stopped. A faint glimmer of sweat had surfaced on his cheeks. He paused, waiting for his gullet to sink again. Then he forced a twisted smile upon his mouth and motioned up toward the skeletons. “You see my angels?”
“Angels, sir?”
“My unknown angels,” McCaggers corrected. He gazed up at them as if they were the most splendorous objects of art. “Two-the young man and woman-came with me from Bristol. The other two-the older man and little girl-were found here. My angels, Matthew. Do you know why?”
“No,” Matthew said. And he wasn’t sure he wished to know, either.
“Because they represent everything that to me is fascinating about life and death,” the coroner went on, still staring up at his possessions. “They are perfect. Oh, not to say they don’t have bad teeth, or a cracked knuckle or an old knee injury, but just those minor things. The two from Bristol hung in my father’s office. He was a coroner, too, as was my grandfather. I remember my father showing them to me in an afternoon’s twilight, and saying, ‘Ashton, look here and look deep, for all of life’s joy, tragedy, and mystery are here on display.’ Joy, he said, because they were children of purpose, as are we all. Tragedy, he said, because we all must come to this. And mystery…because where does the light go, from those houses, to leave only the foundations behind?”
Matthew saw a shine in McCaggers’ eyes that some might have mistaken for madness, yet he had seen it in his own eyes in a mirror in Fount Royal when presented with a problem that seemingly had no solution.
“None of them,” McCaggers said, “should have died. I mean, yes of course, eventually they would have passed, but I recall my father saying about those first two that they were simply found dead and no one could
