“But who’ll be in charge between now and then?”
“We have capable managers. My mother says. She says everything will be taken care of. The business will go on, I’ll return to school in August, and Thomas will take over. But you know, I was being groomed for it. Supposedly. Groomed with my business education. But my father said…” Here Robert hesitated, a muscle clenching in his jaw. “My father said…for all my education, something was left out of me. Isn’t that humorous?” He smiled, but on that strained and bitter face it was more tragedy than comedy. “With all the grades I’ve been getting, all that studying in a cubbyhole night after night to make him…make them both…proud…that he should say something was left out of me? Oh yes, he had proper words for me. When I dealt with the man who shortchanged our beef order, last month. I had not made him afraid enough, my father said. I had not plunged the dagger in and twisted it, to make that man fear the Deverick name. That’s what it’s about, you know: power and fear. We step on the heads of those below us, they step on the lower heads, and down and down until the snails are crushed in their shells. That’s what it will always be about.”
“Your father didn’t think you were hard enough with a swindler? Is that it?”
“My father always said business is war. A businessman should be a warrior, he said, and if someone dares to challenge you then…destruction has to be the only response.” Robert blinked heavily. “I suppose school can’t put that into a person’s soul, if it’s not there. All the grades in the world…all the honors…nothing can put that there, if you’re not born with it.”
“You’re describing a man who must have made a lot of enemies over the course of his career.”
“He had them. But mostly they were competitors in London. As I’ve told you before, here he had no competitors.” There came the noise of horse hooves on the street. Matthew saw through the front window a black carriage pulling up to the curb. “My mother’s returned,” Robert said, listlessly.
With almost frightening speed the gruesome Gretl was out the front door and striding toward Mrs. Deverick’s carriage to, Matthew presumed, fry his bacon. Matthew considered his options. He could either try to get out like a scalded dog or face the situation like a gentleman. In another moment, however, the scalded-dog option was out the window because just as Matthew had risen to his feet and was walking out of the parlor, Mrs. Deverick entered the vestibule with Joplin Pollard following behind and Gretl in the rear almost slobbering with evil anticipation of a fiery scene.
“I tolt him!” Gretl was hissing, even though there were no esses to be hissed. “Thet rud boy!”
“And here he stands,” Pollard said, with a dry smile that did not involve the eyes. “Hello, Mr. Corbett. Just leaving, I presume?”
“Just leaving, Mr. Pollard.”
But before Matthew could get out the door there was a formidable presence in a black funeral gown and hat with a black-lace veil over the face that had to be passed, and this was going to be no easy voyage. Mrs. Deverick set herself between him and the outside world, and one of her black-gloved hands rose up in front of his face with a lifted index finger that had the power, like the wand of a witch, to stop him in his tracks.
“One moment,” Esther Deverick said quietly, her voice as frosty as a January eve. “What are you doing here, on our day of sorrow?”
Matthew dug deep but couldn’t find anything to say. He saw Gretl grinning beyond Joplin Pollard.
“Mother?” Robert stepped forward. “Mr. Corbett was kind enough to bring us the new broadsheet.” He lifted his right hand, and in it was the Earwig.
“I have one already.” Mrs. Deverick lifted her black-gloved left hand, and in it was the Earwig. “Would someone care to tell me who this young man is?”
“Matthew Corbett is his name,” Pollard spoke up. “A clerk for Magistrate Powers.”
“A clark!” Gretl nearly cackled.
“He’s the young man featured in the article,” said Pollard. “You said you wished to meet him, not an hour ago. Here he is, at your command.”
“Yes, isn’t that so very convenient.” The woman lifted her veil. Her narrow dark brown eyes under thin- penciled brows and her white, high-cheekboned face made Matthew think of an insect, one of those preying things that ate their mates. Her hair, a fixed mass of elaborate curls, was so black it had to be either a wig or poured from a bottle of India ink. She was thin and small, actually, with a fashionably cinched waist for a woman her age, which Matthew guessed at between fifty and fifty-five, about three or four years her deceased husband’s junior. It was as much the voluminous folds of the gown as her queenly bearing that made her seem to fill up the vestibule with no possible escape for Matthew until she deigned to free him. Which she did not. “I asked you what business you have here. Close that door, Mr. Pollard.”
Thunk, it went.
“Speak,” said Mrs. Deverick.
Matthew had to first clear his throat. He was painfully aware of all the eyes watching him. “Pardon my intrusion, madam. I…well, I was going to say I was passing by, but that would be an untruth. I came here for the purpose of interviewing your son concerning Mr. Deverick’s murder.”
“Now is probably not the time, Corbett,” Pollard cautioned.
“Did I require you to intercede for me, sir?” The narrow dark eyes flicked at Pollard like a whipstrike and then returned to Matthew. “On whose authority do you conduct this so-called interview? The printmaster? The high constable? Talk, if you have a tongue!”
Matthew felt a bit weak-kneed under this barrage, but he steeled himself and said, “My own authority, madam. I want to know who killed Dr. Godwin, your husband, and Eben Ausley, and I intend to pursue the matter to the best of my ability.”
“I forgot to tell you,” Pollard offered, “that Mr. Corbett has the unfortunate reputation of being what might be called in impolite circles a ‘sammy rooster.’ His crowing and bluster seem to exceed his good taste.”
“I consider myself a competent judge of taste, good or bad,” came the rather stinging reply. “Mr. Corbett, how is it that you think yourself suited to pursue this subject when the town has a high constable employed to do so? Isn’t that a presumption on your part?”
“I imagine it is. I’m presuming from prior experience and observation that Mr. Lillehorne couldn’t pursue his path from his bed to his bedpan.”
Pollard rolled his eyes, but the lady of the house showed no response.
“I think there was a common bond among the three victims,” Matthew went on, before he lost his momentum. “I think the Masker is not an errant lunatic, but a cunning and very sane killer-if one may call murder an act of sanity-determined to make some kind of statement. If I can deduce that statement, I believe I can unmask the Masker, as it were. Others may yet die before that happens, I don’t know. I assume the Clear Streets Decree is going through?”
Still Mrs. Deverick didn’t speak. At last Pollard said, “Tonight the taverns will close at eight o’clock. The decree begins at half past eight. We’re going to fight it with a petition, of course, and we fully expect to have this unfounded burden lifted after-”
“Save your red rag for the court.” Mrs. Deverick continued to stare forcefully into Matthew’s eyes. “Why have I never heard of you?”
“We turn in different circles,” Matthew said, with a slight bow of respect.
“And what’s in this for you? Money? Fame? Oh.” Now a light seemed to appear in those eyes and a fleeting smile crossed the thin pursed lips. “You want to show Lillehorne up, don’t you?”
“I have no need to show anyone up. I strive for the solution of the matter, that’s all.” But even as he said this, he realized he’d been stuck with a small sharp knife of truth. Maybe he did want to “show Lillehorne up,” as she so acidly put it; or, more to the point, he wanted to demonstrate to the town that Lillehorne was ineffectual, buffle-headed, and probably corrupt as well.
“I don’t believe you,” Mrs. Deverick replied, and let it hang. Then she cocked her head to one side as if inspecting an interesting new growth that had sprouted in her garden. She was trying to decide if it was a flowering plant or a noxious weed. When Pollard made a noise to speak, Mrs. Deverick lifted that single commanding finger again and he instantly shut his mumbler.
To Matthew Mrs. Deverick said in a low, calm voice, “There are three things that greatly displease me. The first being an uninvited visitor. The second being the theory that my husband was in any way associated with the two deplorable men whose names you have spoken. The third being a certain imposter to civility on this street named Maude Lillehorne.” She paused and, for the first time it seemed to Matthew, blinked. “I will choose to
