That she sat in her chair, a sad yet regal presence, at the center of this unknown geometry between Pennford Deverick and his killer.
Two facts made his brain burn.
Whoever had put her here cared for her-loved her?-deeply, and wished her to be watched over in some semblance of the previous wealthy life she must have enjoyed, yet this same person had gone to the length of chiseling away the maker’s marks from the furniture to prevent her identity being traced.
Why?
Did she really recognize the Deverick name, from somewhere in the locked room her mind occupied? If so, again, why had that name caused her to shed silent tears?
Deverick to Masker and Masker to Deverick. But was the proper geometry really Queen of Bedlam to Masker to Dr. Godwin to Pennford Deverick to Eben Ausley?
“May I ask what you’re thinking?” It was Ramsendell’s voice.
“I’m thinking that I may be looking at a pentagon,” Matthew replied.
“What?” asked Hulzen, as a thread of smoke leaked over his chin.
Matthew didn’t answer, for he was still calculating. Not distances of meaning this time, but whether or not he thought there was any possibility of success at solving this particular problem. Where to begin? How to begin?
“So.” Greathouse made the word sound like a note of portent. “Does she think herself to be Queen Mary? Waiting for a message from King William?” He scratched his chin, which was in need of a shave. “Doesn’t anyone have the heart to tell her that William is deceased?”
Matthew had come to a conclusion. “I think we will accept this problem, sirs.”
“Wait just one moment!” Greathouse flared up, before the doctors could respond. “I haven’t agreed to that!”
“Well?” Matthew turned a cool gaze toward him. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because…because we ought to talk about it first, that’s why!”
“Gentlemen, if you wish to return with your answer in the morning, we’d be most grateful,” said Ramsendell. “You can find rooms at the Constant Friend, but I have to say that the food is better at Mrs. DePaul’s eating- house.”
“Just so I can get a very large and very strong drink,” Greathouse muttered. Then, more loudly and directed to Ramsendell: “Our fee would be three crowns and expenses. One crown to be paid upon agreement.”
Ramsendell looked for advice to Hulzen, who shrugged. “Expensive,” Ramsendell replied, “but I believe we can manage that if your expenses are reasonable.”
“They may or may not be. It all depends.” Greathouse, Matthew knew, was trying to break the deal before it was sealed. The rogue of swords was definitely unnerved by the shadow of madness; it was, after all, not something he could fight with fists, pistol, or rapier.
Ramsendell nodded. “We’ll trust your judgment. After all, you’re the professionals.”
“Yes.” Greathouse might have puffed his chest up a bit, but it was clear to Matthew that the matter of the fee had been settled. “Yes, we are.”
Before they departed from the room, Matthew paused to again take in the rich appointments, the elegant furniture and paintings. Where was the woman’s husband? he wondered. There was a lot of money on display here. What occupation had earned it?
He looked once more at the group of Italian masks, and then at the woman’s immobile profile. She wore her own mask, he thought. Behind it might be a mindless blank, or a tortured memory.
Young man, has the king’s reply yet arrived?
“Good evening to you,” Matthew said to the silent Queen of Bedlam, and followed the others out the door.
Twenty-Seven
“My opinion,” said Hudson Greathouse as he broke a silence that had stretched over half-an-hour, “is that it can’t be done, no matter if you think the contrary. After all, I’ve had a little more experience in this profession than you.”
Matthew let the comment sit. They were on the Philadelphia Pike, riding for New York. It was just after ten o’clock by Matthew’s watch. The sun was peeking out from behind gray clouds and glinting off wet trees and puddles on the road. They had left Westerwicke this morning after a breakfast meeting with the two doctors at Mrs. DePaul’s eating-house. During the night, while a thunderstorm blew and rain slammed against the shutters of the Constant Friend, Matthew and Greathouse had wrangled over the odds of finding a satisfactory solution to the Queen’s identity. Greathouse had said Mrs. Herrald would have considered this problem a lost cause, while Matthew had maintained that no cause was lost until it was abandoned. At last, realizing that Matthew was not going to retreat from his position, Greathouse had shrugged his shoulders, said, “It’s on your account then, as far as I’m concerned,” and had taken a bottle of rum upstairs to his room. Matthew had listened to the storm wail for a while, drank a last cup of ginger tea, and gone to his own bed to mull the connections of that peculiar pentagon until sleep had rescued him from his own mind past midnight.
“Where are you to begin with this?” Greathouse asked, riding alongside Matthew. “Do you even have any idea?”
“I do.”
“My ears are open.”
“Philadelphia,” Matthew said. He guided Dante around a puddle that looked like a swamp ready to swallow the horse to its bit. “To be specific, the office of Icabod Primm.”
“Oh, really?” Now Greathouse gave a harsh laugh. “Well, that will please our clients, won’t it? Didn’t you hear them say Primm’s not supposed to know anything about this?”
“My ears are also open, but I don’t believe Mr. Primm is…” He paused, searching for the term.
“On the level?” Greathouse supplied.
“Exactly. If Primm’s client cares so much about the lady’s welfare, he-or she-is not going to take her out of there, no matter what Primm threatens. Where else would the lady go, to be treated so royally? Primm’s client wants two things: the lady hidden out of the way, and also protected.”
“I don’t think those doctors will approve of it.”
“They don’t have to know, do they?”
Greathouse was quiet for a while. Sunlight was beginning to stream through the woods and the humid air was getting warmer. “This whole thing stinks, if you ask me,” Greathouse started up again. “Those lunatics walking around without chains on their ankles. All that hogshit about mental disorders and dream states and such. You know what my father would’ve used on me if I’d gone into a damned dream state? A bullwhip to wake me up with, that’s what! Seems to me that’s what some of those people need, not coddling like they’re tender violets.”
“I assume, then,” said Matthew dryly, “that you would give Jacob the bullwhip treatment?”
“You know what I mean! Hell, call a loon a loon and be done with it!”
“I’m sure there are many so-called doctors in the asylums of England who would agree with you. Then again, they would have no need for our services.” Matthew glanced quickly at Greathouse to gauge his expression-which was dour-and then looked toward the road again. “Don’t you think it’s admirable that Ramsendell and Hulzen want to help their patients?”
“I think it’s foolish and we were wrong to come here. People with mind disease can’t be helped.”
“Oh, I see. Mind disease, is it?”
“Yes, and don’t be cocky about it, either. I had an uncle on my mother’s side who got the mind disease. At fifty years of age he liked to sit around and whittle on little wooden horses. Sat me down once and went on about how he saw gnomes in his garden. And him an ex-military man, a cavalry captain! You know, you remind me of him, in a way.”
“What way?”
“He was always playing chess. By himself. He set up his games and played both sides, talking to himself all the while.”
“Imagine that,” Matthew said, and gave Greathouse a sidelong glance.
