“In Grigsby’s dairyhouse.” From the corner of his eye he saw Mrs. Deverick put a black-gloved hand to her mouth. “For the time being. A month, maybe.”
“A dairyhouse.” A quick smile flickered around the edges of Pollard’s mouth. “I assume you’ll have all the milk you can drink?”
“It used to be a dairyhouse. Now it’s-” He decided to stop playing at civilities. “There was business you wished to discuss?” He turned his gaze upon the woman. “Privately?”
“Oh, yes.” Pollard reached into his coat and brought out an envelope. “Your questions to Mrs. Deverick. She wishes to respond to them, in my presence.”
Matthew kept his focus on the widow. “Madam, do you need a lawyer to answer some simple questions?”
“I think it’s best,” Pollard offered. “After all, protecting my client is what I’m paid to do.”
“In this instance, protection against what? Me?”
“Mr. Corbett, we’re all striving for clarity in this situation, are we not? I would be present if Mrs. Deverick were to answer questions like these before High Constable Lillehorne, or any magistrate. Surely I ought to be present if a clerk-no matter how intriguing or intelligent he appears to my client-asks them. And forgive me, Mrs. Deverick, but I have to repeat my objections that this entire arrangement is farcical. What can this fellow learn that trained professionals can’t-”
“Objection noted,” said Mrs. Deverick. “Now shut your wine keg and sit back. You’ll earn your fee with silence as well as with prattling.” She took the envelope from his hand as he settled back with a soft hissing noise, his brown eyes glinting with both defeat and disdain. “I decided not to put anything in writing,” she told Matthew as she pulled the letter free. “On the advice of my lawyer. Particularly concerning my thoughts on…” She paused for a few seconds, as if willing herself to speak the following names. “Dr. Julius Godwin and Mr. Eben Ausley.”
“Very well,” Matthew said. “Nothing in writing, then.”
“I’ll answer your questions in the order they were asked. First, having to do with any discussion Mr. Deverick might have had with me concerning business matters: the answer to that is none. As I have previously stated to you, Pennford kept his business affairs strictly to himself. I was required to run the household, raise the sons, and comport myself as a wife ought to. I never asked about business. It was not my realm. Next question: having to do with any recent trips Pennford made, either for business or pleasure.”
Matthew was listening, though he had the suspicion this was not going to get him anywhere. The horses clopped on, and Matthew began to think of how good a hot bath was going to feel.
“As recent, I assume you mean within the last six months,” Mrs. Deverick continued. “The answer to that, also, is none. Pennford did not care to travel, as he had digestive problems.”
“No need for that detail, madam,” Pollard spoke up.
She gave him a withering glare. “Again, charging per word, I presume?”
“What about less recent?” Matthew asked. “Say, a year or so?”
“Adding to the questions now, are we?” was Pollard’s rebuke.
“Within a year or so, the answer is the same,” said the widow. “None.”
Matthew nodded and rubbed his scratchy chin.
Mrs. Deverick put the letter in her lap and smoothed it out. “The third question, and most odious, concerns my displeasure over your mention of those two men in connection with my late husband. I shall state emphatically and under the eye of the Lord that Pennford had no dealings with either Dr. Godwin or Eben Ausley. They weren’t worth the scrapings off Pennford’s boots.” She turned to Pollard as he was about to protest this detail and put a finger in his face. “Shut.”
Matthew let Pollard settle back like a strawman in collapse before he ventured further. “It’s my understanding that Dr. Godwin had a sterling reputation, madam. Even though he was physician to Polly Blossom’s ladies. After all, some physician had to take that job.”
“Ah, but Julius Godwin enjoyed it too much. He practically lived there the last few years. Became a sobbing drunk and nearly a lunatic, spending all his time with what you charitably and foolishly call ladies. Those are demons in disguise, and before I draw my last breath I pray to see Polly Blossom thrown onto a ship like a pile of rags and deported from these colonies.”
“We are keeping our emotions about us,” Pollard advised.
She ignored him. “I cannot stand a weak man, sir,” she said to Matthew, her face nearly contorted with disgust. “Weak men go through those doors. You ask me why I detested Julius Godwin, well there it is. And plenty of eligible-and fashionable-widows available to him, but he preferred to go to the whores. Pennford told me Godwin was sick, and that’s why he drank so much and spent his…his energies with those filthy creatures.”
“Sick?” Matthew was no longer thinking about the bath; his mind was questing. “You mean mentally ill?”
“I mean he could have been married long ago, but he threw himself away. And I recall when Dr. Godwin first came here, he was a fine upstanding physician. A clean man. Had come from London, to start anew. He was all right, until his weakness killed him.”
“I think it was the Masker who killed him,” Matthew said.
“The Masker finished the job Godwin’s weakness began,” came the reply. “I don’t know, maybe the Masker is some maniac who was incensed over where Godwin put his dirty instruments.”
Matthew let that one go. Pollard was just looking blankly out at the ships as the carriage progressed toward the Great Dock. Matthew wondered if Pollard might be thinking what Mrs. Deverick would say if she knew that one of her own lawyers was as much a whore-monger as Godwin had been. It seemed that the upper class had all the money, but the lower class-like the widow Sherwyn-had all the knowledge. But of course, according to Grigsby, there were plenty of Polly Blossom’s customers living on Golden Hill.
Matthew leaned forward. “You said Dr. Godwin came from London to start anew. When was that?”
“I suppose it was…at least fifteen years ago. Probably nearer twenty.”
“And start anew from what?”
“I don’t know for certain. It was a phrase Pennford used. But it was well-known that Godwin’s wife died of fever, when they were both very young. He told it around town. Possibly that had something to do with the drunken wreckage he became, but I had no sympathy for him.”
A silence stretched, as Matthew pondered this last statement.
Pollard came out of his trance. “Where do you want us to drop you, Corbett?”
“Eben Ausley,” Matthew said to the woman. “What about him?”
Mrs. Deverick gave an unladylike snort of derision. “You being an orphan, as Mr. Pollard informs me, I’m surprised you don’t know what was whispered about him. That he was a…well, I hardly can mention the word. That he took liberties with his charges. Hadn’t you heard? Pennford despised him, too, and said that if any orphan ever came forward to testify about such indignities he personally would have that monstrous heathen hanged in front of City Hall.”
“Really,” Matthew said, as the world seemed to spin around in one dizzying revolution.
“Absolutely. It could never be proven, though. Evidently the rumor went that Ausley was reeking drunk at a tavern and made some mention of…that practice to one of the whores. She told someone else, and…but, as I said, it was never proven. Still, that man made my flesh crawl. I didn’t like him, just on principle.”
“But who can trust a whore?” asked Pollard, with a shrug.
“You were Ausley’s lawyer. How is it you could represent Pennford Deverick and also Ausley?”
“Where’s the problem? My firm inherited both accounts from Charles Land. I handled Ausley’s legal and financial affairs, not his morals. And if you’re wishing to stir up muddy water between Mrs. Deverick and me, you’ll be disappointed to know that she understands-as did her husband-that a lawyer is a tool for a purpose. It was not my place to pass judgment on anyone.”
“Though now that Pennford is gone, there might have been a change of legal firms if Ausley had remained alive,” Mrs. Deverick said. “Tool or not.”
“Another question for you.” Matthew kept his gaze on Pollard. “Since you handled Ausley’s financial affairs, how is it he could afford to lose so much money at the gaming tables?”
Pollard’s reddish-brown eyebrows lifted. “How is it you know how much money he lost? If indeed he lost any?”
“I saw him lose money on many occasions.”
“Did you? What were you doing? Following him?”
