Matthew Corbett 03 - Mister Slaughter

this?

'Professor Fell will take me back,' Slaughter said, in the room beyond. 'He's not going to let a talent like mine go to waste.'

Truly, Matthew nearly had to sit down. He put his eye to the crack, but still saw nothing of the two villains. He thought they were sitting just to the right of his position. He was aware that Noggin had ceased chopping; now there came a scraping noise, blade against bone.

Matthew's brain crackled as he took it all in: Tyranthus Slaughter had been an assassin working for Professor Fell in England. Settling the professor's accounts, which included murdering Fell's enemies who received the blood cards. Richard Herrald, Katherine's husband and founder of the Herrald Agency, had been on Fell's murder list, and had met a hideous fate in London about ten years ago.

Greathouse, Slaughter had said at Reverend Burton's cabin. I don't know that name, but I swear you're familiar.

Probably because Greathouse looked enough like his elder half-brother for Slaughter to have his memory jogged, though he couldn't connect one man to the other.

Slaughter had murdered Richard Herrald, on behalf of his employer Professor Fell. His very strict employer, who had the habit of having associates killed once they landed in gaol, to ensure the secrecy of his operations. Thus Slaughter had preferred a stay at the Westerwicke public hospital, and a pretense of being mad, rather than spending any time whatsoever in a gaol.

As Greathouse himself had said, No one makes Professor Fell angry and lives very long.

Not even, evidently, the professor's own assassins.

'You did that job a long time ago,' Mrs. Sutch countered. Matthew heard the clink of glass against glass; was she pouring from a bottle of wine? 'And that was before he found out you were working for yourself. Masquerading as a nobleman and killing those girls! Really, Ty! Without his permission, and without paying him a percentage! You knew you were dead if you stayed there, and you know you can't ever go back again.'

Slaughter didn't speak for a time. When his voice came, it was raspy and hesitant, as if some measure of strength had left him. 'Tell me, then,' he said, sounding small and even a little frightened, 'where is my place?'

'Not here. I want you gone. Tonight. If he knew I was still in touch with you, it'd be my throat cut.' Spoken like a true woman of business who looks at the balance sheet and sees liability. Matthew wondered if this was the female partner with whom Slaughter had jumped through hoops of fire as a circus acrobat in his youth. He could imagine it printed in festive letters on the broadsheet: Presenting the Daring Ty and Ly!

'You owe me.' Slaughter had regained his dignity; his voice was stone-cold. 'I gave you the idea for this. Told you how you might do it, and look how Mrs. Sutch's sausages are so well-loved, with that little bit of extra spice in 'em! People crave 'em, don't they? Damn right they do, just like I said they would!' There was a loud slap: the noise of his palm hitting the table. 'Don't you scowl at me, woman! I know where your bodies aren't buried!'

Matthew felt feverish. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

It is like pork, Slaughter had said. But sweeter. In the human meat can be tasted the essence of food and drink consumed by that body in happier times. There are some, I hear, who if left to their own devices would become enslaved to the taste of human, and want nothing else.

A popular dish at Sally Almond's, indeed. Sausages likely made most with pork, but with the extra spice of human meat saturated with hot peppers. Matthew recalled seeing them oily and glistening on Greathouse's breakfast platter. This would really slay him.

My God! Matthew thought. How he could use Quisenhunt's rotator pistol right now!

'Lyra,' Slaughter said softly. 'I don't mean to fight with you. After all we've been through together? All the times I've come to your aid?'

'We're paid up,' she answered. 'I bought that damned box for you, so you'd know one when you saw it. You were too stupid to quit while you were ahead.'

'I shall bare my back to your lash. You may whip me for my stupidity-for my ambition-a thousand times, if it pleases you. But this thing I'm asking this one thing would mean my salvation. I'm begging you, as I have never begged another human being and shall never again beg please give me someone to kill.'

'I can't.'

'You can. You have the power to bring me back into his grace, Lyra. Just one name, is all I'm asking. Someone he wants dead. It doesn't have to be a hard one. Or make it the most difficult on the list, I don't care. Please. Now look closely you'll never see Ty Slaughter grovel like this again, so mark the momentous occasion.'

Matthew heard her sigh.

'You're an insane fool,' she told him, but her hard edge had softened.

'True,' the killer replied, 'but I am forever and dependably your insane fool.'

Lyra Sutch muttered an oath that Matthew had never heard come from a woman's mouth, and indeed had thought it was beyond a woman to imagine such a mindboggling crudity.

There came the sound of a chair scraping back.

'Come downstairs,' she said.

Thirty

The door opened. The two killers descended the stairs, lady first.

In the darkness beneath them, Matthew was already on his knees on the dirt floor. He dared to peer out from his hiding-place, but not far enough that the lantern's light might catch him. Mrs. Sutch, wearing an austere gray gown and with a black netting over her leonine hair, went to the cupboard, drew a latch and opened the doors. Slaughter's boots clomped down the steps, the gentleman dressed in a black suit. Obviously he'd either found a tailor to do a quick job, as Matthew had, or more likely some victim had died for his clothes. It pleased Matthew no end that Slaughter's face was less ruddy and more the shade of Mrs. Sutch's gown, and that he held a mottled blue rag pressed to his scalp stitches.

'Now that's what I'm talking about!' Slaughter said, in admiration for what was contained within the cupboard.

Light glinted and gleamed off a variety of weapons held on hooks. Matthew saw three pistols, four knives of various lengths and shapes, two pairs of brass knuckles, one of which was studded with small blades, and two black cords used for the strangler's art. An empty space above the cords indicated that some implement of murder had recently been removed.

Tools of the trade, Matthew thought.

Mrs. Sutch reached deeper into the cupboard and slid out a shelf. On it was the fifth thief trap Quisenhunt had made. She opened it so quickly Matthew couldn't see if she'd turned the latches horizontally or vertically. She lifted the lid, as Slaughter plucked one of the knives from its hook and examined the blade with the air of an artist considering a new brush.

Papers crackled within the box. Mrs. Sutch brought out a small brown ledger book and opened it, positioning herself beneath the nearest lantern in order to better read what was written there. 'As of the last posting, there are two in Boston,' she said. 'One in Albany. That would be an easy job for you. A retired judge, fifty-eight years of age. Crippled in a riding accident last year. Received his card in London, March of 1697. Oh here. This one would please the professor.' She tapped the page. 'Are you up to a trip?'

'I can travel.'

'This would be to the Carolina colony. Twelve days or so, depending on how hard you want to ride. But he's not going anywhere. In the summer he left New York, where he was a magistrate.