Part 42 (1/2)
Matthew stood on the street outside Primm's office, wondering where to go next. He counted himself lucky that on the way out he hadn't been kicked in the bottom by that self-superior clerk.
One interesting thing, Matthew thought, is that when he'd reached down to retrieve the Earwig Primm had snapped it off the desk amid the pieces of Berry's drawing and with beady rattlesnake eyes had dared Matthew to try for it. That told him something, at least. Primm obviously didn't want it shown to anyone else.
The question remained: where to go next?
The sun was warm now. The mist had burned away. Two young damsels with parasols paraded past and they gave Matthew a glance but he was in no mood for flirtations. A slight breeze ruffled the shade trees along Market Street. He paused, looking to left and right. Across Third Street and north about a halfblock was a sign reading The Good Pye with a depiction of a piece of pie and an ale tankard. He decided that might be the place to begin, and started walking in that direction. At least he might get himself a drink to settle his nerves. As he waited for a carriage to go past before he crossed the street, he caught a movement of white from the corner of his eye.
Icabod Primm had just emerged from his office and was walking quickly and bow-leggedly south along Third Street. Matthew watched the small-framed man hurry away. Primm's right hand clutched the broadsheet in a death-grip.
Ah ha, Matthew thought. I have smoked the powdered rattler from his hole.
He gave Primm a few more strides, and then he began to follow at a careful distance.
In another moment Primm had turned left at the corner of Chestnut Street, heading away from the river. Matthew stood on the corner, watching the white wig bob along among the other citizens who travelled the sidewalk. He again followed, realizing that Primm was too fixed on where he was going to bother casting a backward glance. Then, half another block ahead, the lawyer abruptly turned into a doorway under a sign that announced The Lamplighter.
It was just an ordinary tavern, Matthew thought as he stood at the door. Several hitching-posts at the curb. A window made of the round bottoms of gla.s.s bottles, some clear and some green. He opened the door without undue haste and entered, his eyes having to adjust from the bright sunlight to the dim greenish interior where lanterns burned from hooks on the ceiling beams.
Nothing special, really. A long bar where several well-dressed gentlemen congregated over ale tankards and eight tables each set with the stub of a candle. Only three of the tables were occupied, as it was a bit early for lunch. It was no problem to spy Icabod Primm, sitting at the back of the room bent over the Earwig by candlelight.
Matthew approached, but at an oblique angle. Primm didn't know he was coming until he was there. Then the lawyer's black eyes spat fire, his toy mouth chewed the air, and what came out was ”You again!”
”Guilty,” Matthew said.
”Of following me. Yes, I got that part.”
”You were going in my direction.”
”Please continue then, all the way to New York.”
A burly, black-bearded man with a lion's mane of ebony hair came up beside Matthew carrying a brown bottle and a small gla.s.s. As the man filled the gla.s.s to the brim, Matthew caught the nostril-p.r.i.c.kling aroma of stout apple brandy.
”Leave the bottle, Samson,” Primm said, and the man set it down and started back to the bar.
It occurred to Matthew that if Primm drank an entire bottle of what was usually a highly combustible mixture, not only would the lawyer's lamp be lit but his wig would burst into flame.
”Having a liquid lunch?” Matthew prodded. ”It is unsettling to realize your client's a murderer, isn't it?”
Primm took a deep and needful drink. His eyes watered and gleamed.
”I think she's his mother,” Matthew went on. It was a shaky guess, for why would the lady not have reacted to her son's name? ”He hid her away in Westerwicke, and then he plotted the deaths of three men. But my real question is: what happened to his father?”
”Samson!” Primm rasped after another swallow of fire had scorched his throat. The black-bearded behemoth returned to the table, his strides making the planks squeal. ”This young man is annoying me. If he speaks one more word, I'd like you to throw him out on his New York b.u.m.”
”Yes, Mr. Primm,” Samson replied in a biblical ba.s.so while staring into Matthew's face from the distance of four inches. He also cracked the knuckles of one huge hand like the walls of Jericho.
Matthew decided that one more word was not worth the loss of many good teeth. He gave Primm a brief smile and bow, turned around, and got out before his own lamp was extinguished. Farther down the street he saw the sign of another tavern, this one t.i.tled The Harp and Hat. He approached its door, but before he went in he stopped to open his valise. He removed from it another rolled-up piece of paper, which was the second portrait of the Queen of Bedlam that Matthew had asked Berry to draw, just in case Primm's fingers didn't like the first one.
Matthew entered the tavern, carrying the lady's picture and in hopes that someone here might recognize it.
Soon he emerged with hopes dashed, for no one in the place had any idea who she might be. Just across Chestnut Street was the Squire's Inn, which Haverstraw had mentioned. Matthew went in there with the picture ready, and was accosted by a drunken wag who said the lady in question was his mother and he'd not seen her since he was knee-high to a gra.s.shopper. Since the man was over sixty, that was quite impossible. The tavern's owner, a friendly enough gent in his late twenties, said he thought the woman looked familiar but he couldn't put a name to her. Matthew thanked one and all for their trouble and continued on his way.
By the time he reached a third tavern, this one called The Old Bucket on Walnut Street, it was nearing lunch and a dozen persons were celebrating the noon hour. A young man with a brown mustache and goatee and wearing a russet-colored suit took the drawing and examined it pensively while he stood at the bar drinking a gla.s.s of port and eating a plate of sausages and fried potatoes. He called to a friend rather more rustic than himself to come look, and together they regarded the picture as other customers ringed around to see. ”I think I saw this woman on Front Street this morning,” the young man finally decided. ”Was she collecting coins while a girl was playing the tambourine?”
”No!” his friend scoffed, and pulled the paper away so fast Matthew feared it was going to be ripped asunder just as the first had been. ”You know who this is! It's the widow Blake! She was sittin' up in her window watchin' me when I went past her house today!”
”I know that's not the widow Blake!” said the heavy-set tavern-keeper as he put an empty pitcher under the spigot of the wine cask behind the bar and filled it. ”The widow Blake's got a fat face. That one's thin.”
”It is her, I say! Looks just like her!” The rustic with the rough manner had angled a suspicious gaze at Matthew. ”Hey, now. What is it you're doin', carryin' around a picture of the widow Blake?”
”Not her,” said the tavern-keeper.
”She's not in any trouble, is she?” came the question from the young man with the goatee. ”Does she owe money?”
”I'm sayin', it's not the widow Blake. Lemme see that.” The tavern-keeper nearly tore a corner off it when one of his big hands yanked it away. ”No, she's too thin to be her. Anybody else thinks this looks like the widow Blake?” He held the picture up for the a.s.sembly to judge. ”And if you do, you're already way too drunk!”
Matthew counted himself fortunate to get out of the place with the drawing intact and no one chasing him with a cudgel for being a bill collector. He'd told the group he was trying to locate a missing person, and was informed by the grinning rustic that everyone knew where the widow Blake lived, so why should she be missing?
Matthew took to stopping a few pa.s.sersby on the street to show them the picture, but none recognized the face. Farther on along Walnut Street, past an area where farmers had pulled their wagons up to offer fruit and vegetables for sale, he came to two taverns almost across the street from each other. The one on the right was the Crooked Horse Shoe and the one on the left the Seven Stars Inn. He didn't care for the luck of a crooked horse shoe, so he chose to cast his fate to the stars.
Again the lunchtime crowd-mostly a dozen or so men in business suits, but also a few well-dressed women-had come in for drinks and what Matthew saw to be a menu of baked chicken, some kind of meat pie, and vegetables probably fresh from the farm wagons. The place was clean, the light through the windows bright, and the conversations lively. On the wall behind the bar was a painted depiction of seven white stars. It was the same kind of welcoming tavern as the Trot, with its immediate feeling of belonging. Matthew made his way toward the bar, pausing to let a serving-girl with a tray of platters pa.s.s, and almost at once the tall gray-haired man who was pouring wine for a customer came down the bar to him. ”Help you, sir?”
”Yes, please. I know you're very busy, but would you look at this for me?” Matthew put the Queen's portrait down before the man.
”Why, may I ask, am I looking at this?”
”I've come from New York. I represent a legal agency there.” A white lie? It was all in the interpretation. ”Our client is trying to identify this woman. We think she at least has roots in Philadelphia. Would you tell me if you recognize the face?”
The man picked the portrait up. ”Just a moment,” he said, while he fished spectacles from a pocket. Then he angled the drawing into sunlight that reflected off the bar's polished oak.
Matthew saw the man frown, and his gray eyebrows draw together.
”From New York, you say?” the man asked.
”Yes, that's right. I arrived this morning.”
”You're a lawyer?”
”Not exactly a lawyer, no.”
”What, then? Exactly.”
”I'm...” What would be the right word? he wondered. Deducer? No, that wasn't it. Deductive? No, also wrong and hideous to boot. His role was to solve problems. Solvant? No. He might be considered, he thought, as a sifter of clues. A weigher of evidence. A detector of truth and lies.
That would do. ”I'm a detector,” he said.
The man's frown deepened. ”A what?”
Not good, Matthew thought. One should at least sound professional, if one was to be taken professionally.