Conjurer (35 page)

Then she dons a hooded pelisse that conceals her identity. For a brief second, she considers sending word to Thomas Kelman, informing him of her intentions, but then banishes the notion. This little jaunt may prove of no more importance than a drive around the park; there will be ample opportunity to apprise him later if she learns anything of substance.

She walks down the stairs, but as she does so she realizes that some residual effects of the laudanum remain, and that she's a good deal more light-headed than she wishes.

A House in the Northern Liberties

T
HE HOUSE AT WHICH MARTHA
knocks is a solid but unassuming place, one in a block of equally new domiciles at the northernmost stretches of the city: all of them brick, all triple-storied, all with four broad marble steps leading down to the cobbled street. None appears shoddily or hastily constructed, but each so mirrors its mate as to seem designed by a single man. Martha recognizes them as speculation properties, constructed for shopkeepers and other tradesmen with newfound wealth but inferior social position. What connection her father—or Owen Simms—has to the place she cannot surmise, but she raises her hand and boldly bangs the door knocker.

A club-footed man answers and gives her a goggle-eyed stare. “Yes?” he says, and all but bars her entrance as he swiftly looks past Martha into the empty street.

“May I come in?” she asks him.

“You have the wrong house” is the hasty reply, but Martha recognizes terror rather than truth in the tone. “You must go.”

She looks behind her, trying to detect what can be frightening the man.
Is someone watching this place?
she wonders.
Has this crippled man been cautioned about speaking with strangers? Or is it possible it's me he's been warned not to admit?
But the suddenness of her movement combined with the hot fur hood produces an unwelcome and powerful dizziness, and Martha feels herself about to faint. “Please … I must sit down …”

The man releases a sharp, angry sigh but opens the door a crack more, permitting Martha entry before immediately closing and locking it behind her and then sliding a second bolt in place.

“Who is it, Cousin Daniel?” Martha hears a girl's voice calling quietly. The response is an urgent but also hushed:

“A woman. A sick woman, I'm thinking. And you, Ella, you keep yourself to the pantry and kitchen. I told you to stay in the rear of the house, or you'll be ruining everything I've planned. Besides, you know the master's rules. You appear only when he orders it.”

Ella has already walked into the foyer. “But he's not yet arrived, cousin,” she says with some bravado, and Martha, despite her weakened state, suddenly recognizes the voice.

“You're the girl from the Shambles,” she says.

“Oh!” is the startled reply. Ella jumps away as though she's spotted a ghost while Martha raises her bleary head and studies Ella's dress—or lack of one.

“You must be freezing, child.” Martha fumbles at her cloak, untying it and draping it around Ella's shoulders without giving her or Daniel time to protest. “Who on earth put you in such a flimsy garment?” Martha gives Daniel an accusing stare, but before she can speak again, there's the sound of a key twisting in the lock.

“Oh, Lord!” Daniel hisses. “It's him! Go back to the kitchen as I told you, Ella. And take this infernal woman and put her out into the rear alley. We can't have him finding her—”

“But I only came to ask if you knew a man named—” Martha starts to argue, but Daniel interrupts with a ferocious:

“Go, or you'll ruin everything. Go! Go!” Then he spins on his misshapen foot, calling out a loud and placating “I'm coming, sir. That new lock is a tricky one, it is … I had to put the additional bolt on, sir, so nervous was I that the door wouldn't close aright …”

While Daniel seeks to soothe their approaching master, Ella yanks on Martha's hand. “Come, miss, please come. He won't like it if he finds you here.”

The raw fear in the little girl's tone begins infecting Martha also. “Who, child?” she asks in her own whisper.

Ella replies with a fervent “Come, miss, do come. You can leave the house by the alley route as Daniel said. There'll be no harm done then.” As she speaks, Ella ushers Martha through a tall doorway leading to the back of the house, then hurries across the dirt floor of the kitchen to the tradesman's entrance. But when she opens it, a neighbor's hound begins a loud and snarling baying, causing Ella to slam the door shut again. “Oh, that cur and its infernal noise. The master will hear it, sure, and wonder why I'm down here and not upstairs where I belong.”

“But I'm only looking for—” Martha begins in a more reasonable tone.

“Miss! Hush, please … We can't have him hearing you.” Then she suddenly adds, “The butler's pantry … We'll put you there for the time being. You won't be in Daniel's way then.”

“I have no reason to avoid your master, though—” Martha protests, but Ella will hear nothing of this argument, and her frightened state lends her such physical strength that she succeeds in forcing Martha out of the kitchen and into the pantry. “Now, you stay there in the corner where it's dark, and don't say anything. Daniel intends to set us free. And no fine lady with oranges is going to spoil it.”

“But I'm looking for—”

“Hush, miss! You don't know what you're risking. Mr. Robey is not a kind gentleman when angered.”

At the name, Martha falls silent.
Robey
, she thinks,
isn't that the person Thomas is seeking? The man who murdered his sister? It is; I'm sure of it … and I'm here with him, with only a frightened girl and a cripple to attest to my presence. Oh, what a fool you are, Martha Beale …

Ella raises a warning finger to her lips, then turns and scurries away; and Martha presses herself against the wall. She can easily see the entry into the dining salon but only a small portion of the room itself: shiny, new crimson wallpaper in arabesque designs, stiff crimson draperies still redolent of sulfuric ether, and two plump chairs upholstered in crimson damask. She recognizes the color scheme as being solely masculine, which means the dangerous Mr. Robey must be an unmarried man. But that's as far as her conjecture takes her, because Daniel hurtles crookedly through the entryway at that moment, muttering about “Mr. Robey's unexpected guest” under his breath. When he spots the hiding Martha, he almost groans aloud. Instead, he fixes her with such a malevolent glare that she reflexively closes her eyes. “Ruin this,” a whispered snarl informs her, “and I'll do you the same as him.”

Then she hears him hobble through the pantry and into the kitchen, murmuring, “Two we have for luncheon, Ella. Not one as I'd planned … He'll make it difficult for me, will he? Well, we'll see about that—”

“But there are sufficient meats and other fine things, aren't there, cousin?” The girl's anxious voice replies.

“It's not the food I'm fretting over, child—”

“Then what, Daniel?”

“Be quiet, girl, and let me think. And you, you remain here near the alley door as we discussed. No matter what sounds you hear coming from the other rooms—”

“Yes, cousin … But what about the lady? I couldn't get her out into—”

“Swear to me, Ella.”

“I swear it, Cousin Daniel … but—?”

“No more, Ella! No more. The lady must attend to herself, and I must be about my work, or Mr. Robey will grow suspicious. And then everything will come to naught … And now there's the door knocker clacking! It will be our master's guest clamoring to get in. Hide yourself under this table, Ella, while I go attend to the damned gentleman.”

That's all Martha hears, because at that moment her faintness returns. Her flesh turns cold and clammy; her lips grow dry, and her stomach spins over. She pinches her wrists and cheeks in hopes of reviving herself, but to no avail, for the next thing she knows her eyesight dims to black; and she slides down the wall to curl into a limp bundle at its base.

While Martha's brain drifts in an unconscious state, Daniel's roars through the present. He unlatches the door for his master's visitor, takes the man's tall hat, cloak, and cane, then makes a hasty retreat back to the building's rear, his thoughts spinning around like dead leaves caught in a storm.

Oh, how he curses the gold coins he accepted for this miserable bargain. How he loathes himself for keeping Robey as a client … and fleeing Cherry Hill; and being imprisoned there in the first place … and failing to assist his wife in her awful need; and then losing her and his little daughter … and now Ella, who put her trust in him, and whom he must save! No matter what, he must rescue her from the fate their master intends. Grief and censure burn through Daniel's throat and gut till his innards feel as if they're made of living coals, and the coals spark into fire.

“Very tidy for you how these matters have evolved, isn't it?” Daniel's master is saying as he escorts his guest through the sliding double doors of the drawing room and into the dining salon. Like the furnishings in the front room and throughout the remainder of the house, all is waxy and spanking fresh; the carpets shine as if just cleaned with spirits of turpentine; and each polished wood surface is so glossy it hardly seems dry. “You put up the requisite fifty thousand dollars for the gas business your former master and I proposed for this area—a sum, as I once mentioned, that seems overlarge for a confidential secretary to possess … But then, I suppose such monies are not too great a sum for a man who's poised to marry one of the richest women in the nation …” The speaker pauses. “Ah, but please do take a seat. I cannot promise a lavish feast, but I'm sure as Lemuel Beale's successor you will enjoy many sumptuous repasts in the future … Now, let me wish you joy in your wedded state. Matrimony is a fine and holy thing; as you know, I am sadly experiencing my own loss today …”

It's at the utterance of these four final words that the unseen Martha begins to recover.
Surely that's Mr. Rosegger speaking
, she tells herself.
But why is he here in this man Robey's house? Especially now that his wife
—
?
But her queries are interrupted by a voice she knows far better than Rosegger's.

“I trust you're not suggesting that I was involved in Lemuel Beale's death, sir?”

With a quick intake of breath, Martha comes fully to her senses.
Owen Simms … But what can he be doing here as well?
She pulls herself into a sitting position and strains forward to catch the words curling in from the dining room doorway.

“I'm merely remarking upon the timely—or untimely—coincidence, Mr. Simms … as well as the
coincidence
of a hermit being found in possession of your master's percussion rifle.”

“What are you suggesting, sir?”

“Oh, I think you know” is the level reply.

“No, I do not, Rosegger.”

“No? Then let us posit that this hermit shot Lemuel Beale in order to obtain his rifle … Wouldn't a body have been found, sir? The woods and shoreline were searched intensively—and by a good many men, from what I understand. So what I propose to you, Simms, is that your master did fall into the river—although not by accident—and that whoever pushed him in weighted the body so that it could not be found—”

Martha gasps, then clamps a hand over her mouth while her face turns toward the blank wall as if her vision could bore through it.
What am I hearing?
her brain demands.

“Which means,” Rosegger continues in the same lordly tone, “that Lemuel Beale was either shot to death first or dispatched in some other fashion—”

“By me, you imagine?” Simms finally demands.

“Yes, by you, sir. You killed your master and disposed of the body—which is why you remain under scrutiny by our able constabulary. And why I now begin to perceive you as a less than ideal business partner.”

Oh!
Martha thinks,
oh, what Hell have I stumbled into? Simms and Rosegger in league? How can this have happened without my knowledge?
But even as she poses these silent questions, the answer appears:
What, Martha, did you ever understand of men's affairs?

“If it's Kelman that's troubling you, Rosegger, you needn't worry. I've made arrangements for him. And as to our partnership—”

“Another errant hermit with a stolen rifle?” Rosegger interjects with a cutting laugh.

Martha gasps again, but what Simms's “arrangements” for Thomas Kelman might be or how he intends to defend the accusations against him or curry favor with his would-be “partner,” she is not to learn, because Daniel hurries through the pantry at that moment with a large tray of foodstuffs in his hands. “My apologies, Mr. Robey, sir … With an extra mouth to feed, I fear it's taken me longer than I'd like.”

“We haven't all day, tailor,” Rosegger replies testily, and Martha realizes,
Robey … Rosegger is Mr. Robey … and Owen Simms and he … and Father and Simms … and now Thomas …

She listens for further revelations as Daniel limps from place to place distributing plates of butter, rashers of bacon, ham preserved in fat, and a forcemeat pie hot from the oven. But the platters so jounce and clatter upon the table that whatever words pass between the diners are drowned by the sound of cutlery and china until she hears Rosegger demand an angry:

“Is that all there is, man? We are two gentlemen with healthy appetites, not one. And from the accounts I settle on this house, I know that it's a well-stocked place.”

“Yes, sir,” Daniel mumbles in reply. “It is, sir. I have grilled sweetbreads still preparing, and grilled kidneys and sausages. They're roasting in the oven coals yet. I thought, you being two at table, you would require additional—”