They were two words that Matthew would never forget, for they meant that Berry saw nothing, and that he could not correct her vision.
She released her hold upon his coat. She drew herself tall; taller than he, it seemed. She said, “Goodnight, Matthew,” and she left him. He watched her walk with great dignity toward her grandfather’s house, where a lantern showed in a window. She entered the house without a backwards glance, and Matthew drew a long, deep breath of freezing air and continued on to his own abode, which had never felt smaller nor more common.
Eight
MATTHEW again stood in the cold. It seemed that everywhere now was cold to him. It was a chilly world these days, and not just by the weather. He was again in the alley opposite the house occupied by the false Mallorys. Three nights had passed since his encounter there with Berry. He’d not set eyes upon her since. All to the best, he thought. This business was indeed dangerous, for tonight he was determined to get inside there and find that letter, if indeed it still existed.
The house was dark. Not a candle showed. Matthew had been standing here as last night, about the same hour after midnight, but tonight there was a major difference. Nearly forty minutes ago, he’d seen a coach drawn by four horses pull up before the house. Lashed atop the coach had been a black-painted wooden box about five feet in length, three feet wide and the same deep. A sea chest, Matthew had thought it might be. The kind that might be found in a captain’s cabin. Two burly men serving the coach had struggled to get the chest down, and both the false Mallorys had emerged from the house to help them. In time the chest was lugged into the house, and the door closed. Lanterns had moved about inside. Then Matthew had waited to see what developed, his senses keen on the fact that whatever was going on, the false Mallorys wished no one to be witness.
On the gray morning after his brusque dismissal of Berry, Matthew had gone to work at Number Seven Stone Street with a mission in mind. He had climbed the steep and narrow stairs to the loft that housed the office of the two New York problem-solvers and also—if one believed such stories—the ghosts of two coffee merchants who had killed each other on this side of the darkened glass and now on the other side continued their eternal feud. If one believed such stories. And in truth Matthew had heard numerous bumps and thumps and the occasional echo of muffled curses floating through the air, but it was all in a day’s work at Number Seven. Besides, Matthew had gotten used to the spirits, if indeed they still lingered and fought here over the respective sizes of their coffee beans, and all one had to do to stop the noises was say, “Silence!” good and loud, and order was restored for a while.
On this morning Matthew had not been interested in any spirit but the live one of oversized build and sometimes bullying nature sitting behind his desk writing a letter to a certain Mr. Sedgeworth Prisskitt of Charles Town who—
“—is asking for a courier to escort his daughter Pandora to the annual Cicero Society Ball at the end of March,” Hudson explained. “She must be—shall we say—not so much in the area of looks, if her father has to pay for an escort.” He frowned. “I wonder what the Cicero Society is. Ever heard of it?”
“No, I haven’t.” Matthew busied himself hanging his fearnaught up on a hook.
“Want to take this one on? The money’s good.”
“No.”
“Not at all curious?”
Of course he was, but he was on a mission. “Not at all,” he lied.
“Liar!” Greathouse put his quill into its rest. “All right then, what’s on your mind?”
“Nothing in particular. Other than buildings being burned and my name being painted around.”
Greathouse grunted and grinned. “At least they got the spelling right! So pull your face off the floor and smile sometime, won’t you?”
Matthew walked past the polite fire that crackled in the small hearth of rough gray and tan stones. He went to the pair of windows that afforded a view of New York to the northwest, the wide river and the brown cliffs and gray hills of New Jersey. A boat loaded with crates of cargo on its deck was moving north along the river, the wind spreading its brown sails wide. Another smaller boat held two fishermen, sitting back-to-back. Like Hudson and myself, he thought as he surveyed the scene. Our hooks in the water, and we have no idea what’s down there waiting to bite.
“This is becoming a habit,” Greathouse observed.
“What is?”
“Your lack of joy. Why don’t you go to Charles Town? Take the packet boat. Escort Pandora Prisskitt to the ball. Eh? Go have some fun for a change.”
Matthew heard a murmur, but no words. He was watching the fishermen, and he was deciding how to begin what he had planned to say to his friend. He decided it was to be: The Mallorys are behind the burnings. I know this to be true. And I didn’t want to drag you into this, but—
“Matthew!” said Greathouse emphatically, and the younger man redirected his attention. “Let me ask you. What do you think of Abby Donovan?”
The question was so unexpected that Matthew could think of no possible response.
“Go ahead,” Greathouse urged. “Tell me what you honestly think.” He nodded when Matthew yet hesitated. “Go ahead!”
“Well…I think she’s—”
“Yes, and you would be correct!” If possible, Greathouse’s grin broadened. He leaned back, precariously so, in his chair. “She is one hell of a woman!” Matthew thought the great one might be in danger of breaking his jaw if he grinned much broader. “Yes, she is! And kind, Matthew. Really she is. An angel. But…she’s a devil when she needs to be, I’ll tell you.”
“I don’t think I want to hear this.”
“Oh, don’t be such a prude! Are you twenty-three or fifty-three? Sometimes I can’t tell. But listen…about Abby. She and I are getting along very well, Matthew. Very well. I’m saying, sometimes when I’m with her I’m not quite sure where she stops and I begin. Do you know what I mean?”
Looking into Hudson Greathouse’s grinning face, with its left charcoal-gray eyebrow sliced by a jagged scar, Matthew knew all too well what his companion in problem-solving meant. Though Greathouse had already had his share of women, and perhaps many other men’s shares too, he was falling in love with Abby Donovan. Not to be bothered that the scar through his left eyebrow had been made by a broken teacup thrown by his third wife. Not to be bothered that there were likely scars on his heart made by several women, and more scars on their hearts than his. Not to be bothered by any of that, because Hudson was falling in love.
“I do know,” said Matthew, and with that short sentence he put aside what he was going to tell the great one, for this was not Hudson’s business. No, today—and perhaps tomorrow too, and the day after that—the man’s business was love.
“Things may happen,” was the next comment, made by an excitable boy where a rough-assed man had been sitting a moment before. “Really, Matthew. I mean it. Things may happen.”
“You mean…marriage?”
The sound of that word in the room seemed to knock a little of the wind from his sails, and he blinked as if he’d just been slapped with a wet rag but quickly he recovered from whatever thought of reality had intruded. “She is one hell of a woman,” he repeated, as if Matthew needed to hear that again.
But the hellish woman and her equally hellish male partner down at the end of Nassau Street still had to be dealt with. Perhaps a cloud passed over Matthew’s face, because Greathouse’s mood changed just as quickly and he asked with true concern, “Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”