Mister Slaughter (50 page)

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.

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. Settled now as manager on Lord Peter Kent's tobacco plantation, just west of the town of Kingswood. His name is—"

Matthew almost spoke it, if speaking wouldn't have gotten him killed.

"—Nathaniel Powers," she continued. "A friend of Herrald's, by the way. Received his card in London, July of 1694. Sailed from Portsmouth to New York with his family in September of 1694. Obviously he has a healthy respect for the professor's determination. It's time his card was called to count."

"Absolutely time," Slaughter agreed, and seemed to be admiring his reflection in the knife's shine.

"Take what you please."

"I've come upon a bounty of blades just recently. I have a sufficient pistol, as well." He put the knife back upon its hook. "But tell me, what's missing right there?" He touched the empty space above the cords.

"A new item, brought from South America. A blowpipe. It uses a dart tipped with frog venom that causes . . . "

"Instant death?" The way Slaughter said that, it was religious.

"The muscles to stiffen and the throat to constrict," she corrected. "Within seconds, the victim cannot move. It's being experimented with."

"Who has
that
job?"

"We have new blood among the brethren, since you've been gone."

"It's gratifying to know our profession shall not die for want of youth," Slaughter said, and then he, the lady and Matthew all looked across the cellar as Noggin came out of the passageway lugging a damp and dripping
Mrs. Sutch
burlap bag that appeared to be heavy with contents. Noggin carried it out the cellar door, bound for some destination Matthew didn't wish to think about.

"Can you trust
him
?" Slaughter asked, as Mrs. Sutch closed the box and slid the shelf back.

"He does what I tell him, when I tell him. He's dull, but smart enough to ask no questions." She shut the cupboard and pushed the latch home. "From time to time, I let him have one of the girls at Paradise."

The fate of Kitt, Matthew thought. And of how many others?

"You amaze me." Slaughter had turned toward Mrs. Sutch. He lowered the cloth from his head, and Matthew could see that the hair had been shaved away from the vivid red gash and its ugly stitches. "Always the spirit of industry. You can work any ten people into the ground."

"You know where I came from. What I went through, and what I saw. Poverty and misery have always been the greatest of incentives. Besides," she said with a faint smile, "I'm making a fortune for both myself and the professor."

"As if he needs
more
."

"He always needs more. And so do I."

They stared at each other for a moment. Then Slaughter reached out to touch Mrs. Sutch's cheek. She pulled away, her face grim. Slaughter let his arm drop.

"When you do the job," she told him, "come back here. Send Noggin for me. At that point, we'll consider what the next step ought to be. I'm not promising anything."

"I understand." Slaughter was all business now as well; the sparkle had gone out of his eyes.

"Do you have money?"

"Enough, yes."

"Then I want you out of here
now
," she said, and she went up the stairs. Slaughter followed her without a word, his face lowered and shrouded with shadows.

The door closed.

Matthew heard footsteps creak the boards. They were moving toward the front of the house. He was lightheaded, because he'd been breathing so shallowly. He drew a long breath and kept watching the cellar doorway, expecting Noggin to return at any minute. He didn't think any of the pistols in the cupboard would be loaded or he would have been up and at them already, if he could coax his legs into moving. Slaughter was on his way to kill Nathaniel Powers in the Carolina colony. Mrs. Sutch was in charge of the blood cards, and of arranging the murders on behalf of Professor Fell. His own name was on that list, of course, and he wondered what Slaughter's reaction would have been to hear it. How did Mrs. Sutch manage the job? Did she get some kind of message from Professor Fell, or from one of his associates, directing whose name should be added to the list? Did she then make the blood card here? Using blood from either the hogs or—more of a macabre touch—the gutted guests of Paradise? He wondered if his own card had been daubed from the blood of Mr. White. A bizarre riddle occurred to him: what color was White on white?

Did Noggin deliver the cards? Maybe by packet boat from Philadelphia? Or did someone else carry the cards out? So many unanswered questions, and so little time.

But Matthew kept staring at the cupboard. In there was Quisenhunt's fifth thief trap, and within it was a book with the names of Fell's murder list. What else might be in that book, and what other papers in the box?

"Noggin!
Noggin
!" Mrs. Sutch was outside, calling for her handyman. Slaughter must have already ridden away. It sounded as if Mrs. Sutch was moving toward the rear of the place, back toward the pens or the utility building.

There indeed wasn't much time. Matthew stood up, went to the cupboard and found the latch. He put aside his mallet, opened the cupboard, slid out the shelf and looked at the thief trap.

"
Noggin
!" Mrs. Sutch shouted, still at the back of the house.

Matthew now faced a question regarding the box. Was it an armed thief trap, or simply a locked keyless safe? He ran his fingers over the latches. One was nearly horizontal, the other just to the right of vertical. If he turned the latches the wrong way, would smoke and sparks explode from the keyhole? What if the powder charge was not set, but the hammer mechanism was armed? Either way, the noise would bring Mrs. Sutch running. He could take the whole box, he decided. That would be the safest thing. Just take the whole box and get out of here. But he needed the lamplight to see what he was doing. In the dark, it would be impossible to line the latches up either perfectly vertically or horizontally. And which version of the two might this be?

He could take the box
and
a lantern. He reached up, lifted a lamp from its hook and then set the lamp atop the box. He picked the box up with both arms. It was heavy, but not unmanageable.

He turned toward the cellar door, took a single step and stopped as if he'd been slapped in the face.

He was no longer alone.

Standing in his way was Mrs. Sutch.

She smiled tightly; in the lamplight her eyes seemed to possess glowing centers of red.

"Good evening, Mr. Shayne," she said in a quiet, strained voice.

With an effort, Matthew answered, "Hello, Mrs. Sutch."

They stared at each other, the lioness and her prey.

The moment hung, both Matthew and Mrs. Sutch standing motionless as paintings.

Mrs. Sutch suddenly lifted her arm, not without a certain feminine grace. The axe she'd picked up at the back of the house emerged from behind her gray gown. She had come prepared to do her share of the night's work. Her smile crumpled. She showed her teeth.

"
Noggin
!" she screamed, her face contorting into a picture from Hell, and Matthew thought she might well be announcing her target because she gripped the axe's handle in both hands and, rushing forward, brought it down for his head.

He lifted the box. The axeblade crashed into it and knocked it and the lantern from his hands to the floor. He spun around to get at the weapons in the cupboard, but he heard the whisper of the axe coming at him again. As he threw himself to the left the blade whacked into the cupboard. The guns, knives, and all the rest of the deadly collection jumped off their hooks.

The woman was on him before he had time to right himself. The axe was flying at his face, and as Matthew tumbled backward the blade hissed past, nearly rendering him noseless. Before she could bring the axe back for another blow, Matthew reached for the stack of burlap bags, picked one up and whipped it into her eyes. A second whip of the bag sent her reeling, and then Matthew leaped forward and hit her, female or not, smack in the forehead with his fist.

Mrs. Sutch fell across a coil of rope, but she did not relinquish her hold on the axe. All Matthew wanted to do was get out, devil take the box and everything in it; he found this intent denied, however, as Mrs. Sutch heaved herself up from the ground and stood between him and the cellar door, her teeth gritted and the axe upraised.