Carla Kelly (25 page)

“
I
don’t understand you, man,” said Matthew. “Here, let us sit
down.”

The ashman looked
over his shoulder at the house again. Satisfied, he settled himself
on the bottom step. “I wouldna be doing this if the master were
watching. He’s devilish particular about the steps.” The ashman
peered down at Matthew more closely. “You gave me a fright, laddie,
a real start. I remember another time when another cove sat right
where you were sitting. I asked my master about him once, and what
did he do but laugh in that way of his and say something about the
man being ‘snug as a fish in a bottle.’
 
”

“
Might
that have been ... about eight years ago?” asked Matthew finally,
when the old man looked as though he would not bolt.

“
It
might have been entirely just then. My daughter was newly
leg-shackled to a sailor and I was by meself again.” He rubbed his
chin, scratching at the days-old growth. “And now my daughter is a
widow with a small boy to feed. And doesn’t he eat a
lot?”

Matthew sighed
inwardly, but patiently pulled the thread of the story back. “And
what happened here eight years ago?”

The ashman looked
more closely at Matthew, taking him by the chin and turning his
face this way and that. “You was here this afternoon, or someone
like you. You look much like that man, that man on the stairs, but
that man was a gentleman.” He sniffed the air in Matthew’s general
vicinity. “Gentlemen smell better than you, laddie, and they look
better
,
too.”

Matthew prepared
to pull the conversation back again, but he stopped as the ashman
continued.

“
And
we know about gentlemen here on Quallen Lane.” He chuckled at some
great private joke. “The joke’s on my master’s old lady, it is. She
doesn’t have a clue what happens in her flat when she goes to Kent
to visit her daughter.” He rocked back and forth in the clutch of
silent laughter.

“
What
does happen here, Grissam?”

The ashman stared
at him and tightened his lips as if he had said too much. But his
mirth caught up with him. He leaned close to Matthew, resting his
head for a moment on the man’s shoulder. “Oh, laddie, my master
sows and reaps and never misses a penny.” He put his hand over his
mouth and chuckled. “He rents out that flat to gentlemen as want to
have a sporting evening with no questions asked.” He nudged
Matthew. “And then by Sunday evening everything’s all right and
tight again, and nobody’s wife or father is ever the
wiser.”

Matthew put his
arm around the old man, his voice low, as if he were involved in
the conspiracy
,
too,
even as his heart pounded loud in his chest. “And was the old lady
gone that night ... that night you saw the man on the
steps?”

The ashman
nodded. “She was, laddie, and it was a good thing. That was a wild
evening, sir.” He slapped his thigh, nearly carrying himself over
backward. “I think it was even more than my master reckoned for.”
He sat up and shoved his face into Matthew’s again. “We never had a
murder before nor since, laddie.”

“
A
murder?” echoed Matthew. His heart was thumping painfully loud
now.

The ashman looked
about him. “But I am not to say that, laddie, not to anyone, and
not until it is in a court of law.” He frowned. “And then I am to
say only what my master tells me to say.” He leaned closer again.
“And that
wasn’t
what happened.”

The ashman was
silent then. He leaned back against the steps, his elbows propping
him up, and stared up at the stars as if they were a new experience
to him.

“
Ah,
Grissam, you have my interest up now,” said Matthew when he could
stand the silence no longer. He tried to keep his voice casual, as
if he were merely idling away his time. “What ... what did
happen?”

“
You
promise not to tell?”

Matthew
nodded.

“
Cross
yourself, laddie.”

Matthew crossed
himself.

“
That
man on the steps. He sat there all evening. But I’m supposed to say
that I found him in bed with a dead whore when I went in the room
to clean up.” He looked at Matthew, faintly puzzled, and then his
eyes clouded over. “But it was not so!”

His anger
subsided as quickly as it came. “But if I wants my rum, that’s what
I say.” He nudged Matthew again. “And laddie, I wants my
rum.”

“
The
man on the stairs,” started Matthew. “Was he very
drunk?”

The ashman
chuckled out loud this time, and then clapped his hand over his
mouth and looked around. “Oh, laddie, I’ve never even seen a sailor
any farther to the wind than that poor one. When the other toffs
took their leave, he just grins at them like an inmate of Bedlam,
bless my soul.”

“ ‘
The other toffs’? Was one of them tall and thin
...”

“
And
with the silliest giggle?” finished the ashman. “Yes, laddie, and
the other was a military man, leastwise he looked like one. Walked
like he had a poker up his ass.”

Matthew grinned
in spite of himself. Never had he heard a better description of
Merrill Watt-Lyon. Too bad his friend was not alive to enjoy it.
“And the others? Was one of them a quiet man with a
limp?”

The ashman stared
at him. “The very him! And didn’t he even look a bit like ... like
that
man, the one inside. They could have been brothers ...”
He stopped, and when he spoke again, his voice was shrewd. “And how
would you know these things, laddie? You’re too old to be the man
on the steps, and besides, he was much trimmer.”

Matthew shrugged.
“I’m just guessing. Was there another man?”

“
There
was another cove, any road, and he didn’t even look faintly
pizzled. O’ course, some men hold their liquor wondrous well.
Happen
I’m
one of those. Well, that man, he patted the
drunken laddie on the head and wished him happy. Said he would see
him at the wedding in the morning, and reminded him about hunting
in the fall.”

There was no
wedding in the morning, and there was no hunt in the fall. David
Larchstone, that rascal in tight pantaloons, was dead before the
hunting season was half begun. His dead friends, all of them
accounted for except one, paraded before Matthew’s eyes.

The ashman was
speaking again. “There was one more. He paid me.” Grissam stirred
as if the step was suddenly uncomfortable. “He threw some money
down the steps and told me to ... to ...”

He stopped,
resting his hand on his chin, scratching himself and then staring
at nothing in particular. “But I am not to say that,
laddie.”

Matthew stared
ahead too. “I can buy you a bottle of rum, Mr. Thomas Grissam,” he
said softly. “As many bottles as you want. Your story ... interests
me.”

Grissam said
nothing, but held his hand out. Matthew put a coin in it. Without
looking at him, the ashman bit the coin, grunted in satisfaction,
and pocketed his wealth. “The man on the steps went to sleep, just
right out there in the cold.”

“
Was
he covered with ... with blood?”

Grissam started
in surprise. “No, no, laddie! He had on a frilly shirt and them
short pants that gentlemen wear, and he wasn’t tidy, but ...
bloody? No, not him. It was t’other one.”

The same chill
covered Matthew, the chill he had felt in the upstairs bedroom
earlier that day. “Which man was it?”

“
The
cove who paid me. Lord, he came running out of the house, his mouth
open, ready to scream. My master grabbed him from behind. And then
... then they noticed the sleeping man, and just looked at each
other. Lord, I thought I was dreaming. Without a word between them,
they picked up that sleeping man and carried him into the
house.”

Matthew sat
forward on the steps so the ashman could not see his face. He
needn’t have bothered. The ashman was so overcome with his own tale
that he was paying no mind.

“
Ah,
laddie, it was such a night! Be glad you were not there. They
carried that poor sod inside, stripped him, and arranged him
nice-like next to the drab.”

“
You
... you saw this?” Matthew asked. His voice didn’t sound like his
own.

The man nodded,
and glanced back at the house again. “I followed them in and just
stood there in the door of that bedroom like a Bermondsey boy. The
man, the one with the bloody shirt, told me that if I ever breathed
a word, even in my sleep, he would cut my throat from ear to ear.”
Grissam shuddered. “And don’t doubt that he would. I went to sea
once, laddie, and saw glimmers like that on a shark. Shark’s
eyes.”

Carefully Matthew
let out the breath he had been holding. It was no one but
Rotherford.

“
And
so I should not tell anyone. And I will not, laddie,” he said,
filled with resolve that quickly melted away when Matthew pressed
another coin in his hand.

“
And
then what?”

“
The
bloody man, the one with the shark eyes, he took off his cravat and
shirt and threw them at me. Told me to burn them.”

“
And
did you?”

The ashman
smiled, showing a mouthful of gums and few teeth. “Lord love you,
laddie, I can tell you’re not an ashman!”

Matthew shook his
head, faintly amused. I have called myself any number of things
over the years, he thought, but not that.

“
I
took them bloody, reeking things, bowing and smiling me way out of
the room. I even stoked up a good fire out back, but, laddie, I
couldna do it. Do you know what a good shirt like that brings on
the market?”

“
I ...
I can’t imagine,” said Matthew faintly.

“
I
washed it and washed it, thinking I would sell it. But do you know,
laddie, I couldna do it.” He shook his head sorrowfully, as if
chagrined at his own weakness. “I couldna bring myself to think
that gentry mort’s leavings would be on some other man’s back. It
didna set right with me. The shirt’s belowstairs, laddie. Would you
like to see it?”

On legs that had
turned to rubber, Matthew followed the ashman down the stairs and
into the little room under the front steps. Strange scurryings and
rustlings heralded their entrance, but Matthew could see nothing
for a moment. He lived in momentary dread that a rat would run
across his foot, but followed his leader into the room, which was
no more than a pathway through the discarded throwaways of years
and years of tenants.

“
Ah,
laddie, I can’t throw out a thing, as you can well see. Some of
this is surely worth a ransom,” cried the ashman, fondling a
splintered chair leg as if it were a holy relic. “My precious
jewels,” he crooned as he worked his way back into the room to the
cot where he slept.

With a grunt he
threw himself down on his knees and reached under the bed, pulling
out a wooden box. “Laddie, light that lamp over there.”

Matthew did as he
was told, scarcely able to take his eyes from the box, as the
ashman tugged at the dirty string around his neck and produced a
key. He fitted it into the box and clicked it open. Matthew leaned
forward, holding the lamp high.

With a crow of
delight Thomas Grissam took out the shirt, shaking out its folds
and petting it. “Pretty, pretty linen, my laddie,” he said, and his
voice was soft and reverent. “Now, wouldna you like a shirt of this
quality?” he asked. “And look at this cravat.” He laughed. “I stood
myself in front of that mirror scrap behind you and tried to tie
one of them fancy bows.” He gave a growl of disgust. “That’s for
them gentry morts as has time for folderols. Look at this,
laddie.”

He spread the
shirt out on the cot. The material had faded to a pale yellow, and
it was ringed here and there with the faintest outlines of rust
spots. It was a large shirt, large and long, the shirt of a tall
man. Matthew picked up the cravat. The stickpin was still in it, a
gold fancy in the shape of a horseshoe. He thought of Rotherford’s
expensive stables and the horses he prized so highly. Anyone who
saw the horseshoe pin would know it as Rotherford’s.

“
I
wonder you did not sell this, Mr. Thomas Grissam,” he said. “You
could have bought lots of grog with it.”

The ashman shook
his head. “No, laddie. I took it to a tavern once, and even plunked
it down on the counter, but no, laddie. It’s blood money I would
have gotten for me troubles, and sure as the world, I would have
choked to death on me rum that night. No. Better to leave it in
this box.”

Matthew traced
the lines of the horseshoe with his finger. “I would buy this from
you, and the shirt and stock
,
too.”

The ashman
grimaced and grabbed them back. “You’d have nothing but bad luck,
laddie.”

This would be
nothing new
, thought Matthew. “You won’t consider it?” he asked
out loud. When the ashman only clutched his treasures tighter and
shook his head, Matthew adopted a soothing tone. “Mr. Grissam,
would you do something for me, since you won’t sell me these
things?”

The ashman
quickly shoved his treasures into the box and locked it. “I might,”
he said grudgingly.