Robert McCammon - Mister Slaughter

"Ah," said Matthew, nodding. "That sounds hopeful, then."

"Come!" She stood up with a rustle of fabric. "Before we venture into the area of money, let me show you exactly what your coin would buy."

Matthew got his cloak and hat, and in a few minutes was walking beside Mrs. Lovejoy along the gravel drive that went past her house into the property. It was an aptly-named place, because it was certainly beautiful. There were stands of elm and oak trees brilliant in the sunshine, a meadow where sheep grazed, and a green pond where ducks drifted back and forth.

Mrs. Lovejoy continued to talk as they walked. Presently there were twelve male and sixteen female guests, she said. The men and women were housed in separate facilities, because-she said-snow on the roof did not necessarily mean the fireplace had gone cold. Their ages were from the late-sixties to the eighties, the eldest being eighty-four. The guests had been brought from Boston, New York, of course Philadelphia, Charles Town and many smaller towns between. Word-of-mouth was building her business, she said. As life moved faster and responsibilities increased, many people were-as she said-stuck between a rock and a hard place regarding aged parents. Sometimes the guests resented being here, but gradually they accepted their situation and understood it was for the greater good of their loved ones. Oh, there were the rowdy guests and the guests who cursed and fought, but usually they calmed down or they didn't last very long.

A doctor was within a thirty-minute ride, she assured him. Also, the doctor made several visits each week to check ailments and general health. A minister came on Sunday afternoons to lead worship in Paradise's church. Seven workers, all female, did the cooking, the washing, kept everything scrubbed and fresh and all the rest of it. Very upright girls, every one. "Here's our laundry house," Mrs. Lovejoy announced, as they came around a bend.

There stood a tidy-looking white brick building with two chimneys spouting smoke and a pile of wood stacked up alongside it ready to be burned under the wash kettles. The door was wide open, and three young women wearing the gray gowns and mob caps stood beside it chattering and laughing; they also, Matthew quickly saw, were taking snuff up their noses from a snuffbox. When they saw Mrs. Lovejoy they went stiff-backed and the laughter died. Two of the girls turned away and rushed inside, where the heat was probably stifling, to continue stirring the laundry with kettle poles. The third seemed to realize too late that her friends had abandoned her. She had been left holding the snuffbox.

Before the girl could retreat into the laundry house, Mrs. Lovejoy said sharply, "Opal! Bring that to me." And then, under her breath to Matthew: "I have told them such nasty habits will not be tolerated. Pardon me while I apply the whip."

Opal held the snuffbox behind her as she approached, as if that would do any good. In her eyes there was a mixture of trepidation and what? Matthew wondered. Barely-repressed hilarity? Opal's mouth was twisted tight; was she about to laugh in mum's face?

It was never to be known. At that moment came the crunch of hooves on gravel. Two horses pulling a wagon came trotting along the drive from the direction of Mrs. Lovejoy's house. Matthew and the woman stepped aside as the wagon approached. Guiding the reins was a heavy-set, bulky-shouldered young man maybe Matthew's age or just a little older. He was wearing a gray monmouth cap, a russet-colored shirt, brown breeches and stockings and wore a brown cloak over his shoulders. His hair looked to be skinned to the scalp, from what Matthew could see. He had a broad, pallid face with fleshy lips and his scraggly black eyebrows met in the middle.

"May I help you?" Mrs. Lovejoy asked.

"Need talk," the young bulk said; something was wrong with his mouth or tongue, for even that simple sentence was garbled.

"I am with someone," she said crisply.

He balled up a formidable fist and rapped three times on the wagon's side.

Mrs. Lovejoy cleared her throat. "Opal? Would you continue Mr. Shayne's tour of our Paradise? And please do something with that snuffbox. Mr. Shayne, I'm needed for the moment. I'll meet you back at my house in oh fifteen or twenty minutes?" She was already going around to climb up on the seat. Matthew followed her to do the gentlemanly thing.

"Not necessary," she said, but she let him help her.

As Mrs. Lovejoy took his hand and stepped up, Matthew glanced into the rear of the wagon. Back there, among dead leaves and general untidiness, was a scatter of workman's odds-and-ends: some lumberboards of various lengths, a pickaxe and shovel, a couple of lanterns, a pair of leather gloves, a wooden mallet, and underneath the mallet a dirty burlap bag that-

"Mr. Shayne?" came the woman's voice.

He brought himself back. "Yes!" "You can let go of my hand now."

"Surely." He released it and stepped back, but before doing so he glanced one more time at what he'd thought he'd seen, in case the problem with his vision fading in and out had become a problem of seeing what was not there.

But it was there.

"Later then," said Mrs. Lovejoy. "Take care of Mr. Shayne, Opal."

"Yes, mum, I shall."

The wagon moved off, heading deeper into the property. An interesting wagon, Matthew thought as he watched it follow the drive and disappear beyond a stand of trees. Interesting because of the dirty burlap bag that was lying underneath the mallet.

The bag that had 'Sutch A' across it in red paint. If he could have picked the bag up and shaken out the folds, wrinkles and dead leaves he would have read its full declaration: Mrs. Sutch's Sausages and, below that, the legend 'Sutch A Pleasure'.

"Want a sniff?"

The snuffbox, open to its mound of yellow powder, was suddenly up below Matthew's nose. He stepped back a pace, still with Mrs. Sutch's pleasure on his mind. "No, thank you."

"Don't laugh, you bitches!" Opal called to her friends as the girls emerged grinning from the steaming innards of the laundry house. She took two sniffs up the snoot and sneezed with hurricanious violence. Then she hooked an arm around Matthew's, her eyes watering, and crowed, "I've got me a man!" She pulled him along as if he were made out of spit and straw.

Matthew let himself be pulled.

"Well!" she said, striding with a jaunty step. "What do you want to see?"

"What's worth seeing?"

She gave him a deep-dimpled smile. "Now that's an answer!" She glanced back to gauge if her companions in crime were still watching, and when she saw they'd returned to their labors she released his arm. "Not much worth seein', 'round here at least," she confided. She looked him over from boots to tricorn. "Here, now! You ain't old enough to be puttin' a mater or pater in this velvet prison!"

"I'm bringing my grandfather. And I don't think Mrs. Lovejoy would care to hear your description of Paradise."

"This ain't my idea of Paradise!" she scoffed, her nose wrinkled up so hard Matthew thought the metal ring might go flying out. "Hell, no!" She suddenly seemed to catch her own imprudence. Her cheeks reddened and she widened the distance between them by several feet. "Listen, you ain't gonna go blab about my tongue, are you? I mean, my tongue gets me in awful trouble. I'm already hangin' on to my job by the curl of an ass-hair."

"I won't blab," said Matthew, who was finding the girl to be a sparkling conversationalist. Just what he needed, in fact.

"Might have to go pack my bag anyways, cause of this here whuffie-dust." Opal held up the snuffbox, which was fashioned of cheap birch bark and looked like an item from the shelves of Jaco Dovehart's trading post. "Mizz Lovejoy's already been on me twice this week about it. If Noggin hadn't come along, she was sure to toss me out right then and there."