The Humbug Murders (19 page)

Dickens smiled. He clearly understood the slight. “Foreign devils, yes, that is us.”

I caught Dickens' eye, and he nodded.

“Please accept our apologies, Mr. Shen,” I said, bowing in a sardonic and hopefully insulting manner. “Perhaps we have been a little over-zealous.” I strode to the door. “Of course, I can't help but wonder, in your country, what do they call a man who, when he can't gain the attention of a certain lovely he desires, instead paints up a cheap tart to look like her, then parades her around a place like the Doll House, all the time smiling like a strutting goose?”

“Merry Christmas!” called Dickens over his shoulder as we left. We received no response.

Once outside, Dickens grabbed my arm. “So much for being careful. Did you have to say those things? He might be dangerous!”

“What was under that sheet of paper you spotted in Shen's office?” I asked.

He calmed, and excited curiosity burned in his eyes. “The envelope. The summons from Fezziwig.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It had Fezziwig's monogram on it, of course. And there was something else, too,” he said.

“Well?”

Quick as a flash, using a sleight of hand I had not seen the reporter display before, he produced a brass key.

“To Shen's office?” I asked.

“As likely as any other door,” said Dickens. He lowered his head and ushered me into a shadowy alcove. He nodded to the company's front door, which Shen slammed behind himself as he stormed from his place of employment and stalked down the street away from us. “Hopefully he'll be gone long enough for us to put it to the test when we go back to get a better look at things.”

“Breaking and entering,” I mumbled. This was getting darker by the hour. Although Dickens might have been used to this kind of thing when pursuing a line of investigative journalism, I certainly was not. Yet, what other solution was there? Three
more
would die! And then me.

A furious drumroll erupted suddenly as horse hooves thundered towards us under a beast with steaming nostrils. I grabbed Dickens' jacket and yanked him out of the way seconds before we would have been pummeled to death, both of us slipping on the icy cobbles and landing painfully just as the horse's police wagon came to a stop.

“Watch it!” yelled a voice.

I detangled myself from Dickens' limbs and stared into the cold eyes of Constable Crabapple.

“What are you doing here, Scrooge? Never mind!” he shouted down at me. “It's an emergency, get in. You ain't going to like this, Scrooge, and neither is poor Miss Owen. It's concerning Thomas Guilfoyle . . . and it's most alarming!”

Dickens excused himself and I boarded the carriage.

“What's this all about?” I asked. I looked back, and Dickens was now following Shen, though at a considerable and discreet distance.

“The wages of sin,” Crabapple said. “The very wages of sin itself! Our only viable murder suspect attacked at the courthouse by a figure out of nightmare. Right there in the holding cell! A black cloak, sir, black veil, white bony hands, exactly as Guilfoyle himself had described!”

And with that, we were off in a flash, the carriage bolting and skidding into traffic.

OUR STEPS ECHOED
off the cold stone walls as Adelaide and I were escorted down a narrow corridor to the ward where Tom was recovering. I could hear Adelaide's breathing, mechanical and composed, like she was consciously commanding each intake lest she lose control and crumble into fits of tears. “Her Tom” was locked in a coma, imprisoned in his own mind as his broken body attempted to crawl its way back from death.

Many more will die, then you, Ebenezer,
Fezziwig's spirit had promised. I had thought Sunderland to be the first of these, but now I knew I'd been mistaken. His death had been misfortune, nothing more. And now Tom, yet clinging on to life. Humbug had clearly meant to butcher the poor boy; the word HUMBUG was half-written beside his twitching form, and in the victim's own blood.

Humbug had fled out another door, its work unfinished as Guilfoyle clung to life.

Because Tom was a murder suspect, and the prison hospital had no facilities to treat patients with such severe injuries, he had been admitted to a lunatic asylum near London Bridge. Here experimental technology was employed to aid medical progress and thus Tom would have some chance of a full recovery. The danger of hanging had not yet completely passed. Crabapple stubbornly assured me that there was still a chance that his neck, once fully recovered, would eventually be stretched for Fezziwig's murder. This second killer might be an accomplice, Crabapple theorized, who feared Guilfoyle would eventually break under questioning and reveal his name or other damning facts.

In direct opposition to Crabapple's view, headlines spurred by Dickens' take on things boldly proclaimed, “HUMBUG KILLER STRIKES AGAIN!” “INNOCENT MAN ATTACKED!” “POLICE MISTAKEN—CRABAPPLE LOSES FACE!” The articles sported sketches of the cloaked figure with its impossibly long, bony fingers. All it needed was a scythe and it might have been the Angel of Death itself. By late tonight, the penny dreadfuls would certainly be running lurid stories of the butcher of London.

My only surprise was that Crabapple had not yet asked me for an alibi as to my whereabouts during Mr. Guilfoyle's attack. But all good things to those who wait.

And as I looked to poor Adelaide, I could see that waiting, and the terrible anticipation of seeing “her Tom” maimed in some unspeakable manner that had not yet been revealed to us, was taking its toll. The matron of the institution scurried along a few steps ahead of us, a large ring of heavy iron keys clanging as it slapped against her swinging hips. The high-pitched piercing of a Christmas jingle she was whistling, seemingly oblivious to Adelaide's suffering behind her, mingled with distant wails and hollow groans coming from behind locked doors on either side.

“Now, you won't get no sense from the lad,” she said suddenly. “He's fast asleep and will be for weeks, so say the surgeons. Miracle he survived. Still time for that to change, though; the infections may set in any time now.”

Adelaide's breathing quickened, and she gripped my arm with such strength that I felt my muscles bruising under my thick jacket.

“Thank you, matron,” I said. “We have no need for the details. We only wish to visit the man.”

“Mind you, he got what he deserved, didn't he?” she continued. “Did the very same to another, didn't he? The ‘
Humbug
Killer' they call him. Our Good Lord delivers justice in balance, an eye for an eye, so they say.”

So it seemed that not all public opinion had been swayed.

“Yes, thank you, matron.” I glanced at Adelaide, her face set in an expression of strength and courage, though the trembling of her hands betrayed her true pain. I couldn't help myself. “Although, I scarcely think he could be the very Humbug that committed the foul murder of which he is accused, unless he has bravely and skillfully staged the savage attack on his own body. Do you?”

“Why, bless my cottons!” trilled the matron, stopping by a large locked gate. She turned to us and put her hands on her hips. “I daresay you're right! Well, that puts me at ease, it really does. You can imagine my anger when they brought a murderer to my ward. But now that he is innocent, well, I shall have the girls bring him fresh linens each and every day!”

“Yes, I'm sure that will be a great comfort to an insensate,” I muttered. This was how our taxes were spent. Humbug indeed! Yet . . . Adelaide seemed comforted by the woman's words.

Clinks and clangs rang out as she fumbled for the key to the ward, her cheeks rosy and her broad smile bright and clear, until realization dawned. The smile vanished, her eyes became wide, and the key was left half-turned.

“Bless my . . .” she whispered. “But if this man is innocent, then . . .”

I saw the chance to avenge the pain the matron had inflicted on Adelaide with her thoughtlessness, and a twinge of pleasure erupted in my gut.

“Quite so,” I said, raising my eyebrows to emphasize my deep concern for the matron's safety. “The Humbug Killer is still at large. Not one of us is safe this Christmas.”

The matron went white as a sheet, and her trembling hands struggled to grasp the key and turn it. I glanced at Adelaide again. She had gone pale and stock-still, her terror over what she might soon witness paralyzing her.

The lock clanged open, the matron slid the heavy iron gates to the side, and I gently gripped each of Adelaide's arms and walked her into the ward as one might a child who was yet unused to walking and unsteady on her feet. Only one bed was occupied, a fact which the matron explained was caused by the typhoid epidemic just passed: all severely ill patients had perished months before. Foul air lingered, a sharp, surgical smell, but she assured us that no risk of contagion remained.

Tom's bed sat at the far end of the ward, and rows of steel cots marched up either side of us as we approached. Metal devices stood parked by the wall, novel mechanical applications with uses beyond my medical knowledge. A shaft for conveying the food from the kitchen and medicines from the laboratory clanked into operation, probably delivering gruel to the poor insane on other floors.

A policeman, one I recognized from the day Fezziwig's body was found, was dozing in a chair beside the patient, emitting occasional grunts as his hat slid down over his nose and he lifted a drowsy hand to right it.

Adelaide let go of my arm long before we reached the bedside, and the absence of her strong grip was a cool relief. She marched straight up to the bedside, pushing past the matron, and stood there staring at a body still as a plank, covered head to toe by a white sheet.

“Is he . . . ?” she gasped, quaking with fear that her Tom might be dead. Then the sheet rose and fell as the man beneath took a shallow breath.

“Covered up, yes. Constable Pepple doesn't like the sight, disturbs his constitution, so it does,” said the matron. “Look away, Constable!”

The constable made no move, and with a flourish, the matron pulled Tom's sheet back, exposing his face and chest.

“Oh!” Adelaide exclaimed and pressed her hand to her mouth. Bandages covered his face, neck, and chest, the white gauze now crusty and stained with gruesome yellow and brown patches seeping though.

“There, there, dearie,” the matron said. “It's not so bad as it looks. You be a bricky girl, now. The cuts to his face weren't deep at all, the scars will be mild and perhaps not even visible should he grow a beard. His chest, his stomach, his arms,
they're
more of a right mess.”

Adelaide wept silently, her shoulders shaking despite the lack of any other betraying characteristics. She stroked Guilfoyle's hair and caressed his hand, making soft soothing sounds with her mouth, as if her presence would be of any consolation to this man on death's door. I allowed myself to lay a hand on her shoulder, hoping it would give her some comfort.

“Well, just come and find me when you're done, then,” said the matron, taking her leave. “Oh, wait!” She turned, cleared her throat, and recited something that sounded altogether outside of her character. “The cures have been numerous within the wall of our fine institution, thanks, in a great measure, to the bequests of benevolent individuals. Please consider, this Christmas season, the many—”

“Thank you, matron,” I said again, this time with a sneer I made no attempt to hide. “We are here for Mr. Guilfoyle,
not
for your charity. Good day.”

She huffed and scurried away, leaving me with a grieving Adelaide and her broken Tom.

“You must stay with him, of course,” I said. “You won't want to come to the party tonight, I understand.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I may indeed choose to sit here with Tom tonight.”

“I'm sure he feels most comforted by your presence.”

I would need to attend the party by myself, though Dickens had expressed an interest in going and had mumbled something about having a well-connected contact, some widow who would be able to secure an invitation on his behalf. I shuddered to think how Dickens made his connections, but there was no doubt his insatiable curiosity and relentless investigating were of great benefit.

A woman in a blue nurse's uniform entered the ward pushing a trolley with a basin of warm water and some fresh bandages. She ignored Adelaide as she carefully removed the bandages, peeling them off his face to reveal that, indeed, his wounds there were mild. I expected Adelaide to look away when the woman went lower, but she kept her eyes firmly on everything the nurse did. She watched as the nurse washed his wounds, wiping crusty blood from seeping holes in his chest, applying a thick and smelly paste to the gaping gashes.

When the nurse had wound fresh bandages round the patient and taken her leave, Adelaide spoke without turning to me.