The Humbug Murders (3 page)

Horror gripped my very soul. Was this real? I glanced at Miss Owen to ascertain whether she was witnessing the same phantasm that I was, but she was pressed against the window, standing as stoic as a pillar. Her expression betrayed nothing.

I struggled to control my breathing, to focus on something logical. That heavy gold ring on his skeletal finger, the ring was not decomposing. Gold, at least, would always be a comfort to me. I squinted and focused on it.

A confused look appeared on what was left of Fezziwig's face. It was as if he saw something not in these rooms. “A
humbug
?” he asked with a putrid whisper. “Do you think I would deceive you, Ebenezer?” Then he screamed the word so loudly that the walls and windows shook. It echoed in my skull, lacerated my thoughts.
Humbug, Humbug, HUMBUG—

And then his skeleton collapsed. Legs first, then the rest of him, until a yellow skull was crumbling on top of a pile of dust. The ring spun on the floor, then disappeared into the carpet's thickness.

I clapped my hand to my mouth in dread and stared in revulsion at the dusty remains on my office floor. What by God had happened here?

CRASH!
The door swung open and a gust of icy wind sent the pile of Fezziwig swirling into the air and away. My legs finally buckled and I sank to my knees. My hand darted to where I had last seen the ring, but it too was gone.

“A humbug,” I whispered. “A humbug!”

Heavy booted footsteps fell across the wooden floor, one clunk at a time. I lifted my eyes, and the constable who'd burst inside spotted me. His lip curled. I recognized him from some function I'd attended a month ago. Crabapple was his name. The politeness he'd shown that evening had altogether faded.

“Ebenezer Scrooge, the calculating and controlled businessman, is trembling on the floor,” he said with a snarl. “The demeanor of a guilty man sentenced to hang.” He strode over to me and hoisted me to my feet. “A man has been murdered, Mr. Scrooge, the word ‘Humbug' written in blood beside the body. The very word you were just mumbling. You, sir, are required to come with me for questioning.” As I was being dragged across the floor, the sun once more streamed through the window, a solid beam of light catching flecks of dust as they settled in my office.

“And who is this?” said the constable, as he spotted Miss Owen by the window. She was trembling, arms crossed over her chest. “An accomplice? Or another would-be victim?”

She managed a subtle shake of the head before she took a deep breath and composed herself. “I have seen . . . no, no . . . My name is Adelaide Owen. And, and this man . . . he may be many things, but a murderer, no.”

“I'll be the judge of that,” the constable said as he continued dragging me to the door. I heard her footsteps quick and light behind.

“Who has been murdered?” I managed.

“Your onetime master, Mr. Reginald D. Fezziwig.”

FEZZIWIG'S WORKSHOP IN
the tight streets of Spitalfields was normally fairly calm and quiet, but this morning it was bustling with police. The bracing cold on the ride here and the sharp-as-a-tack nerve-piercing shrieks of Christmas carolers had helped revive and focus my thoughts. I could no sooner explain the vivid and horrible dream (or visitation or moment of madness) I had experienced any more than I could reasonably accept that the man who had been more of a father to me than that of my own flesh was now dead. But I was a rational man, and I stood accused of a crime. Only calm and reason would keep me from the noose, and so I vowed to apply them.

Only . . . the presence of Miss Owen beside me on the ride here had upset my claims to reason. One look into her dark, shocked, and quite literally haunted eyes and there was no denying that she had seen what I had. And that made the visitation
real
.

“You, Missy, I have questions for you,” Crabapple had demanded of her. “I think you're a witness. To what, I'm not exactly sure. But I come into the moneylender's lair and what do I find? You, a pretty, young thing, pressed up against a wall, terrified; and him looking half out of his gourd. I mean to get at the truth of things!”

And so he had “invited” her along.

Constable Crabapple now sat in Fezziwig's chair by the rudimentary fireplace, muddy boots unceremoniously plopped on my old friend's mahogany pedestal desk. Miss Owen had been taken away, presumably to be questioned elsewhere, apart from me. He was twiddling a calling card, and a ghost of a smirk was playing at the corner of his mouth. I scowled at him.

“Let us cut to the chase, Crabapple. What's your purpose in bringing me here? Is there perhaps some . . . arrangement . . . you seek? I understand a constable's salary is far from enviable.”

Crabapple said nothing but used the calling card to pick something out of his teeth. He swung his legs from off the desk and leaned forward, sliding a single sheet of crisp paper towards me. Frowning, I took it, and read:

Sir,

'Tis the season for generosity, and I simply must repay you for your earlier kindness. This time you shall receive in kind a gift no less life-altering than the gesture you once paid me, a symbol of my most profound gratitude for what you have done for me. I shall not accept a refusal!

—An Admirer

“I know nothing of this,” I barked, crumpling the paper and tossing it back at Crabapple. “It's not even in my hand.” The inspector caught the paper ball and smoothed it back out.

“Handwriting is easily forged,” he smirked, holding up the card he had been twiddling. “And I wonder why Fezziwig was clutching your calling card when he died?” he said, looking at it.

“How the devil should I know? We are men of business who knew each other exceedingly well: he has no need for it.”

“Don't you sell me a dog!” he growled.

I sighed. “I can assure you, I am
not
lying.”

“Perhaps you
did
know each other, Scrooge, but certainly no longer. Did he have business with you recently?”

“He may have been intending to pay me a visit, I really could not say. I last spoke with him on Thursday. He seemed well.”

I heard angry voices and knocking coming from the back room, and another constable called out, “Keep it down, back there!”

“Your accomplices,” said Crabapple, twiddling the calling card again. “An eclectic mix of characters, but no doubt they each had a use to you. You're all cut of the same cloth, now ain't you? But perhaps your cut ain't quite so fine as theirs, so blackmail is what I'm thinking. Moneylenders learn all kinds of secrets, now don't they?”

“You have a mind like a steel trap, Constable. Anything entering gets crushed and mangled.”

“You done him in, didn't you?”

I knew there was no point in arguing that I had no idea what he was talking about. I remained silent, simmering with suppressed anger. “Where have you taken Miss Owen? Far from this place, I should hope.”

“Worried about her, yes? About what she might say? Confess now, before she spills all your secrets.”

I chuckled. “I would confess that I find your manners appalling, Constable. But first you would have to have some.”

“I see. Let's discuss this upstairs in the workroom, shall we?” Constable Crabapple got up, strode to the fragile staircase, and turned, waiting for me to follow. Clearly, he would tell me nothing of Miss Owen's whereabouts. He had another card to play.

My stomach was heavy with dread. I'd been informed that Fezziwig's body was up there. I could already smell the rot. And there Crabapple stood, grinning as he waited patiently for me to take the first steps. The last thing I wanted to do was go up that narrow staircase and through the trap in the floor. But I was not a coward.

The workroom was spacious, approximately the size of both the front and back rooms downstairs, lined with cases holding books and ledgers. Three looms and several spinning wheels cluttered the floor. Here Fezziwig would conduct his business, with a team of boys weaving fabrics and materials for trade across the country. The familiar smells of wood, velvet, and sweat lingered. But there was another smell: sweet, pungent.

A long, narrow window spilled light into the room, slashed across the floor like a laceration through the air.

Then I saw the body and froze. Fezziwig lay sprawled under the window, drenched in a harsh winter light, a gaping black wound in his throat. At first glance, his face looked peaceful, as his powdered wig lay askew across half his head. Then I spotted deep stab wounds that opened his face and chest, his velvet waistcoat in shreds. His cheek had been sliced to the ear. As promised, the word, “Humbug” was scrawled in blood on a nearby wall.

Suddenly my heart stopped. I spotted the heavy-set gold ring on his finger. The ring I had seen only once before, on a rotting corpse in my office. My head swam and I doubled over and vomited.

“Terrifying sight, ain't it? Did you cut his throat before or after you sliced his face open?”

A prickling dizziness spread across my face as I struggled to clean myself with my handkerchief. Grief threatened to unbalance me, I felt it forming in the back of my throat, but there was too much to process to succumb to it. I couldn't help staring at the cut in his throat and the black pool of sticky, coagulated blood spreading from it.

“He must have been unconscious when he was attacked,” a calm and familiar voice said, fragrant tobacco smoke sweeping in behind me. I turned and was surprised to see my young “investigator” entering the scene. Thin but well-dressed, scowling, sketchbook at the fore with pen poised, his usual cigarette hanging at the corner of his mouth. He didn't so much as look my way.

“What the . . .” Crabapple began. “Dickens!”

“Judging from the color of the old man's skin, I'd say he died late last night,” the sometime reporter added. He was rarely without his sketchbook, and he often added drawings to his articles and observations. If Dickens—or Charles, as I had referred to him earlier—was correct, then Fezziwig had been struck down around the time I was making my nightly “collections.”

“And how did you achieve that?” asked Crabapple, turning back to me, his voice calm and inquiring, as if asking me whether I used a rag or brush to polish my shoes in the morning.

I stared at the constable, anger rising. That damned smirk was still playing at his mouth; he was toying with me.

Dickens began sketching both the room and the body. “That sweet smell, Constable. I'm sure you have noticed it. The killer used chloroform, and plenty of it.”

“Enough out of you,” Crabapple said. “We pay you for a rendering of crime scenes, not your commentary.”

“You don't pay me at all,” Dickens muttered, wincing as he pinched out his smoke between finger and thumb.

“You get no money for your exclusives?” Crabapple chided. He looked back to me. “The old man was drugged first. So you showed your friend some mercy. You have a heart after all.”

I had had enough of this trumped-up thief-taker and his attacks on my good name. “If Fezziwig met his violent end late last night, then I'm as innocent of this crime as you are of knowing which fork to use at a formal dinner, you oaf!”

The constable started to reach out for me with his large callus-covered hands.

Before he got to me, I pointed at something that had been bothering me about the gruesome business. “Good Lord, Crabapple, you couldn't find your way through a maze even if the rats helped you. There's no
blood
on his
hands
. Think. What do you make of that?”

The young reporter jumped in. “No struggle, see? He didn't clasp at his throat when it was cut.”

Crabapple smacked the top of Dickens' head as he began to pace. His venomous words were for me alone. “He was not expecting to be murdered when you called upon him; I doubt he even had time to resist you.”

“I'd agree with you, Crabapple, but then we'd
both
sound like idiots. If this attack happened late last night, then I have a dozen tenants who can confirm my exact location. I was collecting weekly rents until the wee hours of the morning,” I said as I turned away from Fezziwig's bloody remains.

“You got witnesses for the
whole
night?” Crabapple barked. “Otherwise, shut your gob!”

“He's right, it doesn't add up, Constable,” Dickens supplied. “I've read many case reports similar to this. I'd say he was attacked from behind, and then spun round and laid on the floor. See the marks on the floor here from where he was moved to the window?”

Crabapple shuddered but kept his gaze on me. “Was he heavy?”

“The killer would not have had to use much strength, judging from the angle of the body,” Dickens declared. “He simply laid the unconscious victim to the floor. There is very little blood around the stab wounds. They were inflicted after he bled to death.”