The Humbug Murders (42 page)

I heard a rustling, looked back—

Nellie held the lantern. She had only to throw it and we would be at the apex of the destruction. The initial explosion would reach the next trunk and the next, igniting a ring of explosions that would bring the walls down.

Every second I delayed her meant more might be rescued from the pit beyond the abbey walls—including Adelaide.

“Why all of this?” I asked. “The others I think I might understand. They were hip-deep in all of this. Why poor Fezziwig?”

“You have an eye for detail, Mr. Scrooge. Think back to those photos of the Nellie dolls. Did they all bear Sarah's scars?”

I blanched. “They were real.”

“They took me one night. Drugged me. Brought me . . . I didn't know where, not then . . . But I remember the humming. They would snicker and cheer as they sang.
Pretty maids all in a row.
Even now the tune haunts me in my sleepless states. They showed me the photographs. I was to keep on with it, to give one spectacular private performance after another, and so long as I did—”

“The images would be sold only to trusted private buyers. Talk and they would go to the press.”

She nodded. So they all had to go, clearly.

“But why Fezziwig?” I asked. “Why me?”

Before she could answer, a man waving a pistol staggered down from the hillside where George Sunderland had met his death. One of the guards Nellie had chloroformed. He shouted something guttural, the gun barrel wavering madly, capturing my full attention—

Nellie threw the lantern upon the chemical-soaked trunk.

Saturday, December 24th, 1833

The day before Christmas

A BLINDING FLASH
and a roaring thunderous crashing. Stone sentinels of impossible, towering heights falling down upon us, knees buckling, torsos ripping to pieces, dust and snow, screams and a crushing, horrible weight dropping towards me, amused by my insignificance even as it perished—

Startling pain. A chaser of darkness, oblivion, death.

Then a sliver of light, pure, merciful morning light. Shafts tearing open as silhouetted figures worked to drag heavy flat sheets of stone from my moaning, complaining form.

“Over here! Found him!”

Crabapple's grinning face loomed over me as the man hauled me from my makeshift crypt out into the blinding cleansing light of day. Head light, the world lazily whirling, soot and a low-laying bed of smoke twisting about the wreckage and the chaos of dozens—or was it a hundred or more—men surging all about the place, all I could think of was one thing. A name. Through a throat full of ash I croaked, “Adelaide.”

“Here!” she called. Her voice was reassuringly strong, and she joined me, taking one of my arms as Crabapple led me out of the small mound of debris where I'd lain to a plateau near the cliffs. Sunlight sparkled like a sea of diamonds over the distant waves.

“Merry Christmas,” I muttered, taking in the ruination about me.

“It hasn't been that long,” Dickens said, looking up from his sketchbook. He sat upon a nearby rockfall. The remains of the fallen towers and abbey walls stood out upon the snowy waste like spent coals soiling white sheets. Men moved about the ruins, poking about, rattling sticks into the debris, then listening, praying perhaps, for a response.

“Who are all these people?” I asked, shivering. Adelaide waved her hand, and someone brought a pair of heavy blankets that I snatched away and hugged about myself. Before I could even form the thought that I could murder a cup of tea, one was brought to me, hot, steaming, heated by one of the few cauldrons not swallowed up by the abbey's fall.

“Local townsfolk, mainly,” Crabapple said. “All the ruckus drew 'em.”

“How many?” I asked, my tone dark as the weight settling over my heart.

“How many did we lose?” asked the constable. “Or how many did we manage to save?”

Shuddering, I asked, “How . . .
many
?”

Adelaide told me. Roughly two-thirds of the women had been dragged from the hellish “set” Smithson and Lazytree had conceived and constructed in this spot before the last of the abbey walls had come down. Five of the women had been found dead, thirteen were yet unaccounted for. She had come to such a precise accounting from Lazytree, who'd been captured, thrashed, spilled all, and thrashed several more times for good measure.

Only three of the wretched punters—the fine clients—had perished.

Someone called, “She's coming around!”

Crabapple and Adelaide rushed towards the voice. Dickens and I followed. We stared down at a familiar-looking ginger who sat up, coughing.

Miss Annie Piper!

It didn't take long for the prostitute—still drenched in clove perfume—to understand what had happened here. She told her story with little urging. She had indeed been recruited to the Doll House, as we had heard, and into Smithson's bed. But he tired of her quickly and had her drugged and cast her in with the rest of the women in the cradle.

Adelaide pressed the woman about her association with Thomas Guilfoyle, and a fuller picture quickly emerged. The mystery of how Fezziwig knew of The Lady and why he had sent invitations to Sunderland, Rutledge, Shen, and Nellie turned out to be remarkably simple: “Tom took me to the old man's place one time,” Annie revealed. “Where he was doing his scribbling on the man's books. He explained it all to me, though I have to admit, I was a bit distracted. While he was going on about The Lady and how she was connected to Sunderland and them others, I was realizing we weren't alone in the room. Old Fezziwig had fallen asleep in a chair in the corner. I thought him asleep, at first. Then I came to see he was listening to all of it.”

“And you said nothing?” Adelaide asked. “Not to Tom, not to anyone?”

Annie shrugged. “Didn't see how it was my business, so long as I was getting paid.”

The prostitute was taken off by a pair of volunteers, and we returned to the cliffside.

“The truth of all this will never be told,” Dickens said ruefully. “I'll never be allowed to print any of it.”

“He's right,” Crabapple said, spitting out the toothpick he'd been chewing on. “The whole lot is whinnying for their solicitors like screamin' babies wantin' Mama's tit.”

“Nellie?” I asked.

Adelaide gestured back to the mound where I'd been found. Workers continued to excavate.

I was about to sigh with relief when icy fingers strummed along my neck. There was no ghostly whisper, nor was one required. A shout of surprise rose from those sifting through the ruins where I'd been found, and a dark-cloaked figure climbed into view.

Nellie was stooped, bowed, slack-jawed. Dark hollows half-mooned under her eyes, and one of her bony gloves had been lost, her hand scraped raw and bloody to the bone. Slowly, she straightened her spin, removed her cloak, flipped it about. The lining had been bright red, reversible. No wonder she'd been able to be Humbug so easily one moment, then lost in a crowd, just another onlooker, the next.

“Miss Owen told me, but I didn't fully credit it until just now,” Crabapple admitted. He raised his pistol and aimed it at Nellie's heart. “Bloody hell, what does it take to kill you?”

Shaking, moving unsteadily, she made her way towards the cliff's edge, turning her back on Crabapple's orders and threats. We gathered about, along with the local workers, forming a crowd as Nellie suddenly whirled and bowed, her hands describing exaggerated, theatrical flourishes, her face now mined by the blue-black ragged whip scar, cracking into a satisfied smile.

“Oh, my dears! My precious, devoted followers, my cherished audience, come to witness our last performance of the season,” she called, her voice loud and clear to soar above the waves crashing below. “I promise you surprise and delight, intrigue and madness, and most of all, I pledge to curl your toes and quicken your pulses with my tale of murder. And sex, of course. Lust and betrayal and the foul stench of death, a heady brew, my beloved fans, that is what I have blended for your rarified tastes. A warning though, my darling dears, if you've come for the sweetness of love, then I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere. That is a nectar I have never tasted and its sweetness will not be found in this play. . . .”

“She's mad,” Dickens ventured. Then he caught himself, considering the woman had been off her head for some time now. “All right,
madder
.”

“Why doesn't someone grab her?” I asked.

Adelaide shook her head. “She's too close to the edge, she'd fall right over. It's thirty yards to the rocks, at least.”

“I was once but a girl working for a generous old man. Not a letch. Though his skin was withered and his ivory hair falling out in clumps, he sought not to regain lost youth by lusting after pretty young things like me. He had eyes only for his beloved Jane, who had weathered just as many winters as he. An orphan myself, I felt as if I had finally found a loving home.”

“She's talking about Fezziwig,” I whispered. Crabapple nodded.

“And when I confided in him my dreams of one day becoming an actress, he simply said ‘no time like the present' and whisked me off to the Adelphi where he introduced me to its owner, Anton Villiers, a man who would change my life. I gave myself to Villiers in every conceivable way, and he pulled strings for me, helped me get auditions. Before long, I was Nellie Pearl, the ingénue and talk of the town. And he was what he was . . . what he'd always been, but I'd been too besotted with the possibilities of everything my life might be to see him clearly: A gambler. A drunk. A ‘pimp' as they call it, who'd never expected me to succeed. When I did, he bided his time to let my fame grow, all in the cause of his own ambition. . . .”

She hesitated, began to sway, dance awkwardly, horribly, on the cliffside. She nearly lost her footing, once, twice, but caught herself and did not fall. Striding from one end of the cliff to the other, she continued her soliloquy. “Finally, when he was desperately in debt, in danger of having his neck wrung by the vile sorts in the Quarter, he came to me with his demands. I would be his whore after all, servicing the richest men in London. All very discreet, of course. Hush-hush, don't you know. After all, I owed him. When I refused, he attacked me. I'd never harmed a living being in my life, but when he attempted to force me to my bed, my hand gripped a glass, shattered it, and ground it into his face. He fled, covering one eye, bleeding, cursing, promising revenge. I waited night after night for his return until finally my dear Crisparkle dragged my sad tale from me as I wept in his arms. He promised I would never see Villiers again. That he would ‘see' to the man. I believed him. And for many years, it proved true. Ah, for many years . . .”

Nellie tottered on the edge, one boot sliding, then regained her footing. I looked to Adelaide, who stared at the madwoman with the coldest and most piercing gaze I'd ever seen. Then Nellie went on.

“But months ago,” Nellie said, “I knew the truth of it. ‘
Mary, Mary, quite contrary'
they sang of me, before my punishment was issued. Punishment for what? I don't know. Being a woman, I suspect.” And she recounted the horror of waking to strange men on every side of her bed, of being dragged, beaten, drugged, and taken in the night to this place, where we had seen but a fraction of what was done to her. Villiers had engineered all of it. Her precious costumer, Crisparkle, had paid the man with his life's savings to leave London and allowed Nellie to believe Villiers was dead.

“So that's why you killed the costumer?” I asked. “After he made that hideous costume for you?”

Nellie laughed. “Oh! Questions from the audience. Yes, yes, please! And yes, that is exactly so.”

“And I'd wager you took care of Villiers as well,” Crabapple added.

With a sigh, Nellie said, “Yes, well, and that's where the twist comes into the tale. I had no idea when I cut him to bits that anyone else was with us in the villa. Then I found his whore, alight in an opium haze. I could not take the risk that she might have seen, might remember, so I cut her, too. It's surprising how easy it is, once you've done the first one. I gathered up Villier's correspondence, anything that might help fill in the gaps of his story. Oh, yes, I see, I left that bit out. I went there this time with Crisparkle, and he helped me grind the truth of things from Villiers. He had left London and in France fallen in with a trafficker of the exotic who called herself The Lady. The Lady had the little photographer in her employ and had already begun her great and ambitious enterprise, supplying ladies from every port of call for Smithson and the Colleys. In fact, they had forged a three-way partnership, with Smithson remaining in control of vice in the Quarter, the Colleys lording over the docks, and The Lady supplying her particular goods and services. They even had a name for it.”