The Humbug Murders (9 page)

I leaned across the table, brushing his notepad aside. I felt a throbbing in my temple that had nothing to do with the rum. “Mr. Dickens, I did not ask you here for this. You know what I am after. You promised to write a favorable article on Mr. Fezziwig, extolling his many virtues. I would see him remembered as he was in life, not death.”

I shuddered, remembering the ghastly sight of the man's body disintegrating before me as his voice echoed in my ears.
Humbug, Humbug, HUMBUG—

“I'd have done that anyway,” Dickens said. “He was a good man who did not deserve such a miserable end.”

“Beyond that, though, you said you could assist me, as you have done on previous occasions.”

“Yes, and as to that, what you failed to consider is twofold: first, this is different from running some minor line of inquiry into someone's background. And second, why should I even consider such an undertaking? What do I get from it?”

I thought of the threats Roger Colley had made against my fair Belle, and Crabapple's only mild interest in helping to keep her—and by extension, her new family—safe. I had to arrange reliable protection, and Dickens knew his way around the darkest corners of London. “A young mother and her family are in danger and here you are with your hand out? And they call moneylenders cold-hearted and tight-fisted. Fine. Name your price.”

“I already have. Information.”

“You won't get it.”

Shrugging, he gathered up his notepad and made to stand up.

“Stop,” I said wearily. “There must be something else you want.”

The reporter's smile grew as he eased back into his seat. Suddenly the smell of cloves turned a switch in the reporter's head, and he couldn't concentrate. He looked up. A curly-haired vixen in an emerald dress planted a black-gloved hand on her hip. She grinned at us with an infuriating familiarity. Worse, she had a girlfriend with her. With thick ginger curls and slightly parted cherry lips, her bosom heaving as she breathed, the girlfriend was absolutely stunning.

“Move off,” I warned the prostitutes. “There's no trade for you here.”

“It's a free country, sir,” said the lady in red. “I 'ave a mind to take me supper 'ere tonight in the company of my nice friend Miss Piper.” She leaned over the merrily distracted Dickens, almost spilling out of her corset. “ 'Ave you met my nice friend Miss Piper, Mr. Dickens? You said to keep me eye out for persons of interest and talent.”

“And in saying that, Irene, I meant those whose abilities lend themselves to the arts. The wealthy are always looking for talented types to reward with their patronage. Painters, dancers, musicians, of that type. I sense quite the story in it.”

Irene shrugged. “Well, Miss Piper 'ere, she's ever so talented. And that's drawing a great deal of interest!”

Dickens reddened and smiled broadly. “Irene, thank you. Very obliged to meet you, Miss Piper.” He held her hand a little longer than convention.

Miss Piper fluttered her eyelashes. Looking directly into Dickens' eyes, she bit her lip. “Up for a bit of nanty narking? I could sing you a song . . . or do somethin' else with me mouth.”

“Ho, ho!” He smiled and kissed her hand. “Now I bet
you
have a tale to tell, don't you?”

“Damn it, Dickens, will you focus! Be gone, women. Leave us to think. Eat your supper somewhere else, I'm sure there are other gentlemen who would welcome the two of you slopping your soup down your busts as they attempted to conduct a negotiation, but we are not they!”

“Oh! Well, we ain't wanted 'ere, Miss Piper. Let's go somewhere else.” She linked arms with her friend and sashayed away. “Ta-ta, Mr. Dickens, sir. See you round the corner!”

Laughing, the women were swallowed up by the crowd.

“A journalist,” I groused. “I feel that I'm supping with the devil. Or a vulture.”

“I'm feeling much the same, sir. But I'll sit with anyone who has an interesting story. Even you.” Dickens tapped his chin. “Tell you what: I am curious about the mechanics of your enterprises. How things work, vis-à-vis, in the world of moneylending. And how it feels to put desperate, hopeless, and helpless families out on the street.”

I shook my head. “When would feelings come into any of it? It is a matter of business, nothing more.”

Dickens strummed his fingers on the wooden surface separating us. “Mr. Scrooge, it seems you leave me no choice. What price would you pay for my services?”

I named a generous sum, a pitiful one I knew would make his blood curdle. I'd make that vulture of a pen-pusher squirm for every farthing he bled from me.

“Yes, now, that is quite fair, surprisingly so. I would have thought your opening bid would be far less, and that—”

“That's my number,” I told him, stabbing the table with my forefinger. “Not a farthing more. And I'll have no more of you wasting my time. I asked you here to hire you for a job of work, that is all. I need a capable man to handle the discussed matters with speed and discretion. Are you to work for me or not? I would have your answer, Dickens.”

The reporter's upper lip twitched. I knew something of his background. With a father who lived far beyond his means and ended up hauled off with his entire family to debtors' prison, Dickens believed he would be raised a fine young gentleman. He got the shock of his life at the mere age of ten when he was taken to the blacking factory to help work off his father's debts. Yet still, that twitchy sense of entitlement, despite it all, that grasping, grubbing desire to be well off and accepted in the world of his betters. At odds, surely, with his painfully earnest desire to see change done to what
he
considered the corrupt and unjust mechanisms that made this city what it was: mine for the taking.

“I'm quite gainfully employed already.”

“I can see the markings of your success from your ratty sleeve, worn shoes, and pitiful excuse for a razor.” I nodded at the thin reporter's stubble. His lean stomach growled. “And from your full to overflowing belly.”

“I'm interested in truth.”

“I'm interested in protecting a woman's life.”

Dickens glanced down at his wiry, unthreatening frame. He was anything but a hard man. “If it's hired muscle you require, I'm afraid I'm apt to disappoint. My weapons are my brain and my quill, not—”

“But you know such men, yes? You prowl the city streets night after night, acquainting yourself with all manner of vermin and scum. I've seen you as I've made my rounds. I doubt there is a rat in London you haven't named and fed a bit of cheddar.”

Dickens sighed. “It may be as you say.”

“So you know those who might be trusted. Former soldiers, fallen on hard times, perhaps, but not fallen far from the ways of duty and honor.”

“I've met more than a few.”

“I know. I've read your accounts.”

Dickens was clearly pleased at this turn, but he attempted to hide his smile behind the flagon as he took it from me and tipped it back for a scorching swallow.

“So you'll do it?”

“Go on, then,” Dickens promised. “I know a few I can contact before the dawn.”

“Good. And while you're at it, there are a few others I would have you make discreet inquiries about. Well-to-do types.”

“The others who answered Fezziwig's summons,” Dickens ventured. “The lord, the actress, the Asian?”

“And Sunderland himself,” I said, recalling the industrialist's mad fit on the bridge.

“Tell me what's going on, Scrooge. I can do far more for you if I know the full truth.”

I looked away. I had no doubt that it was just as he said. And what did I know of poking about in matters generally left to the police? An investigator of his caliber would be a near priceless boon in solving this mystery. There was just one problem: “How do I know I can trust you, Mr. Dickens?”

He smiled. “I have no answer to that. I only hope that you will.”

I thought about our many conversations, and one in particular exploded into my thoughts.

“Dickens, you told me that you want out from under the yoke of your publishers, did you not? That you dreamed of becoming a publisher yourself, so that you held the editorial reins and none might censor or change your words unfairly.”

A light came into his eyes. One of yearning and hope. “The kind of money that would require . . .”

“What if I pledged to help you raise it? In return for a vow of absolute confidence concerning all I might reveal?”

Dickens raised his chin and blinked with interest. “And if you failed to live up to your end of the bargain?”

“Then you would reveal all. This pact benefits us both.”

“Very well. Just keep in mind, Scrooge, that the tip of my pen is sharper than any sword. Of course, you'll have no need to fear its ability to create new realities in the minds of the readers of its words, my good man. But if you prove yourself dishonorable, then you will find all your unsavory business practices revealed for all of London by my pen—in copious detail. So, then, all that remains is to discuss the method of my payment.”

“Cash when I see results.”

“Oh, no,” Dickens said, amused and taken with himself. “You won't be paying
me
.”

“Who then?”

Dickens outlined a series of charitable contributions he would see me make. I held my tongue at how useless I found the “good works” of each of them. I did not wish him to see how his machinations rankled me, but I could tell from his growing good cheer that I was failing miserably in this.

“You'll wish to remain anonymous, I imagine,” Dickens said. “When making contributions.”

“I wish to be left alone by those who come looking for donations, yes. If word spreads of my giving money to the societies you've named, I will never hear the end of it.”

“That's a shame. Without a name, how may I verify that you have done as you've pledged?”

“You have my word, sir,” I said indignantly. “What more do you need?”

“Receipts, of course, my dear man. We shall have to devise a name for you. How about Tip Slymingstone?”

“Preposterous.”

“Jem Knavelet? Gibby Squallindkind? Ely Crotchinary? Oh, yes, that,
that
I think—”

The muscles beside my right eye twitched. “A sharp tongue is no indication of a keen mind, Dickens. I'd say make a mental note of that, but you're clearly out of paper.”

Before he might resume his ridicule, he was interrupted by a raucous round of applause from a table across the taproom. A crowd had gathered about the two prostitutes, and one was nodding her head, smiling, and waving for the men to settle down as she got on with her story.

Dickens stole a glance, appreciating the full bouncing bosoms of the boisterous ladies, then fixed his dark eyes on me. “Now let us get back to the matter at hand. Tell me, all, Scrooge!”

Nearly a quarter of an hour passed as I recalled all that had happened to me on this grim day. No, not all. Knowing how it would sound to someone who had not been there to witness it, I said nothing of the ghostly Fezziwig. Instead, I claimed to have received an unsigned letter in which my life had been threatened, I had been instructed that the young man was innocent, and the word “Chimera” had been mentioned. I also said I tossed the letter in the fire, thinking it all a nasty humbug from some angry debtor whose deed I held.

“It's hard to imagine George Sunderland having anything to do with the Colley Brothers,” Dickens mused. “But it does all seem to fit, now doesn't it? Sunderland fears Fezziwig knows something about him that might mar his legacy, and so he hires the Colley Brothers to put the fear of God in the old man. They go too far and butcher him instead. Sunderland withholds their payment, the Colleys rush to grab him and force him to hand
it
over—whatever it is he promised to give them in return for their efforts—but he drowns and they get you instead.”

“But whoever killed Fezziwig showed him mercy,” I said. “He was unconscious when his throat was slit and dead before all the terrible wounds were inflicted. I was put to the question by those boys tonight and can assure you, mercy is not in their repertoire.”

“Ah, but I have a theory on that. The Colleys are very small men, are they not? Fezziwig was six feet tall and then some. The chemicals may have been necessary because the killer could not overpower the old man otherwise. That is
if
they got their hands dirty with the task personally, and with all those tall strapping goons, why would they? Hmmm . . .”

I shook my head. “And what is this ‘Chimera'? Why did that word have such an effect on those criminals?”

Dickens nodded. “And if all this is related to the threat—or promise—made to you at your counting-house, that three more would die, then you . . . you're right. There's something there, but it doesn't all fit properly. Not yet. I say that we should—”

The bells above the pub's front door jangled and a red-nosed newspaper boy rushed in with a cloud of swirling snowflakes holding up a late edition. “Humbug Killer strikes! George Sunderland drowned! Beloved businessman murdered! Suspect behind bars! Hang him now, cries the public! Read all about it!”

The lad was crushed by enthusiasts who stripped him of every paper he held. Moments later, he left with coins jingling in his pocket. Dickens snatched up a newspaper and had more spiced rum as he skimmed the front page.

“The Humbug Killer. They already have a name for him.” Dickens sighed. “Well, Scrooge, the public doesn't know about your connection to Sunderland just yet, and all mention of Shen, Nellie Pearl, and Lord Rutledge being at Fezziwig's this morning—with you, Sunderland, and Miss Owen—has not been reported, either. Let me get you in front of this. We need to know what Sunderland feared Fezziwig might have on him, and what better way than to link you to the man in the minds of the public at large, eh? That way, when you ask questions, doors aplenty will be opened ahead of time. Otherwise, as we both know, less scrupulous types than me will simply make it all up.”