The Penny Dreadful Curse (10 page)

“And can you
tell me about the Fish Pond?”

“I presume you
refer to the King’s Fishpond – the latter being one word – it is a
man-made swamp to the east of the city, bordered by Fossgate and
Walmgate. In 1068 or thereabouts William the Bastard or one of his
sycophants decided it would be a good idea to divert the River Foss
to create a moat for York Castle. The surrounding area soon
flooded. It created a fishing pool for subsequent monarchs. It is
marshy ground, rife with razor-sharp sedge, deep in some parts,
shallow in others, favoured by mudlarks for the valuable items it
can sometimes yield. I presume you have a reason for asking?”

“No particular
reason,” she deflected. “I am an ardent student of geography and
history and I like to know about the places I am visiting. All
knowledge fascinates me.”

Mr Thrypp had
finished decanting the amontillado and was standing to attention,
looking hopefully at the famous author.

Mr Dicksen
caught him out of the corner of his incisive eye and expelled an
exasperated breath. “What is it now, Thrypp? Are you an ardent
student of geography and history too?” he parlayed
sarcastically.

“No, sir, er,
yes, what I mean is, yes, I am interested in such things, but that
is not what I want to say, sir, er, what I want to say is that I
heard some bad news this morning when I was in Coppergate buying
some crumpets from Ye Olde Crumpet Shoppe, some news that is
related to you, er, not directly, but indirectly, which I thought
you may be interested to hear, sir.”

“Oh, get on
with it, Thrypp, and stop blathering like the idiot you are. You
are beginning to remind me of my wife.”

“Well, sir,
there was a death this morning in the Shambles. A lad was murdered
and strung up on a meat hook.”

“That is
unfortunate, Thrypp, but what the deuce has it got to do with me,
directly or indirectly?”

“Well, sir,
the lad who was killed was the one who comes by here each month to
take a parcel to Gladhill.”

“Really,
Thrypp, you exceed yourself this morning regarding stuff and
nonsense. The fact that an errand boy who occasionally carries a
parcel from Panglossian to Gladhill gets himself killed is neither
directly nor indirectly related to me. It is like saying the
bargeman who brings the paper from Hull upon which is printed one
of my books has a wife whose third cousin died from a paper cut
whilst reading
Bleak Hall
is related to me. In that
roundabout way we are all of us connected to one another in the
great sphere of life, the infinite plane of existence, the eternal
ebb and flow in the tide of the affairs of men, ergo, the death of
one relates to all, me, you, the Countess and the rest. That the
death was tragic is not in dispute but I cannot be expected to
mourn all mankind in his passing except in a general way, as I do
in my books, sympathetically and eloquently.”

Mr Thrypp had
reddened from the tip of his collar to the bald spot on the top of
his head. “Yes, sir, but, well, there was a parcel wrapped in brown
paper and tied with string on the corner of my desk last night for
the lad to transport to Gladhill, sir, to you, and it has gone as
it should have gone this morning so I was just wondering, sir,
where it might now be now that the lad is, er, dead.”

“Ah! I see the
point you are getting at, Thrypp, if only you could get there
sooner rather than later. The parcel is neither here nor there. No,
no, it is of no import whatsoever. It was a chapter that I deemed
Panglossian might want to view and which he was merely returning
back to me. I have a copy of the very same chapter in my private
study. Be so good as to top up my teeny-tiny thimble, Thrypp.” The
author turned to the Countess. “Another mouthful of sherry for you,
my dear lady?”

She nodded.
“Does Mr Panglossian edit all of your books?”

“Heaven
forbid! He edits none of them! The man is a damn good publisher but
a creative nincompoop! I would not let him near my work with a
bargepole! I edit all my own stuff!”

“But you sent
him a chapter to view?”

Mr Dicksen
smiled strangely as he downed his second sherry. “Ah! Yes! So I
did! Well, it was a chapter describing some Jews and their
religious rituals. I wanted to make sure to get the details right.
Readers are extremely pernickety about that sort of thing. I swear
some of them read books simply to spot errors. They care more
whether a Jacobean fireplace is distinct from an Elizabethan
fireplace than that the heroine is chaste or the villain gets his
comeuppance. It is a perverse world we writers inhabit.”

At this point
Mr Panglossian and Dr Watson reappeared. Mr Dicksen sprang forth
like a jack-in-the-box, rushed across the room and clasped the
doctor by the hand.

“Let me shake
the hand of a fellow author I have long respected,” he trumpeted
loudly, shaking the hand up and down ferociously. “I stand in your
shadow, sir. I am a fervent admirer. I am Mr Charles Dicksen. You
have possibly heard of me?”

“Oh, most
assuredly,” mumbled Dr Watson, overwhelmed and thoroughly shaken.
“Your fame and talent are well known throughout the land. I am
humbled by your praise.”

“We authors
must learn to take such praise with good grace. It is water off a
duck’s back to me now. You will soon become accustomed to it as I
have.” He dropped the doctor’s hand abruptly and turned to his
publisher. “Thrypp informs me that the little courier of yours is
dead.”

Mr Panglossian
looked blank. “What courier?”

“The poor lad
who sometimes runs errands between here and Gladhill - you know the
one I mean,” he prompted impatiently through clenched teeth. “I
sent you a chapter to peruse the other month and he was apparently
returning it this morning when he was unfortunately strung up on a
meat hook in the Shambles by some brute. Tragic! Terrible! Life is
stranger than fiction, as I so often remind my wife! Isn’t that
right, Panglossian?”

Mr Panglossian
seemed momentarily stunned. He stared dully at the famous author
without actually seeing him before blinking several times and
coming to his senses, jerking a fat finger at his hapless
secretary. “Where is the Souchong, Thrypp? Don’t just stand there,
man, bring it in.”

Between
buttered crumpets and freshly brewed tea, Mr Dicksen informed them
he would be doing a reading at the York Theatre Royal at seven
o’clock that evening.

“The Theatre
Royal seats almost seven hundred and the tickets sold out more than
a month ago,” he explained with no lack of modesty, “but I always
reserve some seats for personal friends and favoured guests, not
with the hoi-polloi in the stalls, of course, but in one of the
private boxes. I would be honoured if you would fill those seats
and attend tonight’s reading.” He beamed some golden radiance in
the Countess’s direction, of which a few slants fell towards the
doctor. “Someone will meet you in the foyer and direct you to your
seats. Arrive at fifteen minutes before seven. Try not to be late.”
He pushed to his well-shod feet. “Well, I must be off. I have a
book to write that will not write itself!” He took the hand of the
Countess and brought it to his lips in a gesture both passionate
and dramatic. “
Enchante
, Countess Volodymyrovna, a
bientôt.”

“Did you learn
anything interesting during your tour of the printing presses?”
posed the Countess as soon as she and Dr Watson turned their backs
on the Panglossian Publishing House.

“Not per se,
but I had a chance to ask Mr Panglossian about copyright and
royalties. You will recall he said he didn’t ask for the real names
of his authors, nor their addresses, nor anything about their
circumstances, well, it stands to reason he would not be able to
send the royalties to their benefactors. The only way the
benefactors of deceased authors could claim their rightful
royalties would be to go personally to Panglossian with proof of
who the author was and their relationship to the author. Do you see
where I am going with this?”

She was
already nodding. “It means if an author dies and no one comes to
claim the royalties or claim copyright then Panglossian Publishing
gets to keep both.”

“I’m not
suggesting Mr Panglossian would murder his own authors in order to
profit from their deaths but it is a most unusual arrangement he
has in place.”

“Mmm, yes, it
seems counter-intuitive to kill off your own authors.”

“Unless they
were intending to transfer to another publisher, of course.”

His line of
reasoning provided an adrenaline surge to her sagging spirit and
she picked up her pace as they crossed busy Coppergate, dodging
wagons laden with goods heading down to the river to be loaded onto
barges and wagons coming up to town to be unloaded into warehouses
and factories.

“We need to
check how profitable the dead authoresses might have been for
Panglossian Publishing,” she said.

“How can we do
that if they were paid in secret?”

“The York
penny dreadfuls have a publication number on the front. The
highwayman series was numbered in the 150’s. I think it refers to
volume. It means the author has published at least 150 dreadfuls.
Hotcakes, remember! Sell one or two and you starve but sell
hundreds and you’re in clover. And so is your publisher. I commend
you on your perspicacity.”

Like most men
his age, he had long ago learned to accept praise with a modicum of
modesty but whenever the Countess praised him he turned into a
cooked lobster.

“How about
some lunch?” he said as they passed a cafe with colourful red and
white gingham cloths on the tables that caught his eye.

“I had two
crumpets, two cups of Souchong and two mouthfuls of sherry back at
Panglossian. I couldn’t eat another bite. Besides, I am keen to
check the volume numbers of our dead authoresses. Plus I want to
see if any authors have the initials BB.”

“BB?”

Coppergate
melted into the Pavement at the spot where she stopped to buy
several bunches of bluebells from an old flower-seller who earned
more in that moment than the entirety of the month.

“I hope Mr
Hiboux has some vases. I think these pretty flowers will brighten
up ye olde gloomy Mousehole.”

“BB?” he
prompted again when they recommenced walking.

“Oh, yes, I
forgot to tell you. When I smuggled the muffins to the bookshop
this morning I found Mr Corbie talking to the young lad with the
cloth cap who seemed to be the leader of the rag-tag army of
Snickelwayers. He is a chimneysweep called Patch. In his pocket he
had the piece of paper that was in the dead boy’s hand which
Inspector Bird chased without success down the Shambles. One of the
younger boys, the one who vomited, Boz, had caught hold of the
paper and passed it onto Patch. The dead boy, by the way, was
called Gin-Jim. Anyway, the paper appeared to have been the remnant
of the top left-hand corner of a page. I could have sworn this
morning that it was larger and had more writing on it, alas, the
only thing you can see now are the initials BB.”

“The initials
of his killer?”

“That’s what
Mr Corbie suggested but I cannot see how Gin-Jim would know his
killer in advance. And, besides, the writing was beautifully
executed using a fountain pen with a wide nib. Not the sort of
thing a penniless boy is likely to possess. I have the paper in my
bag and can show you when we get back to the inn. I don’t want to
risk losing it in this jostling crowd.”

“What about
the quality of paper? Sherlock prided himself on being an expert
with paper. He could recognize at a glance where it came from.”

“All I can say
with certainty is that it was of middling quality. The colour was
what I would call white-white. It is quite common.”

They reached
the door of the Mousehole and paused under the over-hanging
eaves.

“I will only
get in your way,” announced Dr Watson, “so I will bid you farewell
for now and take a bite of lunch at Ye Olde Minster Teashoppe then
pay a visit to the police station to speak to Inspector Bird about
what we have learned so far. I might even call in to see Dr Pertwee
and see if he can tell us anything about the unfortunate boy who
was killed this morning, although I agree with the inspector that
his death is unlikely to be related to the five murders we are
investigating.”

“That’s what I
would have said this morning but while you were with Panglossian
checking the printing presses in the basement I returned to his
office where I was privy to an interesting exchange between Mr
Dicksen and Mr Thrypp.”

“When you went
back for the bag you contrived to forget?” he quipped.

She laughed
lightly. “Bravo, doctor! A few more crime cases and we will be able
to read each other’s minds!”

He decided to
move on swiftly. “What conversation?”

“Mr Thrypp
heard about the death of the boy in the Shambles while he was out
buying crumpets and he said he thought it would be of interest to
Mr Dicksen because the boy was a courier between Panglossian and
Gladhill, the place where Dicksen lives. The boy was paid to carry
a parcel from Panglossian to Gladhill on a regular basis. Mr
Dicksen poo-pooed the idea but Mr Thrypp then added that there had
been a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string on the
corner of his desk for the boy to collect. The parcel had gone,
meaning the boy picked it up as usual and was delivering it to
Gladhill, but there was no such parcel in the Shambles as far as I
could see.”

“The killer
would have taken it. It may even have been the motive for killing
the boy. The killer may have been a thief who thought the boy was
carrying something valuable.”

“That’s what I
thought too, at first, but Mr Dicksen leapt out of his chair like a
jack-in-the-box when you and Panglossian showed up. I got the
distinct impression he wanted to be the first to break the news
about the dead boy to Panglossian, rather than leaving it to
Thrypp.”