The Humbug Murders (20 page)

“This ball,” she said absently, her voice dull, lifeless. “Where is it to be held?”

“Dyer Manor, I believe.” I pulled the envelope from my breast pocket, still sealed, and handed it to her. She ripped it open and read it with wet eyes.

“Yes, the Dyers,” she said finally, handing the invitation back to me. “I'll be there. I must be there. This has gone on long enough.”

Before I might ask her what she meant by that, she lowered her head, took her Tom's hand in hers, and began to weep.

I left without looking back.

I RENDEZVOUSED WITH
Dickens at the Cock and Egg shortly past one that afternoon, where we shared some mulled cider and traded information. He'd been most saddened (and not a little bit alarmed) by the news of the attack on Mr. Guilfoyle, and curious indeed at the showman-like nature of the killer.

“One could hardly just blend into a crowd dressed like that, now could one?” he jibed, smiling as he sipped at his flagon. But his hand still trembled despite his brave and dismissive tone.

“They're calling the masked figure ‘Humbug' now,” I added. “Ghastly. I didn't credit Guilfoyle's ravings, but it turns out . . .”

Dickens grunted, swallowed, and waited for me to toss a few coins on the table before we headed into the chill and back to the East India Trade Company's offices. “Poor Miss Owen. How is she taking it?”

“How do you think?”

We devised a plan along the way, and he became increasingly annoyed as I dismissed his ideas of procuring costumes and hiring accomplices to create diversions and other elaborate whatnot.

“Simple is best,” I told him. “We sneak in, and if we are caught, we simply act like a pair of foolish and drunk occidentals who wandered in by accident.”

“But we've been seen by the staff!”

“Don't be such a chocolate teapot, Dickens. It's unbecoming. We'll think of something,” I said. My gloved hand shot out, and I arrested the progress of a running boy. He froze, terrified, looking up into my stern face. “Do you know what you've done?” I demanded.

Shuddering, the boy shook his head flicking the drips from his nose to either side.

“You've chanced on to the opportunity to make some money,” Scrooge said. “That's what.”

We paid the lad to walk an empty, unmarked envelope into the great offices and say that he must deliver it “all personal like, and in person” to Mr. Shen. He returned moments later to say that Shen had left for the day. Dickens wasn't surprised, as he had been following Shen and lost him in the early afternoon crowds while they were traveling in the direction of the Quarter.

The boy raced off, and I nodded to Dickens. “Let's be about it.”

Wind-whipped sleet pummeled the back of my neck as we slipped behind the East India House and stole down the stone steps leading to below the street. Dickens crouched before a door marking the servant's entrance, his ever-present cigarette between his teeth, as he fiddled with a tiepin and a butter knife in the lock.

“I thought you said you could pick locks?” I said, looking about anxiously. I held the brass key he'd stolen, which had not opened this particular door.

“I said nothing of the like,” he mumbled. “I said I had a tie pin, which
might
work.”

Actually, he had boasted of all he'd learned of the thief's craft from writing an article about the criminal plague on London and assured me he could pick a lock like this in his sleep.

“Good thing you brought that butter knife,” I said, not even attempting to hide my sarcasm. “I shan't even ask
why
you carry such a thing about your person.”

I heard the bolt shift slightly.

“For buttering toast,” said Dickens, the bolt shifting slightly from his efforts. “Though I trust myself to always find bread to eat, I do not always trust that it will be under sanitary conditions. I also carry a clean napkin and a fork.”

“Then at least we are prepared should we have to face armed guards,” I said, squinting against the icy wind. “Particularly if they're in the mood for dinner service!”

I heard a further scraping as the tiepin forced the lock mechanism to loosen, and he wedged the butter knife against the bolt, scraping the paint on the molding. Almost there . . .

“The only weapon I brandish is my pen, Scrooge. Embellishing, conserving, and devastating in equal measures, limited only by my own will.”

My heart lifted when he gave the tiepin a final twist and we heard the sharp snap of a bolt sliding free of its steel home. Dickens and I looked at each other and held our breaths. We listened beyond the howling wind, past distant hooves and the scratching of a city fox in a festering gutter nearby. We were alone. My companion reached for the doorknob. Exultant and terrified, I watched as he turned the knob, leaned all his weight inward, and flew inside, tripping down the unexpected set of half-stairs before us. I strolled into the dark hallway that smelled of polish and coal and eased the door shut behind us.

East India House was deceptively large, and the entire basement floor that we had just entered housed the many operations needed for the running of the administrative complex above. Navigating this floor would be challenging, though our earlier visit to Shen had at least provided us with a solid compass. His office was in the west wing, and the servants' entrance was east. We would need to find a stairwell and ascend to the ground floor as early as possible, for at the lunch hours it was more likely that the kitchen, pantry, or storage rooms would be occupied than the great halls and offices above.

Dickens led the way. Exposed water pipes jutted out of the walls at head height, iron hooks protruded a foot into the narrow corridor, and one had just narrowly missed my forehead but for Dickens' timely warning. A doorway opened up to our left, the earliest opportunity to move westward, so we entered cautiously. Foul smells of rotting food and soiled water seemed to thicken the darkness of the ill-lit rooms, and just as I reached up to cover my nose, I bumped into the back of Dickens.

“The scullery,” he whispered. “There's no thoroughfare here, move out.”

I turned to exit, but just then a sharp snort vibrated through the foul air, followed by a smacking of lips and an almighty belch and a cloud of stale beer and bodily gases contributed to the soupy atmosphere. Someone was sleeping in this horrible room! I froze, but Dickens continued, bumping into me and sending me crashing into the side, knocking a faltering stack of pans to the stone floor with a crash.

“Wha-what? Pardon?” came a slurred and drowsy man's voice. “Betsy?”

I squinted into the darkness and made out the shape of a man sitting on a small wooden stool, slumped against the stone basins at the end of the tight room, clutching a bottle and rubbing his eyes. The smell of his alcohol breath was poison, but at least it signaled that we were safe from immediate persecution.

“Jus' waitin' for you, Betsy,” slurred the man, and belched again. “Think I love you.”

“And I adore you, dear!” sang Dickens in an exaggerated female's voice, and my heart stopped with mortification and dread.

“Good, good, I knew it,” muttered the drunk, and a thud rang out as his head fell, deadweight, against the sink.

Dickens tapped my shoulder, and I stepped over the mess of pots and pans and out into the corridor.

“Damnit,” I hissed when we were clear of the scullery. “What were you thinking?”

“What harm? At least now the potboy knows his Betsy loves him and he will sleep soundly through the rest of our mission. It'll be the next left now, if that was the scullery. Look for a tight spiral staircase.”

Ducking under sporadic copper pipes, we found the staircase and ascended, clutching the banister as the steps twisted round. We were met at the top by a heavy door.

“We should try the brass key first,” he replied, snatching it from my outstretched hand. I heard the scraping of metal on metal as Dickens fumbled with the key in the lock. “Doesn't fit. Time for the butter knife. . . .”

“Have you even
tried
the door?” I asked.

“No need,” he said. “All doors leading to the basement are locked from the hall during this hour. It's safe to assume the housekeeper will not open them again for another—”

I reached past him and turned the knob, pushing the door open.

“Dickens, when I've funded your publishing venture and made a businessman of you, you should keep in mind to always attempt the simplest solution first. Otherwise, you will come to ruin, though I'd wager that's not unlikely either way.”

The ground floor was airier, lighter, the ceilings higher and the air fresher. The building's floors were polished marble, forcing us to tread lightly lest our footsteps reverberate round the great hall. Bright, bracing sunlight streamed through the tall windows, was multiplied and reflected inside by the many shiny surfaces: marble columns, mosaic mantelpieces, crystal chandeliers. Vast paintings hung at every wall, dreamscapes of elephants and treasures, merchants in exotic places, and the quizzical eyes of King William following us as we snuck past Fredrick's empty post and to Shen's office.

“Well,” I whispered, “our key will finally be of use.” Facing the double door with elaborate golden painted carvings and a crystal glass doorknob, I grabbed it back from the reporter.

“Have
you
even tried the door?” Dickens said with a grin.

It slid open silently as soon as I turned the crystal knob. I felt both relief and annoyance as Dickens commented that he had noticed none of the internal office doors lining the great hall had locks, and that some housebreakers he had previously interviewed had testified that to be the norm in West End London. We were inside with the door closed behind us only seconds before footsteps rang out in the hall and a trio of laughing figures passed beyond us.

Sighing with relief, I hurried to Shen's desk, our footfalls sinking into the lush carpet. I rummaged through Shen's papers, taking care to note the position of each one.

“The envelope isn't here, Dickens,” I said with a sigh.

“Check again.”

“What did it look like?”

“Like an envelope.”

He rushed to my side, overturning each paper I had carefully laid back in its place, but laying them back even neater than I had managed. No summons from Fezziwig, but whatever the papers contained had some value to Dickens, for he was meticulously copying words down in his notepad using one of Shen's dip pens and the remaining ink in the toppled inkwell.

Then I spotted the drawer in the desk, slipped the brass key in, and blissfully turned it with a near-soundless
clunk
. I pulled it open and grabbed its contents, flicking through each file. Nothing.

“Of course it's not in
there
,” said Dickens. “How would he have got it in without the key? But look here.” He reached past me and pulled a small velvet box from the drawer. “Hazard a guess?”

He opened it, and we leaped back with cries to the almighty. The ring—the key to the Doll House and the other great palaces of sin in the Royal Quarter—sat inside. It rested round a man's leathery and well-preserved severed finger. A macabre joke, perhaps. But it spoke with unquestionable authority as to the true and apparently deadly nature of Mr. Shen.

“I wonder,” said Dickens, carefully closing the box and putting it back in the drawer. The color had drained from his cheeks.

“What?”

“Well,” he said as he moved to the bookcase. “It seems our Mr. Shen likes his little jokes. So perhaps . . .” With fast-moving fingers he examined the spines and located
A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.
It fell open in his hand, an envelope hidden between the pages at
H
for
Humbug.

Dickens handed me the envelope, and I gently slid the flap open and removed the letter. My throat tightened as I read aloud Fezziwig's words, hearing his benevolent voice in my mind as clearly as if he were addressing me directly: