The Humbug Murders (21 page)

You must know that throughout our association, I have cared for nothing except preserving your utmost happiness and well-being. So please, heed me now when I tell you that I must speak with you on a matter of the utmost urgency.

Information has come into my possession concerning a threat to all you hold dear.

For fear of this missive finding its way into the wrong hands, I will say only that it concerns “The Lady.” I think you know the personage to whom this nom de plume refers. Please attend me at eight in the morning tomorrow at my office.

I will tell all then.

Yours Affectionately,

Reginald D. Fezziwig

I folded up the summons and slipped it back in its envelope. Dickens flicked his notepad shut and put the envelope back between the pages of the book, then slid it into place in the bookshelf.

“The Lady?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I'm afraid I don't know. Considering he asked all four to meet at his offices on the same day, at the same time, I would think they all knew something of this ‘Lady,' that she was the common tie between them.”

“Some threat she held for each of them. How would Fezziwig know such a thing?”

“Mr. Scrooge, it appears there was much you didn't know about your friend.” He was still scribbling.

I opened my mouth to agree but was halted by the sudden sound of muffled voices on the other side of the door. Shocked, I looked to Dickens, who was staring at his pocket watch.

“Lunch must be just about over,” he mumbled. “Stewards will be in shortly to prepare the offices for their occupants. We need to leave, now.”

“The window,” I offered, and we moved to the tall panes and peered out. The street outside was clear, so I flicked the latches and slid the bolts to the side. Lifting the lower pane just enough for us to slide through, we stepped onto the ledge and hopped over the iron railing underneath. On the other side, Dickens gave me a leg up, and I reached up to pull the window shut just as I saw the crystal knob inside turning.

We huddled together over what was becoming our regular table at the Cock and Egg. My eyes were red raw from exhaustion, and a familiar ache in my legs closed tight round my calf muscles.

“What was all that you were copying down in your notebook?” I asked.

“Yes, about that,” Dickens said. “I'd just have you read it, but shorthand, you know. Our foreign friend in there is hip deep in the underground opium trade. I suspected as much of course, rumors abound, but evidently, he's in command of shipments, had records of trade routes, the coded names of suppliers, receivers, and more. He may present himself to the world as a man of legitimate business, but his main trade is something else entirely.”

“Do you think
he
could be Smithson?” I asked.

“It's possible, I suppose. And yet, I have difficulty imagining men like the Colleys taking orders from a foreigner, don't you?”

“I'd put nothing past them if money is in the game.” I sighed. “We have no choice but to request an interview with the prisoner.”

“An interview with Jack Colley?” Dickens mused. “Are you feeling suicidal, Scrooge? And what of Mrs. Potterage and her family? You're paying handsomely for their protection. Wouldn't it jeopardize them further if you antagonized that man?”

“Then I'll simply have to charm him,” I said.

Dickens choked on his ale. “I'd pay handsomely to see you charm anyone. But yes, I suppose that considering the attempt on Mr. Guilfoyle's life and these startling developments about Mr. Shen, the days of caution are behind us, don't you?”

I nodded.

“Lunch at first, at least?”

“Sorry, Dickens,” I said, eyeing the plates of salted ham that had just clattered on the table in front of us. “No time to waste!”

But my jovial tone was only to hide my terror at the thought of seeing the madman Colley once more.

“Well, then,” Jack Colley said, fingers templed and tapping his lips, “to what do I owe the honor of this visit, Mr. Scrooge? Here to reminisce about old times? Hah! The last time we was face-to-face, you hit me right in the gob with a copper's baton, you did. But no hard feelings, eh? And by the way, how
is
that fine woman of yours. Belle, wasn't it? Belle Potterage, eh? Only, she's hardly yours these days, now is she?”

I thought I'd be prepared for Jack Colley's nasty tricks when I asked Inspector Foote to arrange this audience. But now, as I sat alone with him in this dingy “visitors' room,” Jack in chains bound to a hook in the floor, I felt the heat rising in my veins. My hands wrung each other until my knuckles turned white.

“Still taste a bit of that porridge on the side, do ya?” Jack asked. “Naughty-naughty, hiring those bruisers to watch over her and that fool of a husband. The twins, though, they sound appealing. Perhaps Baldworthy might adopt them. Or make them into a tasty stew. Something. But those lads you're paying, war men, eh? Problem with blokes like that is they're used to having someone tell them what to do, and they operate by a certain code of honor. Roger and his lads . . . they don't.”

“Do you want answers?” I asked, the words catching in my throat. “Or haven't you finished showing off?”

Lines crinkled about his eyes like spiderwebs as he smiled. “Just proving a point.”

The point, of course, was that despite being locked up in here, Jack Colley had complete access to his brother Roger and others on the outside. Probably through notes and messages smuggled in and out via corrupt guards. It also meant that, as Dickens warned, my actions and words here and now with this thug could well have consequences for Belle, myself, Dickens, and Adelaide. Though I dearly wished to take advantage of Jack's “vulnerable” state—chained up as he was—and give him a fair thrashing for what he had done to me, I would instead need to employ thoughtfulness and reserve.

“The police make it sound as if they crippled your operations,” I ventured. “I find that hard to believe. You may have suffered setbacks, yes. But with the right influx of cash and goods, I could see your empire rising again from whatever ashes Foote and the others would say it's become.”

“Well, I never! Then you mean to be my benefactor, Mr. Scrooge. You fancy being business partners, just like you were proposing when you were, ah . . . hanging about with us at the docks?” He smiled, revealing gleaming teeth flecked with silver fillings.

I forced myself not to turn away, forced my expression to remain stony. “What if I might provide you with information about the opium trade? Very specific information. Arrival times, shipment weights, the names of those responsible on every side of the equation. Is that something that might interest you?”

“Never dealt with that stuff. Foul and nasty it is.”

“Yes, but needs must, do they not? Even if all you did was seize those goods and sell them back to their rightful owners, the amount you stood to gain would be monumental. More than enough to rebuild.”

“But I'd still be in here.”

I snickered. “All you lack is the means to bribe a few well-placed judges. This would provide it.”

Jack looked about suspiciously. “Trying to trap me, eh, Mr. Scrooge? I'd think you're more the type that if you came into the possession of information like that, that you'd turn it over to your copper friends, like the Inspector Foote.
Toot sweet
.”

I sighed. I had learned that the cornerstone of any great lie was a foundation of truth. And so I offered that now. “I am marked. The Humbug Killer is coming for me. Do you understand what I'm saying? My life is worth
nothing
so long as that creature is about.”

He chortled. “The Humbug? You believe that's real? And old Saint Nicholas, too?” He winked at me.

I stared at him and let him read the dark truth in my eyes. At last he turned away, shuddered.

“All right, then,” he said. “What's any of that got to do with me?”

“You admitted that you had something to do with Fezziwig's death.”

“Nahhh,” Jack said, shifting and testing his chains with a sharp jangling. He frowned with disappointment as he realized he was solidly bound and released them. “Just said that to put a fright in you, we did. News of what happened to that poor old man spread quick.”

I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest. I believed him, unfortunately. “Tell me what it was you thought Sunderland had cheated you out of. And what ‘Chimera' means. How it connects to your enterprises.”

He laughed. “So you were bluffing, too? Maybe you
are
fit for a partner after all!”

I shrugged. “It's all connected, Mr. Colley. Chimera, George Sunderland, that fool Rutledge, the Royal Quarter, a certain Miss Annie Piper, perhaps even that Smithson fellow.”

Jack Colley's face betrayed nothing but flickers of interest as I wove the tapestry before him.

“And ‘The Lady,' ” I added, pretending it was an afterthought. “We know of her, too.”

At once his expression soured. I'd clearly touched on something with him, but he was not in a giving mood. Not yet.

Finally, I said, “And that means if I am on Humbug's list, you might be as well.”

Jack's eyebrows flared with mirth. His dark eyes sparkled. “Let 'im try,” he said, relishing the challenge. Then he sat forward, all smiles and laughter. “I'll tell you what, Mr. Scrooge. Because you've amused me, brought amusement to me, made me feel . . . amused, like. Because of that, and not that shite about the opium trade—leave that to the slanties—I'll give you this.”

Closing his eyes, he rolled his head back, revealing a sore rash on his throat where his prison clothes were buttoned too tight, and began singing a nursery rhyme. At first I thought he was mad, but I knew the rhyme, knew it very well.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockleshells, pretty maids all in a row.
He sang three traditional choruses, the final one replacing
maids
with
cuckolds
.

“There,” he said at last. “That should do for you.”

“You've told me nothing,” I said, standing up and brushing the filth of this wretched place from my coat.

“Everything,” he said. “Make that, ‘everything.' Words have many meanings, Mr. Scrooge. And from innocent beginnings often comes hideous ends. Now, going back a final time to that other trade you mentioned, for your sake, steer well clear of it. I wouldn't want to see anything happen to you, Mr. Scrooge. Truly, I would not. You're so very amusing!”

“Well, in that very spirit, then,” I said, “may I suggest becoming acquainted with soap and water? I've come across decomposing bodies that are less offensive than you are.”

He laughed and laughed as I took my leave.

Trudging through the snow outside the prison some time later, I reflected on that rhyme. Like all good schoolboys, I was well aware that most such rhymes were thought to be allegories for religious or political matters in England's past. Some believed the pretty maids to be Mary Queen of Scots' four ladies in waiting or Mary's many miscarriages and her execution of Lady Jane Grey. Others that the rows referred to the execution of Protestants and that cockleshells suggested an unfaithful husband. Cuckolds one might leave on its own.

I cursed myself. I had risked much to come here and lay myself bare before that grinning lunatic. In return, it seemed, despite his assurances, that I had gained nothing at all.

Why had I done it?

Memories returned to me, visions of Adelaide weeping at the broken Guilfoyle's bedside . . . and layered upon them, the chill, dead look in ghostly Fezziwig's black eyes.

Later that evening, when I spoke with Dickens outside the gates of Lord Dyer's manor house, he rubbed his hands briskly and smiled ear-to-ear. “Ah, that is the way of these things,” he assured me. “Information that at first seems meaningless later turns out to be the lynchpin to solving the entire mystery! Rejoice! Rejoice and be merry!”