Frost Fair

by Edith Layton

  “He might have a family to claim him, bury him in Westminister Abbey, for all we know,” Will said, choosing to ignore the insinuation he might stoop to the illegal, lucrative practice of selling unclaimed bodies to the resurrection men for the use of medical students. He didn’t like the viscount even thinking about such things, but wanted the women’s good will too much to make an issue of it. “What I’d like to know is what you know about Mrs. Pushkin, the female the corpse was dying to see,” he said instead.

  The women stopped drinking. Their expressions grew closed.

  “Were he?” Mrs. Gudge asked slowly. “Ain’t what we hears. We heared he was dead afore she woke, nor was we surprised. That one don’t bother with men, y’see.”

  “Ever?” Will asked.

  “Well, she did when she were married to old Pushkin,” Mrs. Gow said seriously, “’cause she couldn’t ’elp it, could she? There ain’t a woman born would blame ’er fer not wanting to touch a man after ’im! Dirty as a barge bottom,” she said scornfully, as though she were immaculate, “and with a mouth that was worse. Gawd! ’E had a mouth like a ’orn, ’e ’ad, and nary a good word fer no one ever come out of it, and damned to all else but ’is work. A real rusty guts! So who could blame ’er?”

  “And her married to him when she were only a bit of a girl. All eyes and red hair. Gawd she were a sight, remember Mrs. Gow?” Mrs. Gudge asked softly. “Scart of him hollering, scart of us, scart of everything. But she worked hard, and dealt fair. She ain’t the murdering kind, redbreast.”

  “Why should she be?” Mrs. Gow asked. “Got a good business, money, peace and quiet now, she don’t need no man, nor nothing else. And good luck to ’er, says I!”

  They drank to that.

  Will sat back then and talked to them a while just for the pleasure of it, because they’d told him all they cared to about the crime he’d come to ask about. They liked the freckled widow. He was wise enough to know he’d get no more out of them on that head. But he liked them. He liked their honesty and their humor, and the fact that they weren’t afraid of him. He didn’t run into that often. The viscount sat in shadow and wisely held his tongue. They ignored him, taking him for an assistant or some underling. Will liked that too.

  “And so who would know more about the bran-faced widow?” he finally asked out of the blue, when they stopped chuckling over a story they told him. “You know I’ll ask more,” he chided when they glared at him. “Not like me to give up so easy. The widow’s prime with you, I see that. So who’s got the gossip, piping hot? We’ll hear it sooner or later. Best you tell me who to ask so I hear it right, eh?”

  They looked at each other. Mrs. Gow sighed. “You could nip round to Petticoat Lane, I s’pose,” she said grudgingly, “and chat up Roger Bell, him that’s got the fish market there.”

  “Bell?” Mrs. Gudge shrieked, “that auld woman? That Jessamy? What can ye be thinking of, Mrs. Gow?”

  “’E’s a regular man milliner, I know that,” her friend answered. “’is tongue runs on wheels, I know it too. But ’e ain’t cruel nor stupid, is ’e? ’E got no knife to grind neither. Gives ’isself airs, but there’s no ’arm in ’im. Anyways, we owe ’im a treat. ’E’ll be that glad to have such two such brave, ’andsome cullys as Spanish Will and his friend in ’is shop, won’t ’e? Be sure and say we sent you, Dearie,” she told Will coyly.

  Mrs. Gudge began to laugh so hard she choked. Mrs. Gow thumped her on the back as she flung her hands in the air and gasped and coughed and laughed all the harder, sputtering gin. “Oh Gawd!” she finally said on a wheezy sigh. “Won’t he though? Aye, ’e lives to talk, does Roger Bell. Oh, you’ll like ’im, lad,” she told Will as he eyed her suspiciously. “But maybe not half so much as ’e’ll like you. Don’t know why ’e sells fish,” she cackled, “seeing as how they smell like what ’e don’t never want to use.”

  This set both women into gales of laughter.

  “I take it he’s a Molly mop,” Will said sourly.

  “Why, lad, how could we say? We don’t never look in the back of ’is shop,” Mrs. Gudge said piously, making it Mrs. Gow’s turn to choke with laughter. “One thing sure, though, all fun aside,” she added, “’e knows everything, and be sure, ’e’ll tell it too.”

  “If you ask ’im nice!” Mrs. Gow crowed.

  Will and Lucian left the tavern to the sound of the two fishwives’ merriment.

  “You did well to hold your tongue in there,” Will commented when they stepped outside again.

  “I’d no choice. I scarce understood two words in three they spoke,” Lucian said wryly. “Did you learn anythng to the purpose?”

  “I might have. I have another long walk to take now to find out. Still interested in coming along?”

  “More than ever,” Lucian said. It was absolute truth. He’d lived in London most of his life and was considered a man about town. But he’d never seen this side of it. He felt stimulated, enthralled. He hadn’t felt so awake in years. He was fascinated. Both by the denizens Spanish Will mingled with, and the fact that he could mingle with them. It was very like being bilingual, he realized, more impressed with the runner now than before.

  “You’d do well to remain silent then,” Will grunted, and lowering their heads against the cutting wind, they made their way along the deserted streets to Petticoat Lane.

  *

  It was snowing just as hard there, and it was Sunday there as well. But Lucian was surprised to see the pavements thronged with shoppers buying at a jumble of shops, each fronted by a bawling crier, shouting merchandise of every sort to be found in London.

  “Aye,” Will said, reading his confusion. “It never sleeps, not even on the Sabbath. Here’s Jews, whose Sabbath it is not, and Christians who only worship a good bargain. Bargains, and all—if neither new nor first quality, then cheap, and sold no questions asked or answered—honestly, at least.” He interrupted a hawker trying to hook in customers with a lively spiel outside a men’s clothing shop. “Bell’s Fish Market?” Will asked him.

  “Down the street, left, it’s on the right… Quality, Quality! Nice warm coats marked down and down! Special today,” he sang.

  Bell’s was a hovel of a shop, the front window a bleak square, but the fish in it had been laid end to end with care and precision. The ones that were left, that was. The place did a thriving business. Inside, it was blistering cold in spite of the customers crowded in. Two boys in aprons and a lean man dressed like a gentlemen were bundling fish into papers, handing them out and pocketing change.

  “Your pleasure, Sirs?” the man asked the moment he saw them, giving them a brilliant smile, “I’ve lovely smelts. So tender. And such a nice bit of plaice put away. I have it! Lobster. Costs the earth, because of how cold the sea is these days, but you’re obviously men of taste. It’s yours—for a good price,” he promised, his light eyes dancing from Will to Lucian, eager and bright. He had a thin face and his fair thinning hair was tortured into a semblance of a Brutus cut. He was dressed as elegantly as a man in his club on St. James Place, Lucian thought, but the effect was ruined by the blood-stained gloves he wore, the many fobs on his waistcoat, and the huge pearl gleaming on his carefully tied cravat.

  “Here!” a tiny old woman in front of Lucian cried indignantly. “Oim next, they just come in!”

  “So they did, so they did,” the lean man said, his smile still brilliant. “You see my dilemma?” He apologized to Will, his gaze never leaving his. “If you’d just wait a moment, Sirs? If you please? Just a bit?”

  “A bit or two, certainly,” Will said. “It’s information we’ve come for—not fish. Are you the proprietor, Roger Bell? Well, then,” he said to the man’s quick confused nod, “we’ve some inquiries when you have a moment…” He took a small notebook from his inner pocket and glanced down into it.

  Lucian saw Roger Bell’s color change, and his smile fade to a sick grimace. “Our Jim here will take care of you, Mum,” he told the old woman. “Sir?” he asked W
ill, blinking rapidly.

  “Hardly needful to call a runner, ‘Sir”,” Will said jovially. Lucian didn’t think Roger Bell could grow more pale. He could. “‘Mr. Corby’ will do.”

  “And your associate?” Bell asked dazedly.

  “I’ll be doing the asking,” Will said too gently. “He’s just here to see all goes smoothly.”

  “To be sure, to be sure, if you’d care to step this way?”

  They followed him to a next room where a boy slicing fish looked up at them curiously. Roger Bell waved him back to work and led Will and Lucian to a room in back, furnished like a parlor. A coal fire in the hearth made the air shimmer with the rumor of heat, though it couldn’t dispel the terrible chill of the place.

  “Would you like a seat?” he asked, and when Will shook his head, added quickly, licking his lips, “How may I help you?” He held his hands in front of him like a praying rabbit, all his former vivacity replaced by equally intense terror.

  Well, but a man with his reputation should be terrified, Lucian realized. His rumored sin was punishable by death. Not if he had the money, rank, and sense to enjoy his pleasures on the quiet, of course, or the means and power to placate the right people if it became less quiet. He’d seen it done. But he supposed a man without a fortune or titled family could well end up hanging high for loving his fellow man and boy, and well they knew it. Sometimes, of course, as in the infamous case of the denizens of the White Swan that he’d read about in the Times a few years ago, they were more kindly used. Not hanged, but only pilloried, whipped, beaten and pelted with offal, dead cats and dung.

  Will rocked back on his heels, pleased. Mrs. Gow had steered him right. It made getting information so much easier. He waited a few seconds so the fact of his presence could sink in, so that all the man’s secret crimes could have time to roil in his brain before he asked his questions.

  “We’d like to know what you know about a competitor of yours—Mrs. Maggie Pushkin,” Will finally said.

  The man deflated. He looked as if he’d had his backbone filleted as neatly as one of his fish. “Oh Lord!” he said as he slouched, one hand on his heart, “Is that all?”

  “All for now—if I get the right answers.”

  “It’s about the dead man on her doorstep, isn’t it? Well, but I don’t know anything about that,” Roger said, slanting Will a roguish look, completely at odds with the pallor of his face. “I can’t be expected to know every naked man in London, can I?” He gave Lucian a sidewise smile, in turn.

  Will looked up from his notebook, amused and approving. The fellow had ballocks, even if he didn’t know how to use them. “Aye, it’s about him. And her.”

  “Him, I do not know. Her, I do. And I’m pleased to, I can tell you. She’s a nice woman, not really my competitor, you know. Oh no. Her fish are…shall we say for a different market, price and quality? Well, but her late husband had such connections, a cousin on every fishing smack from here to Le Havre, so she’s that well set up now. Not that I begrudge her, she worked hard enough for it. So what is it you wanted to know?”

  “Who her friends are. And her enemies,” Will said curtly, to discourage some of the charm the man was now attempting. He didn’t seem to have a stop between terror and come-hither.

  “Enemies? I couldn’t say. Don’t know of any. Enviers, though, Ah there, Mr. Corby—there you may have a full plate. And not just because she has so much. But she won’t share it with a man, you see. You know how some men are, think they’re cock of the walk and a gift to all women and get snarky when they’re told they’re not.” He grinned at Will, as though that hard dark face were a challenge rather than a warning.

  “Well, any event, she won’t have a suitor, for none will suit her.” He paused to see Will smile, and failing, glanced at Lucian, and seeing that cold face set in stone, still went on as cheerily. “And why not? Maggie has breeding, and few in our district do. I have some education, of course, but Maggie and I…ah, we would not suit either,” he said coyly.

  “Breeding?” Will asked stonily.

  “Oh yes. Her mama was a lady’s maid, which is why she speaks so charmingly. Her father had a barrow and sold what he could get his hands on, unlucky fellow. He bought from the wrong men and sold to the wrong man, because his goods turned out to be stolen and his customer was a runner. Still, the magistrate gave him a choice. The gallows or transportation, and last anyone heard he was on his way to the Antipodes. After marrying our poor Maggie off to ghastly Pushkin.

  “Her mama died soon after…” Roger put a finger to his cheek, thinking. “She has some family in London, I believe, but they’re not close. No consorts, if that’s what you want to know. Only some urchins she takes in from the streets and trains to serve her. And there it is! Complete. More, I do not know, alas.” He held up his hands to show they were empty.

  “But if you hear more, you’ll be sure to get word to me?”

  “Mister Corby,” Roger said with a die-away sigh of pure longing, “of course. I look for any excuse to see you again. And any friends you care to bring as well, of course,” he added, with a winsome smile for Lucian.

  Will was amused and annoyed in equal parts now. He was being sent up and put down, and there was just enough honesty in it to make him uneasy as well. “That’s all I can ask,” he said, snapping his notebook shut. Lucian almost grinned.

  “Oh my no!” Roger said. “There’s so much more you can ask…”

  “Game’s over,” Will growled. “Do not take it further, I sincerely advise you not to.” After noting how quiet Roger had gotten, he nodded, clapped his hat back on, and left.

  “Edifying,” Lucian said with laughter in his voice, when they reached the street.

  “Indeed?” Will said. “How so?”

  “I didn’t know I could be so insignificant, of course,” Lucian said, but the laughter was still there. “Nor be considered not half so attractive as yourself. I don’t know whether to be wounded or not. And so, where to now?”

  “Home. I live near Bow Street. Two rooms, one chair. Do you want to come there too?” Will said with annoyance.

  “Such a graceful invitation, I quite see why Mr. Bell was so entranced with you,” Lucian said, “but no, I fear not. My own hearth beckons. Will you let me know your next moves?”

  “I’ll let you know of any progress in the case,” Spanish Will said stiffly. “If you want another tour of the lower classes, my lord, I suggest you get a map.”

  “As you will. I’ll be in contact, Mr. Corby,” Lucian said. “Ah. I see a hack.” He waved an imperious hand, and the lonely hack driver’s head came up. He didn’t get that many fares in this district, but it was a cold night and he lived in hope. The coach came toward them at a trot. “I think I’ll ride home, thank you,” Lucian said. “May I take you up and leave you off? Bow Street is on my way.”

  “It is, but no, thank you, my lord. I have thinking to do, and I do that best on my feet.”

  “Then, adieu, I’m sure we’ll met again. Tell Mr. Reardon I’ll return his coat, or at least, set it on its feet. I’m sure it’s fully capable of walking back to him on its own.” And with a laugh, Lucian stepped up into the coach, and disappered within it.

  Spanish Will watched him go, and then, ducking his head, started walking again. Leaving Lucian to wonder. Because as he sat back and the carriage carried him away, he glanced out the window and realized the runner was walking, quickly, in the wrong direction.

  Chapter Three

  The afternoon darkened to milky dusk as snow continued to fall. The elegant viscount had long since been borne away laughing, in his hackney carriage. But Will brooded as he trudged through the frozen streets, reviewing his last interview in his mind’s eye. His best suspect had many friends, but he still had many tricks left up his sleeve. She had friends and wealth. The widow was altogether too privileged for him to feel a particle of sympathy for. And the reward was too rich for him to ignore.

  Good breeding, that Nancy of a f
ishmonger had said of her, aye, he thought gloomily, as the cold set his dark face in even more rigid lines. The red-headed widow had that too, and good luck besides, whatever her late, unlamented husband had been. She’d had a mother who taught her, a father who provided for her before he left her, and now money and a good business as well? What right had anyone with such riches to rob a man of anything, much less his greatest treasure—his life?

  He himself hadn’t been half so lucky.

  His mother was a memory, his father had been a mystery. They called him “Spanish Will” because he looked like a foreigner, so it was possible his father had been one, though his mother swore her lover had come from Wales as she had done, and not anywhere near the muddy banks of the Thames where Will was raised. She died when he was ten, but by then he was fierce and tough and clever enough to survive on his own, in a community of thievish children that lived by their wits in the streets. But it was a hard life. At thirteen his luck finally changed.

  He met John James, and became his student, then his partner. All in a year, because John was clever as he could stare, but so foolish it was a wonder he’d lived to the great age of four and twenty he’d been when they’d met. He didn’t live much longer.

  But at least he’d taught Will to speak, read and write like a gent before he died, and how to do more than snatch and grab and run and hide. He taught him how to dress and act, how to talk in front of a lady and how to talk to a whore as though she was one, how to treat a friend and make one just by the power of his charm. He’d taught more practical things too, all sorts of rigs only a gentleman could run, frauds that paid more, with less risk. Or so he’d thought. He’d taught Will much before he was hanged at Tyburn for forging a five pound bank check. Five pounds! It staggered Will still although he knew far better by now, having seen them hang for half that. He shivered as he tramped the freezing streets, not because of present cold so much as how far back he was in his mind now to that April day. But the thought of John always took him there, and the thought was never that far away.