The Humbug Murders

by L. J. Oliver

  “But what if that’s what he truly saw?” Adelaide asked.

  “How could it be?” I said.

  Her look reminded me of the ghostly vision we had shared. And if one such creature might exist . . .

  “A madman running about in a costume meant to strike fear and obscure one’s identity. I could see such a thing,” Dickens said. “The Japanese once wore terrifying masks into battle. Others have done the same.”

  “The Royal Quarter and this Smithson,” I said. “Mean anything to you?”

  “The Quarter, yes. A cesspool of sin, and that’s putting it mildly. He said the ring was a key that opened locks in that place? I must learn more. But what weighs on me most heavily is this person Mr. Guilfoyle was certain would swoop in and save him. To whom was he referring?”

  We watched Adelaide’s face as she turned from us, struggling.

  “I understand not wishing to betray a confidence,” I told her. “But you do him no good by holding back.”

  “His father,” she said at last.

  “You said his parents were dead.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Drowned like Mr. Sunderland. And like him, their bodies never found. It’s haunted him. And when he is . . . like that . . . he becomes convinced that his father will return and rescue him.”

  I tried to envision a version of Thomas Guilfoyle who could possibly have won the heart of a woman like Adelaide Owen. But I could not.

  “Didn’t it bother you?” I asked. “His whoring?”

  “Of course it bothered me!” she snapped. “But it is hardly of the moment now, is it? But if that woman is his only chance for survival, so be it.”

  “Well,” Dickens said. “I have further inquiries to make. I will see you both at the wake?”

  “You shall.”

  Tipping his hat, he bid us a good day.

  Miss Owen maintained her composure and waved him off, then instructed me to meet her at Fezziwig’s home. She had to return to the hovel in which she rented a room and secure appropriate mourning attire.

  It was a flimsy excuse, but I said nothing and only watched her go, her silhouette illuminated as the winter sun glaring over the icy streets of London. She was nearly halfway down the cobbled road before I saw her clutch at a streetlamp and break into what looked like racking sobs.

  She reminded me of my dear sister Fanny, whose strength had also been severely tested, and turned away, giving Miss Owen the only boon I might provide: her privacy.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  FLOCKS OF PEOPLE gathered outside Fezziwig’s home: scores of weeping women and somber-faced men, all dressed in black rags and clutching baskets of holly and roast chestnuts or other humble gifts for the widow. My friend and former mentor had touched many hearts, by the look of it. My stomach clenched painfully as I realized with sadness that I, clearly amongst the wealthiest of Fezziwig’s friends, had brought nothing but Adelaide and my own guilt. Mrs. Fezziwig had once been like a mother to me, and I had shamefully prepared to offer her nothing more than my condolences. For once, I was ashamed of the tight-fistedness that had built my career.

  With Adelaide by my side, I stood at the bottom of the stone steps leading up to Fezziwig’s wide-open front door. An iron dread suffocated me, pressed on my lungs and heart. Taking a deep breath, I checked my nerves by holding my trembling black-gloved hand out, steadying it, and gripping my cane tighter than necessary.

  “Please, sir,” came a hoarse voice, and I felt a tugging at my jacket. I turned to see a filthy wretch of a woman. Her hair was matted like flocks of wool, poking from underneath a ragged mourning veil. She lifted her syphilitic eyes, deep set and dark from want, squinting through a film of tears so thick she looked almost demoniacal. The skin on her face was blotched from crying and grey with cold and lack of nutrition. But she seemed to have forgotten to be shameful about her appearance as she beseeched me.

  “Please, sir, are you visiting Mrs. Fezziwig? Are you, sir? They’re only admitting close friends and family, they say. Ain’t lettin’ none of us lot in, close as we were to dear Fezziwig . . .” The beggar woman’s voice cracked and she pressed her lips together. Blinking tears away, she continued. “Would you give this to her, sir? To Mrs. Fezziwig?”

  She handed me a silk kerchief, a delicate thing adorned with a tiny embroidered partridge in one corner. “S’all I ’ave, sir, me mother gave it to me. I want Mrs. Fezziwig to ’ave it, can’t give her nothin’ more.”

  My hand went to my purse—there was some coin left, but I had not attended business since Sunday and my money was dwindling. Still, if this miserable woman was to gift her only possession of value . . . I reluctantly resolved to give Mrs. Fezziwig two pounds towards the funeral.

  “Will you pass it to ’er, sir? She’ll know me name, it’s Rosie, and tell her Fezziwig was a good man, a very good man, will you, sir?”

  I took a deep breath, but just as I was about to turn away from the wretched woman, Adelaide squeezed my arm, leaned forward, and kissed the woman on the cheek.

  “Of course, we will, Rosie,” she said, her voice as soothing and safe as warm milk. “Fezziwig was a good man, indeed, and Mrs. Fezziwig shall be so comforted by your kind thought.”

  When Adelaide had carefully folded the kerchief and tucked it safely away to the comfort of the weeping beggar woman, we ascended the steps, rising above the crowd of grieving paupers. I felt Adelaide tense beside me. Was Fezziwig waiting for us inside? His decaying body, would it be standing there, pointing at us with its black fingernails, demanding a resolution to this gruesome mystery?

  I tapped the head of my cane against the open door, and a man appeared in the doorway.

  “Bless you, Ebenezer,” he said, shaking my hand. “Thank you for coming. And thank you, miss. Please, do come in.”

  My heart lifted when I saw that it was Dick Wilkins, a former friend who had studied alongside me in the days I apprenticed with Fezziwig. A good man, his face betrayed sorrow and anguish, but his manner demonstrated none of his own pain, simply compassion for mine. He took my hat and Adelaide’s cape, and led us into the main drawing room where a number of visitors loitered round the table of refreshments.

  “Mrs. Fezziwig asked me to attend to the visitors,” Dick said. “She is simply too weak. Terrible business, Ebenezer. What do you suppose could have driven a man to do such a thing?”

  He went to a waste-paper basket and retrieved a crumpled newspaper. “Look what was delivered to poor Mrs. Fezziwig this morning.” He smoothed out the front page and thrust it at me. “Have they no decency at all? Our poor friend.”

  The headline was no worse than those run in the late edition that boy had peddled at the pub or the pickets held up outside the police station. Thomas Guilfoyle was cited as the murderer, his name printed in capitals next to a fairly accurate sketch of his face. I tried to fold it back up before Adelaide spotted “her Tom’s” name, but she snatched the paper from me.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. Her eyes welled up, and with a sudden flourish, she screwed up the paper and tossed it back in the wastebasket.

  “Quite,” mumbled Dick, his voice somber and his eyes deep with sympathy. “The press has no shame. Well, at least they didn’t get wind of what happened to poor Arthur.”

  “Arthur?”

  “Arthur Greville. First, his mother passes, then some ruffian had him tied up in his own home for days for heaven knows only what purpose as he came and went. Suddenly, wonder of wonders, the man freed him and fled. At least Arthur is well, though we live in mad times.”

  I nodded. The moment Fezziwig’s ghost had appeared and Crabapple had come to take me, I had let slip my vow to set the constables on Greville’s impersonator if I did not receive a visit from the true article, who I hoped would come by to reward me for saving him.

  So much for gratitude.

  Dick shook his head. “Do excuse me, but please, make yourselves at home.”

  My friend bowed and turned to receive another visitor, and I glanced
at Adelaide. Her chin was wobbling and she was biting her lip so hard it had turned white. Her eyes were fixed on the crumpled newspaper in the waste-paper basket. I knew she had seen the police statement next to the portrait of the “Humbug Killer,” promising justice and a speedy hanging. She took a deep breath and pulled herself up, but her anguish was palpable. I reached out and gave her shoulder the slightest pat.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, her big emerald eyes locked on to mine.

  “Yes, well,” I began, when a thunderous voice interrupted.

  “Ebenezer Scrooge!” it boomed.

  It was Pickwick. I sighed.

  “Shocking, shocking!” he wheezed when he had pushed past the mingling mourners and stood before me like a rosy-cheeked golem. “What a shock for us all. But why didn’t you say last night? To think, there I stood, harping on about this and t’other, and all along . . . but where’s Boz?”

  “Dickens is on to another story by now, I’m sure,” I said. “Besides, I hardly think the press would be welcome here, all things considered.”

  “Quite right!” he roared. “But what luck they caught the monster red-handed, eh! Word has it you nabbed the man yourself!” He slapped me on the back, and I felt the welt spreading. “I’m quite the detective, too, you know. Why, when I was in India . . .”

  “India?” said Adelaide suddenly. She had seen my growing frustration, linked arms with Pickwick, and began leading him away. “Why, you must tell me all about India!” She turned and nodded towards the corner of the room. I followed her gaze, and there, at the far end of the room, his head barely visible over the sea of black hats and veils, was Lord Rutledge. She walked off with a very happy Pickwick, listening and nodding to his verbose tales.

  I moved through the crowded room towards him, and as I approached, I noticed with confusion that he was rummaging through a rolltop commode. His fingers were quickly flicking through papers, darting about the little drawers, opening and closing them as if he were conducting some strange symphony. Whatever he was searching for remained hidden, and his desperation was growing.

  “Good morning,” I said politely.

  “Nothing!” He slammed down the lid of the rolltop and winced as it caught his finger. His eyes darted round the room for a split second, then rested on mine, and his face softened into a smile. “I’m glad to see you, Scrooge,” he said. “In fact you found me at a most coincidental time, for I had just placed an envelope on the surface of this desk and momentarily lost it amongst the papers, but have now retrieved it.”

  He was lying, of course. He had not retrieved a thing before he slammed his own finger in the lid. Sunderland believed Fezziwig knew some secret of his . . . did Rutledge share that belief?

  It seemed that Adelaide’s instincts about this fop were dead on.

  “Rutledge, the more I think of you, the less I think of you,” I said jovially.

  “Pardon?” he asked, not really listening. As I’d expected.

  “What was your connection to Fezziwig?” I asked bluntly, raising my voice and speaking slowly and clearly.

  He leaned in conspiratorially. “There wasn’t one, really. Not as such. My father, you see, he served with Fezziwig during the war. Owed Mr. Fezziwig his life. It was a debt of honor my father never had the chance to repay, and so along with his estate and holdings, it was a debt I also inherited. Not that I saw it as such. I introduced Fezziwig to the shawl wool traders of the Punjab for an important partnership. I have quietly funneled funds to Mr. Fezziwig’s accounts over the years when his business was ailing. But that hardly seemed payment enough. When I received his urgent summons, there was no question of attending in person.”

  “What happened to that summons? I would like to see it.”

  “Lost,” Rutledge said, one finger absently tracing the monogram on his opposite glove. “Try as I might to find it.”

  “And you truly never met Sunderland, Shen, or Miss Pearl before?”

  “Oddly, no,” he mused. But a muscle twitched at the corner of his eye and his body tensed when he said it. “But from what I read in the papers, it seemed you knew Sunderland quite well!”

  “You can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers,” I assured him. “Often they don’t know the half of it!”

  Beaming with smiles that didn’t quite reach his eyes, Lord Rutledge searched his breast pocket and pulled out a cream envelope, a thick red company seal firmly pressed onto the flap. He did not extend it to me, just held it tight.

  “Listen, Scrooge,” he said, his voice lowered. “Some friends of mine are throwing a party tomorrow night, a seasonal thing, you know. At Lord Dyer’s place. I’m sure you know it.”

  I didn’t. I was not one of the fortunate few who would ever step foot in such circles. “Splendid.”

  “A number of high-profile politicians, of course, other personalities of worth, you know, investors . . . Quite the opportunity for someone seeking to, eh, further their business acquaintances.” He gave me a look from under a darkened brow, and I nodded. Then he smiled and handed me the envelope. I turned it over. Ebenezer Scrooge in stunning calligraphy already decorated the front.

  “Why?”

  “It’s terrible business all this, such a shame the likes of you and I have been dragged into this mess. Such a shame. Feel a sort of solidarity, I suppose. We can all do with a celebration, I think. In fact, bring your, uhm . . .” He nodded towards Adelaide, who was listening intently to something Pickwick was laughing about too loudly for a wake, at the other side of the room. “Your, eh, your . . .”

  “Miss Owen. You’ve clearly forgotten her name.”

  “Yes, yes, Miss Owen. Precisely. And mind you bring the invitation; security will be fairly tight, of course. You know how savage the riff-raff get so close to Christmas, hah!”

  “Indeed,” I said, and a painful twinge nudged my conscience as I thought about the grieving riff-raff outside, carrying their humble possessions to give to the widow of a man they had loved.

  Rutledge strode off, giving a matronly woman just the curtest condolence before swooping past Dick at the door and vanishing into the frosty morning.

  It was Mrs. Fezziwig! My heart leaped when I saw the woman. She spotted me, and her eyes lit up, she opened her arms, and I rushed to her. She enveloped me in an embrace as she allowed herself to weep into my chest. I patted the back of her head, feeling her soft curls bounce under her black veil. The familiar smell of her talcum powder warmed my heart.

  “I’m so sorry, Jane,” I whispered, my lip shaking and my breaths short and pained. Sorrow burned in the back of my throat like acid, so I straightened my back and cleared my throat.

  Mrs. Fezziwig blew her nose on a handkerchief, which she tucked up her sleeve. “Oh, you foolish boy,” she soothed, and I realized with humiliation that my eyes were wet and red. I cleared my throat again. “Old Mr. Fezziwig would not have you in such a state!”

  I mumbled something, but as I was about to protest that I was most calm indeed, my heart stopped. A figure was drifting through the room wearing a dark shroud. I felt my breath shortening, the blood draining from my face. Were those thin, bony fingers stretched out before it, feeling their way through the deathly atmosphere? My body became lead. My mouth was dry and I couldn’t swallow. Could this be yet another cruel spectral trick? Could it be the Humbug Killer?!

  A glass smashed somewhere behind me, and the figure turned, revealing its face. I evaporated into relief. The figure was no Humbug Killer at all, but Dora Fezziwig, my friend’s oldest daughter, her shoulders hunched under her grief and her black veil falling about her face like Death’s own shroud. I pressed my eyes closed and felt the hot redness burst like stars in my mind. I was exhausted.

  The pressing matter at hand shot back into my consciousness.

  “Jane,” I said. “There were four summonses sent by Mr. Fezziwig that night. Do you know what they contained?”

  “No, dear,” she answered. “Reginald minds his own business the
se days. I barely know what he sells. Sold, of course.” Once again her face twisted into sadness.

  “What of George Sunderland? Was there some spark of friendship between him and Reginald? Were they in business?”

  “Oh, that poor man who drowned. No, not so far as I am aware. I can’t say I recall Reginald ever mentioning him.”

  “Jane, do you know of anyone who might have wanted Reginald . . .”

  “Dead? No, as I said to the police, I can’t imagine why Guilfoyle wished him harm.”

  “Guilfoyle, yes. Or anyone else for that matter?”

  “No, Ebenezer. No more questions now. I read Mr. Dickens’ account of Mr. Fezziwig, and your kind, kind words about him. How we all cherish his memory; all that is left to us now. Come and let’s toast to Reggie, my husband . . .” She fell into sobs, and I pulled her back to my chest.

  “He was most ardently admired by many influential people,” I tried, but it sent her into more tears.

  “Oh, they admire him certainly,” she cried, her eyes and nose streaming. “But his friends, the people outside, the ones he helped, they love him!”

  “Although you can’t see their faces,” came the soft voice of Adelaide, “their hearts can still reach yours.” She was standing next to me, unfolding the silk kerchief she had accepted from the beggar woman, which she handed to Mrs. Fezziwig. My friend’s widow took it and beamed. She glanced between us, her tear-stained cheeks bulbous in smile.

  “It’s from Rosie,” Adelaide continued. “She wished me to pass on the message that your husband was a good man. There are scores out there who have come to offer their warmth.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you so very much, Miss . . . ?”

  Adelaide held out her hand. “Owen. Miss Adelaide Owen. Oh!” She was suddenly startled, and as I followed her gaze back to Mrs. Fezziwig, it became clear why.

  The widow’s face was white, set in an expression of fury and thunder, nostrils flared and lips pursed. “Well! Adelaide Owen indeed!” she snapped.