The Humbug Murders

by L. J. Oliver

  “Yes, yes . . . There is one who can illuminate these matters far better than I. He . . . It’s just . . . You see, when one has the means afforded to me, the usual pleasures lose their luster. One seeks the new, the different, the perverse, to be blunt. I found a place that provides it. A person who provides it.”

  “Smithson.”

  “Yes. Smithson is the spider in the web, all right, but that’s not his true name. Smithson is what you would call an alias. In truth, he is a man of business, much like you. Respected. Above board, so the world thinks. But the truth of it is he has his hands in every kind of filth you might imagine.”

  My heart raced as I pressed him further. “A name, Rutledge. Give me a name, and I will forget all I learned about your problems and . . . transgressions.”

  He quaked with rage, sweat beading on his forehead. Then his knees buckled, and I grabbed his arm to steady him.

  “The wine, the wine!” he said jovially as others rushed to help and he dismissed them with a wave of his hand. Leaning in close to my ear, he whispered, “Marley. Smithson’s true name is Jacob Marley. Now leave me and never speak with me again!”

  Lord Rutledge composed himself, smiled, and waded back into the crowd, though his step was far less sure than it had been.

  I too felt unsteady. Jacob? My once friend, my once partner . . . could he have truly fallen so? But then, his fortunes had risen dramatically since we parted, and he had expressed little hesitation in dabbling in wretchedness like the Black Trade.

  Reeling from it all, I determined to flee this place, but a commotion at the edge of the room where the passage to the library resided caught my attention. Constable Crabapple was there, clutching a piece of paper, waving it in the face of Inspector Foote while Lord Dyer looked on in red-faced fury.

  “Well, now, look at that!” Dickens said, swooping in beside me and clutching another drink. He looked about, took in the crowd’s sudden fixation on the business ahead, and removed his flask. He emptied his drink into it and screwed on the top. “Might get chilly later.”

  “I think it is time we take our leave. Have you seen Miss Owen?” I asked, a terrible unease settling in as I thought of how easily she had hidden her distress earlier. She was an expert at hiding things, it seemed, and there were many things she’d hidden from me.

  “I have not,” he said curiously. “And in that dress she wore tonight, she is a bit hard to miss. Curious!”

  We pressed towards the fracas and searched for Adelaide, but to no avail. Finally, I nodded to a side door, where we might make a discreet exit.

  “I’ve learned much tonight,” I said.

  “As have I,” Dickens said. “It seems our Miss Annie Piper is now the consort to Smithson himself.”

  “How—”

  “I have my ways,” he said, not even attempting to hide his smug expression.

  Ahead, Crabapple was peering past Foote’s shoulder and waving a fist at the party’s host. “Explain yourself, Lord Dyer! Why would my prisoner, Thomas Guilfoyle, the Humbug Killer his own self, be writing to you from his prison cell only hours before he was struck down? Why should he beg and plead for you of all people to save him? What’s the connection? Tell me, sir!”

  Pinpricks rippled through my flesh as I staggered back, physically struck by the revelation. I thought of Guilfoyle in his cell, madly certain that “he” would come and provide salvation. And later, Adelaide’s teary story that Tom, in his drug-addled state, was referring to his dead father.

  She had lied to me. Guilfoyle was talking about Dyer, and I had just caught Adelaide in an unquestionable untruth.

  I looked about. Where the hell was she?

  Inspector Foote motioned over a pair of bobbies, who roughly grabbed the belligerent, and now, I could tell, quite drunk Crabapple. They were about to haul him away as Foote made copious apologies to Dyer, when a sudden scream rang out. A woman’s scream.

  I whipped my eyes in the direction of the secret door. It was open now, and a terrified maid backed out of the library on legs as unsteady as those of a newborn faun and pointed within. “Humbug,” she said, her voice hoarse from her sudden shriek. “In there, plain as life, the killer, black robes, bony hands, the angel of death . . . HUMBUG!”

  Dickens sobered instantly—and ran for the doorway.

  Shockingly, I was at his side.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LORD RUTLEDGE SAT in the leather chair in the center of the library, face slack, eyes unseeing, his fine suit ruined by a dozen slits, his white silk shirt and cravat now ruby red. His wig had slipped partly over his face, the bottom curls dark with the sticky blood slowly trickling from his gashed neck. Streaks of blood decorated the books, the ceiling, floor, walls. A figure I had first dismissed as a lunatic’s ravings stood near the open double doors leading deeper into the mansion, one bony hand dripping with gore and blood. A painting had been torn from one wall, and the killer’s signature now resided there.

  HUMBUG

  Streaked and dripping in blood.

  I caught only a glimpse of the black-cowled figure before it whipped towards the door and fled into the darkened hall. A heavy black veil had obscured its face, and a blade the length of a man’s forearm, flecked and still trailing red, was gripped in its hand.

  No, not it, I told myself, my fear and disgust pressing down on me, threatening to bring me to my knees. Humbug was mortal. A man. Had to be.

  And men could be brought low.

  “After him!” Crabapple shouted from the door behind us.

  Though the rational thing would have been to part for the police, let them do their jobs, Dickens and I sprang ahead, spurred by the command. We had only a short lead on the police, who trounced behind us, while ahead Humbug flew into the amber-lit main hall. A startled footman bearing a tray filled with wineglasses turned a corner, and the murderer crashed into him. The tray flew, glasses shattered, and the footman stumbled back and fell flat on his backside. Humbug whirled with surprising grace, spinning in mid-stride to avoid faltering. Regaining his footing, the killer sprinted ahead and leaped over a marble table to avoid two more startled servers.

  “The last time I saw anything like that it was a troupe of Chinese acrobats,” Dickens said, puffing, out of breath.

  On we ran, following the killer up the main staircase, along the hall braced by the second-floor railing, through spacious and stunningly appointed bedrooms, and finally into yet another hidden passage, this one accessed by tilting a painting of a dour old man at a precise angle. Into the dank and murky darkness we ran, the sharp clatter of the killer’s footsteps ahead. We wound down a spiral staircase with no thought to the trap Humbug might have set simply by stopping unseen at the first-floor landing and waiting for us blade in hand.

  A door cracked open, light streamed in, and the man in black darted through it. We followed, Crabapple and his men laboring, shouting, cursing, but no longer at our heels. We raced into a main gallery and stopped dead, panting, clutching our knees. Humbug was gone. The walls surrounding us were lined with rows of portraits of those responsible for the mansion’s history. They ranged over almost three centuries, with the emerald eyes of Lord Dyer staring at us from the end. Two heavy-paneled doors sat at the room’s far end, but both were shut tight. The killer couldn’t have had time to first escape through one of them and then quietly shut it behind him.

  So where had he gone?

  Dickens and I cautiously approached a secretaire and desk with tortoiseshell and brass inlay, the reporter snagging up a sharp blade used for opening envelopes. We approached from either side, determined to corner the monster who had to have been crouching behind it.

  “Scrooge, behind you!” Crabapple called.

  I spun to see Humbug rising to his feet, blade held high. The bastard had scuttled through the small passage under the desk and could have simply kept running, but instead, he’d come back around to take a stab at me.

  I stumbled back and banged against the desk as the hu
ge butcher’s knife whooshed the air before me, its savage arc stopping and shifting with a masterful and blood-chilling swiftness and sureness. Dickens came around beside me and held his tiny blade in his trembling hand, looking as if he might faint.

  Humbug’s head angled to one side, a wolf taking measure of its prey. Then the black-clad killer darted away as the shouts and footfalls of Crabapple and the others rang out only a few yards away. He ignored the two now blocked doors but closed on a paneled wall where he struck just the right spot and slid inside another secret passage. Crabapple ran after the murderer, his men hot on his heels. Shots rang out from their pistols, misses one and all.

  Chest heaving, breath labored, I exchanged looks with Dickens. He shook his head. We would not follow. Yet something gnawed at him. . . .

  “That passage will come out somewhere,” he said. “If we can get ahead of this madman . . .”

  “Your flask,” I said, reaching out with quivering fingers.

  He accommodated, and the liquor helped bolster my courage and dim my good judgment. We prowled the halls, listening intently for the shouts and screams that had disappeared when the passage door had closed in the gallery behind Crabapple’s people.

  I cautiously passed wall hangings of crimson and green embroidered silk, fearful that the killer might be hiding behind any one of them. I studied the vibrant carpets for traces of blood still leaking from the blood-soaked blade.

  We quietly stole through the drawing room, the ceiling adorned in an antique mosaic said to have been stripped from the Baths of Titus in Rome. From there we traced the length of the banqueting room, stopping to peer beneath the long central table, which might easily seat fifty, then on to the great conservatory. Statues of lions and other predators rose about us, peering from behind lush walls of exotic foliage, while carvings of Greek and Roman personages lazily peered down at us and gestured to the huge room’s marble fountain. The conservatory, with its vast open globe of a ceiling and its many glass walls, led out to a spectacularly lit inner courtyard, where servants and workers were preparing for a night of fireworks under the stars.

  I was about to say to Dickens that our plan had failed when a door creaked open and our black-garbed prey unceremoniously stumbled into the room. Humbug held his stomach, catching his breath. He hadn’t seen us, and from the lack of footfalls and shouting at his heel, it seemed he had lost the coppers.

  Then he looked up—and tensed, seeing us for the first time. The murderer’s body coiled. Fevered intent seemed to reach into the shadowy figure. I could not see his face through the many layers of black gauze hiding it from view, but, in the pale, soft-blue moonlight, he could see mine.

  Who are you? I wanted to ask. Why are you doing this? But terror stilled my tongue.

  The killer was wordless as well, but not silent. His labored breathing assured me that the murderer was mortal, not some wretched thing that had shaken off the grave. It was small comfort. Humbug was shorter and slighter than I would have guessed. His cloak and hood had given the illusion that he was greater in measure. Tom, a specimen of a good six feet and four, would have towered over Humbug; no wonder the stab wounds had been concentrated on his chest and lower.

  “There are two of us,” Dickens said stolidly as he began to circle the killer. “We can do this!”

  My gaze left Humbug for the briefest of moments as I scanned the room for anything I might use as a weapon. I heard a rush of fabric, like the exhalation of the reaper, and looked back to see Humbug leaping at me!

  A glint of moonlight struck across the blade’s deadly edge, scaling down it like a tear from heaven, and I was frozen with fear, a statue serving itself up for destruction. Then a shape smashed into Humbug from one side: Dickens, tackling the beast, and the blade fell, clattering to the polished tile. I kicked it away and dropped down upon the grappling pair. Dickens had pinned the killer, who was silently squirming and beating at him, and I fell to grasping the wildly kicking legs. They were leaner than I might have expected. The “monster” was hardly a brute at all!

  And his white, bony hands . . . they were gloves painted to look skeletal, sharp, and fearsome.

  Now all we had to do was hold the killer until Crabapple caught up with us. I shouted for help, hoping to gain the attention of the workers outside. The reporter, ever a slave to his insatiable curiosity, eased his grip on our prey and reached for the hood and veil that hid the murderer’s identity.

  Humbug’s head flashed forward, striking that of Dickens with a hard, feral crack, and Dickens fell away. Startled, my hold loosened enough for the killer to spring back, then send a nasty kick at my face with his heavy, iron-soled boots. I grunted as stars exploded before me and groped madly, unwilling to lose the killer now, when we were so close—

  But running footsteps sounded. I turned on my side and saw Humbug flee into the courtyard, racing past surprised workers in the garden, disappearing down the gravel paths and parterre beds edged with box hedges.

  With a clatter, Crabapple arrived, Foote’s goons close behind him. “Where?” he demanded, eyeing the butcher’s blade the killer left behind and our sorry states.

  I pointed to the garden and they ran into the night. Shots rang out again, but I had little hope that the killer would be brought low. Humbug might have been human, but he also had the luck of the devil.

  Nearly an hour passed before Dickens and I were reunited with Adelaide, who stood by herself, hands crossed demurely, the pose of a serving maid. I could not bring myself to stand by her side, such was my fury at her betrayal.

  Crabapple watched with glee as Foote suffered the verbal tirades of Lord Dyer and then a parade of his associates.

  The Christmas charity ball had ended before the dizzying dances, before the fantastic fireworks. Nearly all the guests had been sent home. Rutledge’s body had been left as we had seen it in the library. Dickens was anxious to return there with his sketchbook, but Crabapple was having none of it. We were material witnesses. We had stared into the dark face of the killer, we had laid hands upon him. Even if it took half the night, Crabapple was determined to learn all we knew before we were allowed to be on about our business.

  Soon, Dickens was huddled with Crabapple far and away from me, and Adelaide approached.

  “Are you well?” she asked.

  I made no pains to hide my anger. “Are you?”

  She glanced at me with hollow, hunted eyes, and shot a look in the direction of Lord Dyer. “I would not have seen this happen here,” she said. “I would not add to the suffering of this place.”

  “Where were you?” I asked, whirling on her, advancing with unmistakable rage. “When Crabapple was hurling accusations at Lord Dyer? When Humbug was putting the finishing touches on Rutledge?”

  “T-taking air,” she said, startled, but without hesitation. “I was . . . why do you ask?”

  I stared into her dark eyes, trying to root out the madness and rage that the killer surely possessed in superhuman quantities. There was no hint of it. But, then, she was skilled at hiding her true feelings, was she not? Only instants after leaving Dyers’ side in tears, she was in the ballroom laughing charmingly, holding court.

  “Mr. Scrooge, explain yourself!” she demanded.

  Humbug was small, athletic, and quick. Roger Colley was diminutive for a man, but I doubted his ability to remain so eerily wordless under duress as Humbug had. Dickens had mentioned Chinese acrobats, so that was one possibility. Another—and this connected to the mysterious “Lady”—was that Humbug might be a woman. And during all that had happened, Adelaide had been nowhere to be seen.

  Yet . . . if Adelaide was the murderer, why had Fezziwig’s spirit shown her such kindness?

  Not wanting to “give away my hand,” as a gambler might say, I shrugged and told her, “I was wondering if you had seen Shen anywhere,” I said. “Or any of his entourage?”

  She shook her head absently. “Why?”

  “Later,” I promised, unable to add even a trac
e of false pleasantness to my tone.

  Dickens returned, Crabapple laboring to catch up to the long-legged writer, and, acting a bit more sauced than he actually was, giddily informed us of everything he had told the constable so that our stories would line up. He had played down our ongoing investigation into Humbug and instead focused on what he had learned about Miss Annie Piper, the woman who still might alibi Mr. Guilfoyle. He’d also spoken of Humbug’s overall physique, so far as we might gauge it.

  “You were seen speaking to Rutledge,” Crabapple said, pressing his angry face close to mine. “First, you have a chat with Sunderland and he dies. Now the same with Rutledge. What did the two of you discuss, eh?”

  “He was afraid,” I said, which was true enough. But then my words and the truth parted ways. “He spoke of a man he had run afoul of. A criminal he believed to be a worse threat than the Colley Brothers and the illicit importers of opium into our ports combined. Someone he felt was pulling Humbug’s strings, so to speak. But it had to have been nonsense, surely?”

  Crabapple’s hand gripped my arm. “Are you an imbecile? He says he’s in fear for his life and then he’s murdered? I think there just might be a connection. Did he name this man?”

  “Yes, yes, he did,” I said, shaking my head. “He said the man goes by the name of Smithson.”

  “There in the Quarter,” Crabapple said. “The same man Miss Annie has taken up with. Makes sense. Only—no one has ever laid eyes on this Smithson. No one willing to talk to me, that is.”

  “He said that Smithson has another identity completely, that he is a respected man of business. But it could not be. It could not.”

  “The name!” he demanded.

  “It is a man I once knew very well, or so I believed. Jacob Marley. And if you ask me, time is of the essence. Word is sure to reach him quickly, and that will give him time to hide his books, dispose of illegal goods and other evidence. . . .”

  “It may take most of the night to get this arranged, but I know a few decent men I can trust for another raid,” he said, looking away from Inspector Foote, who was still toadying up to Lord Dyer. “And I don’t want him knowing about this.” Ambition and greed danced merrily in the constable’s eyes. A fine and gratifying sight.