by KJ Charles
“Lie down anyway,” Clem said. “Come on. I’ll sit with you.”
He pushed Rowley upstairs. The other lodgers came out of their rooms or opened the doors. Miss Sweeting and Mr. Power murmured sympathy. Mr. Rillington shook his head and ejaculated, “More trouble!” then shut his door with a bang.
Clem closed the door and pulled Rowley into a hug. It was pure comfort, the first chance for it in the long, nightmarish hours since they’d seen the fire set, and Rowley rested his face against Clem’s shoulder and let himself be held. Clem finger-combed his hair, nuzzling it. “Oh, my Rowley. I’m so sorry. It’s so dreadful. All your work.”
Rowley couldn’t bear that now. He shook his head. Clem seemed to understand, merely dropping a kiss on his ear. “Come, lie down. You look white as a ghost.” He tugged at Rowley’s coat. “If you give me your clothes I’ll have them laundered, for the smoke.”
“Thank you,” Rowley managed. “And for—God, for everything. For saving my life. I thought I was going to die. I really thought—and you came, and you were wonderful.” His voice cracked.
“I had to play rugby at school for years.” Clem took Rowley’s shirt from his tense hands. “Imagine that coming in useful, after all this time. I hated it, but the games master said he’d teach me to tackle if he died in the attempt.”
“I should write and thank him.”
“You can’t. He died.”
Rowley choked. “Really?”
Clem grinned. “No, you idiot.”
“And you kicked the door in,” Rowley said. “They didn’t teach you that at school.”
“I taught myself,” Clem said darkly. “Do you know how often I’ve lost my keys? Come on, get under the blanket.”
Rowley got between the cold sheets, shuddering at their touch on his skin. Clem sat on the bed next to him, making it dip, stroking his hair. “Oh, Rowley. I like your dragon.”
It was an excellent dragon, of which Rowley was normally proud. He hadn’t shown it to Clem before, since he’d been a little nervous to think what his lover would make of this sort of stitched-together creation, but anything was better than talking about fire and blood and fear. “It’s a wolpertinger.”
“A what?”
“A German word for invented beasts made out of various parts. We call them composites in English but I like the German. I don’t make them as a general thing—it was an exercise Mr. Morris set me—but I’m fond of this. It was quite hard.”
“So what’s it made of? Is that a crocodile?”
“A sort of one, called a caiman.” The reptile was nearly two feet long. Rowley had posed it clinging to a branch, mouth aggressively open, wings spread. “It’s from South America. I bought it pickled in formalin.”
“And the wings are…” Clem peered at it. “Are those bird’s feet?”
“That’s right. Great black-backed gull, with the back claw taken off and the webbing spread.”
“That’s marvellous. They look perfect, all scaly.”
Rowley shifted so he lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling. His eyes stung. “The horns on the head and back are bird claws and I added some teeth from a weasel we had lying around.”
“It’s marvellous,” Clem repeated. “It honestly looks exactly like a dragon would, if it existed. Where’s the stitching?”
“There isn’t any. I skinned it out through the mouth, as you do snakes, left the skin completely intact. It was a bit tricky.”
“You should send it to the Royal Society,” Clem said. “Or to Mr. Darwin. Present it as a new species.”
“It wouldn’t detain him long. But it is a nice mount, of its kind. You don’t find it disrespectful?”
“I don’t so much, no,” Clem said thoughtfully. “I wonder why. It’s not the care that goes into it, because the kittens playing whist are made with care—did they get burned?”
“God, I hope so.”
Clem put a light hand on his shoulder. “No, well, it’s not that. I don’t know. Maybe just that it’s something that ought to exist. Dragons flying around the rooftops—that’d deal with the pigeons, and probably the rats too. Every home should have one. You could breed especially pretty specimens and train them as lap-dragons for ladies.”
“They’d set fire to things,” Rowley said, more harshly than he meant, and felt Clem’s hand tighten.
“I know.” Clem was silent a moment. Rowley turned on his side, away, staring at nothing.
“Rowley?” Clem said after a while.
“What?”
“What happened to your ear?”
“My father hit me with an iron.”
He heard Clem’s breathing hitch. “An iron. A flat iron?”
“Yes. It wasn’t hot.” God knew what damage that would have done. He’d spent long enough in the infirmary as it was. “I was twelve. It flattened my ear out. As you’d expect from an iron.”
“That’s not funny,” Clem said. “Rowley—”
“He drank, and he hurt people. That was what he did. He got away with it for a long time, and then one day he didn’t get away with it any more and they hanged him for murder.”
There was a rustle of movement and a dip of the bed, as Clem carefully shifted to lie alongside him. His arm came over Rowley’s shoulder, just holding. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“All I ever wanted was to be safe,” Rowley said to the wall. “I lived with Mr. Morris after the iron, but my father wouldn’t leave me alone. He’d get drunk and come shouting around. He didn’t want me, but he didn’t want to let me get on without him because that was an insult, you see. I don’t know how Mr. Morris put up with it. He was old, but he wasn’t afraid. I was always afraid.”
“I don’t think you can have been,” Clem said. “You hit a criminal twice your size with a wolf’s jawbone.”
“I did learn how to cope with violent men, yes, as far as that was possible. I learned to dodge and hit, but I was still afraid. I’m afraid now. I’m so tired of being afraid. Even after he was dead, every public house was one he’d been barred from, every street had people who knew I was Denny Green’s son. I got thrashed a few times by people who were afraid to take it out on him—as if he’d care—and after he hanged it was even worse. People don’t like it when your father hangs for murder.”
“Why did you stay?”
“Because of Mr. Morris. He was old, and got sick, he was sick for years. I ran the shop for him, and then he died, and I gave notice on the lease the next day. I crossed the river to get away from South London and remembering him every time I walked down the street. I moved again a few years later because there was a man like him, like my father, in the area and it was too much. And now this.”
He felt Clem shudder. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Why can’t they leave me alone?” Rowley demanded, knowing it was as meaningless as shouting It’s not fair! at the universe. “Why this, why me, why do I have to have these bloody people in my life?”
“Shh. I don’t know.”
“And now what? Tidy up my shop, repaint it, and wait for a criminal to break in or burn it down again? See if next time I’m going to be murdered? Or do I run away to—to Scotland,” he said, as the most remote location he could think of, “and start up my shop where I don’t know anyone and jump at every shadow for the rest of my damned life?”
Clem wormed his other arm under Rowley’s neck so he was held in a tight, strong grip, with Clem’s face in his hair. “Door’s not locked,” Rowley said, half choked.
“I don’t care,” Clem said. “Look, I’ve got no idea what’s happening, nor do the police, so why don’t we ask someone who knows how to find out? You shut your eyes for a bit, I’ll send Mark a message. We’re going to the Jack.”
Chapter 7
Rowley did manage to sleep for a couple of hours, although he didn’t look any better for it. Clem felt sick and guilty at the sight of his grey face and dark-ringed eyes. He had a hounded look that Clem hadn’t seen before, yet
which seemed to belong on his face as though it had always been there.
Clem wasn’t having it. He was not. Maybe he wasn’t able to do something himself, but he blasted well knew a man who could.
They walked to the Jack and Knave in silence. It was a Saturday evening, mid-November, cold and miserable and misty, but still the streets bustled and the lights and noise of the late markets were enough to make Clem and Rowley take a zigzag route to Greystoke Place, in tacit agreement to stay away from people.
The shop had been boarded up, and Clem had paid two of Elsie’s brothers to keep an eye out and raise the alarm if they saw trouble. He didn’t know if it would do any good, prayed it was unnecessary, and suspected it was too late to matter anyway, with so much of Rowley’s stock ruined by fire or water.
It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair, and Rowley ought not to be looking so hunted and so lost.
“Rowley!” Phyllis hurried up as they entered the Jack. “Mark told us the news. I am so sorry. Here, come and get a drink, both of you.”
“Thank you,” Rowley said dully.
Greg had to extend sympathy too, and Clem took the opportunity to ask Phyllis, “Is Mark in yet?”
“He’s in the back room, with Nathaniel.”
“Oh. Uh. They aren’t, you know, are they?” It seemed utterly implausible, but stranger things had probably happened, though Clem couldn’t think of any offhand.
“Lord, no. Mark would throttle him before he got his trousers off. No, Nathaniel’s after professional help as well. Some problem with a confidence trickster, apparently.”
“Oh, dear,” Clem said vaguely.
“Might be good for him,” Phyllis said with a little shrug. “Nat thrives on righteous rage. He’ll enjoy a really deserving target.”
“That’s not very kind,” Clem objected.
“Kind is your job, sweetie. I do accurate. In you go now, and good luck.”
The Jack and Knave’s back room was where the regulars went to be discreet, which was to say, you might find three or four couples there on busy nights. Nathaniel called it the Den of Iniquity when he was talking like a newspaper, but it was only a room, with settles round the walls covered in rather worn velvet drapes. There was one table in the middle of the room, with four chairs and Mark and Nathaniel deep in conversation.
“Oh, here they are.” Mark rose. “Rowley, I’m sorry to hear your news.”
“As am I.” Nathaniel pushed back his chair. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“No, please don’t go,” Clem said. Nathaniel was without doubt the cleverest man he knew, and his legal training could surely come in useful. “We’re in real trouble and I need help.”
Nathaniel glanced at Rowley and resumed his seat. “Of course. Mark, the floor is yours.”
Mark had a notebook ready. He took a pull at his tankard, then produced a pencil from his inside pocket. There was no reason anyone would have used two hands for any of that, but it still had an oddly lopsided look. “Right. Tell me about it, Rowley, from the beginning.”
Clem wasn’t surprised by that. It was Rowley’s shop that had burned, even if it had been Clem’s lodger murdered on Clem’s doorstep. More to the point, Rowley could tell a story succinctly and in order. Still, it stung that Mark hadn’t even asked.
Rowley began at the beginning—before Clem would have done, actually—with Mr. Lugtrout arguing in his room, the burglary, his disappearance, and his reappearance in that awful mutilated state. He stopped there with a quick look to Clem. “There’s something here….Clem doesn’t think it’s relevant, and he probably knows best. But the reason Lugtrout was in the lodging house at all was, well—”
Oh, no. Clem did not want to talk about this. It was part of the arrangement that he didn’t talk about it. But then, Rowley had never agreed to that, and Clem was grateful to see any sort of spark in his eyes. He took a deep breath. “I really don’t think there’s any need to tell Mark this, but you can, if you think it’s worth it.”
“Clem’s brother owns the lodging house. He insisted that Lugtrout should live there rent free, although he was a disruptive drunkard. I didn’t see your brother visiting him in the eight months I’ve lived there—”
“No, he didn’t visit.”
“But in the week after Lugtrout’s death, he came to demand information on who the man’s friends were. He claimed it was for his peace of mind, so I volunteered to pose as a friend, and he interrogated me about what confidences Lugtrout had placed in me, and where he kept his valuables and papers.”
“That, what, no,” Clem said. “He did not.”
“Yes, he did,” Rowley said. “That’s exactly what he was doing. I’m sorry, Clem, but he was after something.”
“What would he have been after?” Clem demanded, voice rising. “What on earth do you imagine my brother could want from Lugtrout?”
“I don’t know, maybe whatever it was that motivated him to give the man free lodgings for years?” Rowley snapped back.
“That was charity!”
“Free lodgings? Who gives that? How much would that have cost him and you?”
“Excuse me,” Nathaniel said. “Clem, does Rowley know who your brother is?”
Clem felt his cheeks heat. Rowley’s face stilled into the habitual blankness that Clem hated.
“I didn’t— It’s not a secret, but I don’t like to talk about it.” Now he felt baselessly guilty, as though he’d deliberately been keeping Rowley out. He took a deep breath. “He, uh, he’s the Earl of Moreton.”
Rowley looked at him for a moment. “I’m sorry, could you say that again?”
“The Earl of Moreton. My father was the Earl of Moreton, and now my brother is. Half brother. And we—they—he has a country house and a lot of money, and he really wouldn’t think twice about pensioning an old parson.”
“You’re the son of an earl?”
“Yes, well, I know it’s not obvious,” Clem said, a little more tartly than was perhaps fair.
“No, it honestly isn’t. Why—” Rowley rubbed his hands over his face. “All right, let’s stick to the point for now. So your brother Edmund is an earl. An actual earl, a his lordship with a mansion?”
“He’s Lord Moreton and I wouldn’t say mansion. It’s very old, though. Crowmarsh, up in Berkshire.”
“And he pensioned Lugtrout because he’s Lord Bountiful?”
Nobody would be likely to call Edmund that, but Clem was quite sure his brother fulfilled his obligations in his own way. “I don’t know his reasons, but he’s responsible for a lot of people. He isn’t always very— I mean, not everyone likes him, his manner is a bit, um, overbearing, but that doesn’t mean he’s done anything wrong.”
“Didn’t his wife bring a divorce suit a few years ago?” Nathaniel asked.
Clem flushed. “It was denied. She couldn’t prove adultery or cruelty, and she’s the one who’s deserted him.”
“Rowley, was there anything else about the conversation with his lordship?” Mark asked. “No? Very well, let’s leave him to one side for now and go on with what you know.”
“The next thing that happened was last night, when a man set fire to my shop. It was arson. He had made piles of flammable materials. I caught him with a lighted taper in his hand.” Rowley’s face was pale and tense. “We had a fight.”
“Rowley hit him. And set him on fire,” Clem said, with some pride.
Rowley ducked his head, almost a flinch. “He hit me first. He was coming out of the back room—there’s a door to a yard, and the key on a nail beside it, but he hadn’t unlocked it. He came out, he attacked me, I ran into the back room, and he followed me instead of running away through the front door.” He swallowed. “He was trying to kill me. I have no doubt of that at all. The shop was on fire, but he was forcing his way into a burning room after me.”
“Do you think that was because you saw his face?” Mark asked.
“I can’t think so. I suppose I’d have guessed him to be the m
an from the burglary on the first glimpse I had of him, but I didn’t see him clearly either time, until he came after me. The police said they think he’s named Jim Spim.”
“And—I have to ask this—you have no idea what he was up to, how you two or Lugtrout got in the way of this mess?” Clem and Rowley shook their heads. Mark put down his pencil and swigged beer. “Right, well, first things first. Do we reckon a thug from Golden Lane is behind all this?”
“I saw him,” Rowley said.
“Not saying you didn’t, mate. I’m saying— All right, Occam’s razor, first of all. Someone tortures and kills Lugtrout; meanwhile we’ve got Spim burgling and burning. Anyone think those are unrelated?”
“It would be something of a coincidence,” Nathaniel agreed with caution.
“Right. Now, burglary’s common enough, but arson, torture, and murder are good ways to get noticed by the rozzers. So Spim must have a reason to do those things that’s more important than the possible trouble it could cause him.” Mark tapped the end of the pen on the table. “All right, let’s try out a theory. Say Spim wanted something off Lugtrout. Maybe it was him shouting at Lugtrout in his room, maybe it was him who burgled it—”
“He didn’t seem precisely stealthy,” Clem objected.
“Fair enough, so maybe he gets someone else to do it. Your tweeny, say.”
“No,” Clem said flatly.
“Just a theory, mate. Whoever it was didn’t find whatever it was in his room. So Spim kidnaps Lugtrout and tortures him to ask where it is.”
Nathaniel whistled. “That’s a logical leap.”
“Theory,” Mark said. “Give me a chance. Where was I? So there’s this thing that Spim wants—”
“Such as what?”
“I don’t know, Nat,” Mark said, with some annoyance. “Why not get the Seer of London to summon Lugtrout from beyond the veil and we’ll ask.”
Clem had heard of the Seer of London, the spiritualist Justin Lazarus. Everyone said he was uncanny; Polly’s aunt had been to see him, to ask after her deceased husband. “You don’t think—”