The Counterfeit Viscount

by Ginn Hale

  “Try to keep him distracted and chatting for fifteen or twenty minutes, if you can.” Nimble took out his pocket watch and studied it briefly. “Yeah, twenty minutes will give me more than enough time, I imagine.”

  “Time for what, dare I ask?” Archie inquired.

  “I got a little lark that’ll let me in to the second story of the house. I’d rather Doug not come up while I’m having a rummage through his dresser and wardrobe.”

  “In broad daylight?” Archie dropped his voice.

  “He’s less likely to be upstairs in the bedroom then.”

  “But won’t his neighbors—” Archie began.

  “Nah. Who do you think is letting me climb across their balcony? Nice woman, actually, very fond of cats and liked Nancy. She’s worried Doug’s done something to her.” Nimble checked his pocket watch again. “And speaking of, I better go. Don’t fret, Archie. Worse comes to worst, I’ll turn myself into a pretty little butterfly and flutter out the window.”

  With that he left Archie to cycle the rest of the block to a gray row of densely packed two-story houses. Archie leaned his bicycle against the side of the wooden steps and strolled up. His heart pounded in his chest as he knocked on the weathered door. No response came, and after a few moments, Archie wondered if Doug was out of the house. All these props and worry for nothing. Though it would make matters much easier for Nimble.

  He supposed he ought to hang around and keep watch in case Doug came home.

  But then he heard the faint squeal and creak of someone descending a staircase. A tall, gaunt man with stringy brown hair and a sickly pale complexion pulled the door open. He wore a nightshirt and sported an ugly black eye, as well as a scabbed gash across his forehead. Archie recalled Thom mentioning Inquisitors beating Doug—though the two missing upper teeth had probably been Nimble’s doing years before.

  An air of sweat, alcohol, and old eggs rolled from the interior of the dark house like a sour breath.

  “I ain’t buying nothing,” Doug told him in a forlorn tone.

  “As luck would have it, good sir, I’m not selling anything.” Archie offered him a wide smile that seemed suitable for a salesman.

  Doug leaned on his doorframe and stared at Archie in a sort of dazed manner that made Archie wonder if he was drunk.

  “I’m delivering sheet music that’s already been paid for.”

  Confusion slowly spread across Doug’s bruised face.

  “By a Mrs. Nancy Beelze,” Archie added.

  “Nancy….” And all at once, Doug appeared convulsed with sorrow. His lower lip trembled like it was about to boil over, and tears welled up in his eyes. Despite knowing the man was no friend to Nimble and remembering Thom calling him a beast, Archie felt a stab of sympathy for him.

  “I’m sorry,” Archie said. “I didn’t mean to….”

  Doug didn’t seem to hear him. He simply hung on the door, weeping for several minutes. At last, when he appeared to regain a little control of himself, Archie proffered him a handkerchief. Doug wiped his face.

  “What… what music did she buy?” he asked. His words quaked as he tried to suppress another sob.

  “Well… why don’t I come in and show you?” Archie suggested. Maybe he could buy Nimble some time by playing or singing some of the music. Perhaps that would offer Doug some comfort in his grief. Archie possessed a passable voice, and if Doug owned a piano, he could perform on that quite easily.

  Doug nodded and stepped back to allow Archie inside the narrow, dark drawing room. No fire burned in the hearth, and the only source of light came from the few shafts of sunlight that shot in between the dusty curtains of the front window. Craning his head slightly, Archie made out the foot of a staircase far back and what must have been a tiny kitchen just beyond that. Definitely no piano. In fact, no real sign of any artistic, literary, or musical interests at all.

  As Archie’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he noticed the shadows that he’d first taken for knickknacks, gimcrack, and vases were in fact assorted stacks of dirty and broken dishes. The single picture on the mantle was cracked, and there was a notable space where Archie guessed another framed image must have once stood.

  There was only one chair in the room. It occupied the space between a cluttered sideboard table and the cold hearth. Doug dropped down into the chair and picked a whiskey bottle up off the sideboard. Light from the window cast his face in silhouette as he kicked a spindly footstool out to Archie.

  “As you can see….” Archie opened the paperboard briefcase and peered in at the sheaves of sheet music. “Mrs. Beelze—your wife, I presume…?”

  Doug nodded.

  “She ordered a number of very lovely hymns and a few popular songs—”

  “You probably think it’s funny,” Doug stated.

  “I beg your pardon?” Archie asked.

  “That little bitch running off and leaving me with a bunch of church songs,” Doug grumbled. The accusation seemed to come from nowhere.

  “No. I don’t think it’s funny at—”

  “She would have!” Doug took another swig from his bottle. “Bet she’s laughing her tit off right now.”

  “I… I’m sorry, but I was under the impression from your… response at the door, that she’d passed away.” Archie wasn’t certain, but he thought he heard the faintest creak from the floorboards overhead. Was Nimble up there already? If so, Archie needed to keep Doug distracted and talking, even if he didn’t like the turn of the fellow’s temper. “She’s not dead?”

  “Dead? I wish to God she were!” Doug snorted. “The pinchcock’s made a laughingstock of me. Took everything and ran off to get frigged up one end and out the other by every member of some dandy’s club.”

  Archie struggled to think of a response, but fortunately Doug didn’t seem to need encouragement.

  “Getting it from just one natural man is never enough for Proddie quims. Had to have ’em by the dozen, didn’t she? Liked it real rough too. She’d come home covered in bruises some nights. Hope they give her all the rough she can take and more.” Doug paused to drink from his bottle.

  Archie resisted the urge to question Doug. Hadn’t he noticed that the bruises on his wife were from fights? Didn’t it occur to him that something might have happened to her, or did he have reason to suspect that she’d actually left him?

  Doug lowered the whiskey bottle, almost dropped it on the floor, but then shuddered and pulled it back to his chest. “They better put her in the river when they’re done with her. ’Cause if I find her alive….” He shook his head. “Pigs won’t have her after I’m done with her. That’s a husband’s right.” Doug’s voice began to quaver again. “The whore took my medicine and poured it down the sink!”

  “Your medicine?” Even as he asked, Archie realized he ought to have guessed from the man’s sallow complexion and gaunt frame, or from his abrupt swings of mood: ophorium.

  “I got pain, like you couldn’t understand.” Doug snuffled into Archie’s handkerchief, and Archie guessed that he hadn’t been weeping for his lost wife earlier, but for the drug she’d deprived him of.

  “I was injured in the war.” Doug sniffed.

  Archie nodded. So many of them had been, and not always in way that other people could see or understand. It had spawned an epidemic of ophorium addicts, drunks, and thugs. Archie supposed Doug might count as all three. God knew, it wasn’t easy to come back from war and not bring any of the horror along with you.

  “That sheet music,” Doug said. “You suppose it’s worth much?”

  “Well, the print quality is rather nice.” Archie really had no idea but did his best to stall for a little more time. “Hymns aren’t in the highest demand since most people already know them, but you might be able to sell the four music hall songs—”

  “What’ll you give me for them?” Doug demanded.

  “I’m hardly an ideal buyer,” Archie replied. He took a step back to ensure he was well clear of Doug’s long reach. “Being a h
ymn hawker myself, I already have first pick of all I could possibly use.”

  “I fought in the war. Wasn’t for men like me, soft little boys like you would be on your knees for them Nornian sods.” Doug surged up to his feet, with the whiskey bottle still gripped in his hand. “You’ve had it easy—I can tell just looking at you! A pretty little boy who goes around chatting up men’s wives and selling them songs!”

  “Sir, I can assure you—”

  “I know your type! Half the women in the city giving you free trips up cock lane, as well as their husbands’ money. You here laughing up your sleeve at a man like me.”

  “I’m not laughing at anyone,” Archie replied, but Doug wasn’t listening.

  “Those ain’t cheap rags on your back. Bet they was bought with other men’s money.” Doug stepped closer. And out of the corner of his eye, Archie thought he glimpsed a shadow moving slowly down the staircase.

  The last thing he wanted was for Nimble to get dragged into this—whatever this was about to become.

  “Bet my wife liked you plenty! Gave you money she wouldn’t spare for me!” Doug swayed so close that Archie could smell the stale odor of his breath. He glowered at Archie, lips quivering. His hand shook as he raised his whiskey bottle like a club. “You pampered boys owe men like me everything! Now you’re gonna pay up, or I’ll shove this bottle so far up your—”

  Archie slammed his right fist into Doug’s gut and then hooked his jaw with a fast left.

  Doug fell back. The whiskey bottle bounced across the floor and spilled the last of its contents into the dark hearth.

  Archie glanced quickly to the stairs. If Nimble had been there, he was gone now.

  Doug moaned from where he lay sprawled on the floor. “You dirty little shit.” His voice broke in another self-pitying sob. “I fought in the war. I was out there—”

  “So was I!” Archie snapped. “And so were thousands of other people, and a lot of them never came back. You and me were the lucky ones. We get to live our lives. So if you’re going to wallow and weep for anyone, it shouldn’t be yourself.”

  Archie hurled the sheets of hymns down on the floor and left Doug whimpering and moaning to himself.

  ***

  “Remind me never to get into a punch-up with you, Archie,” Nimble commented. “Your knuckles all right?”

  “Not too bad.” His left fist was a little red and sore, but nothing felt broken. His hand certainly didn’t give him any trouble as he cut his meat.

  All around them, boisterous groups of actors, playwrights, musicians, and costumers filled tall box seats and crowded around narrow tables. Voices boomed, as players—many dressed in costumes and makeup—ran their lines and waiters shouted orders into the steaming back room of the kitchen. The air sizzled and clanged with the sounds and scents of beef and onions searing in hot pans.

  Their waiter had recognized Nimble, not on sight but by the sound of his rough voice. He knew Nimble as a character actor who regularly ascended from Hells Below to search for roles. He and Nimble took a moment to discuss the padding Nimble had used to fill out the potbelly under his yellow waistcoat.

  That briefly drew the attention of an actor seated at the table to the left of them. The young man wore a fabulous scarlet gown and a towering red wig, and sported a rather convincing bust; he offered Nimble an approving nod. Then he returned his attention to trading fantastically comical dialogue with the two handsome brunette girls opposite him.

  The men on the other side of Archie and Nimble appeared even less interested in them. The paunchy middle-aged fellows drained pints of ale and scribbled on what little empty space remained of the many manuscript pages that they passed back and forth between them.

  Once the waiter departed, Archie went ahead and described the week he’d spent at the Dee Club. Nimble listened, and every once in a while, asked a question or penciled a note onto the pages that Archie had given him. After Archie had said his fill and their food had been served, Nimble leafed through the sheets of paper.

  “You say the building used to belong to a smuggler?” Nimble studied Archie’s map with the intent expression of a man plotting a prison break.

  “That’s Umberry’s story, but I’m not certain it explains why he kept all those passages intact.”

  Nimble nodded. Absently he picked up one of the golden fried chips from his plate, but he didn’t eat. Archie, on the other hand, polished off his six-penny serving of beef and peas, as well as his chips and lump of cheese. He’d hardly eaten the three days before and felt relieved to regain his appetite. He sipped his beer and considered what, if anything, he’d learned from his encounter with Nancy Beelze’s dissolute husband.

  “He said that she took everything,” Archie said.

  Nimble looked up, his eyes flashing bright yellow as they rose over the blue lenses of his spectacles. “There weren’t any women’s clothes or toiletries in the bedroom or bath.” Nimble remembered the chip and ate it quickly before turning his attention to his peas and beef.

  “You were expecting as much,” Archie guessed.

  Nimble nodded. “Like I said, I’ve been asking around about the twelve others who went missing from the club. They share a number of commonalities.”

  “All Prodigals.” Archie knew that already. “All took part in the Sunday fights at the Dee Club.” Normally he would have lowered his voice, but in the cacophony of the Fatted Cat chophouse, his words hardly carried. Besides, so many of the surrounding discussions revolved around the murders, affairs, and treasons of stage plays that their conversation could hardly compete with the surrounding drama and scandal.

  “Right. Also all but one of the twelve are women. And every single one of them was living with a man, whom my dear departed mum would have referred to as a shit-with-fists.”

  “Violent?”

  “Oh, definitely. But most deep in debt too,” Nimble said.

  “So these missing people would all have had good reason to run away.” Archie considered that. “And if they disappeared, that would be the first thing anyone would think, right?”

  “Righto. One girl’s mum told me that she didn’t search for her daughter at first because she was scared that she would lead her daughter’s husband to her.” Nimble leaned forward a little. “I don’t think it would have taken much talking to convince Nancy or any one of the others to pack their belongings and come away. Show a little kindness, lure them in with the offer of shelter. Then when he’s got them alone, do them in.”

  The thought struck Archie as horrible, cunning, and manipulative in all the worst ways. What kind of person chose a victim like Nancy—a person in desperate straits—and exploited her anguish to make her take part in her own murder?

  That was like something his uncle Silas would dream up, Archie thought in disgust. Then he considered the idea more seriously. Could Silas be involved? He certainly wasn’t above anything so repulsive, not so long as it served him. But the question was, how would the deaths of thirteen prodigals benefit his uncle? Could his presence in the Dee Club merely be a coincidence, unrelated to Nancy’s disappearance?

  “On top of that,” Nimble went on, “say one of their bodies does eventually wash up on the river bank one day. There’d be no question of who the Inquisition would arrest. Neighbors, friends, and parents have already seen plenty of bruises, heard fights and the nastiest sorts of threats.”

  Archie nodded, recalling Doug Beelze’s hateful words. He hadn’t spent even an hour in the man’s company, but he felt certain Doug had abused his wife and was fully capable of killing her.

  From the point of view of someone plotting to murder Nancy, Doug would make a perfect scapegoat. Perhaps even a deserving one.

  “And here’s the other thing they have in common, and this one is rather strange.” Nimble’s words interrupted Archie’s thoughts. “Every single one of them was introduced to the club through a pretty fellow who goes by the name of Pugg—”

  “Mr. Pugg the dog trainer?” That
, Archie had not anticipated at all.

  “The very one.” Nimble ate another of his chips.

  “Mr. Pugg….” Archie struggled to imagine Mr. Pugg in any capacity other than a handsome man holding out hoops for his hounds to leap through. There had been a guileless—even stupid—quality about his beaming stage presence that Archie found difficult to get past.

  “It’s curious, ain’t it?” Nimble commented.

  Archie nodded. Both of them lapsed into thoughtful quiet.

  Then, without preamble, the young man in the scarlet dress turned in his seat and leaned in to their table. He offered Archie a brief sweet smile and then placed his gloved hand next to Nimble’s. “I’m sorry for intruding, but we just have to know.” He indicated his two companions. The girls smiled with a warmth imparted by one too many pints of beer. “Are you two staging a murder mystery play?”

  “Still working out the plot, actually,” Nimble replied.

  The taller of the two girls leaned forward as well. Archie had to admire her shoulders and the muscular quality of her tanned hands. “I like the design for your set, but it’s far too complex and fussy.” She indicated Archie’s sketchy map of the Dee Club. “I build trap doors and false floors at the Moonlight Playhouse. All three of us work there.”

  Archie recognized the name of the theater; it possessed quite the reputation for staging outrageous productions filled with illusions and transformations.

  “This back half here is really all you need or want.” The girl traced her finger over the circular arena on the map. “You’ve got the audience situated perfectly to direct their attention away from the wings, and below you have more than enough space for trapdoors and any machinery you might need to have ghosts or whatnot pop out.”