“Oi!” the constable said.
Primus Harley turned and waved at Charles, then awkwardly made his way down the stairs. “I can’t rouse the house. Why isn’t anyone answering?”
“Where have you been these past hours?” Charles demanded.
Primus frowned and held up a box. “Visiting a friend. She made more of that shortbread you liked so much. I thought it might cheer Uncle Emmanuel.”
“Would she testify to that?” the constable said in a domineering manner.
Primus’s face went very red. “I was with her all night until I walked here.”
“Mr. Pettingill is dead,” Charles said, taking pity on the man. He might very well be innocent. “Murdered.”
“Murdered? I thought you had banished the Dorsets!” Primus exclaimed.
“I would not say this murder seemed to be the work of Johnny Dorset,” Charles said. “Your father’s death had something of blunt force about it. This death was more intimate.”
“I hope we shall have more help here within the hour,” said Thornton. “I want this friend of yours spoken to before you see her.”
Primus screwed up his face mulishly. “I won’t leave this house until you do. I don’t wish any stain upon my character.”
The constable pushed past him and banged on the door until footsteps could be heard.
Mrs. Pettingill opened the door to them. “I wondered if we would ever see you again, Mr. Dickens,” she chided, ignoring the other two men.
She had changed into a black dress. The fashion of it dated to so many years ago that Charles thought it must have adorned a long-dead Screws. Fold lines had whitened some of the dye, but the fabric was good silk.
“This is Mr. Pettingill’s widow,” Charles said to Thornton. “How is Mr. Screws?”
“He wouldn’t let me into his chamber,” said the new widow. “Whatever did you say to him?”
“I advised caution,” Charles said. “He didn’t look well.”
“He could have some kind of fit,” said the exasperated lady. “I’ve just lost my husband. I don’t want to lose his uncle as well.”
“I’ll check on him,” Charles said. “You take Constable Thornton upstairs. We’ll put Mr. Harley in the parlor.” When she visibly hesitated, he coaxed, “We will do everything we can to put your mind at ease.”
“But Mr. Harley might have killed my husband,” she said.
Charles smiled reassuringly at her. “He says he didn’t. The police will check his story and will have an answer soon.”
She dabbed at her dry eyes again. “This way, Constable.” She gracefully tilted her head toward the staircase.
Charles took Primus to the parlor, where his father’s body had once laid in state. “I’m going to lock you in.”
The weaver grunted and took off his hat. “Will you at least take the shortbread to Uncle Emmanuel?”
Charles shook his head. “You can do it when you’re exonerated.” He left the room and turned the key in the parlor door lock, then pocketed it. Then he went up and knocked on Mr. Screws’s door. When he heard no response, he called for Mr. Screws. “It’s Dickens, sir.”
A minute later, he heard shuffling footsteps, then the key in the lock. Mr. Screws peered out, then gestured Charles in.
“I thought you trusted Mrs. Pettingill,” Charles said.
“I thought about what you said after you left,” said the old man, sitting down heavily on the chair by his stove. “And locked myself in.”
“Oh?” Charles leaned against the wall.
“My nephew was not a grasping sort of fellow, but his wife could be ambitious. No.” He shook his head sadly. “I may not be able to trust her. Or anyone else in this house.”
“I understand.” Anyone could take advantage of an ill old soul. He told Mr. Screws about Primus Harley and gave him the parlor door key.
“Regardless of Mrs. Pettingill’s honesty or lack thereof, I cannot expect her to take messages back and forth between here and the countinghouse,” Mr. Screws added.
“You have Mr. Fletcher for that.”
“He will need to run the place, I am sorry to say. I do not think I can make it up and down my own steps.” Mr. Screws coughed weakly and sighed. “No, sir, for the first time in my life, I need a confidential secretary.”
“I can place an advertisement for you,” Charles offered.
“Why not take the position yourself?” the old man suggested. “You are on leave from the newspaper.”
Charles closed his eyes, pride warring with reality. He hated to be idle, and he needed funds in order to have any hope of a future with Kate. Also, Mr. Screws might be the only person willing to hire him. Still, he demurred. “I have my book to finish.”
Mr. Screws wrinkled his nose and opened his jaw, suppressing a sneeze. “I understand, but I can trust you, Charles. You were outside when Jacob died, and at your newspaper office when my nephew was murdered.”
“Very well,” said Charles, surprising himself. But how could he say otherwise, with pride in the Dickens name thoroughly redeemed? A position of trust with a man who had once rejected his father for a loan? “Temporarily.”
* * *
After Charles left, he went to visit his mother at last. She opened the door of the Dickenses’ Bloomsbury chambers with an expression of delight.
“Many happy returns, Mother,” he said with a kiss on her cheek, his smile easy now that his fortunes were looking up.
“Such a pleasure to see you today, darling,” she cooed and ushered him in, the lace on her sleeves fluttering.
His mother settled herself comfortably in the second-best chair. Letitia sat on the stool at her feet, winding yarn. His father was already in the best chair, the day’s newspapers in his lap.
Charles pulled fruit from his overcoat pocket and dropped it into his mother’s lap, on top of her knitting. “I’ve just been by the orange girl. Happy birthday.”
“Very nice,” she exclaimed.
“Nothing better on a winter’s eve,” his father added. “The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.”
“I agree.” Charles recognized the Wordsworth quotation. “It may not be much, but”—he pulled a package from his other pocket—“sausages from my favorite butcher, an even dozen.”
“Oh, Charles, how can you afford it?”
His father frowned, dampening his mother’s enthusiasm. “You must count your shillings, boy, under the circumstances. Do not be profligate.”
Charles frowned. “You have heard about what happened at the Chronicle?”
“I am in shock over your career fall, my boy.”
“We both are,” his mother added.
Charles stiffened. Blood left his extremities and heated his face. But he could not lash out. He could not dishonor his father by pointing out that he was more successful than his father ever was, and his father threw away a prosperous career, which Charles did not do.
He would show them, his parents whom he had supported through numerous disasters brought on by their own profligacy. He would apply for new newspaper positions the second Mr. Screws was safe to die in peace. He knew he was the best shorthand reporter in the business. Someone would want him. Even if he was declared guilty of fathering a bastard, the business was full of men with irregular lifestyles. “Mr. Hogarth never would have cared about a possible illegitimate child if it hadn’t been for my engagement to Kate. This is personal.”
“Oh, Charles!” his mother exclaimed.
Letitia put her hand to her mouth.
“Oh, you can’t believe it,” Charles snapped at his sister. “I was never anywhere near the mother of the infant in question.”
A sneer crossed his father’s normally jovial face. “And yet, sir, my son is the laughingstock of the newspaper business due to your pride over being engaged to your editor’s daughter while consorting with a mere inn maid.”
“How can you possibly think the story
is true given how ridiculous it is?” Charles demanded.
“Young men have to sow their oats.” His father smirked and took a sip of wine from his ever-present cup. His mother bent her head over her knitting.
Letitia gave him a wild glance and went back into the kitchen.
Had his father even bothered to defend him to his cronies? Charles schooled his expression and did not rise to the bait, for his mother’s sake. “I have a new position, as a private secretary to Emmanuel Screws, the owner of a countinghouse.”
“My stars,” his mother gasped excitedly. “How wonderful.”
“I start tomorrow,” Charles said, gathering enthusiasm from hers. “It’s a new trade to learn, but I have hopes that it will be temporary.”
“Giving up journalism for business?” his father said, snapping his top newspaper. “Not a terribly sound notion.”
“At least, sir, he trusts me, which is more than can be said for—”
Letitia reentered with a jangling tray before Charles could finish his retort. He was the better for it. Knowing the truth himself was more important than reminding his father of his failure with Screws and Harley more than a decade before.
Letitia set the tray on the little table in between the two armchairs. Her mother snatched the bit of lace decorating the table out from under the tray just in time.
“Letitia,” she snapped.
“Sorry, Mother.”
The lady of the house sighed noisily and tucked her lace out of sight on the mantelpiece, behind three pine cones, a sprig of holly, and a pewter candlestick.
“Are the boys at school?” Charles asked, remembering how his parents had allowed him to roam London without any thought of educating him when he’d first come here from Kent after being thought a gifted student there.
“Yes, dear,” his mother said blandly.
He bit back a grimace. But Letitia picked up on his irritation and quickly poured the tea. The two of them took their cups to the dining room table, where they pored over a scrapbook Henry Austin, Charles’s old friend as well as Letitia’s betrothed, had made for her.
He stayed for dinner, wishing his father could be as grateful for his company as Mr. Screws was, and then left after. The streets were slick with moisture and his breath fogged the air. The moon scarcely cut a sliver into the night sky and he had to rely on the street lamps for light. Even so, he felt restless and decided to talk William into a walk.
When he turned up on Cheapside, Julie was busy with baby Timothy.
“Can William come and play?” he asked, pulling a comical face.
“He’s in the bedroom, working on some bit of writing. I’ll ask him.” Distracted, she handed the baby to Charles. “Jiggle him around. I think he has a tooth coming in. He cries when I stop moving.”
Charles took him, bouncing gently from side to side while Julie conferred with William and took a couple of minutes for herself in her bedroom.
“What brings you to our humble chambers?” William asked. He wore an old coat Charles hadn’t seen in a year and had circles under his eyes.
“I thought you might like a walk.”
William peered at him. “You look positively jumpy. Another visitation from your specter?”
“Worse,” Charles said. “Another murder.”
“Oh, no.” Julie rushed back into the room and took Timothy from Charles’s arms, as if he might be contaminated with death.
“Who?” William asked, walking into the small area by the front door and plucking a comforter sprawled across the boot bench.
“Edward Pettingill.”
“Wasn’t he staying with Mr. Screws?” William asked.
“In the same room Jacob Harley fell from,” Charles said grimly. “Same room, two deaths.”
“What a puzzle.” William abruptly shifted focus. “Shouldn’t you be looking for a position?”
“I’ve one with Mr. Screws for now. He thinks I’m merely on leave from the newspaper to finish my book.”
“I prefer to think of it that way myself,” Julie said stoutly.
“Every day Timothy looks less like you. See how narrowly spaced his tiny eyes are? Not like yours at all. Your eyebrows are much more widely separated.”
“Could be from the mother,” William said with a ghost of a smile on his tired face.
“Maybe I shouldn’t take you out,” Charles said.
“Just to the pub,” William said, heading for his hat. “Let Julie have some peace. She’s already had to send Lucy to bed.”
Charles followed on his friend’s heels as he walked into the outer passage. “What’s wrong with Lucy?”
“Feeling closed in. Not used to all this time indoors.”
“Is Julie taking her to do the marketing?”
“No, because Timothy isn’t feeling well. She and Julie even had a very small spat.” William jumped the last two steps to the ground floor, where the chophouse was, the windows darkened now.
Charles guessed he felt pleased to be out of doors himself. “Do you want to hear all the details?”
“Wait until I have a glass of something hot in front of me. Julie and Lucy have been too busy to take care of me.”
They walked in companionable silence until they came to an elderly pub next to a church. Inside, the fire smoked and the taproom was half empty, but the drinks were a penny less than elsewhere so they decided to stay.
When William had his boots stretched out toward the fire and a hot glass of punch in his hand, he smiled easily for the first time that night. “Tell me all.”
“Mr. Pettingill was strangled,” Charles said, explaining the scene.
“A woman could have done it with the tools used,” William mused.
“But the fingerprints on Mr. Harley’s arms were male sized.”
“Mr. Pettingill didn’t have the same marks from what you saw. Could there be two killers?” William drank deeply and raised his hand to get the barmaid’s attention.
“Why would there be? Mr. Screws had just decided to give Mr. Pettingill the countinghouse. Surely these men are dead because of the business.”
“Why wasn’t Mr. Screws offed?”
“He’s probably at severe risk,” Charles said. He set down his almost untasted cup as acid soured his belly. The old man liked him, trusted him. No, he wasn’t a kindly old fellow, but Charles appreciated his tough spirit. Mr. Pettingill, on the other hand, had seemed to be kindly. A lot of schoolboys would be devastated to hear of the death of their hero, gone tragically too soon. It seemed the countinghouse was a curse cast upon these two men. Who would be the next to fall foul of this evil?
“You really shouldn’t be so involved. Taking the position as his secretary is beneath you. It’s a step backward, especially with such a skinflint as Screws. What kind of wage did he offer?”
“It’s tolerable,” Charles muttered into his glass. He hadn’t even asked about the pay. “Not a junior wage.”
“Ri-ight,” William said, then flashed his old grin at the serving maid as his drink arrived.
Charles ordered a bowl of stew. “The position won’t last long. Mr. Screws is a dying man with a palsy.”
“At least he can’t be the murderer,” William said. “He could have helped someone out a window, I suppose, but he couldn’t have strangled anyone.”
“At least not Mr. Pettingill,” Charles agreed. He had set that theory aside some time ago without even realizing it. Mr. Screws had loved Jacob Harley too well to kill him. Mr. Fletcher or Mrs. Dorset would have told him if the men had been fighting.
“A conspiracy between the old man and Mrs. Pettingill?” William suggested.
The waiter delivered Charles’s stew. “Why would they want Mr. Screws’s nephew dead?” Charles picked up his spoon. “He was a great man, you know. Boy’s own hero, with his birding expertise.”
William drained his second glass. “Did he become too familiar with the housekeeper?”
“She’s gone,” Charles said. He put his hea
d into his hands. The cold metal of the utensil branded his cheek. “I don’t know. She didn’t mention it.”
“I wish I could return to Hatfield and deal with the infant situation but I need to stay with Julie,” William confided. “She’s becoming terribly attached to Timothy. I want his future resolved before our own child comes.”
Charles coughed and took a bite of the stew. It tasted flavorless. “I think the fireplace is irritating my lungs. Are you warm enough to walk now?”
“Very well.”
Both dogged by their own thoughts, they made their way through remembered thoroughfares, retracing the streets they both had so often journeyed the summer before, when they had rooms at Selwood Terrace.
“Strange to walk this now,” William mused. “I have become soft, with Lady Lugoson sending her carriage to us.”
“Did you ever think you would call such a woman aunt?”
“I never really thought about marriage at all,” William admitted. “I wasn’t like you, with your dream of being a proper paterfamilias, the man your father never was.”
“You think that’s why?”
“I know it is. You were already trying to get married at eighteen. I didn’t know you then but I’ve heard the Maria Beadnell story often enough.”
They walked on, stopping in front of the Hogarths’ house.
“They aren’t abed,” William said, pulling Charles into the side garden when he saw the lights were still on.
“How do you know Kate’s room?”
William reached down and gathered a handful of gravel from the pathway through the herb garden. “I’m next door all the time, Charles. Really, it’s a wonder Julie has learned to cook so well.” He shot the gravel in an arc so that it rattled down Kate’s windowpane.
Charles was frozen. What if Kate saw them and waved? What if she refused to speak to them? He agonized, staring at the wavering flame of light behind the window.
Chapter 18
A moment later, Charles and William saw the light of a candle move to the side of the upper window and a dark shape come up next to it. The window pushed outward and Kate stuck her head out, whispering, “Julie?”
Charles’s eyebrows rose. “Julie?”
A Christmas Carol Murder Page 21