The Humbug Murders (8 page)

“Listen here, Ebenezer,” said Jack quietly. “I don't have time for polished toffs with scarves and coats withholding valuable and necessary information, no, I do not. Have you no thought for me and me lads here? They all need feeding, don't you, boys?” Another punch landed on my side, but even as I pulled again at the chain, I recognized that I was fading. “Where is our shipment?”

It was then I saw the golden glint on Roger's finger. A ring exactly like the one Fezziwig had been wearing.

They were connected to his murder. I had nothing to go on but the glimpse of that ring and a feeling deep within me that I could not ignore.

I choked, I felt my eyeballs pressing threateningly at their sockets, the pain was indescribable—then they released me. With a crash, I fell to the floor, gasping for air. My heart stung and my tongue swelled in my throat. I rubbed my neck.

“Would you like to do that again?” Roger asked.

I shook my head violently.

“Then tell us what we wish to know.” He produced a blade, placed it at my throat, over the scarf. “Or I'll slit you ear-to-ear. After.”

I didn't want to ask, but the silence spilled out for so long I could not help myself. “A-after what?”

“Bring the gravel, Baldworthy. And the spoon. Mr. Scrooge needs to be made to see reason. And I'm thinking he only needs one eye for that.”

I went mad. I twisted and jerked and fought, but there were too many. They beat me down, subdued me, and held me while Baldworthy approached with the instruments.

I began to babble. I told them I knew exactly what they were talking about. I gave them locations where I knew grain was kept, precious imports, and more. The Colleys tsked tsked with every lie, and my coat and shirt were stripped from me. I told them how I could help them hide their income through legitimate enterprises, how I could launder their money, disperse their illegal goods throughout warehouses stocked with legal trade so that none would suspect what they were up to. But it was no use. They were after something else, something far more critical than what my wildest promises could deliver.

They worked at me with their knives, which they first salted. Tiny burning cuts that bled copiously. And all the time, Baldworthy stood holding the spoon over a candle, heating it like a red-hot iron, smiling as he waited his turn. He would use the spoon to dig out my eye.

Finally, Jack said, “I don't think he has anything to tell us. Nothing of substance. No value to him.”

Baldworthy looked crestfallen. “So I don't get to . . .”

“Hang it all, take both eyes before you kill him, do whatever you wish,” Roger said. Then he looked down at me . . . and at something lying beside me. “Hold on, now. What's this?”

Roger bent down, his knees clicking, and then rose again gripping my locket. He held it before me. He popped it open and inside I saw a cameo portrait of my beloved Belle. And despite the horrid way we had left things when she released me from our engagement, I would not, and could not, ever stop loving her.

As I was choking and kicking, my brain on fire from the agony of hanging, I heard them describe the vileness they would perpetrate upon Belle. Things they would do together or taking turns. A “party” for all their happy lads.

I could not let that happen. I would not. I scoured my mind for all the ghostly Fezziwig said to me and shouted, “Chimera!”

The mockery came to an abrupt silence. Roger and Jack paled.

“Cut him down,” Roger commanded.

“Cut him down now!” echoed his brother.

Roger advanced on me. “Tell me what you know. End this. Be straight and we'll forget about the girl. We're not monsters, Mr. Scrooge.”

And just then, while I was sprawled on the floor, panting, spitting, coughing, the warehouse erupted into a hellish crescendo of activity. The doors burst open and men with lanterns flooded the place. Cries of
“mutton shunters”
exploded from the criminals. A warning that the police were here. Roger ran off even as Baldworthy and the man with the claret mark bested a handful of constables and scattered into the darkness like cockroaches. The other thugs fell or surrendered, wishing to keep all their teeth. And their knees. Jack sprang from the darkness.

“I'll kill you!” Jack screamed. “Kill you!”

Then a baton clipped him at the base of the skull and down he went. Crabapple stood behind him, that faint smile I'd seen earlier today playing on his rough-hewn face.

As Jack was dragged to his feet, he screamed. “Where is it, Scrooge? Where's our shipment?
Where is it
?” Crabapple's men led him away, screaming. “When Roger finds your woman, he'll make what was done to that old bastard Fezziwig look like a mercy a thousand times over,” Jack promised, as he was dragged past me. “Then Baldworthy can have her eyes, put them in his fun jar. His pickled pleasures. His—”

I was on my feet by then. And somehow, Crabapple's baton had found its way into my hand, as if the man had slipped it there himself.

I made good use of it. And down went Jack, falling in a heap.

And for the first time ever, I heard Constable Crabapple laugh.

On the dock, beneath the stars I found Miss Owen waiting for me. There had indeed been a hose in the warehouse, and after stripping off my clothes, I had used it thoroughly to wash the hellish stink of the Thames from me. A policeman who'd served in the war as a medic and always carried his doctor's bag had seen to the cuts, disinfecting and dressing them. One of Colley's goons who was about the same size as me had been stripped, his dry if ratty clothes given to me. His shoes were a size too big; I moved clumsily, which made Miss Owen smile.

“I owe you my life,” I said. Crabapple had told me how Miss Owen had doubled back, watched as I went into the river with Sunderland, saw his men take me from beneath the docks, and followed me here. Then she'd made her way back to the precinct and convinced Crabapple to stage this raid. He wouldn't have given the woman's pleas credence had it not been for her precise descriptions of so many of Colley's “soldiers,” particularly the man with the claret mark. Crabapple had returned here with her, and when he saw the mountains of stolen goods in the warehouse, he sent one of his men to round up enough strong fellows for the raid.

“I owe that poor fellow who worked for Mr. Sunderland mine. He fought so that I might go free.”

“I don't have much time,” I cautioned her. “There are arrangements I must make.”

Crabapple had pledged to send men to watch Belle's home on the chance that Roger might make good his threats against her. But he would not keep them there beyond morning. By then the villain's rage would have cooled, Crabapple assured me. And the man would be on to more pressing matters. I was not so sure.

“I expect nothing to be given to me,” Miss Owen said. “My entire life, I have earned what little I have received. You are in the midst of a business venture, I believe? Suppose I had information that might prove useful to you in securing investors. Would you not consider partnering with me under those terms?”

“I would certainly be interested to know what you consider ‘useful information.' But first, what nature of partnership are you proposing?”

“Partner with me in the solving of Fezziwig's murder, Mr. Scrooge. So that my Tom might be set free. I shall make certain your investment deal benefits.”

“Yes . . . your Tom.”

She held out her hand like any gentleman might when proposing a business deal.

I frowned. “You will receive the bitterly disappointing wage I had reserved for a clerk. You will perform the duties of a clerk but out of sight, and you will not speak of this; you will receive no letter of recommendation from me. This is a finite arrangement, is that understood?”

Her hand did not waver. And as a chill wind rose off the river, I took it—and found in it a warmth I had not felt in many a year.

“And as your first order of business,” I told her, “I want you to investigate something called Chimera.” She knew that Fezziwig's spirit had spoken of it, and her eyes widened as I described the strange effect that single word had upon the Colleys. “I'll need to know things about George Sunderland and what Fezziwig might possibly have known about him to cause the businessman sleepless nights. I also must know about this Tom fellow. Any reason you might conceive why he had been at Fezziwig's in the first place.”

At the far edge of the warehouse, I saw Dickens and his fellow reporters arrayed before Inspector Foote, who had arrived just in time to take all credit from the fuming Crabapple once more. I knew the ways of London's press. There would be fear-mongering and mass panic brewing in the vile cesspools on either side of the city's class divide unless I could have words with Dickens before this night was over. Miss Owen caught my gaze.

“What I tell you about Tom . . . it will be in the press?” she guessed.

“It will. I must preserve Fezziwig's name. It is all I may do for him now. And I cannot guarantee that what's written will help Tom's case at all.”

“But you will try?”

I did not need to reply. She saw in my eyes how all of this benefitted me, and how the night's events had strengthened my resolve to circumvent the ghost's terrible prophecies.

She nodded and promised she would be forthcoming. But another matter weighed on her as well: “We have to know why Fezziwig summoned those people. I know of a gentleman who might be able to help you squeeze that arrogant prick Rutledge. Of the four we met in that room this morning, he struck me as the weak link. Something about him was simply not as it seemed.”

“Then squeeze him we shall, but not right away. There are other more pressing matters to deal with first.”

Like keeping a dead man from visiting me once again, I silently added.

ONE CAN REASONABLY
assume that dancing at the end of a rope can leave a man proof against further shocks to the system, but the vile swill that passed for dinner at the Cock and Egg challenged most assumptions. I leaned back in my seat barely two hours after the incident at the warehouse and closed my eyes. I wanted to wish away the bitter tang and thick oppressive odor of the seasoned egg and cheese slop Dickens greedily slurped and swallowed. The din and clatter of the pub crashed over me, Christmas songs merrily slurred by those full to the brim of mulled cider and whiskey pressed me like an inquisition's victim. It pushed down on me with the thick smell of stale beer, rotting straw, sickly sweet perfumes, unwashed bodies, and urine. Shuddering, I opened my eyes and reached for the flagon of spiced rum I shared with my guest and drank. I couldn't wait to be far from this bristly underbelly of Whitechapel and the stench of beer batter. But first I had business to conduct with the young reporter seated across from me.

Dickens smiled thinly as he pushed the scraped-clean plate away and mopped at his chin with a worn handkerchief. An air of confidence settled about him as he withdrew a small notepad and pencil from his jacket and set them down between us. “Right we are then, Mr. Scrooge. Tell me all there is to know about your secret association with Mr. Sunderland and how it ties to those wretched Colley boys. And what business dealing were they and this Tom fellow mixed up in that led to poor Fezziwig's horrible demise? Mr. Scrooge, imagine the publicity this story will get you. The people who will line up at your door to do business with the final confidant of George Sunderland. That's what I will make of you.”

A hot flush burst in my cheeks. “Dickens, you always have your ear to the ground. So what's life like in the gutter, anyway?”

“My theory is, the Colleys took you because of a kidnapping gone terribly wrong,” he went on, ignoring my slight. “The big fish, as it were, got away, drowned in the Thames, and the Colleys thought to make do with you. See what gold they might squeeze from you in return for your miserable life. And perhaps find out if you knew where Sunderland keeps his cash.”