by L. J. Oliver
“Over here! Found him!”
Crabapple’s grinning face loomed over me as the man hauled me from my makeshift crypt out into the blinding cleansing light of day. Head light, the world lazily whirling, soot and a low-laying bed of smoke twisting about the wreckage and the chaos of dozens—or was it a hundred or more—men surging all about the place, all I could think of was one thing. A name. Through a throat full of ash I croaked, “Adelaide.”
“Here!” she called. Her voice was reassuringly strong, and she joined me, taking one of my arms as Crabapple led me out of the small mound of debris where I’d lain to a plateau near the cliffs. Sunlight sparkled like a sea of diamonds over the distant waves.
“Merry Christmas,” I muttered, taking in the ruination about me.
“It hasn’t been that long,” Dickens said, looking up from his sketchbook. He sat upon a nearby rockfall. The remains of the fallen towers and abbey walls stood out upon the snowy waste like spent coals soiling white sheets. Men moved about the ruins, poking about, rattling sticks into the debris, then listening, praying perhaps, for a response.
“Who are all these people?” I asked, shivering. Adelaide waved her hand, and someone brought a pair of heavy blankets that I snatched away and hugged about myself. Before I could even form the thought that I could murder a cup of tea, one was brought to me, hot, steaming, heated by one of the few cauldrons not swallowed up by the abbey’s fall.
“Local townsfolk, mainly,” Crabapple said. “All the ruckus drew ’em.”
“How many?” I asked, my tone dark as the weight settling over my heart.
“How many did we lose?” asked the constable. “Or how many did we manage to save?”
Shuddering, I asked, “How . . . many?”
Adelaide told me. Roughly two-thirds of the women had been dragged from the hellish “set” Smithson and Lazytree had conceived and constructed in this spot before the last of the abbey walls had come down. Five of the women had been found dead, thirteen were yet unaccounted for. She had come to such a precise accounting from Lazytree, who’d been captured, thrashed, spilled all, and thrashed several more times for good measure.
Only three of the wretched punters—the fine clients—had perished.
Someone called, “She’s coming around!”
Crabapple and Adelaide rushed towards the voice. Dickens and I followed. We stared down at a familiar-looking ginger who sat up, coughing.
Miss Annie Piper!
It didn’t take long for the prostitute—still drenched in clove perfume—to understand what had happened here. She told her story with little urging. She had indeed been recruited to the Doll House, as we had heard, and into Smithson’s bed. But he tired of her quickly and had her drugged and cast her in with the rest of the women in the cradle.
Adelaide pressed the woman about her association with Thomas Guilfoyle, and a fuller picture quickly emerged. The mystery of how Fezziwig knew of The Lady and why he had sent invitations to Sunderland, Rutledge, Shen, and Nellie turned out to be remarkably simple: “Tom took me to the old man’s place one time,” Annie revealed. “Where he was doing his scribbling on the man’s books. He explained it all to me, though I have to admit, I was a bit distracted. While he was going on about The Lady and how she was connected to Sunderland and them others, I was realizing we weren’t alone in the room. Old Fezziwig had fallen asleep in a chair in the corner. I thought him asleep, at first. Then I came to see he was listening to all of it.”
“And you said nothing?” Adelaide asked. “Not to Tom, not to anyone?”
Annie shrugged. “Didn’t see how it was my business, so long as I was getting paid.”
The prostitute was taken off by a pair of volunteers, and we returned to the cliffside.
“The truth of all this will never be told,” Dickens said ruefully. “I’ll never be allowed to print any of it.”
“He’s right,” Crabapple said, spitting out the toothpick he’d been chewing on. “The whole lot is whinnying for their solicitors like screamin’ babies wantin’ Mama’s tit.”
“Nellie?” I asked.
Adelaide gestured back to the mound where I’d been found. Workers continued to excavate.
I was about to sigh with relief when icy fingers strummed along my neck. There was no ghostly whisper, nor was one required. A shout of surprise rose from those sifting through the ruins where I’d been found, and a dark-cloaked figure climbed into view.
Nellie was stooped, bowed, slack-jawed. Dark hollows half-mooned under her eyes, and one of her bony gloves had been lost, her hand scraped raw and bloody to the bone. Slowly, she straightened her spin, removed her cloak, flipped it about. The lining had been bright red, reversible. No wonder she’d been able to be Humbug so easily one moment, then lost in a crowd, just another onlooker, the next.
“Miss Owen told me, but I didn’t fully credit it until just now,” Crabapple admitted. He raised his pistol and aimed it at Nellie’s heart. “Bloody hell, what does it take to kill you?”
Shaking, moving unsteadily, she made her way towards the cliff’s edge, turning her back on Crabapple’s orders and threats. We gathered about, along with the local workers, forming a crowd as Nellie suddenly whirled and bowed, her hands describing exaggerated, theatrical flourishes, her face now mined by the blue-black ragged whip scar, cracking into a satisfied smile.
“Oh, my dears! My precious, devoted followers, my cherished audience, come to witness our last performance of the season,” she called, her voice loud and clear to soar above the waves crashing below. “I promise you surprise and delight, intrigue and madness, and most of all, I pledge to curl your toes and quicken your pulses with my tale of murder. And sex, of course. Lust and betrayal and the foul stench of death, a heady brew, my beloved fans, that is what I have blended for your rarified tastes. A warning though, my darling dears, if you’ve come for the sweetness of love, then I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere. That is a nectar I have never tasted and its sweetness will not be found in this play. . . .”
“She’s mad,” Dickens ventured. Then he caught himself, considering the woman had been off her head for some time now. “All right, madder.”
“Why doesn’t someone grab her?” I asked.
Adelaide shook her head. “She’s too close to the edge, she’d fall right over. It’s thirty yards to the rocks, at least.”
“I was once but a girl working for a generous old man. Not a letch. Though his skin was withered and his ivory hair falling out in clumps, he sought not to regain lost youth by lusting after pretty young things like me. He had eyes only for his beloved Jane, who had weathered just as many winters as he. An orphan myself, I felt as if I had finally found a loving home.”
“She’s talking about Fezziwig,” I whispered. Crabapple nodded.
“And when I confided in him my dreams of one day becoming an actress, he simply said ‘no time like the present’ and whisked me off to the Adelphi where he introduced me to its owner, Anton Villiers, a man who would change my life. I gave myself to Villiers in every conceivable way, and he pulled strings for me, helped me get auditions. Before long, I was Nellie Pearl, the ingénue and talk of the town. And he was what he was . . . what he’d always been, but I’d been too besotted with the possibilities of everything my life might be to see him clearly: A gambler. A drunk. A ‘pimp’ as they call it, who’d never expected me to succeed. When I did, he bided his time to let my fame grow, all in the cause of his own ambition. . . .”
She hesitated, began to sway, dance awkwardly, horribly, on the cliffside. She nearly lost her footing, once, twice, but caught herself and did not fall. Striding from one end of the cliff to the other, she continued her soliloquy. “Finally, when he was desperately in debt, in danger of having his neck wrung by the vile sorts in the Quarter, he came to me with his demands. I would be his whore after all, servicing the richest men in London. All very discreet, of course. Hush-hush, don’t you know. After all, I owed him. When I refused, he a
ttacked me. I’d never harmed a living being in my life, but when he attempted to force me to my bed, my hand gripped a glass, shattered it, and ground it into his face. He fled, covering one eye, bleeding, cursing, promising revenge. I waited night after night for his return until finally my dear Crisparkle dragged my sad tale from me as I wept in his arms. He promised I would never see Villiers again. That he would ‘see’ to the man. I believed him. And for many years, it proved true. Ah, for many years . . .”
Nellie tottered on the edge, one boot sliding, then regained her footing. I looked to Adelaide, who stared at the madwoman with the coldest and most piercing gaze I’d ever seen. Then Nellie went on.
“But months ago,” Nellie said, “I knew the truth of it. ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary’ they sang of me, before my punishment was issued. Punishment for what? I don’t know. Being a woman, I suspect.” And she recounted the horror of waking to strange men on every side of her bed, of being dragged, beaten, drugged, and taken in the night to this place, where we had seen but a fraction of what was done to her. Villiers had engineered all of it. Her precious costumer, Crisparkle, had paid the man with his life’s savings to leave London and allowed Nellie to believe Villiers was dead.
“So that’s why you killed the costumer?” I asked. “After he made that hideous costume for you?”
Nellie laughed. “Oh! Questions from the audience. Yes, yes, please! And yes, that is exactly so.”
“And I’d wager you took care of Villiers as well,” Crabapple added.
With a sigh, Nellie said, “Yes, well, and that’s where the twist comes into the tale. I had no idea when I cut him to bits that anyone else was with us in the villa. Then I found his whore, alight in an opium haze. I could not take the risk that she might have seen, might remember, so I cut her, too. It’s surprising how easy it is, once you’ve done the first one. I gathered up Villier’s correspondence, anything that might help fill in the gaps of his story. Oh, yes, I see, I left that bit out. I went there this time with Crisparkle, and he helped me grind the truth of things from Villiers. He had left London and in France fallen in with a trafficker of the exotic who called herself The Lady. The Lady had the little photographer in her employ and had already begun her great and ambitious enterprise, supplying ladies from every port of call for Smithson and the Colleys. In fact, they had forged a three-way partnership, with Smithson remaining in control of vice in the Quarter, the Colleys lording over the docks, and The Lady supplying her particular goods and services. They even had a name for it.”
“Chimera,” I said.
“Well!” Nellie clapped her hands together. “Very good, my darling dear, quite wonderful you are. The Lady was Greek and had grown up with all those ancient legends of three-headed beasts. The Colleys added to the Greek mythology with their despicable use of our own English children’s rhyme.”
I took a step towards Nellie, who drew back, nearly falling. I stood rock still. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary . . .” I sang. Nellie winced.
“Pretty maids all in a row,” she continued, her voice choked. “They used it as a code to alert the other factions of the trinity to any new shipment of women. Telegrams and message boys delivered the rhyme, the men themselves sang it while they . . .” She stopped suddenly as the memories darkened her face. “Even waking moments were shrouded in shadows. I grew so sick of shadows.”
“Killing Villiers wasn’t enough,” I said, giving the poor killer some solace from her haunting memories. “The Lady had those photos and wanted more.”
“Tut-tut,” Nellie said, raising a finger to object. “Smithson, by way of his lackey Lazytree and that fool Rutledge. Villiers had been The Lady’s lover, he was quite astounding in that regard, even I must admit, and through her, he had known of Sunderland’s double life. But you see, what kicked off all the ruckus was that the whore I had slain along with Villiers actually was The Lady! He had plenty of her photographs, examples of her writing, and so on. So, because I’d removed both those foul beasts from the face of our Earth, she vanished just after the latest delivery had been made to that warehouse where the girls were stored. Oh, what a mess I caused, quite outside my intention! You see, I finished her before she could tell the Colleys where to take ownership of their delivery! Whoops!”
Adelaide was nearly out of breath with worry as she asked, “Then my Tom, he knew none of this terrible business?”
“Just a pawn. He knew something illegal was being delivered to those warehouses, and he was handsomely compensated for his services, but the details, no, I don’t think so. Thinking back on it, though, I can’t help but surmise that he had planned to bring about old Fezziwig’s ruin. I think he was going to, ah, ‘tip the coppers’ to the idea that something illegal was in Fezziwig’s remote warehouses, then be on hand to pick up the pieces somehow when the old man was dragged through the courts.”
“The land deal,” Adelaide said, lost and saddened. Her hand brushed mine—and I took it.
“So that was what did it for poor Fezziwig, then,” Dickens said, rubbing his journalist’s brow. “You assumed the worst when you received Fezziwig’s invitation mentioning The Lady, that he was a party to what had been done to you.”
Nellie scampered about, tempting death. “When I received it, I thought back to the day he introduced me to Villiers—”
“And you decided that Fezziwig might have known the kind of man Villiers really was,” I said. “He clearly knew something of all this. And that’s why you killed him. You sent him an anonymous letter promising a repayment for an earlier good deed, and when he met you, you delivered.”
“Clever duck,” Nellie said, “so clever.”
“But he just wanted to warn you. To warn all of you, people he had helped in the past. I’d wager that there was even something he had done for Sunderland before, though that fat, lying bag of filth went to his death denying it. You thought Fezziwig the liar, the Humbug, but you were wrong.”
She laughed. “I took that word from some of his correspondence to you!”
Yes, Fezziwig’s offices had been ransacked. She’d gone through his papers trying to understand what he knew and how he’d found it out.
“You didn’t have the heart to do to him what you did to Villiers and The Lady,” Crabapple said. “You still had feelings for the old gent. It’s why you put him out, slit his throat while he slept, and then went about your business.”
She nodded, unashamed at the retelling of her barbaric acts. “As for your involvement, Mr. Scrooge, I found your card and tried to, ah, frame you, as they call it. If you had not meddled, had not continued to poke and prod at things that did not concern you, I might have let you go . . . or I might not. After all, you were clearly close to the old man. What might he have told you? No, in truth, I’d have come for you eventually. So I slipped you a letter, like I did for that dreadful Shen, just to aid you along a little. You see, sometimes the supporting characters need a little prompt, just to keep the play going smoothly. I almost had you. The final victim of the Humbug Killer. I wanted to be sure this was done. I wanted my life back. . . .” She touched her scarred face. “Just a dream, I see that now.”
“Enough of this,” Crabapple said, stalking towards her. “You’re coming with me.”
“I have a prior engagement. . . .” Nellie perched one teetering foot over the void.
“No!” shouted Adelaide. Wrenching her hand from mine, Adelaide ran at Nellie, approaching at a sharp angle. Even the actress gave a sharp, startled cry as Adelaide flung herself at the woman, pounding into her, and together they fell from our view.
I ran ahead, heart in my throat, waiting to hear their screams or the horrible impact of their bodies being smashed below. But instead, there was only a low, soft weeping.
I peered over the edge and saw Adelaide with one arm around Nellie, the other holding onto a solid perch on the sole outcropping just past the cliff’s edge. I grabbed her arm, pulled her up, and Crabapple took custody of the crying, broken young Nelli
e Pearl. Humbug no longer.
“Stop crying,” Adelaide snarled. “You’re not getting off that easy.”
“Let me die, let me die . . . ,” Nellie pleaded.
“Soon enough,” Crabapple said. “After your trial!”
The carriages pulled away. As the snow settled in their wake, I spied an old man watching me from behind the skeletal branches of a frosty willow tree. Though he was some ways off, I could not mistake him for another. It was Fezziwig, his hands in his pockets, a warm smile spread across his elderly face. As our eyes met, a soft breeze picked up, breathing relief and calm into my broken body. Now that the episode had passed and the mystery had been laid to rest, my old friend’s spirit that had haunted my conscience expelled its last breath down my spine and dissolved into the swirling snowflakes. Like morning mist, I felt the tension leave me, and at that moment, it became clear to me that no spectral visitation had taken place that morning six days ago. No more than a blot of mustard, an undigested bit of beef at the most curiously placed moment. Although the week had been short, it had been the longest week of my life. I welcomed normality with open arms.
The gentle movement of the carriage started to lull both myself and Adelaide into a desperately needed slumber. We sat close together in the small carriage, huddling together partly for warmth and partly . . .
But just as I was about drift off, I heard a gentle voice calling to me.
“Ebenezer,” Adelaide whispered in my ear.
“Yes, Adelaide.”
“I need you to understand that this must never happen again.”
“What are you talking about? What must never happen again?”
Soft hands cupped my face and Adelaide’s rose lips met mine. Leaning into the kiss, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her closer. Her lips were so warm, despite the cold, and their warmth spread to my heart in a way not even Belle had induced.
Then, just as quickly, she pulled herself away.
