by Anna Lord
The
Penny Dreadful
Curse
ANNA LORD
Book Three
Watson & The Countess
Series
Copyright © 2015 by Anna Lord
Melbourne, Australia
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
1
Ye Olde Bookshoppe
Mr Corbie extinguished the gasolier and sat in the quiet dark among the dusty shelves. He closed his eyes and took in the smell of old leather and ancient oak. For forty years he had loved that smell more than anything. But lately a new smell had started to creep into the shop - the smell of mould, rising damp and woodworm. Death, decay and rot. He opened his eyes once more and gazed despairingly at the day’s takings – fifteen pence. Not even enough to pay the fishmonger. Magwitch was nothing but fur and bones, curled up most of the time in his favourite spot on the windowsill where the last dregs of crepuscular light filtered in and solaced him. Mr Corbie had named each of his cats after a fictional character. There had been Scheherazade the fluffy Persian, Mephistopheles the sleek black with sharp claws and Count Vronsky the randy tomcat. All were now buried in the back yard amongst the dust bins.
Wearily, he swept the fifteen pennies and a swathe of dust into the top drawer of his desk and stared glumly out of the window. It was a lovely bow window, uncommonly large with diamond panes of leaded glass that once sparkled like jewels. He had always been proud of that window. His eyes drifted upward to the sign creaking in the current of air that always blew down the Shambles at this time of the evening: Ye Olde Bookshoppe: Antiquarian books and literary works. Beautiful gold lettering. Elizabethan font. It had cost a pretty penny. Paid for in the days when people still purchased books of quality.
Unable to bring himself to turn and look at the shelving looming behind him, he slumped forlornly onto bony elbows, closed his eyes and tried not to picture the rows and rows of worthless penny dreadfuls. Execrable rubbish made of cheap paper that smelled like pulped vegetables stewed in bilgewater. Mawkish prose. Horrid titles. Hideous pen and ink drawings dashed off in a frenzy of demented scribbling by some talentless madman. Ridiculous authors – Ryder Saxon, Dick Lancelot, Conan le Coq! They were noms de plume, surely? No one in their right mind would own up to writing such drivel!
Lady Rutherwood had sent her personal maid to buy fifteen dreadfuls today. He could remember the days when Lady Rutherwood would come in personally and purchase a first edition of Wuthering Heights and Sense and Sensibility and Les Miserables, and they would tête a tête over their favourite Bronte and share quotes worth remembering. And Lord Rutherwood would order Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Plato’s Republic and a first edition of Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. Last Tuesday he had sent his valet to buy ten dreadfuls.
Now it was Varney the Vampire and Jack Black the Highwayman and Ghosthunter! That last came with an exclamation mark! Ridiculous! They were not even worth the cheap paper they were printed on! Ten pence was the entire taking for last week. How was a bookseller supposed to survive on that?
His head fell into his hands as the tears welled up. They blurred the gaslight burning in the front parlour of the opposite establishment: Ye Olde Mousehole Inne. He laughed mirthlessly, a ghost of a laugh, the sort that featured with monotonous regularity in Ghosthunter!
Poor Mr Hiboux, owner of the Mousehole, should have extinguished his gasolier to save his pennies, as he had done. No one would be checking into the old inn this late in the day. It never attracted the better class of tourists who sauntered down the cobbled lane gawping slack-jawed at the higgledy-piggledy medieval dwellings that had survived from Queen Bess to Queen Victoria. In fact, it rarely attracted any tourists at all. The Mousehole was almost beyond repair and the three overhanging floors, each one hanging more than the one below, looked like they were about to topple over onto the heads of hapless passers-by any moment. Besides, if any potential guest did get past the crooked front door, then the gloomy parlour with its dark linen-fold panelling and rickety old stairs would have been enough to send them scurrying elsewhere.
The wind picked up and the sign above the bow window creaked like an organ-grinder’s music box as it swung to and fro on rusty hinges. Once upon a time the bookshop had been called The Bibliophile but the Quakers and zealots who resided hereabouts mistook if for a bible shop. Do you have The New King James Bible or the latest Book of Psalms with illuminated capitals? The name was changed to Le Libraire de Jorvik. But the philistines and cretins mistook it for a library. Oh, I didn’t realize I would have to pay for taking out a book! So, he had borrowed a page from Mr Hiboux’ tome on survival in the age of post-enlightenment and changed the name to Ye Olde Bookshoppe. And how he detested the ungrammatical spelling that was a throwback to a darker Age! But pragmatism reigned. He told himself it was a nod and a wink to living in a place of medieval origin and bowed to the necessity of changing with the times even if it meant going backwards.
The Shambles was originally called Fleshammels, meaning flesh-shelves, where butchers displayed their wares. The stench must have been raw in summer and thick with flies. The word shambles once meant slaughterhouse, but today most people took it to mean a mess. He could remember the days when there were twenty-five butcher’s shops with huge carcasses hanging from meat-hooks outside each of the shops. Massive, they were, pinkish and marbled with fat; not at all gruesome but rather lovely. As a lad, he had touched one once out of curiosity. He expected it to feel wet and slimy but it felt cold and dry and lifeless. Another disappointment. There were only three butchers left now. Mr Chevaline sold horsemeat which was popular because it was more marrowy than beef and made a better stew. Mr Fielding still made his own pork sausages stuffed with all the pig’s slithery bits and some secret ingredient which everyone said was sawdust. Mrs Lozere sold cervelle, tripoux, and poutelle – calf’s brains, sheep’s belly and pig’s trotters. Foodstuffs always sounded better in French. It was a throwback to the Norman invasion. Amongst the timber-framed shops was tucked a little shrine to Saint Margaret Clitheroe who had been married to a butcher and was horribly tortured for being a Catholic at a time when such things were dangerous. No one stopped to pay their respects anymore except Miss Titmarsh. She left a bunch of flowers every Saint’s day.
Large iron meat-hooks still hung outside most of the shops, even though they no longer displayed pinkish carcasses. Another thing they no longer did was throw gizzards and innards into the wide gutter that ran down the centre of the street. It was actually called a runnel, a brilliant word that explained itself rather well. They no longer poured animal blood down the runnel either. His grandmother slipped on some pig’s blood once and ruined her Sunday best. That really was a shambles. There was a meat-hook outside his bookshop, one outside the Mousehole Inne, and another outside the door of Ye Olde Minster Teashoppe owned by Miss Titmarsh, though she had a jolly basket of flowers hanging from her hook which overflowed with violets and pansies and hyacinths, depending on the season.
Miss Titmarsh closed her door at precisely four o’clock, cleaned the downstairs shop and went upstairs where a paraffin lamp burned long into the night. He sometimes wondered what the spinster did during those long lonely hours. He pictured her embroidering tablecloths and napkins and crocheting doilies for her sh
op. She kept it spotless, though it was a bit tired looking with smoke-stained etchings of York Minster that she had picked up cheaply at a church jumble sale once. Hence, the unimaginative misguided name because it was nowhere near the Minster. The teashop opened its door at precisely a quarter to eleven in the morning in time for elevenses, served a light lunch and was popular for afternoon tea. Miss Titmarsh rose early and baked all the scones and cakes and biscuits herself, and the dainty fish paste sandwiches were always fresh. Occasionally she brought some leftovers over to him. He rather hoped she might do the same this evening. But the lamp had been lit upstairs more than an hour ago, indicating she had settled for the night by the little coal fire in her bedroom and her nimble fingers would be toiling industriously.
Five narrow lanes dissected the Shambles. They were called Snickelways. Now, there was another good word. They didn’t make words like that anymore. He never used a Snickelway after dark. Speak of the devil! Someone came from out of a Snickelway and began walking briskly down the runnel, negotiating the uneven cobbles with balletic poise. Oh - more angel than devil! He recognised the lithe, light step of Miss Carterett, the school mistress from the old Quaker school in Northbrick Lane. The Quakers no longer ran the school but the name had stuck long after they sailed on the Mayflower to more salubrious climes. Lately he had begun wishing he had sailed with them. On Monday and Wednesday evenings Miss Carterett went to the Minerva Home for Fallen Women and taught the girls to read, donating her schoolmarm services gratis to those who had managed to get themselves pregnant. Most of them were nothing more than prostitutes, some as young as twelve. Some things never changed. He used to donate damaged books to the Minerva but he could no longer afford to do so. He re-glued them and re-stitched them kept them on the shelves.
The Minerva was the brainchild of York’s most celebrated author, Mr Charles Dicksen, a philanthropist who could afford to buy all the books he wanted for his pet project. He could even afford to pay Miss Carterett for her time if he chose to do so. Mr Dicksen used to come into the shop at regular intervals to browse the shelves and buy a French novel or two by Maupassant or Voltaire or Balzac, but he hadn’t been in for years - too busy now with readings and tours and fame and such. The bookshop featured all of his books in a prominent place on the shelves at eye level and Mr Corbie had read them all more than once. Bleak Hall was his favourite, but he also liked Great Infatuations and The Mystery of Edward Drudge, though the ending of that one always left him befuddled, as if it had been left deliberately unfinished. Everyone said it was very clever. Mr Dicksen was often described as a man of genius. He decided it must be wonderful in some mystifying way and reread it.
Miss Carterett gave a discrete wave as she hurried past and he mustered a smile and managed a wobbly nod of his head that probably made him look like a drunken puppet in a Punch and Judy show. She was an attractive young woman with a clear complexion, pale green eyes, nose in proportion to her face and a generous sweep of shiny auburn hair that she kept neatly coiffed; not yet twenty-three years of age. She would need to find a suitable suitor soon or risk being left on the shelf like poor Miss Titmarsh who was nearer forty and had no hope of matrimony, as plump and round as one of her scones, and just as plain without the sweetness of jam and cream, a simple creature with dull brown hair that was always secured in a snood, a hair accessory that went out centuries ago, though it probably suited ye olde image and kept her crinkly tresses out of her baking. It wouldn’t do to find a stray crinkly in one’s scone or teacup.
Oh, this was interesting and a little unprecedented for a nippy autumn evening in November when all the tourists had scuttled back to their warm lodgings ahead of the pickpockets and prostitutes loitering in the Snickelways.
Four people by the looks of things - almost a crowd! A man and a woman followed by two servants, carting portmanteaux and hatboxes. The man was stocky and unprepossessing. He had a ramrod back and a soldierly gait indicating he had seen military service. One shoulder drooped more than the other and he carried one arm stiffly as if that shoulder or arm had suffered an injury and had lost its natural swing, most likely in India or Afghanistan, the main theatres of war for The Empire before they decided to give the Zulus a thumping. He was wearing a tweed suit under a woollen coat that he left unbuttoned, and carrying a walking cane. The crooked lane twisted round and they began walking directly towards the bow window now and he could see that the woman was in fact a lady dressed in a chic travelling costume that nipped her waist and flared out at the hem, swishing as she put one foot in front of the other, more balletic than even Miss Carterett. She had a leopard skin Paletot draped over her shoulders and carried an umbrella rather jauntily. The servants looked like Bolshevik provocateurs. Surely not in the Shambles!
Well, here was a turnaround! They paused outside the door to the Mousehole and gazed dubiously at the dilapidated Tudor dwelling before going inside. But what would they make of the poky parlour and the gloomy panelling and how soon before they would beat a hasty retreat for something more commodious? Mr Corbie waited and waited, then he waited some more, but the couple did not emerge. Gaslights went on upstairs in the bedrooms on the first and second floors and two candles flickered in the attic, most likely for the Bolsheviks. The man and woman must have been brother and sister, not a married couple, that would explain why they had not walked bras d’ssus-bras d’ssous, but were still able to keep up an easy natural pace with each other, and why they took separate bedrooms on separate floors.
What was this! An army of lackeys marching forth, carting trunks and portmanteaux and more hat boxes by the score! All the lads who loitered in the Snickelways had been commandeered to the task by the looks of things. That was a bit risky! Perhaps the mysterious couple was opening up a fashionable dress shop at the end of the lane where the spinster seamstress, Miss Linnet, had died of brain fever last summer when she washed her Rapunzel mane and sat by an open window, not thinking about the chill that comes from living in a wind-tunnel. The shop had been vacant for months. He had paid her a visit once and taken her a little book of Shakespeare’s sonnets that had been irreparably water-damaged when a roof tile cracked during a storm and rain flooded in behind one of the shelves. That’s how he knew about Paletots and what was considered chic and stylish among the ladies of the beau monde.
Mr Hiboux would be required to put on supper for his paying guests. His family was descended from Huguenot weavers and he knew how to concoct a decent pot à feu. What the man could do with a chicken, an onion, a handful of wild herbs and a splash of cheap red wine was extraordinary. Mr Corbie’s mouth watered at the thought of a steaming hot chicken in a pot and his stomach played a discordant, depressing, all too familiar tune. Magwitch stirred and stretched and arched his back and looked at him with hopeful eyes but it would be potluck fishbone stew for him and a morceau of bread and dripping followed by a cup of black tea for the master of the house. Beggars could not be choosers.
Magwitch and Mr Corbie ate their meagre repasts, chewing slowly, and went back to the same spots they had occupied beforehand; Magwitch in the bow window and Mr Corbie at his dusty desk. Magwitch was a scruffy old stray who had been through the wars and had the battle scars to prove it; chunks taken out of both ears in the fight for tomcat territory. He was too old to fight now and had retired to the window, safe behind the diamond glass.
Mr Corbie lit a stumpy candle, used his grimy sleeve to wipe the smudges off his pince-nez, making the lenses even greasier, and studied his ledger of incomings and outgoings. There was infinitely more of the latter. The bills were piling up and his creditors would soon lose sympathy. Weary with worry, he blew out the candle and let his head fall into his hands as he slumped forward with his forehead on the mountain of bills and eventually dozed off, lulled to sleep by a symphony of soporific purrs. It was the tinkle of the bell above the door that woke him. It jangled whenever anyone walked in or out. He had forgotten to lock up. In the doorway stood Patch, the local chimneysweep, a boy of ab
out fifteen, but small for his age and narrow shouldered, probably malnourished during his early years in that grim orphanage that abutted the lunatic asylum. The growth spurt that most boys have at that age had never caught up to Patch. Nevertheless his days as a chimneysweep would soon be numbered. Small as he was, he was getting too big for the neck of most chimneys.
“Good evening to you, Mr Corbie,” he said respectfully, doffing his cloth cap.
He was a polite boy with good manners and came in once a month, regular as clockwork, to buy ten dreadfuls. He was probably teaching himself to read. For the lower classes who toiled in manufactories and in the fields, the paperbacks were a godsend; but what annoyed Mr Corbie was that the upper classes preferred them too. The educated world as he knew it was going backwards in more ways than one.
“Hello Patch, how are you doing this fine evening?”
“I’m good, Mr Corbie, er, I mean I’m well, thank you for asking. Did you see the gent and the young lady that went into the Mousehole earlier? Cor! She was a looker, weren’t she? All the lads whistled when she stepped out the fancy carriage at the end of the lane. I reckon they will come in here and buy some of your books, Mr Corbie.”
Yes! That was a good observation. Perhaps they would. He’d wager they never read dreadfuls. The man would read Rousseau or Carlyle and the lady would prefer Jane Austin to the Bronte sisters.
Mr Corbie re-lit the stump of wax, stood up and dusted some bread crumbs from his threadbare sleeve and gave a tug to his fraying cuff. “Some penny dreadfuls for you as usual, Patch?”
“Have you got some new ones?” the boy said eagerly.
“A new batch arrived the day before yesterday. They’re still wrapped in brown paper. I haven’t even cut the string.”
