The Humbug Murders CHAPTER ONE


Monday, December 19th, 1833

Cheapside, London

Six Days to Christmas

FEZZIWIG WAS DEAD to begin with. Had I known that, had I been among those first few to discover his bloodied corpse and seen the brutal, rage-fueled manner in which he’d been murdered, I would have been far more alarmed when he walked through the door to my office only a few hours after his demise. Instead, my focus was on the annoying drone of Christmas carolers battling the howling winds of winter, which was mercifully silenced as he shut the door. Brushing newly-fallen snow from his shoulders and hat, he caught sight of what I was doing and slinked into the shadows by my bookshelf as I addressed my would-be client.

It was early in the morning, the meager light of the sun not yet fully penetrating the foul London smog. Yet only a single small lump of coal added its glow to my office. Darkness is cheap, and I liked it.

“Mr. Greville, sir, the time is now. I need not remind you of the pressing nature of this investment: the project governors leave for York by the morning.” I indicated the leather chair once more, but Mr. Greville remained standing. “And as you know, I have little patience for anything other than profit.”

He grunted an unintelligible reply as he flicked through the papers of our agreement, squinting to see the inked words through the hazy light of dawn.

“Very well, I’ll give you a moment to see that all is in order.” While Mr. Greville continued thumbing through the documents, I strode to Fezziwig, eased beside my former mentor.

“Let me look at you, boy,” Fezziwig said, in a voice dustier than I remembered. He straightened my lapels. “Smartly dressed, of course. Brass buttons, freshly polished. Good. A suitably handsome jawline and a full head of healthy, dark hair add to the necessary scintilla of authority. Subtle wrinkles in the crook of your eyes and high upon your forehead. No matter. They counter your youth with an air of gravitas and experience. Merry Christmas, Ebenezer!” His eyes darted round my office, from my client to me and to the dark corners. “Now then, where’s the girl?”

What an odd thing to say. Fezziwig knew that there had been no one in my life since Belle broke our engagement five years earlier. True, I had made some half-hearted attempts at engaging in conversation with mindless young women at society parties. But since Belle had told me, with ice in her voice as glacial as her eyes, that my love for profit had smothered my love for her, my heart had withered. I slipped my hand in my pocket, where I kept a secret: a little locket, smooth and shiny. Safely hidden inside was a tiny cameo portrait of my Belle, with her perfect ringlets and starched lace collar. Between finger and thumb I stroked the metal. It gave me comfort. Perhaps Fezziwig thought one of his granddaughters was meeting him here.

“Merry Christmas indeed,” I replied with a cheerful smirk. “You’ll be happy to know I’ve come around to your way of thinking on the season.”

The old man’s eyes brightened. “Really? You no longer consider Christmas a humbug?”

“Absolutely not! ’Tis the season in which I may charge ninety percent interest on loans, and these poor fools are so desperate to put on a spread, they’ll gladly pay it. God bless us, everyone.”

Sighing, Fezziwig nodded to my pale and trembling client. “Ebenezer, you have the same look as Ralph, my tabby, when he comes upon a rat sitting on an as yet unsprung trap.”

I raised an eyebrow. “This man has cost me time, energy, and hard-earned cash. There will be an accounting.”

Returning to my desk, I faced Greville and waited for him to speak. My unswerving gaze unsettled him; he made a strained effort to avoid eye contact.

Still, with a shaky voice, he mustered up enough courage to spit out, “I shall be candid.”

“Of course.”

“I am not sure about you, Ebenezer Scrooge.”

I sat down behind my desk. I’ve found it is almost impossible not to trust a man willing to sit down before his aggressor. “That remains entirely your prerogative.”

He was leaning on his cane, which, as had been pointed out by my paid investigator, was a few inches too short. He stood at an acute angle as he pounded a fist on my desk.

“These conditions! Steep, no? I am a grief-stricken man, Scrooge. You are aware that my mother died recently? I have no desire to see her inheritance defrauded through your exorbitant interest rates. I came to you in good faith, despite the fact that your practice has been operating a mere six months, because I was assured of your reputation as a cutthroat businessman. But I didn’t expect mine to be the throat that suffers!”

He was willing me to falter, challenging me to succumb with his narrowed eyes and puffed-out chest. I looked to old man Fezziwig. There was an urgency in Fezziwig’s eyes and stance that suggested the old man was here on pressing business.

I peered up at Mr. Greville and opened my hands solicitously. “I will be investing in rail with or without your stake; such is my confidence in the project. Naturally, the inclusion of your funds will render the return significantly more bountiful for both of us. So, considering my callous terms, as you put it, ask yourself this: would you rather own forty percent of the greatest endeavor of our century, or a hundred percent of nothing? No, don’t concern yourself with the mathematics, I can see it is overwhelming you. The time is now, sir.”

Mr. Greville pulled his pocket watch out of his jacket’s breast. He stared at it for a minute, then started rubbing the smooth side against his other hand as he hummed a song better suited to a church choir. Then he froze as he caught me looking at him. His face darkened.

“Look, Scrooge. You were the one who advertised for an investment partner, not me. I don’t need to sign any terms I’m not happy with.”

“Indeed you do not, Mr. Greville.”

Though he stood as calm and solid as St. Paul’s, I could see his fingers twitching. I let the potent silence hang between us like a gaping crevice demanding to be filled. Mr. Greville’s fidgeting intensified, spreading to his feet with little spasms of energy.

Then it finally happened. He lunged for the pen. I smiled. The trap had at last been sprung.

“Ah, not so fast, Mr. Greville.”

My would-be client froze, jaw opening and closing like a gasping fish, one hand clutching a too-short cane and the other my fine pen. His eyes met mine and widened. The faintest shimmer of sweat on his forehead reflected the flames in my fireplace.

“Did you write to me in response to my advertisement for an investment partner? Claiming to be able to pledge the funds against the security of these?” I waved at the papers on my desk. “Certificates of your late mother’s estate?”

“Don’t be so damned impertinent, Scrooge! Why else would we be here?”

“I see. That’s a terrible shame.” I pushed the papers away and folded my arms.

“What in the devil—”

“There is a young reporter chap I met recently. We’ll call him Charles. He’s damn near as greedy and grasping, as hard as flint as me. I had him follow you. Investigate you. According to him, you didn’t write to me at all, did you? I am told that Mr. Greville is left-handed. But see here, all these unsightly ink smudges on your right cuff.” He gulped and glanced at my ivory pen, firmly clasped in his right fist. I stood up and walked to the coat rail, where I pulled his heavy wax coat from its hook. It still dripped horrible grey sludge onto my expensive carpet; sludge that had been pure white snow before it was trodden down by the boots of thousands of Londoners racing about in frantic anticipation of Christmas though the day was still a week away.

He took the coat without expression.

“You dragged snow and slush into my office. That is not very gentlemanly. And that is not your cane. It is too short. My investigator also caught you cavorting with some unseemly types of both sexes. Gambling, whoring, drinking, the holy trinity of vices, yes? And a trip or two to the opium dens for good measure. Surprising for a man of Greville’s reputation and a short leap to unmasking you as an imposter.” I snorted. “That you were not even aware that the true deadline for the rail deal is Friday, four days from now, shows you’re lazy, too. Can’t be bothered to do your research. Well, I do not know who you are or where the real Mr. Greville is, but judging from the dark stain that looks very much like dried blood on your trouser leg, I judge that he is not in a fine condition.”

The imposter just stood there, his face ablaze despite the chill. The warbling of carolers in the distance did nothing to soothe his fury.

Without taking my eyes from him, I snatched a lump of coal from the brass shuttle by the fireplace and tossed it on the flames. I loathed the expenditure, but it was necessary to place my hand within inches of the poker without attracting his notice.

“My reporter friend has been paid for his silence. It is my duty as a citizen of London to inform the police of my suspicion of fraud, and who knows what else. Though, honestly, you strike me as a lazy and cowardly man, I don’t see you as the type to commit murder. So I would return to wherever you have Mr. Greville bound and gagged and free him this instant. Then perhaps catching a ship to the colonies might be prudent. As you’ve probably heard, I don’t appreciate being crossed and I forget nothing. In fact, I would say that if I do not receive a visit from the true Mr. Greville by lunchtime that I will happily set the wretched hounds of the legal system upon you.”

The imposter stood before me, boiling in his own pudding, so to speak.

“But there is yet a way I might recoup the time and expenses you’ve cost me. When you speak to Greville, tell him the name of his savior and advise him to bring his checkbook when he pays me a visit to thank me for his liberty and even his life. After all, I do have a business to run. Good day, sir!”

The imposter’s arms were pulled slightly out to the side, he had lifted his chin and his eyes were darting from me to the door and back again. I could tell he was calculating whether or not to attack me. I felt my hand close around the poker, and my nostrils flared despite my efforts to control them.

“You’re a devil, sir,” he told me. “You’ll pay for your sins.”

“No. Today I mean to collect.”

Then, eyes glazed, he nodded once, turned, and bolted towards the door at the same moment it opened from the outside, a woman’s gloved hand clutching the knob. With a tinkling crash, he thudded into the door and nearly collided with a snow-covered female visitor. She stepped back and held the door as the angry gentleman vanished out into the cold London morning.

“Mr. Jasper!” she called out. “Are you quite well?” With a sigh, she entered and hung her umbrella on the hat stand. She stomped the snow off her tightly-wound black boots and straightened her coat. The straight edge of a plain but craftily hand-sewn burgundy dress poking out under her coat betrayed a simple background, yet a high regard for quality. She was a true English rose, the hair tucked under her snowy and simple hat a rich and dark chocolate, her skin so velveteen it was like poured cream. Unwinding her crocheted scarf, she smiled and sent me a quick glance with her sparkling emerald eyes. Then, with delicate hands encased in smart but inexpensive gloves, she discretely applied a pomade to her pink peony lips and checked her timepiece with a snap.

“Young lady,” I said, intent on drawing her attention so that I might dismiss both her and Fezziwig and get on with more pressing matters.

But now she was digging into a satchel, rummaging about for papers, from the sound of it. “One moment, sir,” she said with a polite exuberance.

“Whatever charity it is you represent, I can assure you I want none of it,” I told her. “Be on your way, you’re wasting your time—”

“One moment,” she said again, her smile cheery and beguiling as she continued rustling about through her papers. “Almost ready . . .”

I breathed out and turned to my friend. “Pardon me for extending our conversation to a later date, Fezziwig, I must make ready in the event that the actual Greville pays me a visit wishing to reward his true savior—me.”

Fezziwig’s brow crinkled. “And for that possibility of profit you let a criminal loose?”

“Call it a calculated investment.”

“I call it cause for immense regret, as should you,” Fezziwig groused as he retreated back into the shadows, his eyes narrowed and glued to the woman who had swept in from the cold. Was that recognition in his eyes? I heard the rustle of his fingers twitching nervously against his pocket. My friend was eager to speak with me—but as he had taught me, business always comes first.

“Have I the honor of addressing Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge, sir?” asked the young lady, one hand outstretched to shake mine and the other clutching a packet of neatly tied papers. Delicate yet strong handwriting marched across the sheets.

“I am, and—hold on now. Do you know that gentleman who just left my offices?” I asked.

“I believe so, yes,” she said. “Did he not give you his name?”

“Jasper, you called him?”

“He bore the look and untoward demeanor of a choirmaster I have seen here and there, a certain John Jasper, but I could be wrong. He did not turn when I called after him.”

“I see, I see. Well, what is it you want? I’ve already told you, if it is a charity—”

“I have come to speak with you in regards to your advertisement. My name is Adelaide Owen.” Her voice was soft yet her tone determined, and surprisingly, it sent a tingle of pleasure up my neck.

“Advertisement?” I frowned. I couldn’t recall advertising for the services of any woman. Her hand was still stretched towards mine, so I shook it. “Are you certain you have the right address?”

“In your window, sir, you advertise the need of a clerk.”

I stared at Miss Owen, and then at my window. True enough, the paper hanging there against the frosted pane announced an immediate opening for a junior clerk, against a payment, which I thought far more generous than ideal, of one hundred pence a week. In truth, it had been so long since I had seen a single applicant I had forgotten it still hung there. I have a bit of a reputation among clerks, it seems . . .

“Here are my papers.” She withdrew her hand and laid a series of crisp white sheets out on my desk, jabbing at one of them with her gloved finger. “As you can see here, I have excellent references, particularly concerning my outstanding eye for detail, a skill which I am sure you value most highly in any clerk within your employ.”

I stared at her in confusion. “You mean to say you know someone who might be appropriate for the job?”

“Of course!” she said with a smile that seemed to illuminate my office all the way to the dark corner where Fezziwig waited. “Me! Why else would I be here?” She leaned forward again to scrutinize her own papers, and a strand of her chocolate hair tumbled down her forehead. She blushed and hastily tucked it back. “I can begin immediately, and I shall require some initial instruction and training, but I’m sure you’ll agree it’ll be worth the investment of your time. As you can see from my papers—”

“Surely you don’t mean to say that you are seeking employment as a clerk in my office?” I said, emphasizing the words I felt certain would highlight the absurdity of what she was proposing.

Her shoulders tightened and drew back, her spine straightened just a touch, but her polite smile never wavered.

“What I mean to say is, ah, well,” I sputtered. “I’ve simply never heard of such a thing. You have clerked before?”

“In an unofficial capacity.” Her confidence and resolve were impressive.

My eyes drifted from hers to Fezziwig, still looming in the dark corner, and despite the shadows, I could make out a mild grin spreading across his wrinkled face. “Perhaps she is a devotee of that Mary Shelley woman, who espouses equality between the sexes. You might put her to ‘the question,’ yes?”

I quite liked the idea. Glancing at more of her papers, I said, “You have a head for numbers, it says here. You are used to balancing accounts?”

Her smile widened. “Certainly, Mr. Scrooge. You will find evidence in these papers of my experience working both in the city and in the country. I’m sure you’ll agree the post will require the ability to relate to and conduct discourse with a wide range of types, and you’ll find me just the right person to build mutual relationships with any client, old or young, rich or poor.”

I laughed.

“Do you think me foolish, Mr. Scrooge? Applying for a position normally held by a man?”

“I would have reacted so no matter your sex,” I told her, and it was true. “It seems you have my needs all figured out. So I say to you, sit down at that dusty desk in the corner and remove the red leather folder. You have ten minutes to balance the spread within. Do so, and I will seriously consider awarding you the position.”

“What if I don’t need ten minutes?” she asked, taking herself and her crooked smile to the little cell, as I jovially called the cramped work area.

A dusty shuffle sounded as my old master emerged from the shadows, the sound competing with Miss Owen’s grunts of displeasure and the scratching of her quill as she attempted to work with the hopeless ledgers I used as a test for prospective clerks.

I looked at my former master in surprise. He was paler than usual. “Fezziwig—are you well?”

“No, no. This is not about that,” he said. “This is more urgent. More urgent.”

“I doubt your business can be more pressing than the railway deal. I have very little time. But I could meet with you tomorrow afternoon perhaps.” I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Miss Owen will be done in just a bit. Perhaps you might walk her out of the district?”

“You must listen to me, you and this girl—”

“I cannot, Fezziwig. You have my word, tomorrow afternoon. Good day.” I rose from behind my desk, went to his side, and gestured to the door, where I wished to lead both him and the girl. As I touched his elbow, a wave of icy dread fell down me. The room darkened as a thick cloud moved in front of the morning sun outside. “We will speak . . . soon,” I whispered.

Miss Owen sprang to life and hastily gathered her papers, stuffing them in her satchel with less care than she had extracted them. “Mr. Scrooge, I have come to you with the utmost respect, but you and I both know the test you have put me to has no solution. Any one of those ledgers might be balanced in and of its own, but together they are mush. I think it is time for me to do as you desired from the start and take my leave.”

The hurt in her voice was palpable, but unimportant. I cared for profit, not feelings.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, brow furrowed, taking a step back. Then I smiled, and she shared in it. She was right: there was no balance to be found; that was the whole point, and in all my years, no other prospective employee had ever deduced that, let alone with such blinding speed.

I can’t say what I might have done next. The idea of hiring a female clerk was so audacious and attention-generating that I might have given in to it for the sheer perversity of seeing my competitor’s scandalized looks at the Exchange. But a wretched dark working was setting upon my counting-house. I looked to her as she approached. Her face was pale, her lips parted in a silent “O.” As she turned to the door, the flames in the fireplace flickered and died, leaving the candle on my desk the only light.

She froze.

“Peculiar,” I muttered. A physical chill seeped through me. The temperature within my office seemed to have fallen several dozen degrees in the blink of an eye.

Fezziwig stood as still as a corpse, his eyes as wide and white as marbles.

“Ebenezer,” he whispered. “Listen to me now. You have both been chosen to glimpse beyond the veil of mortal men. Together you must protect the innocent.”

I stopped, suspended in a sudden overwhelming unease, and was only barely aware of Miss Owen standing beside me, her chill hand brushing mine. Fezziwig’s words came out as white steam in the cold, darkened office. I dropped my grip of his elbow and held my breath.

“I am dead.”

Scowling, I narrowed my eyes. His complexion was paling before my eyes, dark blue veins appearing in his face like a gruesome cobweb of decay.

“Don’t be absurd,” I mumbled.

“Such things are not possible,” whispered Miss Owen. She shrieked as Fezziwig flung himself at me.

He gripped my shoulder suddenly, black and cracked fingernails digging into me, ice creeping into my blood through his touch. “The young man is innocent, Ebenezer!” he urged. I glanced at Miss Owen, who was staring back at me.

I shrugged out of Fezziwig’s grip and noticed that his hand had withered. The bluish skin was cracking, revealing grey muscle beneath. Panic rose in the pit of my gut. Desperately searching for something logical and tangible to bring my mind back to reality, I spotted a ring on his finger. He had never worn that before. Ostentatious, a gleaming ruby-red stone in a gold setting; not something he’d be likely to wear, yet there it was.

“Innocent,” he whispered once more, and Miss Owen gave a quiet whimper, almost inaudible, because he was looking at her now. Was she the “girl” he had expected to see when I first greeted him? Madness!

Then, his once thick hair wilted and fell, revealing a cracking scalp beneath. His breath was putrid, and I recoiled. “I see shadows of the past, present, and future, and exist within them all. What may be . . . what must be . . . Not all is known to me, Ebenezer. But he is innocent. Of this much I am certain. And you are in danger!”

My mind was reeling. I could not accept the evidence of my senses. “Forgive me, Fezziwig, I think I am unwell. Indigestion, perhaps. A blot of mustard, an undigested bit of beef. I’m certain there is more gravy than grave about you.” I backed from him to leave my office. My imagination was playing tricks on me.

But as I inched my way towards the door, Miss Owen grasped my arm so tightly I thought her nails would bite through my jacket and into my flesh. Before us, Fezziwig’s throat split open and deep, black gashes appeared in his face and chest. He drew a pained, rattling breath. Before my eyes his clothes became dust and fell from his decomposing body.

Miss Owen and I dashed for the door, but despite our combined strength, it would not open. Fezziwig approached, shuffling slowly as if to avoid completely disintegrating. The girl squeezed between him and the wall and dashed to the window: it too was stuck.

Fezziwig was upon me. Once more he gripped my shoulders, sending dark daggers of ice into my bones. My legs weakened, a ball of nausea rose in my gullet.

“Leave him!” Miss Owen cried. And when the grim specter would not release its grip, she snatched a heavy book from a nearby table and raised it as if to strike the withered apparition. One hand sweeping from me, he brushed it over the air separating her from him and she froze, bewildered, shaking, unable to take another step.

Then his terrible gaze held mine once more.

“Many more will die. And then you, Ebenezer Scrooge. Though still a young man of thirty with much potential for good or ill, you will die, too.” His flesh began to rot, his eyes became solid grey and shriveled into his skull. “Remember ‘Chimera,’ Ebenezer. It may save you. And remember that I chose you, and think long and hard upon why . . . and the consequences of volunteering a blindness to what you know is right.”

Horror gripped my very soul. Was this real? I glanced at Miss Owen to ascertain whether she was witnessing the same phantasm that I was, but she was pressed against the window, standing as stoic as a pillar. Her expression betrayed nothing.

I struggled to control my breathing, to focus on something logical. That heavy gold ring on his skeletal finger, the ring was not decomposing. Gold, at least, would always be a comfort to me. I squinted and focused on it.

A confused look appeared on what was left of Fezziwig’s face. It was as if he saw something not in these rooms. “A humbug?” he asked with a putrid whisper. “Do you think I would deceive you, Ebenezer?” Then he screamed the word so loudly that the walls and windows shook. It echoed in my skull, lacerated my thoughts. Humbug, Humbug, HUMBUG—

And then his skeleton collapsed. Legs first, then the rest of him, until a yellow skull was crumbling on top of a pile of dust. The ring spun on the floor, then disappeared into the carpet’s thickness.

I clapped my hand to my mouth in dread and stared in revulsion at the dusty remains on my office floor. What by God had happened here?

CRASH! The door swung open and a gust of icy wind sent the pile of Fezziwig swirling into the air and away. My legs finally buckled and I sank to my knees. My hand darted to where I had last seen the ring, but it too was gone.

“A humbug,” I whispered. “A humbug!”

Heavy booted footsteps fell across the wooden floor, one clunk at a time. I lifted my eyes, and the constable who’d burst inside spotted me. His lip curled. I recognized him from some function I’d attended a month ago. Crabapple was his name. The politeness he’d shown that evening had altogether faded.

“Ebenezer Scrooge, the calculating and controlled businessman, is trembling on the floor,” he said with a snarl. “The demeanor of a guilty man sentenced to hang.” He strode over to me and hoisted me to my feet. “A man has been murdered, Mr. Scrooge, the word ‘Humbug’ written in blood beside the body. The very word you were just mumbling. You, sir, are required to come with me for questioning.” As I was being dragged across the floor, the sun once more streamed through the window, a solid beam of light catching flecks of dust as they settled in my office.

“And who is this?” said the constable, as he spotted Miss Owen by the window. She was trembling, arms crossed over her chest. “An accomplice? Or another would-be victim?”

She managed a subtle shake of the head before she took a deep breath and composed herself. “I have seen . . . no, no . . . My name is Adelaide Owen. And, and this man . . . he may be many things, but a murderer, no.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” the constable said as he continued dragging me to the door. I heard her footsteps quick and light behind.

“Who has been murdered?” I managed.

“Your onetime master, Mr. Reginald D. Fezziwig.”