The Penny Dreadful Curse Read online

  Coal black eyes sparked up. “Do you think there might be Varney the Vampire?”

  “Oh, no doubt,” he said with a forced smile, suppressing his distaste for all things Transylvanian. Bram Stoker had a lot to answer for! “Go and have a look. You know where to find them. Take the candle with you. You’ll find some scissors on the kitchen dresser.”

  “Would you like me to put the books on the shelf for you? I can do it in alphabet order now. Miss Carterett wrote the alphabet out for me and I’ve been learning myself, er, I mean teaching myself all month. I washed my hands and face before I came. I won’t smudge any of the pages. I promise.”

  “Thank you, Patch. That will save my arthritic bones a lot of toing and froing and bending down and reaching up. I will go and make us some hot cocoa in the meantime. You’ll stay for a cup of cocoa? It will be mostly hot water and just a little milk. The lass from the dairy forgot to stop by this week and Magwitch does insist on his saucer of warm milk.”

  “Thank you kindly, Mr Corbie. Some hot cocoa will go down a treat. I’ll have the new books on the shelf for you in no time.”

  “Just enough time to select the ten you want to take with you!” teased Mr Corbie.

  Patch let rip an unbridled laugh that echoed up to the blackened rafters and shook the cobwebs. “Too right!”

  Twenty minutes later the old bookseller and the avid young reader were sharing a hot beverage that was more water and less cocoa with barely a drop of milk but it was the warmth they appreciated. Mr Corbie had never married and last Christmas he had realized with a sudden wrenching pang that he had turned into a lonely old man with thinning grey hair that needed to be tied back in a ponytail to disguise just how sparse it was, a grey complexion, fading grey eyesight and arthritis in both hands that caused the knuckles to swell. It had never bothered him in the past to be sans famille. The shop had kept him busy and the customers were like family but over the years they had dwindled away. Some of the regulars had died and the others had gradually stopped coming. They had probably stopped reading too.

  “Where do you store all your books, Patch? You must have a hundred or more by now?”

  He imagined the boy’s lodgings to be cramped. A tiny room in a freezing cold attic or a windowless box room no bigger than a broom closet.

  “Oh, I don’t need to store too many, sir, I borrow them out to the other lads who cannot afford the penny but can afford a halfpenny. I keep a list of names and if the lads don’t return them after one month I charge extra.”

  Mr Corbie’s shaggy grey brows lifted for two reasons. First, he had never pictured Patch as a businessman. Second, that the working class lads could be so honest. He wished his customers were half as honest. How many times had he agreed to allow someone he considered trustworthy and respectable to take a book on loan and then never seen it again!

  “Do many of the books go astray?”

  “None have gone astray. The lads know that if they don’t return them they will be struck off the list. And they would rather cut off their right arm than not have any more stories about Varney the Vampire or Jack Black the Highwayman.”

  Mr Corbie thought that perhaps he was in the wrong business and dealing with the wrong sort of clientele. He should go into renting books and charging for them, that way he would get paid over and over for the same book instead of selling it just the once.

  “Can all the boys read?”

  “Just about most, yes, now that they can get their hands on some dreadfuls. It makes the school lessons worth sticking at and some of the older lads who never learned their ABC when they shouldov have lessons with Miss Carterett on Tuesdays and Thursdays when she is not at the home for girls-up-the-duff.”

  “Miss Carterett sounds like she has her work cut out for her,” he said dryly.

  “She’s a smashing sort. All the lads think the sun shines out of her, no disrespect! She learns them their ABC and she doesn’t even use the strap to make it sink in, er, I mean teaches.”

  Mr Corbie smiled at the boy’s keenness to better himself. Patch, he thought, was a lad who would go far in life. “I wonder if some of your customers might one day come to me?”

  “Well, sir, they are put off.”

  “Put off?”

  “They think the books you have in here are too high brow and they are terrified of making fools of themselves.”

  “Really?”

  Mr Corbie had never thought of himself as intimidating. He had a ready smile for every customer who stepped over his threshold and a helpful nature, keen to match the right book to the right reader.

  “The lads are dead scared to set foot in here. That’s why I come in for the ten dreadfuls every month. And if you don’t mind me saying, sir, no offence, but I’ve been thinking for a while that you should change your sign,”

  “Change my sign?”

  “It puts folks off.”

  “Too high brow? Is that what you mean?”

  Patch bit his lip and nodded. “I think you would have a lot more customers through the door if you changed it some.”

  Mr Corbie was curious. “In what way?”

  “Well, the gold letters look fancy but the wording is all wrong.”

  Now he was intrigued. “Wording? Wrong?”

  “Ye Olde Bookshoppe makes the books sound old; like no one wants them. The lads don’t understand satire or irony.”

  “You know about irony?”

  “Sure thing! It’s when something comes back to bite you on the bum.”

  “Indeed.”

  “The spelling is all wrong too. Now that the lads can read they think it’s, well, someone havin’ a laugh but they don’t get the joke. Why take all that trouble to learn to spell and then spell wrong – especially if you is, er, are in the job of selling books with lots of words in them. It vexes them, you see.”

  Mr Corbie scratched his head. “Mmm, yes, I see.”

  “The rest of the sign needs changing too. It should say: Aquarian books and penny dreadfuls.”

  “You mean I should advertise the fact I sell penny dreadfuls? And it is antiquarian not aquarian.”

  “Antiquarian,” repeated Patch, proving he was a quick learner and not afraid of being corrected, “that means old?”

  “Old and valuable as opposed to old and worthless,” pointed out Mr Corbie a touch pedantically – an occupational hazard.

  “Oh, there goes Miss Carterett!” exclaimed Patch. “She must have finished at the home for girls-up-the-duff and is heading home for her supper. I might catch up to her and walk with her to the end of the Whip-ma-whop-ma-gate. Thanks for the cocoa.” He bounced to his feet and stuffed his ten dreadfuls into a small hessian sack and threw it over his shoulder like a sack of baby beets. When he reached the door, he paused and turned back, speaking quickly. “Oh, I almost forgot. Here is the ten pence I owe and I don’t know if you heard it from one of your customers but a body was fished out of the river this morning. It was a writer that was killed.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Ouse.”

  “I meant which writer, and when you are referring to a person you say who not that.”

  “It was the one who pens them dreadfuls on pirates – Robbie Redbeard.”

  Mr Corbie smiled mirthlessly as the bell tinkled and he blew out the candle and stood alone in the quiet dark. For a brief moment he had allowed himself to imagine it might have been Conan le Coq, anonymous author of plotless dirge where the ghosts and ghouls had more life in them than the lifeless protagonist that hunted them down!

  Now, if someone were to murder Conan le Coq…

  2

  Ye Olde Mousehole Inne

  “Are you quite certain your Aunt Zoya did not own a house in York?” Dr Watson pitched for the third time, running a dubious eye over the narrow dimensions of the half-timbered dwelling with the teetering overhang creaking in the wind. “A sturdy country seat in the west riding? A Georgian terrace near Gillygate? She owned a house everywhere else,” he fi
nished facetiously, wincing at the ludicrously quaint spelling.

  “Oh, do stop quibbling,” returned Countess Volodymyrovna tetchily as the wind played merry with the ruffles of her petticoats. “It is becoming tedious. You know very well that the York Mystery Pageant Plays mean that most of the better hotels have been booked months in advance. Besides, we will be right in the heart of things. How much closer can we get to the heart of York than the Shambles? And we won’t need to hire a carriage every time we step out the door.”

  He fixed her with a belligerent eye and readied a rebuff starting with – nothing but a dog cart can actually navigate the Shambles! - before a hacking cough forced him to swallow his words. “I’m sorry we ever agreed to help out in this matter,” he wheezed and gurgled as he drew an asthmatic breath. “It has nothing to do with us. I doubt Inspector Bird even wants our help. Apart from Lestrade, I never met a detective who welcomed outsiders sticking their noses into police business. Most of them regard such interference akin to dog turd stuck to the bottom of their shoe – speaking of which!” He swore under his breath as he scraped his heel on the cobbles and continued to grumble. “Lestrade only put up with it because he knew he was out of his depth. Sherlock solved the cases and then allowed the bumbling inspector to take all the credit.”

  “In that case,” she delivered confidently, “we will allow Bird to take all the credit too. And you are wrong about him not wanting us here. You read his telegram. He was thrilled at the prospect of meeting his hero!”

  The doctor turned menopausal pink and gave thanks for the slanting shadows dissecting the Shambles. Hero? Sherlock had always been the brains. He liked to think that he played a small part, that he made a contribution, that he was the voice of reason, the voice of the common man – but hero! Heroes didn’t step in dog turd for a start.

  “You are reading too much into his telegram.”

  “Oh, do stop being so grouchy. Wipe your feet on the mat and cheer up. Let’s go inside and seek out a warm fire. It’s like a wind-tunnel out here.”

  The parlour of the Mousehole Inne did little to cheer the doctor. It was dark and gloomy, with rough-sawn beams, a smoke-stained ceiling, oak panelling punctuated by a hotchpotch of wonky doors designed for Elizabethan dwarfs and tiny windows with thick latticed glass recalling a time of prohibitive window taxes. There was not a straight line or a right angle to be seen and the uneven floor made him feel seasick. It did however possess a wonderful inglenook fireplace with a log fire giving off plenty of heat and two wooden benches either side protected from the draught that blew in from the wide gap under the wonky door. Faintly flickering gasoliers conjured a chiaroscuro of kinetic shadows and it took a moment to spot the sole occupant hunched over a desk set in an alcove in the far corner.

  Startled, Mr Hiboux drew himself up rather quickly and stumbled forth into a pool of sickly yellow gaslight that made him look jaundiced and slightly demented. He was short, stocky and stumpy-legged, with a square bookish face. He was also lopsided, leaning slightly to one side, possibly suffering from a congenital deformity such as a curved spine that did not culminate in an unattractive hunchback but forced one shoulder to droop down more than the other. His hair was so wild and thick the Countess wondered if he might be wearing a wig, or perhaps a mop. He moved with nervous abruptness, two steps forward and one step back, and spoke with a halting quaver, hesitantly, falteringly, the words quivering on his vocal chords as he continually paused to check himself before finishing a sentence, interrupting the flow with er and ah, before getting to the point.

  After a shaky start he let them know he had assumed they had changed their minds and decided to book elsewhere, it being, er, so late and all, nevertheless he had dinner simmering in a pot, a char would come in the morning to help out, and Miss Titmarsh who owned the teashop a few doors down would be, ah, supplying breakfast. If they cared to refresh themselves, he could, er, show them to their rooms first and then serve dinner – coq au vin – a family specialty. An awkward tilt of his head indicated an antique gateleg table positioned under the wonkiest window. It was set with old pewterware and had two tapestry wing chairs facing each other either side. The doctor and the Countess were apparently the inn’s only guests. The maid and manservant, er, could eat in the kitchen where there was a sturdy table by the coal range.

  The Countess’s bedroom was on the first floor while the bedroom of Dr Watson was on the second. The rooms were twins of each other, long and narrow to accommodate the narrowness of the dwelling. Both had tiny windows that gave onto the Shambles, though it wasn’t much of a view from one side of the lane to the other. One could almost reach out and touch the building across the way. Tudor four-poster beds, heavily carved, dressed with antique fabrics embroidered in autumnal threads were as stupendous as they were unexpected.

  Inspector Bird called on them after dinner. He seemed genuinely pleased to meet them, especially Dr Watson, but declined to pull up a third chair upon being invited to join them for coffee or cocoa. He stood stiffly by the side of the gateleg table, arms tucked behind his broad back soldier-fashion, and informed them in a thick Yorkshire accent that there had been a fifth death. A body had been fished out of the Ouse that very morning. If they cared to see the latest deceased he could take them to the morgue tomorrow after breakfast and go over any details they cared to know.

  “Thank you,” said Dr Watson. “Shall we say half past nine? Here at the inn?”

  Inspector Bird apologized for interrupting their evening meal and, bowing awkwardly, took his leave. The parlour seemed emptier without him. He was what might be described as big-boned, above average height with a wide set of shoulders and huge hands that would fist up like truncheons whenever the need called for it. Detective Inspector MacDuff had been right in his assessment. His friend, Inspector Bird, would make a perfect addition to the Yard. His wooden face gave little away, a godsend in the policing profession. If not for the fact he stared reverently at the doctor the way one does at a sacred idol or religious relic, it would have been impossible to imagine what he was thinking. A remarkable pair of enormous sideburns was his one distinguishing feature. His lanky hair was a darkish blond but his sideburns showed whorls of ginger and a theatrical flourish.

  Dr Watson, cheeks still burning, braced for the inevitable teasing.

  “I thought he was going to kiss your ring,” the Countess said playfully as soon as the inn door creaked back into place. “Did you notice how he bowed his head?”

  “That was due to his height. He had to stoop the whole time. He must be at least six foot tall.”

  “He ignored me completely. I may as well have been invisible. He had eyes for you only - very disconcerting. I am not accustomed to competing for male attention with another man.”

  “Any more of that and I shall take myself off to London and you won’t have to compete for attention at all.”

  “What a heartless cad you are? Poor Inspector Bird will never get over the sense of rejection.”

  “I’m sure he will recover.”

  “He will probably throw himself in the river.”

  “He appeared stout of heart and sound of mind to me.”

  “That’s true, but who knows what lies beneath the surface. Take the lovely city of York. No finer city would you find anywhere on earth and yet five murders in the space of a fortnight.”

  He was happy the conversation had steered itself elsewhere, albeit in a grisly direction, and decided to keep steering. “No wonder Inspector Bird telegraphed his old chum, MacDuff, for help. I imagine a bit of panic has crept into the constabulary. A shame MacDuff was summoned to Edinburgh for that daring museum robbery.”

  “But lucky for him we were available! Our third case as consulting detectives!”

  He pressed his lips together and his nostrils flared to compensate. “We are not, repeat not, consulting detectives. And our other so-called cases were both in country houses –”

  “Castles,” she corrected. “Baskerville and Cr
uddock.”

  “I meant to point out that it was amongst friends and people of our own ilk. This case will be different.”

  “Because it is in a town, you mean?”

  “Precisely.”

  “That makes it more of a challenge. Did you notice how Inspector Bird seemed reluctant to divulge any details?”

  “Not surprising. He only just met us. I think he wanted to size us up. That’s probably why he dropped by tonight.”

  “To get the measure of us?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then we had better measure up, mon ami!”

  He did not share her enthusiasm for this latest venture and wondered how she had managed to talk him into accompanying her. But, of course, he knew the answer: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The secret telegram from Mycroft before he left Scotland had suggested he continue to keep a close eye on her while information continued to trickle in from across the globe. Was she who she claimed to be? Or was she their worst nightmare? Was she her father’s daughter? Or her mother’s? Or was she neither? Oh, yes, she had proven her sleuthing capabilities twice over but he was still no nearer to finding out who she really was or what she really wanted. Until such time as he did, he could not drop his guard. His chest suddenly felt tight and all he could think was how much he wanted a warm bed and a good night’s rest. The train journey from Scotland had been tiring. His muscles felt sore and cramped, his legs were beginning to seize up. He was feeling his age.

  “It can’t be easy for someone in his position to share confidences with outsiders,” he said.

  She smiled a touch flirtatiously, or was his tired brain just imagining it? It was too easy for a young woman of uncommon attractiveness and infinite confidence to appeal to a tired old duffer past his prime – a luminous smile, a flutter of lashes, some flattering candlelight…

  “I think he would trust you with his life,” she teased mercilessly. “The man who partnered Sherlock Holmes! I thought he was going to go down on bended knee when he said it, like one of the knights paying reverence to Arthur at the round table. Should I tell him who I am?”