Jane Steele(34)

“Murder most ’einous!” he cried. “Murder most hunnatural! Penny a page, miss.”

Blinking in astonishment, I reached for the broadside. He growled and I paid him belatedly, walking a few paces away to read:


MOST FOUL AND DELIBERATE MURDER OF A COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER.

Mr. Vesalius Munt, a most upstanding gentleman of E—— parish, was found stuck like a pig through the gullet and left to die in a pool of his own red gore. The villain what competrated this most perspicable act, an act sufficient to strike thunderific fear into the hearts of even the most auspicillary citizens, remains at large. Many schoolgirls of Lowan Bridge have gone missing; thirty or so have vanished into the idyllious countryside, two hundred more staying under the most dutiful and meritransible guard of their teachers, the rest having returned home.

Mr. Munt was lauded as the most distinguished philanderist, and a knife was shoved so far into his throat that his molars suffered renumerous damages, according to experts. The most authoritive and ingeniable Inspector Sam Quillfeather has been assigned the task of hunting his killer, and the townspeople are most certifitive that his quest will end in the stringing up of the traitorious fiend’s neck like the most veriable chicken.

A finger snapped beside my ear.

I had not fainted, but a murky tide swam before my eyes, all grey silt and shrinking terror. The patterer’s fleshy face—for he was a patterer of dark deeds, and I had been identifying every way possible to obtain money whilst preventing my legs from parting company—hovered over mine, seeming at once fascinated and annoyed that I had been so affected. He wore funereal black, but had enhanced this theme with a scarlet cravat and trousers to answer, the effect being that one grew fretful over whether he had just been stabbed in the throat and the legs.

“What ails you?” he demanded.

“I went to school there,” I murmured, scarcely knowing what I was saying.

Secrets, reader, are tidal—they swell and recede, and my greater misdeeds had forced this lesser intelligence from my lips, a river spilling over its bed; at the unexpected name Sam Quillfeather, the constable like an embodied question mark who had peppered me with queries after Edwin’s death and apparently been promoted, my spine turned to jelly. The only good news the article contained was that so many had disappeared, for our absence—should it occur to Inspector Quillfeather that a schoolgirl was capable of stabbing her headmaster—would thereby seem much more natural.

“Eh?” he exclaimed. “You were there, ye say?”

“I merely—I was confused. I’ll just—”

“A man in my line o’ work would pay dear in order to print someone’s hinsider perpinion, ’specially if you saw the cold dead corpse, like. Did you?”

He winked, and then I understood—he expected me to lie in order to earn a commission in exchange for the tale.

“Yes,” said I, attempting to appear a bad perjurer, which is a bemusing trick and not one I recommend the layman acquire.

The man chuckled, jowls quaking. “Name’s Mr. Hugh Grizzlehurst. And yours?”

“Miss Jane Steele.”

We shook hands, I and this purveyor of tragedy, as an idea gently hatched in my brain.

“There’s another Lowan Bridge girl with me, and we’ve need of lodgings for the night. I’ll exchange my story for our board.”

Mr. Grizzlehurst nodded. “If it’s an hextraordinary story, I’d not begrudge two nights. Tell Bertha—Bertha’s me wife—that ’appy circumstance sent you, and I’ll be along when I’ve hexpleted my stock. The ’ouse is twelve Elephant Lane, Rotherhithe—if you hespy the White Lead Manufactory and the Saltpetre Works, you’ve gone too far.”

Weak with shock and relief, I shook hands. Meeting Mr. Grizzlehurst seemed one of those felicitous coincidences which occur so seldom in fiction—for in fiction, such blessings can scarce be believed, whilst in life they are shared with future generations as thrilling tales of danger averted and luck seized.

I say that it seemed just the gift we had been seeking; I have since grown more cautious. Nature’s boons are equally plentiful and random, but I have never yet encountered a more capricious mistress—save perhaps for her daughter, madly mercurial London.

? ? ?

Clarke and I, pulses thin with nerves, trudged past warehouses and shipyards, past a harelipped Italian organ boy whose eyes followed us soulfully as he ground his instrument, past earnest geranium boxes tucked under begrimed windows, and finally entered Rotherhithe where it perched upon the edge of the Thames. A whaler, salt in his beard and a blue marine glint in his single eye, directed us to Elephant Lane and trudged away as we knocked at number twelve.

The door creaked open. Mrs. Grizzlehurst stood there, blinking—a dull woman with flat greyish hair and an overbite which rendered her resemblance to a rodent more profound than she might have ideally preferred. Bertha Grizzlehurst’s close-set eyes were amiable, however, and her dry lips even spasmed in a theoretical smile.

“I am Miss Rebecca Clarke and this is Miss Jane Steele,” Clarke introduced us.

No answer emerged.

“We’re looking for Mrs. Bertha Grizzlehurst?” I explained.

The woman who was probably Mrs. Grizzlehurst continued affably saying nothing.

The wind from the Thames scraped across our necks as I glanced worriedly at Clarke; we had made our way from the bridge through market gardens and occasional meadows, rejoicing as the stench of refuse faded and the aromas of maritime saline and humble beds of mint met our nostrils. Rotherhithe was actively being bullied by the metropolis, however; upon nearing the waterfront, the sunlight failed to reach the cobbles as the rickety buildings grew thicker and taller. Huge draught horses lugging wagons of timber passed, making us feel even tinier than we did already. I badly wanted a meal and a bed, and the same for Clarke.