The Penny Dreadful Curse (26 page)

The inspector
downed his glass in one fell swoop. It did not bode well. The
doctor decided to follow suit. The Countess merely toyed with her
glass; perturbation mounting.

Inspector Bird
licked his lips and sucked back a breath. “I have some shocking
news…”

“Yes! Yes! Get
on with it!” She could not stand being
pas en courant.

“I understand
that tonight you attended a dinner party at the house of Sir
Marmaduke Mallebisse,” he continued painfully, ploddingly, choosing
his words with particular care, “at number 17 Mallebisse Terrace.
The dinner party finished at approximately ten o’clock. All the
guests left at the same time.”

He seemed to
be confirming their whereabouts.

“”Yes! Yes!
Mais oui
!” She was still mixing her English with her
French.

“Sir
Mallebisse provided his own carriage for yourself, Dr Watson, and
you, Countess Volodymyrovna, and Reverend Finchley and Miss Flyte?”
It was half-question, half-statement. “Mrs Dicksen travelled home
in her own carriage, a landau, pulled by…”

“For goodness
sake!” interrupted the Countess. “Get to the point!”

“More sherry?”
intervened Dr Watson, sensing something dire.

“Not for me!”
snapped his counterpart, remembering she still had the first glass
in her hand, contents untouched.

“Thank you,
doctor, I won’t say no. Where was I?”

“Mrs Dicksen!”
reminded the Countess shortly.

“Oh, yes, Mrs
Dicksen,” continued the inspector as ploddingly as ever, “being
seven months gone with child, and at her age, began to feel unwell,
not sickly, but anxious and nervy, as if her time might be near, as
can happen to some ladies, or so I am led to believe, and directed
her coachman to take the long way home to Gladhill, so that she
could breathe some cool night air. She had been sleeping poorly,”
he added irrelevantly. “She could have gone home quicker along High
Petergate, you see, round past the Minster via Deangate to
Goodramgate, all well-lit thoroughfares, but she chose the route
outside the city walls, Gillygate and St Maurice’s Road, through
Jewbury, and onto the Foss Islands Road, a lonely track, dark too,
with thick marsh fog from the King’s Fishpond and…”

Dr Watson
returned with glasses refreshed. The inspector paused mid-sentence
to lubricate his throat. The doctor did likewise. Exasperated, the
Countess drained her glass and winced.

“Has something
terrible happened to Mrs Dicksen?” she vented impatiently,
circumventing any further extenuations to the never-ending
story.

The inspector
seemed slightly dazed at this point, as if he couldn’t quite
believe what he was about to say. “Mrs Dicksen? No. It’s Mr
Dicksen. He’s dead.”

“
Quoi
?”
The Countess was so taken aback she used the ungrammatical French
expression of the uneducated classes, rather than the more correct:
Comment
? It proved just how rattled she was. “Mr Charles
Dicksen? Dead?”

All her neatly
formed conclusions fell off a cliff. She felt as if she had fallen
with them and reeled, momentarily stunned.

“Shot,”
confirmed Inspector Bird concisely, “by Mrs Henrietta Dicksen.”

This
extraordinary revelation required fuller explanation. The word
shot
did not seem adequate. Besides, Mr Charles Dicksen was
supposed to be in Leeds or Lancaster on a reading tour. How could
he possibly be the victim of a fatal shooting at the hand of his
own wife!

“Mrs Henrietta
Dicksen was travelling home in her carriage along the Foss Islands
Road,” prompted the Countess, backtracking, “what happened
next?”

“Her carriage
was held up by a man on a horse with a gun intent on robbery, in
other words, a highwayman…”

“Highwayman!”
echoed the Countess disbelievingly – it sounded like something out
of a penny dreadful. “This is
not
the eighteenth century!
Highwaymen don’t go about holding up carriages at gun point! Nor do
horses! Surely it was a bad joke!”

“A joke it may
have been at the start,” agreed the inspector soberly, “but it did
not end as one.”

“Stop
interrupting the inspector,” reprimanded the doctor crossly, all
ears now.

“The robber,”
continued the inspector, stroking his whiskers, “came out of the
mist, riding a black horse, wearing a mask.”

The doctor,
who had just reprimanded the Countess for interrupting, sought
clarification about the horse. “Was it the rider or the horse
wearing the mask?”

“The rider,”
said the inspector dryly, glancing oddly at the doctor and
wondering why he would think a horse would be wearing a mask.

“It sounds
like an episode out of
Jack Black the Highwayman
!” blurted
the Countess before remembering herself. “Please go on
inspector.”

“Well, the
rider with the mask, not the horse, pulled out a loaded pistol, the
old-fashioned sort, from last century, or maybe the century before,
and demanded money and jewels. The lady, alone in the carriage and
fearing for her life, put her hand into her evening bag as if to
pull out some money, but pulled out a muff pistol instead, the sort
ladies are known to carry to protect themselves, and shot the rider
wearing the mask, not the horse, not realizing it was her own
husband. Shot him right through the heart, she did, then fainted
clean away.”

“What about
the coachman?” quizzed the doctor, wondering if he had played a
part in the fatal dramatics.

“The coachman
confirmed the lady’s story,” said the inspector. “I questioned him
at length straight after I questioned the lady.”

“They were
still at the scene when you arrived?” pressed the doctor.

The inspector
nodded curtly. “The coachman dared not move on while his mistress
was in an unconscious state, having swooned, and in her condition,
see, so he settled the horses and then checked to make sure the
highwayman was dead.”

“How did he do
that?” asked the Countess.

“He did as all
folks do – he checked for a pulse. But he said he knew the man
would be dead because he had slumped forward in the saddle on being
shot and then toppled sideways, one foot stuck in the stirrup.
There was also a lot of blood. The highwayman’s horse, fortunately,
did not bolt but stayed put. While the coachman was tethering the
horse to a sapling on the side of the road another carriage came
along. He flagged it down.”

“Who was in
it?” asked the Countess.

“It was a
hansom for hire with a foreign gentleman in it, a Dutchman, a
painter of portraits. I have his name here.” He retrieved his
notebook and flipped over some pages. “I wrote it down because it
is the sort of name that does not spring readily to mind. Here it
is – Monsieur...”

“Boetius van
Brugge,” finished the Countess.

“You know
him?” said the inspector, inflection rising.

“I know
of
him. He has been commissioned to paint a portrait in oils
by Mr Panglossian and is staying as a guest at Foss Bank House. The
portrait will feature Mrs Miriam Ashkenazy, Panglossian’s married
daughter. I wonder what the Dutchman was doing out on the road at
that late hour.”

“I can answer
that for you,” supplied the inspector. “He was returning from
Friargate Theatre and he was indeed going to Foss Bank House.”

“Do you mind
if we go back to what the coachman said when you questioned him?”
interrupted the doctor, sensing they were getting off the
subject.

The inspector
stroked his whiskers once or twice whilst gathering his thoughts.
“The coachman said a horseman came out of the mist, brandishing a
large pistol. He called out for the coachman to stop and seemed
hell-bent on wickedness. It did not seem like a jape. The coachman
is a burly fellow yet he claimed to be scared for his life as the
masked man waved his pistol about menacingly, aiming first at him
and then at the lady, demanding jewels and money. He heard him cock
his weapon. When the lady drew out her pistol and shot the
blackguard through the heart he had no idea it was the master, so
well did the scoundrel disguise his voice and his person.”

“After the
highwayman was shot,” clarified the Countess, “Mrs Dicksen fainted
and the coachman secured the coach and horses and then went to
check the dead body – is that correct?”

“Yes,” said
the inspector.

“When did it
become apparent the highwayman was Mr Dicksen?”

The inspector
took a moment to reflect on the events in the order they happened,
he was bone-tired but his brain was whirring fast. He felt he would
sleep a hundred years if only he could close his eyes and yet he
knew sleep would prove elusive. “The Dutchman stayed at the scene
while the driver of the hansom came straight to the police station.
A constable was still on duty because we have such an overload of
cases at present – another case of arson last night,” he heaved
bitterly. “The young constable, being not as daft as some, realized
it was an unusual crime involving a lady of some prominence in
York, and roped in the driver of the hansom, dispatching him with
one of the Snickelwayers who is always hanging about the premises
looking to make himself useful and maybe earn a halfpenny, ordering
them to track me down as quickly as possible. I was out by Castle
Mills Bridge where the arsonist had been spotted lurking about. I
arrived at the murder scene a short time later to find Mrs Dicksen
just coming out of her swoon. She had been revived by the Dutchman.
It was me who tore off the mask. I didn’t recognize Mr Dicksen,
though I have seen his photo countless times in the newspapers. It
was the coachman who cried out in shock – ‘The master! It’s the
master! God help us!’ – at that stage Mrs Dicksen, realizing she
had shot and killed her own husband, fainted again.”

“And then?”
prompted the doctor, after allowing the inspector to catch his
breath.

“The Dutchman
was a real gent for a foreigner. I will take my hat off to him. He
offered to accompany Mrs Dicksen home in her coach. I climbed back
into the hansom and came straight here. I thought you might want to
know, having become acquainted with the Dicksens recently and
having been at dinner with Mrs Dicksen a few hours earlier.”

The
grandfather clock in the corner chimed the half hour.

Dr Watson
thanked the inspector. “We appreciate being informed. We can sleep
on what you have told us and pay a visit to Mrs Dicksen tomorrow
morning after breakfast. By the way, I presume the lady was not
physically harmed?”

“Apart from
shock, she did not appear to suffer any ill effects. She said she
was extremely tired and wanted to go straight to bed. She said she
would summon a doctor first thing in the morning. She did not want
to call her doctor out at midnight. She appeared to be sound of
mind, thinking rationally, that is, but I cannot vouch for her
emotional state. Sometimes shock takes a while to set in. I have
witnessed folks act calmly during a crisis and then go to pieces a
few hours later. I was told it has something to do with the adrenal
gland.”

The doctor
confirmed he had witnessed the same thing several times and it
appeared to be linked to the body’s production of adrenalin. He
began to elaborate when the Countess cut him off.

“You believe
there is something suspicious about the turn of events?” she put to
the inspector. “That is why you were longwinded about describing
the route Mrs Dicksen could have taken as opposed to the one she
took. Why did she choose to go home by that particular road? The
Foss Islands Road? Did she and her husband plan the robbery
together? Did she know her husband would appear out of the mist
dressed as a highwayman? Why a highwayman? Did she plan to kill
him? Why the elaborate charade?”

The inspector
regarded the Countess with evident approval. “Charade is a good
word. It appears to be a charade. But the husband would have to be
in on it, except now he is dead and we will never know why. It
doesn’t make sense. I am still locked into tracking the arsonist.
That is my first priority because of the importance of the river
trade to the prosperity of the city. Any more barges going up in
smoke and we could have a barge war on our hands. I will be
grateful to hear what you have to say after you visit Mrs Dicksen
tomorrow morning.” He pushed wearily to his feet and appeared
unsteady for a moment or two. “I bid you both good night.”

The death of Mr
Charles Dicksen was not only a mystery in itself, but had come as a
blow to the Countess’s neatly ordered understanding. Everything had
been turned on its head.

Fedir returned
while she was breakfasting with the doctor in the poky parlour to
tell them the school mistress was safe; nothing untoward had
happened in the night. The manservant was on his way to the kitchen
to have his own breakfast when he turned back. He addressed his
mistress in Ukrainian, which always managed to get up the doctor’s
goat.

“Countess, you
charged me with keeping an eye out for the churchman. I observed
him this morning at the seven ways. I followed him to the church.
He went up to the bell tower.”

The Countess
never travelled without her personal maid or manservant. Fedir and
Xenia were brother and sister, born in 1864 three years after
serfdom had been abolished, though their family chose to remain in
service to the Count of Odessos, her late step-father. They had
been with her since childhood, going with her into the fields and
woods, keeping her safe from harm from wild animals and poachers,
and then acting as actual bodyguards, keeping an eye out for
anarchists, robbers, kidnappers and unsuitable suitors. They had
saved her skin more than once during her endless wanderings with
her madcap, peripatetic, adventurous aunt. Eventually, as her life
grew tamer, they had fallen into the role of servants. Since
partnering up with Dr Watson as a so-called consulting detective,
albeit entirely reluctantly on his part, Fedir and Xenia’s
usefulness had increased tenfold.