“The same.”
“Am I speaking to Lord Puffery?”
The man had not offered a smile. He offered none now. “You are not.”
“Oh…pardon. But this is the shop where the Pin is printed?”
“It is.”
“Then I assume you’re in contact with Lord Puffery?” Matthew had noted a closed door beyond the press area, which was guarded by a waist-high wooden gate at the far end of the counter.
“Lord Puffery,” said Luther, “is indisposed. If you have a story to sell, I would be the man to see.” He motioned toward a desk to his left where there were two chairs, a stack of cheap paper and writing tools atop the blotter.
“But you would need to ask Lord Puffery if the story I wish to sell would be worth his money? Correct?”
“Correct.”
“All right, then. Before we begin, please tell Lord Puffery that Matthew Corbett, the Monster of Plymouth, has arrived from his chamber of horrors in Whitechapel. Tell the kind sir he wishes to sell an account of the decapitation murders of umpteen women and double-umpteen children.”
Luther did not move. The gray eyes, greatly magnified by the corrective lenses, blinked. He reached for a rag to wipe his hands. “I’ll relay the message,” he replied, with steadfast calm, and then he went to the door, rapped on it and stuck his head in. “Matthew Corbett’s here,” he said to the person within. “The Monster of Plymouth. Got a story to sell, he says.”
An exchange was made that neither Matthew nor Keen could hear. It went on for perhaps thirty seconds.
Luther pulled his head back out. “Come on,” he told the two.
They went to the gate, which Matthew reached down to unlatch and open. They crossed the print area. Luther stepped aside for them to enter the domain of Lord Puffery.
It was a nice office, but no rich man’s haven. In fact, no man’s haven at all.
The middle-aged, rather plump gray-haired woman behind the desk was sitting in a brown leather chair that had known better times. So too had the desk, for all its nicks and scratches. Behind her were a few books on shelves. An oil lamp burned on the desk. She had been scribing in a record book, as it was still open before her and the quill returned to its rest next to the inkjar. Facing the desk was a chair and another one stood the corner. The floor was of rough planks, the walls the same except upon them were various framed copies of earlier Pins and a couple of advertising broadsheets indicating the other work that Luther did.
“Leave us,” she told Luther.
“But ma’am—”
“Leave us and close the door,” she said. Her accent was neither highbrow nor low; she was an educated woman and certainly very wealthy but no mistress of an ostentatious castle, for her clothing was plain and unadorned by frills. Her bearing, as well, gave Matthew the impression of directness and simplicity, which surely were not qualities of the London gentry.
Luther withdrew and the door was closed.
The woman’s right hand came up. Perhaps it was accustomed to holding a quill, but for the moment it held a very serious-looking pistol aimed in a direction of damage.
Twenty-Two
WHICH one of you is Corbett?” Before an answer could be made, the woman’s sharp gaze found him. “You. Cleaner than the other and a look of inquisitive nature, but the brutal scar of past misdeeds upon your head.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you colorblind?”
“No, madam. I haven’t had a chance to find a proper tailor. This is my friend Rory Keen. Would you mind moving that pistol to one side? I didn’t come all the way from Whitechapel to have my hair parted by a ball.”
“Are you here to take revenge?”
“I am here to feed my nature. Which, you must know, is not an appetite for the murder of countless women and children in Plymouth.”
“But you’ve murdered at least one woman and child?” The pistol’s barrel had not moved the length of a flea.
“Sorry. Not one.”
“The next issue of the Pin will have the authorities uncovering more of your murders from beneath the dirt of a rose garden in Exeter. What do you have to say to that?”
“I say…before I leave here I’ll give you the address to which you might send my share of the take. That would be the colonial branch of the Herrald Agency, Number Seven Stone Street in the town of New York.”
Now the pistol did waver, the length of a hand. “What?”
“Indeed,” Matthew answered with a genuine smile of pleasure at upsetting this particular applecart. His smile had no longevity, though, because of the truth of his next revelation. “I did kill a man aboard a ship from New York. A past associate of Professor Fell…and I see from your face that you know the name. This particular man wished to use me to return to the good graces of the professor. Things developed as they did.” His eyes had darkened. “Praeteritum est praeteritum.”
“Hold on just one damned high-wigged minute!” said Keen, in what was nearly a bleat. “I’m seein’ that Lord Puffery is a woman? And I’m hearin’ that you killed one of Fell’s people? Holy Hell, Matthew! What have you dragged me into?”
“Real life,” came the answer. “A far cry from the fiction of the Pin. Please put that gun down,” he said to the lady of the house. “And now that the introductions have been made on this side, may I ask your true name?”
The woman’s calm had not diminished. The gun did drop a few inches, but wasn’t completely harmless at that angle. “Firstly,” she said, addressing Keen, “if you go out into the world and shout from the highest rooftops that Lord Puffery is indeed a woman, you’ll find yourself laughed at from here to Land’s End. Quite simply, no one will believe you. Who but a crude and crass vulgarian of the male breed would smear upon good stationery such nuggets of scandal and malice?” Her cool, pale green eyes in the full-cheeked and matronly face turned upon Matthew. “Secondly, I know of the Herrald Agency and I do know the name of the individual you’ve mentioned, and for that reason both myself and my pistol request that you leave this office, never to return.”
“Has the kitchen suddenly become too hot?” Matthew asked. “Odd, for one who has flamed up so many tinderboxes and touched off so many fires.”
“Get out.” She cocked the pistol. “I won’t tell you again.”
Matthew knew she meant business, but he dared the moment. With an effort, he kept his voice light as he said, “I’m not going anywhere, Lady Puffery, until you tell me who Albion is.”
“What? Are you mad? How should I know?”
“He’s been to this office and sold a story to you through Mr. Luther. Do you keep records of the names of persons who sell you these tales?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, then. What is the name you have for the person who sold you the tale of my being released by Albion from that prison coach? There’s a detail in the story that only Albion would know…one I’m sure you have exaggerated in your smearing of good stationery. A single dagger became two…your invention, correct?”
“The more is always the better,” she said.
“As I suspected. Really, madam…please uncock the pistol and put it away.”
At that moment a knock sounded on the door. Luther’s tremulous voice asked, “Are you all right, Mrs. Rutledge?”
“A moment,” she replied, because she hadn’t yet decided.
“It’s the truth,” Matthew prompted. “Albion was here. You have his name in your book.” Book of lies, he almost said, but he didn’t wish to help her pull the trigger.
He waited.
“Yes, Samuel,” the woman answered at last. “I’m all right.”
“Do you…need me to—”
“I need you to bring me the payment book, at once.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and moved away.
Mrs. Rutledge carefully uncocked the pistol. She put it down upon the desktop, but within easy reach. “Matthew Corbett,” she said, as if fully seeing him for the first time. “You’ve killed an associate of Professor F
ell? I’d say you’re the one who’s touched off a fire.”
“He’s not the first of them I’ve had to…shall we say…condemn with rough justice.”
“Oh sweet Jesus!” For all his swaggering toughness, Keen was melting. He took a staggered step and got himself in the chair before the woman’s desk. “Killed more’n one? Matthew, you’re a harder case than I thought…but you ain’t toyin’ with tykes, gonna take their jacks and waddle on home.” He gave Matthew a suffering look. “Even weaker’n they were, them mashers play for keeps!”
“Believe me, I know.”
“I’d want to stay far, far away from ’em. Hell, just knowin’ you puts me in the same bloody soup!”
“Esther Rutledge,” Lady Puffery said.
Keen ceased his quailing.
“My name,” she said, speaking to Matthew. She tilted her chin up. “You do understand that I am running a business here, and a business sometimes runs on—”
“Lies?”
“The low road,” she continued, with no change of her solemn expression. “Ah, here’s our book.” Luther had knocked at the door again. “Come in,” she instructed.
Luther entered with a book bound between covers of a suitable flammatory red. The pages, Matthew saw as Luther passed the volume to Mrs. Rutledge, were marked off in lines and columns, with dates at the top. From the looks of it, there was no lack of items for the Pin to pursue. It occurred to Matthew, as the woman put the book in front of her and her finger found the proper line, that the Pin was misnamed; instead of puncturing gaudily-colored soap bubbles, it created them, only in this instance soap was not the material that came to mind.
“Here,” said Lady Puffery, tapping the line. “The story about Albion attacking the coach and the two guards. We paid a crown and two shillings for it. To—”
Matthew leaned forward to see.
“Joshua Oakley is the name,” she announced. Her gaze came up. “He’s Albion?”
“Josh Oakley?” Keen looked as if he might be strangling, and sounded worse. “That’s a nutter’s nightmare! Josh Oakley ain’t Albion! Hell, Josh is long dead!”
“You know this individual?” Lady Puffery asked, again with steady calm.
“I knew a Josh Oakley! Can’t be the same one! He’s bones and worms by now!”
“That’s the name in the book.”
“And the name I was given,” said Luther, who had put a distance between himself and the Monster of Plymouth. “I remember the young man quite well.”
Matthew felt as if his head was swimming. Who was Joshua Oakley? Oh yes! He recalled the name. The member of the Broodies who had been so crazed by the White Velvet that he’d leaped from a third-floor window and been brained by a horse in the street below.
“Im-fuckin’-possible!” Keen was on his feet, craning to look at the name. “At least that can’t be the Josh Oakley I knew!”
“I daresay,” retorted Lady Puffery, “that there are several Joshua Oakleys in London and the environs.”
“Wait, wait,” said Matthew in an attempt to steady the chaos in his own brain. “Mr. Luther, can you describe this man?”
“I can. He was young, well-dressed, of slender build, and had light-colored hair.”
“Not much to go on. Anything that stood out about him?”
Luther shrugged. “He seemed quite ordinary. A gentleman, he was. Soft-spoken. Oh…he wore spectacles with square lenses.”
That touched a chord with Matthew. The description of the spectacles with square lenses. Of course that was not out of the ordinary, but who had he seen lately who wore such a pair?
“I’m sorry,” Luther said. “That’s all I have. He attested that he was a cousin to one of the guards involved, and so had been given the tale first-hand. I paid the young man his coin, thanked him for coming in, and he left.” Luther’s head seemed to shrink a bit into his shoulders. “Please understand, we are…um…how shall I put this…?”
“We are not sticklers here for absolute truth,” Lady Puffery chimed in. “We did send a messenger boy to the constable’s office to verify the fact that this event occurred, with a letter requesting the verification on behalf of the citizens of London, but the boy was rudely thrown out. That was an answer of sorts. Thus I took the raw material of what we’d been given and worked it into—”
“Dough?” Matthew interrupted.
The woman pushed the book aside and leaned back in her chair. She regarded Matthew with hooded eyes, and for the first time he noted the lines of pain in her face. They seemed to have risen to the surface of the skin all at once. “How little you must know of the baser instincts of human beings,” she said. “Either that, or you delude yourself.”
“I do understand the baser instincts, madam, but I don’t wish to enrich myself by stroking them.”
“I’ll have you know,” said Luther, who had decided to play a shining Lancelot in spite of the presence of these two dingy ruffians, “that Mrs. Rutledge does not enrich herself on earnings from the Pin! Quite the contrary! After business expenses and costs of living are met, every shilling goes to feed the poor and aid the hospitals! You being from Whitechapel, you should know there’s a hospital on Cable Street that serves the poor and can’t survive without financial help! There’s another one within a few blocks of here! And others a’plenty, I can tell you! Without the money from the Pin, they’d likely—”
“Samuel,” the woman said quietly. “Cease and desist. It’s not as if we keep all those institutions afloat just by ourselves.”
“Well, it’s almost so!”
“Hush,” she told him, but gently.
Matthew nodded, having been given a new view in this light of illumination. “Pardon me. I understand you have altruistic motives, but…I am very curious as to how a woman of your obviously clean character has chosen to play in the grime of the streets.”
She didn’t answer for a moment. Her gaze seemed to be fixed on a faraway distance.
Then she took a long breath and said, “There could be no cleaner character than my husband. A printer by trade. An honest man. Honest to a fault. Crushed by creditors, and squeezed by costs. Like any business it is a demanding competition for customers. Zachary died early…too early. After his passing I at first wanted to sell, but Samuel insisted I try my hand at the reins of this ungainly horse. We couldn’t keep up with the other printshops, who were well-established and dropping their prices to drive competitors out of business. We were at the bitter end of our rope. One night, it came to me: why wait for business? Why not produce it? I thought…what is it that the common man of London would pay five pence a sheet for? I was thinking of volume sales even then. But what was it, that would find itself in demand by the masses?”
She lapsed into silent memory, and Matthew allowed her to linger there.
“I decided,” she continued after her repose, “that what every man and woman wishes is to feel equal to, if not superior than, the most notable lords and ladies of the moment. Thus I began a news sheet relying on stories of the absurd habits and peccadillos of those individuals, their spending sprees, their spats in public and in private—if I could get the information—and anything else that would make them appear more…well…common. We almost instantly began selling out, and so we soon went to a twice-weekly schedule. Of course at that rate, even though London is a vast cocoon of tawdry moths dreaming they are butterflies, news of the wealthy and infamous began to be more difficult to procure. Oh, we had our share of threats and broken windows. A fire was started here once, but Samuel lives upstairs and he was able to douse the flames before any real damage was done.”
She offered Matthew a wistful smile. “It was not my intention to become a factory of exaggerations and—often—outright lies, but our readers demand more and more. Whatever I might concoct sends thousands of copies of the Pin sailing off into eager hands. Perhaps I’m doing my part at helping people learn to read. At least…I tell myself that. We have outlasted a score of competitors. The names of
Lord Puffery and the Pin carry considerable weight. Would I do this again, in the same way?” It took her only a few seconds to answer her own question.
“Yes. I think of my Zachary laboring as he did. I think of the creditors hounding us, day and night. I think of how it was when the rent was due and our daughter and her family were offering money they did not have to keep us out of the house of poverty. Then I write a stirring or sordid tale that may or may not be based upon fact, and I sit back in this chair, Mr. Corbett, and in the vile but sometimes accurate expression of the street, I say to all those who live in their ivory castles, hide behind their false masks of civility and bare their fangs at Lord Puffery’s Pin and the citizens who read it…fuck you.”
There was a stretch of silence before Luther nervously cleared his throat. “And to add that the poor and the hospitals are very generously aided.”
“Zachary died in a public hospital,” the woman said. “The wealthy here take everything, even down to the proper equipment and doctors for themselves. The hospitals particularly are in need.” She waved away any more talk of what the Pin was doing for the public. Her gaze had sharpened again, and Matthew could tell that something else was on her mind. “Samuel,” she said, “fetch the document.”
“Yes ma’am.” He was gone at her command.
“We received an interesting document in an envelope sometime last night or early this morning. Slipped under the door,” she explained. “I wish you to see it.”
“Coalblack,” said Matthew, as it came to him to bring this up.
“Pardon?”
“The African strongman at the Almsworth Circus. Do you know anything more about him?”
“That he was found drifting at sea, that he is huge, has a tattooed face, cannot speak as his tongue has been cut out, and that he draws quite an audience every night. I myself haven’t seen him. Why?”
“I think I might know him.”
“Lord Steppin’ Lightly!” said Keen. “Do you know the flippin’ queen?”
“I’ve had occasion to meet one.”