The Penny Dreadful Curse

The

Penny Dreadful

Curse

ANNA LORD

Book Three

Watson & The Countess

Series

Copyright © 2015 by Anna Lord

Melbourne, Australia

All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical
means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or
reviews—without written permission.

The characters and events portrayed in
this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to
real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by
the author.

Mr Corbie
extinguished the gasolier and sat in the quiet dark among the dusty
shelves. He closed his eyes and took in the smell of old leather
and ancient oak. For forty years he had loved that smell more than
anything. But lately a new smell had started to creep into the shop
- the smell of mould, rising damp and woodworm. Death, decay and
rot. He opened his eyes once more and gazed despairingly at the
day’s takings – fifteen pence. Not even enough to pay the
fishmonger. Magwitch was nothing but fur and bones, curled up most
of the time in his favourite spot on the windowsill where the last
dregs of crepuscular light filtered in and solaced him. Mr Corbie
had named each of his cats after a fictional character. There had
been Scheherazade the fluffy Persian, Mephistopheles the sleek
black with sharp claws and Count Vronsky the randy tomcat. All were
now buried in the back yard amongst the dust bins.

Wearily, he
swept the fifteen pennies and a swathe of dust into the top drawer
of his desk and stared glumly out of the window. It was a lovely
bow window, uncommonly large with diamond panes of leaded glass
that once sparkled like jewels. He had always been proud of that
window. His eyes drifted upward to the sign creaking in the current
of air that always blew down the Shambles at this time of the
evening: Ye Olde Bookshoppe: Antiquarian books and literary works.
Beautiful gold lettering. Elizabethan font. It had cost a pretty
penny. Paid for in the days when people still purchased books of
quality.

Unable to
bring himself to turn and look at the shelving looming behind him,
he slumped forlornly onto bony elbows, closed his eyes and tried
not to picture the rows and rows of worthless penny dreadfuls.
Execrable rubbish made of cheap paper that smelled like pulped
vegetables stewed in bilgewater. Mawkish prose. Horrid titles.
Hideous pen and ink drawings dashed off in a frenzy of demented
scribbling by some talentless madman. Ridiculous authors – Ryder
Saxon, Dick Lancelot, Conan le Coq! They were noms de plume,
surely? No one in their right mind would own up to writing such
drivel!

Lady
Rutherwood had sent her personal maid to buy fifteen dreadfuls
today. He could remember the days when Lady Rutherwood would come
in personally and purchase a first edition of
Wuthering
Heights
and
Sense and Sensibility
and
Les
Miserables
, and they would
tête a tête
over their
favourite Bronte and share quotes worth remembering. And Lord
Rutherwood would order Gibbon’s
The History of the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire
and Plato’s
Republic
and a
first edition of
Ivanhoe
by Sir Walter Scott. Last Tuesday
he had sent his valet to buy ten dreadfuls.

Now it was
Varney the Vampire
and
Jack Black the Highwayman
and
Ghosthunter
! That last came with an exclamation mark!
Ridiculous! They were not even worth the cheap paper they were
printed on! Ten pence was the entire taking for last week. How was
a bookseller supposed to survive on that?

His head fell
into his hands as the tears welled up. They blurred the gaslight
burning in the front parlour of the opposite establishment: Ye Olde
Mousehole Inne. He laughed mirthlessly, a ghost of a laugh, the
sort that featured with monotonous regularity in
Ghosthunter
!

Poor Mr
Hiboux, owner of the Mousehole, should have extinguished his
gasolier to save his pennies, as he had done. No one would be
checking into the old inn this late in the day. It never attracted
the better class of tourists who sauntered down the cobbled lane
gawping slack-jawed at the higgledy-piggledy medieval dwellings
that had survived from Queen Bess to Queen Victoria. In fact, it
rarely attracted any tourists at all. The Mousehole was almost
beyond repair and the three overhanging floors, each one hanging
more than the one below, looked like they were about to topple over
onto the heads of hapless passers-by any moment. Besides, if any
potential guest did get past the crooked front door, then the
gloomy parlour with its dark linen-fold panelling and rickety old
stairs would have been enough to send them scurrying elsewhere.

The wind
picked up and the sign above the bow window creaked like an
organ-grinder’s music box as it swung to and fro on rusty hinges.
Once upon a time the bookshop had been called The Bibliophile but
the Quakers and zealots who resided hereabouts mistook if for a
bible shop. Do you have
The New King James Bible
or the
latest
Book of Psalms
with illuminated capitals? The name
was changed to Le Libraire de Jorvik. But the philistines and
cretins mistook it for a library. Oh, I didn’t realize I would have
to pay for taking out a book! So, he had borrowed a page from Mr
Hiboux’ tome on survival in the age of post-enlightenment and
changed the name to Ye Olde Bookshoppe. And how he detested the
ungrammatical spelling that was a throwback to a darker Age! But
pragmatism reigned. He told himself it was a nod and a wink to
living in a place of medieval origin and bowed to the necessity of
changing with the times even if it meant going backwards.

The Shambles
was originally called Fleshammels, meaning flesh-shelves, where
butchers displayed their wares. The stench must have been raw in
summer and thick with flies. The word shambles once meant
slaughterhouse, but today most people took it to mean a mess. He
could remember the days when there were twenty-five butcher’s shops
with huge carcasses hanging from meat-hooks outside each of the
shops. Massive, they were, pinkish and marbled with fat; not at all
gruesome but rather lovely. As a lad, he had touched one once out
of curiosity. He expected it to feel wet and slimy but it felt cold
and dry and lifeless. Another disappointment. There were only three
butchers left now. Mr Chevaline sold horsemeat which was popular
because it was more marrowy than beef and made a better stew. Mr
Fielding still made his own pork sausages stuffed with all the
pig’s slithery bits and some secret ingredient which everyone said
was sawdust. Mrs Lozere sold cervelle, tripoux, and poutelle –
calf’s brains, sheep’s belly and pig’s trotters. Foodstuffs always
sounded better in French. It was a throwback to the Norman
invasion. Amongst the timber-framed shops was tucked a little
shrine to Saint Margaret Clitheroe who had been married to a
butcher and was horribly tortured for being a Catholic at a time
when such things were dangerous. No one stopped to pay their
respects anymore except Miss Titmarsh. She left a bunch of flowers
every Saint’s day.

Large iron
meat-hooks still hung outside most of the shops, even though they
no longer displayed pinkish carcasses. Another thing they no longer
did was throw gizzards and innards into the wide gutter that ran
down the centre of the street. It was actually called a runnel, a
brilliant word that explained itself rather well. They no longer
poured animal blood down the runnel either. His grandmother slipped
on some pig’s blood once and ruined her Sunday best. That really
was a shambles. There was a meat-hook outside his bookshop, one
outside the Mousehole Inne, and another outside the door of Ye Olde
Minster Teashoppe owned by Miss Titmarsh, though she had a jolly
basket of flowers hanging from her hook which overflowed with
violets and pansies and hyacinths, depending on the season.

Miss Titmarsh
closed her door at precisely four o’clock, cleaned the downstairs
shop and went upstairs where a paraffin lamp burned long into the
night. He sometimes wondered what the spinster did during those
long lonely hours. He pictured her embroidering tablecloths and
napkins and crocheting doilies for her shop. She kept it spotless,
though it was a bit tired looking with smoke-stained etchings of
York Minster that she had picked up cheaply at a church jumble sale
once. Hence, the unimaginative misguided name because it was
nowhere near the Minster. The teashop opened its door at precisely
a quarter to eleven in the morning in time for elevenses, served a
light lunch and was popular for afternoon tea. Miss Titmarsh rose
early and baked all the scones and cakes and biscuits herself, and
the dainty fish paste sandwiches were always fresh. Occasionally
she brought some leftovers over to him. He rather hoped she might
do the same this evening. But the lamp had been lit upstairs more
than an hour ago, indicating she had settled for the night by the
little coal fire in her bedroom and her nimble fingers would be
toiling industriously.

Five narrow
lanes dissected the Shambles. They were called Snickelways. Now,
there was another good word. They didn’t make words like that
anymore. He never used a Snickelway after dark. Speak of the devil!
Someone came from out of a Snickelway and began walking briskly
down the runnel, negotiating the uneven cobbles with balletic
poise. Oh - more angel than devil! He recognised the lithe, light
step of Miss Carterett, the school mistress from the old Quaker
school in Northbrick Lane. The Quakers no longer ran the school but
the name had stuck long after they sailed on the Mayflower to more
salubrious climes. Lately he had begun wishing he had sailed with
them. On Monday and Wednesday evenings Miss Carterett went to the
Minerva Home for Fallen Women and taught the girls to read,
donating her schoolmarm services gratis to those who had managed to
get themselves pregnant. Most of them were nothing more than
prostitutes, some as young as twelve. Some things never changed. He
used to donate damaged books to the Minerva but he could no longer
afford to do so. He re-glued them and re-stitched them kept them on
the shelves.

The Minerva
was the brainchild of York’s most celebrated author, Mr Charles
Dicksen, a philanthropist who could afford to buy all the books he
wanted for his pet project. He could even afford to pay Miss
Carterett for her time if he chose to do so. Mr Dicksen used to
come into the shop at regular intervals to browse the shelves and
buy a French novel or two by Maupassant or Voltaire or Balzac, but
he hadn’t been in for years - too busy now with readings and tours
and fame and such. The bookshop featured all of his books in a
prominent place on the shelves at eye level and Mr Corbie had read
them all more than once.
Bleak Hall
was his favourite, but
he also liked
Great Infatuations
and
The Mystery of
Edward Drudge
, though the ending of that one always left him
befuddled, as if it had been left deliberately unfinished. Everyone
said it was very clever. Mr Dicksen was often described as a man of
genius. He decided it must be wonderful in some mystifying way and
reread it.

Miss Carterett
gave a discrete wave as she hurried past and he mustered a smile
and managed a wobbly nod of his head that probably made him look
like a drunken puppet in a Punch and Judy show. She was an
attractive young woman with a clear complexion, pale green eyes,
nose in proportion to her face and a generous sweep of shiny auburn
hair that she kept neatly coiffed; not yet twenty-three years of
age. She would need to find a suitable suitor soon or risk being
left on the shelf like poor Miss Titmarsh who was nearer forty and
had no hope of matrimony, as plump and round as one of her scones,
and just as plain without the sweetness of jam and cream, a simple
creature with dull brown hair that was always secured in a snood, a
hair accessory that went out centuries ago, though it probably
suited ye olde image and kept her crinkly tresses out of her
baking. It wouldn’t do to find a stray crinkly in one’s scone or
teacup.

Oh, this was
interesting and a little unprecedented for a nippy autumn evening
in November when all the tourists had scuttled back to their warm
lodgings ahead of the pickpockets and prostitutes loitering in the
Snickelways.

Four people by
the looks of things - almost a crowd! A man and a woman followed by
two servants, carting portmanteaux and hatboxes. The man was stocky
and unprepossessing. He had a ramrod back and a soldierly gait
indicating he had seen military service. One shoulder drooped more
than the other and he carried one arm stiffly as if that shoulder
or arm had suffered an injury and had lost its natural swing, most
likely in India or Afghanistan, the main theatres of war for The
Empire before they decided to give the Zulus a thumping. He was
wearing a tweed suit under a woollen coat that he left unbuttoned,
and carrying a walking cane. The crooked lane twisted round and
they began walking directly towards the bow window now and he could
see that the woman was in fact a lady dressed in a chic travelling
costume that nipped her waist and flared out at the hem, swishing
as she put one foot in front of the other, more balletic than even
Miss Carterett. She had a leopard skin Paletot draped over her
shoulders and carried an umbrella rather jauntily. The servants
looked like Bolshevik provocateurs. Surely not in the Shambles!