“’Ere now.” Mr. Grizzlehurst thrust his face into mine, jowls swinging like pendulums. “True enough Mr. Buckle hasphyxiated down at the granary, but you’ve habsconded from school by your own hadfession. Now I’m to suffer the keeping o’ you?”
Clarke bristled, and I pressed her toe with my boot.
“You write up murders for a living,” I reminded him. “Well, I’ve read the Newgate Calendar back to front, and I’ve been educated by the renowned Mr. Vesalius Munt. I know you didn’t believe me, but it’s true. I offer stylistic improvements and new material in exchange for room and board.”
“’Eavens above us, hexisely what manner of improvements are you a-thinking of?” Mr. Grizzlehurst growled. “My customers dote on my turn o’ phrase.”
“Think what fields we could expand into together!” I coaxed. “Gallows ballads, last confessions!”
“They live upstairs and will work for breakfast,” Mrs. Grizzlehurst said.
Hugh Grizzlehurst slammed a fist upon the table, still vigorous despite his bowed back and drooping face. “Why them? We’ve money enough for the room to be hempty a few nights.”
“They live upstairs,” Bertha Grizzlehurst insisted, though her face paled to match the lobster flesh peeking from the shells.
“I’ve no need o’ hassistance when it comes to my broadsides! My broadsides is known ’ither and yon and every street betwixt!”
“I don’t think positivical is a word,” Clarke observed.
“Can you prove positivically that it hain’t?” he shouted in high dudgeon.
“No,” I hastily owned, “but wouldn’t it be better to employ words which actually exist?”
“Hexistence nothing.” He regarded me with an outraged eye. “You lot will hexplicate how Mr. Vesalius Munt came to have his neck spitted like a guinea fowl, and then—”
“The room can’t be empty!”
The shriek—high but thin, like the feral cry of a shrew—rendered all three of us mute. Following this decree, Mrs. Grizzlehurst, three plates balanced on her left arm and a fourth in her right hand, set the meal upon the table.
When finished, she sat and stared at her husband; a silence of grotesque dimensions ensued.
“We’ll sup first,” Mr. Grizzlehurst said contritely, “and then—then, mind—we can talk about halternatives.”
Clarke and I ate as Mr. Grizzlehurst slurped from a lobster shell; Mrs. Grizzlehurst only gazed at her plate, relief softening her ratlike features. After supper had ended, I jotted down an account of Mr. Munt’s murder, prudently leaving out my guilt whilst doubling the gore. I did not need to ask whether it would suit; it was a mingling of my memory and imagination, and as such was criminally engaging.
Hugh Grizzlehurst read my work, snorting in approval.
“I decide which crimes deserve hadvertisement,” he admonished.
“Of course.”
“You get not a cent—just lodgings, that’s hessential.”
“Absolutely.”
“And what’ll she do, then?” he demanded, pointing at Clarke.
“Teach music lessons,” Clarke said dreamily. “All we must do is find a piano, and I shall partner with the owner quick as thinking.”
“Well,” said Mr. Grizzlehurst. He regarded his spouse as if struck by sudden melancholy. “They live upstairs, then, it’s settled.”
Smiling, Mrs. Grizzlehurst cleared the plates and uttered not another word that day . . . nor the day after that, nor the day after that, which ought to have set off plentiful warning bells in my ears and did not, more’s the pity for everyone involved.
? ? ?
Clarke set out to partner with a pianist upon the morrow. A week later, having failed in many attempts, she disappeared one morning and sent me into a hair-tearing panic—wondering whether she had met with misadventure, wondering whether she had tired of me. She materialised ten minutes after supper ended (which Mrs. Grizzlehurst always served us whether we had paid her the extra fourpence or not) with three shillings, which she pressed into my palm.
“I stood upon the street corner, practicing, before meeting with Mr. Jones, but I needn’t bother over using his piano.” Her smile engulfed her pretty face despite the small scale of her lips. “I always thought I had a knack for music, though Miss Lilyvale’s praise wasn’t precisely encouraging.”
“You made this much warming up your voice?” I stared stupidly at my hand.
“Imagine what I’ll earn when I’m doing it on purpose,” she concluded, skipping upstairs to wash.
Thus Clarke settled into an unlikely occupation as a street singer, trilling “Cherry Ripe” and “Poor Old Mam” whilst I penned atrocities; had we not been educated at Lowan Bridge School, learning daily despite our sorrows, I shudder to picture what would have become of us. She was even happy, I think, warbling like a strangely technical songbird, whilst I took heinous tales from my employer and translated them to actual English, with sufficient spilt viscera to please everyone.