Grimm's School for the Erratically Gifted: Chapter 16

Jail — among the many other horrors it bestows on its victims in an effort to punish, rehabilitate, or segregate — is the perfect place to think. Edmund became acutely aware of this fact remarkably quickly, if for no other reason than he had nothing else to do.

In an odd way, it was strangely liberating: he had no school-work, could not attend classes, and was free from needing to read or write letters to his landed kin. He couldn’t leave to see Leeta, couldn’t explore, couldn’t do anything. He was free only to think, unfettered by societal obligation.

In a far more practical, fitting, and accurate way, it was everything Edmund had ever feared come true.

He had wanted to be adopted because the Orphanage had come to feel like a jail. During his first night as a Moulde, he had felt the walls closing in on him like a jail. He had tried to flee when Ung had locked him in his room like a criminal. He had been trapped in the Moulde Family tomb like a jail.

He had failed. In less than an hour, he had gone from a honored member of the upper-class to a common criminal.¹ Any number of respectable sanctions would have been surmountable; a forced volunteership, a solicited donation, even the worst offenses of the upper class could be appropriately absolved through a stern letter of censure.

But Edmund had not been given the respect of such just punishments. He had been locked away in a commoner’s jail, the walls a pale stone, the door a stark iron. But for his thin foot slipping through the smallest shackles they had, Edmund would have been clapped in chains and left to rot, alone.

Not completely alone, of course; Edmund always had his thoughts to keep him company. His first hour had been consumed with the appropriate thoughts for any unjustly imprisoned person; whether to place their faith that freedom will soon return once the judicial system realizes its mistake, or to bend their efforts to escape. These thoughts did not last long; one was just as bad as the other. Whether he remained stationary or broke free, his reputation as a common criminal would be solidified. He was trapped less by the walls themselves, than by the impropriety of it all.

Edmund’s head sunk into his hands. He didn’t even have his notebook to write in. The poetry of the situation was singing to him, filling his head with words and phrases and sensations, crowding out all other thoughts, and he couldn’t exorcise them onto paper. They were trapped in him, in a kind of living death; not alive enough to impact the world, not dead enough to remain silent.

They were every inch the prisoners that Edmund was.

“Food.”

Edmund looked up as the cell door opened, and a tall constable held out a tin bowl of simple broth and a piece of stale bread. Edmund accepted the humble fare, though he had little appetite, and returned to his seat to eat.

One sip was enough to drag a deep yearning for Moulde Hall from his stomach. He wanted to eat Mrs. Kippling’s watery soups and hear the pinging from the boiling tea in Matron’s teapot. He wanted Ung to appear from nowhere, and the black rain of Brackenburg to coat the windows like a spring frost. He wanted to see Matron again. He wanted to go home.

“So, ready to tell us your real name?”

“Edmund Moulde.”

“Ah, sticking to your story, eh?” The constable folded his arms and blew through his mustache. “Got a visitor for you.”

Edmund didn’t bother to look up as the hard shoes and soft swish of an evening cloak sidled next to the bars. Had he not been so consumed with self-pity, he might have known who it was before they spoke.

“Well, well, well,” the thin voice of Lord Brocklehurst drifted through the cell.

In spite of himself, Edmund looked up in surprise. For all the time Edmund had spent with Lord Brocklehurst during the balls and soirees of the Teapot Coterie, he had never studied the man’s baring. He was not particularly tall, nor particularly thin. His dress was befitting one of the upper-class, complete with cane and top-hat. His singular distinguishing feature was a pearl monocle gripped in his left eye.

What was he doing here?

The answer came quickly. The Brocklehursts were connected to the Moulde family thorough multiple marriages and blood-relatives. They were as much a part of the Moulde family as the Éire Isle were a part of Britannia.² They were just as shamed by Edmund’s actions as anyone. Obviously, Lord Brocklehurst had come to reprimand Edmund.

He had already begun to craft a suitable apology, full of regret for the situation while completely lacking any acceptance of responsibility, when a small smile spread across Lord Brocklehurst’s face. “I should be angry,” he said, tugging at his gloves. “Instead, I find myself relieved. Had I but known you would throw yourself into prison, I would have spared myself my efforts.”

Edmund, for all the trouble he was in, was still a Moulde, and as such it was but the work of a moment for the truth to out itself.

“You poisoned my tea,” Edmund said, less an accusation and more a statement of fact.

“I did nothing of the sort,” Lord Brocklehurst bristled. “I hired someone to poison your tea.” He paused. “Well, first it was to spy on you and your lessons, and such. Poison came later. Inspired, I thought it was, what?”

“Childish,” Edmund said, “and ultimately ineffective.”

“Oh?” Lord Brocklehurst sniffed, and glanced around once more. “And yet, here you are. A public disgrace to the Moulde Family. I admit I was playing a long game; I had thought to insure your downfall before your time at Grimm’s had ended, and yet you managed to ruin yourself before your first year was out!”

“You worked with the Downstreeters.”

“Work?” Lord Brocklehurst sneered. “I would never work with anyone! I hired some vagabond in the street for a shilling. Promised him more if he could bring me proof of a scandal. Kept me in the know for several months before he stopped meeting me all-together — typical of the common rabble; no sense of duty or responsibility. He probably got distracted by dice-tables or whiskey.”

Or a sound thrashing by Jolly, Edmund thought.

“But here you are, nonetheless,” Lord Brocklehurst spread his arms. “And here I am, to see you. Now all I need do is write a letter and send it to Matron Moulde. She will learn of her heir’s folly, and so will the rest of the Moulde family after a few more letters! You will be disgraced, despised, and discounted. You will be nothing! A mistake! An unfortunate and foolish mistake!”

A mistake?

“And what will you be?” Edmund asked.

“Satisfied.” The man continued his rant. “You will be finally and justly punished for taking Tunansia’s place in line for the Matronage!”

Edmund blinked. What did Tunansia have to do with any of this?

“Typical Moulde behavior,” Lord Brocklehurst continued. “Never thinking how your actions might ruin the carefully laid plans of others. Never stopped to consider that our grand-daughter was all set to marry Tunansia Charter’s second cousin, and when she finally was chosen to succeed Matron Moulde, our family would have been prepared to ascend! We would have been on the cusp of the Moulde Family title once and for all!”

Edmund had, in fact, not thought about this, but with little else to do at the moment, he devoted himself to some quick heraldic figuring. After re-checking his work, he looked up at Lord Brocklehurst. “You would have been thirty-fifth in line to the Moulde Estate, instead of forty-sixth.”

“And we were so close,” Lord Brocklehurst hissed, “until that barmy bat of a Matron went and adopted.” After spitting the word, Lord Brocklehurst’s sneer was one of disgust instead of rage. “She went and elevated a…a…we don’t even know what you are. High-born? Low-born? Who is to say? They all thought your orphaness was something to be applauded. All of them, the Teapot Coterie, they all thought you were amusing. Tantalizing. Intriguing. Well, I saw you for what you really are, what? You’re nothing more than a charlatan, a pretender, an unknown! Mark my words, boy, you are not a Moulde. You will never be a Moulde!”

Never be a Moulde.

How can one explain what happened inside Edmund’s head to someone who has never been Heir to one of the Nine Founding Families of Brackenburg? How much harder to explain what happened to someone who has never been Edmund.

With a sniff, the man waved his gloves in the air like a shrug. “No matter. It’s done, now. I will take my leave of you, Master Moulde, and with the stroke of a pen I shall sever your life more cleanly than if it had been an axe to your neck.” Slipping his gloves back on, Lord Brocklehurst gave a mocking nod of his head. “Good day, I should think?”

“Not for you.”

Lord Brocklehurst froze for a moment. Edmund’s voice had changed. It was not the same stoic tones of a boy going through the motions of life, ticking the boxes and behaving as he had been taught. It was still calm, but now the steady tones were the still waters that hid unseen monsters. A freezing lake of horrible and inexorable danger.

But Lord Brocklehurst was not one of the gentry who could easily accept such tones coming from a child of twelve, and so he shook off his sudden apprehension, and laughed. “Oh indeed? And what sort of threat do you think can change what is about to happen?”

“No threat,” Edmund slowly stood from where he sat. “You have simply forgotten something.” It was so simple.

“And what might that be?”

“That I was arrested and put in a commoner’s jail for impersonating Edmund Moulde.”

“What? Ha! I assure you, I have not forgotten that.”

Edmund took a step towards the bars that separated them. “Then you must have forgotten that the Moulde Family is one of the Nine Founding Families of Brackenburg, and no proper Moulde would be caught dead in a commoner’s jail.”

“I…have not forgotten that either.” For some reason, Lord Brocklehurst was suddenly aware of how thin the bars were.

“Then what you have forgotten,” Edmund took one more step, “is that I am Edmund Moulde.”

Lord Brocklehurst, in spite of himself, took a step back.

“I…I must write Matron Moulde,” he struggled to regain control.

“Do so,” Edmund didn’t move. “You will be arrested for slander, because I am not in a commoner’s jail; no Moulde could be. Or perhaps you will be thrown into an asylum, because I have not been arrested for impersonating myself; I am me.”

To his credit,³ Lord Brocklehurst’s will remained strong enough to gasp out: “But…but you have been arrested. You are here.”

“Who will believe you?” Edmund’s gaze was like a sword. “And when I get out, I will still be Matron’s heir and someday Patron Moulde. I will have all the duties, powers, and influence of the Moulde Estate. When that happens,” Edmund clasped his hands in front of him. “Do you want me to be angry with you?”

---

In the depths of Edmund’s mind, deeper than he could hear at the moment, a tiny voice made note that someday he would be able to send people like Lord Brocklehurst running with a look, instead of wasting so much effort speaking.

But that day would come later. Now, where mere moments ago Edmund had been sedate and despondent, he paced his cell like a tiger, his brain sorting through the world like a clerk at his desk, pulling in idea after idea, tossing facts and figures around like a whirlwind circling around the quiet eye, the central fact that he would never compromise on: He was Edmund Moulde.

He was Heir to the Moulde Estate, and savior of the Moulde Family. If he hadn’t stepped up to solve the problems, who would have? Who was better suited to fixing everything than he?

It was everyone else that was the problem. Yes, that made perfect sense. If everyone knew what Edmund knew they wouldn’t stand in his way. They’d let him fix everything, make the Moulde Family strong again, solve the problems of society, and everything would be better for it.

If a scandal was anything that challenged how things ought to be, then the real scandal was everyone ignoring Edmund.

Lord Brocklehurst had left quite quickly, his face a ruddy hue. Edmund did not expect much more trouble from him, and rightly so. Even if he did call Edmund’s bluff and risk his wrath, a good deal of the landed gentry simply wouldn’t believe him. Even the other Teapots would more likely believe that, after speaking with the Mayor, someone else had been arrested for impersonating him. Not he himself.

This would, of course, been more believable if he hadn’t been in jail at the moment, but that was a minor problem compared to the rest of the world that swirled around Edmund’s head.

Lord Dashington had killed twenty-seven women, all infected with Syphilis. The last one, Miss Pinfort, had been his guest at the soiree at his home. She had certainly seemed…eager, and that suggested that Lord Dashington was infecting these women only to kill them when the disease started to manifest.

Then, the Ripper would find the body and dissect it with all the skill and knowledge of a surgeon from the 1700s.

Lord Dashington had also killed Professor Babbages, Edmund was certain, dooming Grimm’s to die as an institution of learning, but why? Had Babbages learned something Dashington wanted to keep hidden?

Or had the target been Grimm’s itself? Leeta and Fairly had been digging up bodies in the graveyard and applying their new forensic sciences. Perhaps the spy Lord Brocklehurst had hired let something slip, and the gossip had made its way to Lord Dashington. Perhaps killing Babbages had been his way to ensure no one ever dug up the secret he had tried to bury with his victims.

And that would have all been bad enough, but now Grimm’s was in danger of becoming illegal on the face of it: if the Mayor passed the law banning science — a law that had been written by Jolly Snagsby of all people and passed off as Edmund’s own — Grimm’s School for the Erratically Gifted would be destroyed forever.

“Can I get you anything?”

Edmund turned to the cell-door. The constable stood in the doorway, his face placid.

“I would like to be released.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. Quite an honor, my jail holding a Moulde. Thought you lot went in for the higher quality jails than my little hole.”

“I wasn’t planning on visiting.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, but I saw the evidence. Two different letters, two different hands, two different signatures. One came with a card. Quite posh, that, coming with a card.”

Edmund bit back his sharp reply. The art of sending letters was far to complex to go into. It had taken him almost a year to understand the intricacies, and the constable might not listen long enough to understand that no true Moulde would ever send a card with a letter, especially when contacting a Mayor.

“I am Edmund Moulde. Someone else impostered me first.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” The constable shrugged, “but I recognize the look, you see. I’ve seen those eyes of yours before, and they’re the eyes of someone who knows how to take care of themselves. Someone not used to maids and butlers, you see.”

It was true, but largely because the size of Moulde Hall meant that Ung and Mrs. Kippling were constantly running about doing their own chores. Edmund had to do quite a lot of things for himself.

The constable stared a moment longer. “You have anything you want to tell me?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

Edmund ran through the thoughts in his head. No, there was nothing. Well, except for Lord Dashington, of course, but why would he tell the constable about that? What could he do? If the police arrested Lord Dashington, the judge would throw out the case. Or the Mayor would intercede. Or the evidence would be dismissed as illegal. Anything to avoid a scandal.

What even was a scandal? Edmund had heard the word countless times in his life as a Moulde, and he had thought it was little more than a synonym for crime; but it wasn’t. If his working with Leeta had taught him anything it was that crimes weren’t always scandalous, and scandals weren’t always crimes. Kolb traveling in the African continent had been a scandal. No, a scandal wasn’t a crime per se, it was…

…Anything that conflicted with how things were supposed to be. It was an attack, an assault, on established norms and mores. A Scandal was anything that had to be hidden, lest people start to wonder if how things had always been actually hadn’t been that way at all.

“Oi?”

Edmund opened his eyes. “I’m sorry?”

“I said you sure you don’t want to tell me anything?”

Edmund took a breath. What did he have to lose?

“The person who killed all of the Ripper’s victims was Lord Dashington. He’s trying to keep a secret, and all of those women knew about it.” Edmund thought a moment. “And there will be more.”

“Oh?” The constable blinked. “The Ripper’s Lord Dashington?”

“No, he’s just a killer. The Ripper didn’t kill anyone, they only performed autopsies after finding the victims in the streets. They’re a doctor.”

“They’re always doctors, aren’t they,” The constable shook his head. “I suppose you think we should hunt them down, eh? Arrest them?”

“Isn’t that your job?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” the constable sighed, “I suppose in a sort of way, it is, but, in another way, it sort of…isn’t.”

“You haven’t been hunting the Ripper?” Edmund was shocked. The Teapots had made it sound like the lack of action on the police’s part had been thoroughly improper.

“Just not done, is it? You don’t arrest doctors, do you. They don’t even wash their hands, they’re so clean. Besides, doctors save so many lives…if one wants to kill a few, well, I guess we’re still coming out ahead, aren’t we?”

Edmund had never heard a clearer and more reasonable statement from an officer of the law, and wouldn’t again for many years.

“How did you know it was a doctor?”

“It’s always a doctor, cutting and sewing people back up. Who else does that?” The constable cocked his head. “How do you know?”

“I’ve been working with the Raven Resurrectionist.”

“Oh yes? What they do is against the law, you know.”

“I know. It’s still important.”

The constable nodded slowly, running his finger over his mustache in what passed for thought. After a moment of careful consideration, he shrugged.

“Well, I don’t know about that, I just keep the peace, and make sure everyone follows the law.”

“You don’t know about a lot, do you?”

“I’ll tell you what I know. I know that the last seven times I’ve had that Resurrectionist gel in my cell, she’s told me things. Things I don’t know how she knows. I thought she was a killer, several times; I mean, how else could she know all those facts? But she explained it to me, and well, I don’t know how she does it, but I do know that I’ve caught more than twenty blokes who thought they’d escape the noose, thanks to her.”

Edmund and the constable locked gazes for a moment, and Edmund couldn’t help but feel like he was being tested, somehow.

“You say you’re the real Moulde, eh?”

Edmund nodded.

“Yeah, well, I don’t know about that.” The constable crossed his arms and leaned his back against the doorway. “What I know is, you look like the crafty type. You are crafty, aren’t you?”

“I try to be.”

“Got light fingers too, I’ll bet. Could pick a pocket if you tried.”

The constable was saying something. Edmund sat up straighter. “I’ve never tried.” He considered it unwise to mention his skills at picking locks, as he didn’t want to risk the constable asking for a demonstration when his bent-key was lay broken and useless.

“I bet you could,” the constable slowly turned, pointedly positioning his back towards the cell. “I bet you could lift anything, if you tried.”

Edmund looked at the constable, standing there with his back towards him, and understood. When the deed was done, the constable turned back and gave a genteel nod.

Edmund nodded as the constable left, and stared at the key in his hand. If he hadn’t broken his bent-key on Tunansia’s locked chest, he could have left without the constable’s clandestine help. If he hadn’t expected the Mayor would be a simple pawn in his chess game, he wouldn’t have been arrested in the first place. Every step he took, every move he made only seemed to be making everything worse. If he hadn’t intervened…

If he hadn’t intervened, then Grimm’s would have closed at the end of the year, and Lord Dashington would continue his wave of murders. No, Edmund couldn’t let himself fall down that path of thought.

But it had been difficult, hadn’t it? Everything he did hadn’t quite turned out the way he had wanted it. Some day, when he had the chance, he would sit down and chart out the entire story of his first year at Grimm’s and work out all the occasions where he went wrong.⁴

He closed his hand around the key. At least one constable knew he was better suited to life outside the bars of jail than in. If only he had more allies like that; people in high places who knew how to work for Edmund, instead of against him.

No, he stopped himself, that was the old way of being a Moulde. The Mouldes had existed for a long time with people working for them, and it had ended with the family in the same precarious position it was in now.

Grimm’s had tried to force him to work alone, but he had learned more through the Dilettante Trust and working with Leeta than he ever had working alone. He needed to work with people.

First thing first, Edmund needed to get out of the cell. Then, he could run to Grimm’s and speak with Headmaster Lynch, to tell him what was about to happen. Then he could speak with Lady Tinbottom…

Could he? Would Lady Tinbottom listen to Edmund if he accused Lord Dashington of murder? Or would she ignore him as the Mayor had, resolved that whatever Lord Dashington’s actions, punishing him would be improper?

It was all getting so messy, Edmund thought as he slipped through the cell door.

---