Le Gentilhomme Aimant Sans Pitié - Lockwood x Lucy

Stubborn Always Wins the Fights

"Le Gentilhomme Aimant Sans Pitié"

Lockwood x Lucy

Lockwood and Co. Series

Summary: What happened with La Belle Dame Sans Merci, but reverse.

Sequel: Maybe we could, you know, finish this interview?

————Lockwood————

I found myself in an excellent mood the next morning. Last night had been stressing, going over to the cemetery with Lucy and talking about my family...it wasn't something I had thought over, but I felt somehow better now.

Today we were going to Tufnell's Theatre at five to take a look around the place, talk with the people who've seen the ghost and destroy it. First though, I had to go to Mullet's to pick up my new rapier and some other supplies, iron fillings for example. There is nothing like the smell of fresh iron and silver before a case.

But before all that, we gathered to listen to George's findings, like we did before every case, of course.

"Little comment on the Marissa subject before we start" George said "I went to Hardimann Library yesterday to follow a lead I got when researching the beginning of the Problem, I'll let you know more when I find something juicy"

"I thought Hardimann Library was off limits?" Holly asked. Oh yeah, thanks to DEPRAC's new regulations, some libraries were restricted sections. They said they wanted to prevent ghost-cults from reaching invaluable information but we knew it was to discourage eager researchers like George.

"Depends on how you look at it" George said "Strictly speaking no one who doesn't have a permit shouldn't go there, but the curator's a friend of mine. However, I was mostly in the Archives looking at anything I could find about the Palace Theatre, and, let me tell you, how successful I was there..." He took out his enormous notebook and opened it, revealing it to be full of incomprehensible writings and post-its of all colors. He took out a folded paper, showing us a theatrical flyer like the one Mr Tufnell showed us yesterday, with the same man on the front making another herculean pose with the words 'The Hangman's Daughter' beside him.

"So you found more about our handsome ghost?"

"His real name would be a good start" Lucy commented.

"Its written right here" I said, taking a closer look to the flyer "It says 'Featuring our most sinister star, Victor Evanoff'. Hm. Seems he was Russian"

"Or Polish" George said "But Victor Evanoff was only his stage name. His real name was Desmond Fowkes. He was first heard of at the end an end-of-the-pier show in Eastbourne a hundred years ago. Five years later he was packing with audiences at the Palace Theatre in Stratford. Tufnell was right; he was a big star during his days, and all thanks to his acts that consisted of pretty much the same things: romance, glamour and the threat of a violent death. Which pretty much summed his off-stage life too"

"Mr Tufnell said he was a wicked man" Holly spoke up "Said he wrapped women around his little finger, or at least that was the implication"

"Which was very much accurate" George continued "The best papers of back then are full of stories about him and the many rich married and single women that fell in love with him, all the husbands he'd wronged- some men even attacked him on the street. He never stayed long with his lovers, though, always discarded them like food wrappers. It was rumored that more than one woman committed suicide due to one-way love for him, leaving their kids orphaned, in the care of their husbands or the help, even in the streets. And when he'd hear about this things he'd only laugh and said it was 'life imitating art', since all his performances were basically like that"