Jeffrey Tiffen Smythe & Lady Fiona Fiziwiggs(The Continentals)

It’s Victoria-era England, and cane-wielding JEFFREY TIFFEN SMYTHE and his partner, the gender-bending, swash-buckling and wise-cracking LADY FIONA FIZIWIGG, don’t consider themselves private eyes. Or not really.

But maybe they are. It’s just that they have only one client, albeit a very special one. They’re working on the sly as personal investigators for Queen Victoria herself.

The story goes that Her Majesty, in the wake of the notorious Jack the Ripper murders, commissioned several ”agents,“ each an expert in criminology and law enforcement, who were dubbed ”Continental Operatives.“ These agents were were charged with working independently of official law enforcement channels, answering only to the Queen herself.

Uh-huh…

Smythe is a bit of a dandy, a sardonic aristocrat from a politically and socially well-connected clan living in the city of Mansfordshire. He carries a cane and walks with a slight limp, due to an old injury obtained while on a secret mission. Mind you, that cane is equipped with a sword, grappling hook, and cable, and he has other canes for more “special occasions.” Various canes can function as a spear gun, a poison dart gun;  a Bo staff or a rifle, and the assorted handles can include everything from ninja throwing stars to a derringer. Meanwhile, his ever-present bowler is straight out of Ian Fleming’s Bond villain Odd Job in Goldfinger—when activated, several small curved blades extend from the brim of the hat.

Handy, that.

Lady Fiona, meanwhile, came from the small Welsh fishing village of Swansea, the only girl in a “brood of brothers,” where she decided at an early age that “nothing much was expected of me in life. That society extended certain advantages to men that weren’t extended to we women. So, I decided then and there to become a man. Until it suited me otherwise, of course…” And so Fiona dresses as a man, and has no qualms about kicking ass.

My only question?

Where did the title “Lady” come from. The wise-cracking Fiona’s family were fish cleaners.