Gentlemen Formerly Dressed (41 page)

The Bitter Pill, in contrast, was a rundown, underground drinking house too decrepit to even qualify as bohemian. Its clientele were a step down from the men happy to pay for the more erudite spectacle of a naked woman pretending to be a naked statue.

Rowland was neither surprised nor alarmed that Asquith had chosen such an uninviting venue. He had himself taken H.G. Wells to a less than salubrious establishment to ensure they weren't seen. He assumed that Asquith, too, was wary of being noticed.

There was something clandestine and anonymous and forgotten about this part of Soho—the crowds were at the Windmill Theatre and here the few passers-by kept their gazes averted and their business to themselves. In the fog, cloaked in coats and hats, every man became any man, undistinguishable and nameless. It was an apt place to pass secrets.

There were a few patrons at the grimy tables, smoking and drinking cheap wine from thick-walled glasses. They fell silent as Rowland entered, glancing furtively at the gentleman who'd descended into their squalid corner of the world.

Rowland spotted Asquith, who stood to shake his hand.

“There're too many people here,” the civil servant muttered tersely as he fished some coins from the pocket of his long coat and tossed them onto the table, “and if you'll forgive me saying, Sinclair, you stand out.” He glanced around the tawdry premises nervously. “I know somewhere discreet,” he said quietly. “We're going to shake hands and say goodbye. I'll leave; you stay for a drink before you follow. Turn left onto the street at the top of the stairs and keep
walking. I'll be waiting for you at the corner.”

With that he slapped Rowland on the shoulder and walked out. Rowland ordered a gin but, in truth, could not bring himself to take a sip out of the filthy glass. An ageing prostitute came in touting for business and spoke to him for a while. He let her have his drink, gave her a couple of shillings as he declined her services, and took that opportunity to leave.

Stepping thankfully out into the chilly day, Rowland turned up his collar and headed left as he had been instructed. The fog made it difficult to see whether Asquith was waiting for him on the corner as he had promised. With his eyes fixed ahead, he didn't notice the alley much less the men who waited in it. The sack which flew out over his head thrust the world into an immediate, suffocating darkness. A blow to the stomach winded him before he could make a sound and then, the distinctive click of a revolver being cocked and the press of its hard muzzle against his ribs.

R
owland blanched at the first onslaught of light, and gasped air as the sack was removed. The floor was cold, stone. The light produced from a single hanging bulb in a windowless room offered enough illumination to make visible an iron staircase which led down from a closed door well above the floor. It was a cellar of some sort.

Rowland's eyes adjusted and Asquith came into focus. The civil servant was seated on a chair, watching him. Rowland cursed. With Asquith captured, too, there was no one to raise the alarm.

It was only when he noticed the revolver in Asquith's hands that he realised the liaison at The Bitter Pill had been a trap.

“Don't move, Sinclair,” Asquith warned as Rowland attempted to stand. “Theo will be back in a moment and he will be displeased if you've moved.”

“Theo? You don't mean Harcourt? You're working for Harcourt? My God, man, he's the most reprehensible kind of pervert!”

Asquith smiled. A door creaked open at the top of the stairs and Harcourt descended. In one hand he carried several lengths of rope, in the other an Enfield rifle.

Rowland looked at the two men together. He cursed. Why hadn't he seen it before? Side by side their resemblance to each other was unmistakable. Asquith was Diogenes Thistlewaite—the other brother of Euphemia Pierrepont, nee Thistlewaite. And then he remembered, the portraits of the Baronets of Asquith among others at
Arundel House
… the subordinate title after which Diogenes had apparently fashioned his name.

“What do you want, Harcourt?” Rowland demanded.

Lord Harcourt regarded him curiously. “Odd tone for a man in your position to adopt. But then we didn't send our best and brightest to the penal colonies, did we? The breeding stock was arguably inferior in terms of intellect in the first place.”

“At least our sisters were safe,” Rowland spat.

Harcourt laughed. “Your horror is based in ignorance and twisted cultural norms, not science, Sinclair. If you were a man of science you would not be able to deny the argument for concentrating genetic success.”

“Is that why you killed Pierrepont… in some warped act of genetic purification?”

Harcourt's face darkened. “Pierrepont reneged on our arrangement. When he discovered how special Euphemia's child would be, the fool said he would have no part of it. He wanted the
marriage annulled. The closed-minded fool planned to denounce us and to ruin our sister.”

Rowland decided to play his hand, weak as it was. “When this comes out, Harcourt, whatever the scientific justification, your sister will be ruined and her child a pariah. The only way to prevent that is to confess to the murder now.”

“It's not going to come out, Sinclair,” Asquith replied quite casually. “We're going to kill you.”

“You were the last person seen with me, Asquith,” Rowland said, sliding back as the gun was raised in his direction. “They'll work it out.”

“Not in the condition they find your body,” Harcourt said coldly. He trained the rifle on Rowland. “Tie him up, Diogenes,” he instructed his brother. “We've only a few hours till dark.”

Asquith bound Rowland hand and foot, then, dragging him to the base of the iron stairs, they secured him to that too, brutally subduing any resistance with their fists.

Rowland tried to reason with the brothers, but they only laughed as if they were part of some great joke to which Rowland was not privy.

The panic rose in Rowland's chest and with it fury. He swore at Harcourt and Asquith, calling them vile, inbred degenerates among other things less accurate but more profane.

Asquith kicked him until he couldn't speak anymore. Harcourt watched and when his brother was done, put down the rifle, removed Rowland's tie and used that to gag him.

It was quite late in the afternoon before Rowland's companions thought to worry about him. They had returned to find his note, which had promised he would return soon. In the first hours they
simply assumed he was pursuing whatever breakthrough he had made in Allie's case. The sun penetrated the fog and the brightness of the day provided a kind of reassurance. Rowland was, after all, a grown man so they were initially more anxious to know what he had found than where he was.

As they waited they talked of Clyde's discovery that Entwhistle had not, in fact, telephoned the Ministry of Health making Asquith's presence at Watts difficult to explain, unless he'd had some independent knowledge of Pierrepont's murder.

The daylight started to fade. Milton began to pace.

At five o'clock they reread and scrutinised Rowland's note more carefully—as if they could extract more information simply by reading it over and over again.

Milton squinted at the note under the concentrated light of a lamp. “Clyde, do you have on hand one of those art pencils you and Rowly use?”

Clyde tossed him the pencil. Milton placed the note onto the table and rubbed the flat of the lead over it. An impression became visible. Rowland's writing. “The Bitter Pill, Soho.”

“What's that?” Edna asked, peering over the poet's shoulder.

“It's a rubbing of what was written on the page before.” Milton murmured. “This must be where Rowly went.”

“Why would he go to Soho?” Edna asked, already donning her gloves and looking for her hat.

Clyde grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. “Let's go.”

They took a motor taxi to Soho and alighted just outside the dissolute establishment whose name had been inadvertently impressed onto Rowland's note.

If Rowland had turned the odd head when he'd entered the bar, the three of them turned several more. A few drunken men called
out to Edna. Clyde and Milton kept her protectively between them. They spoke to the establishment's dishevelled proprietor, describing Rowland.

The man was vague… he might have seen a tall man with dark hair and blue eyes but he didn't really pay that much attention to the punters. It was the woman who confirmed that Rowland had been there—a middle-aged prostitute who had been moved by the young man's manners, the courtesy with which he had spoken to her.

“That's Rowly,” Milton declared. “He'd be polite to the devil himself!”

Edna swatted the poet as the prostitute reared in affront. “Do you know where he went?” Edna asked after apologising for Milton. “We're quite worried about him.”

The prostitute looked a little sheepish. “I run out after him… I don't run after men, mind you, but the kind gentleman gave me five shillings. I thought he might have expected something fer that, if you know what I mean?” She took them up the stairs to the threshold of The Bitter Pill and pointed up the street. “He walked up there and then he disappeared into that alley. I figured then maybe he'd already arranged something… you know.”

They had started towards the alley before she finished. Edna thanked the woman over her shoulder as she trotted to keep up with the long strides of the men.

Dark and dank, the alley ran behind a number of less prosperous businesses. They searched for any sign that Rowland had been there.

“Clyde, have you a light?” Milton asked, crouching by the rough brick wall of the building on one side of the alleyway.

Clyde flicked open his lighter and held it up to the wall. A fresh white mark—like chalk.

“Ed, could this be plaster?”

Edna nodded. She bit her lip.

“We'd better call Wilfred,” Clyde said grimly.

Rowland tensed as the door creaked open again and the bulb was flicked on. He was almost relieved, though he knew it meant his time had run out. Every muscle ached from the strain of the position in which he'd been secured. His left wrist was rubbed raw with his attempts to get out of the bonds, and against the cold stone floor his body had become chilled to the core.

Asquith and Harcourt ignored him for a while, sitting together companionably and sharing an apple. Asquith peeled the fruit with the gleaming blade of a hunting knife, before cutting segments. They talked of their sister, the progress of her pregnancy and their plans for her child. They discussed genetics, eugenic theories and their own extreme position which, it seemed, they were testing with Euphemia.