Midway through the afternoon, Reverend Calthorp appeared, his pink cheeks aflame with virtuous dismay at the plight of the inhabitants of Lotus House, a handful of religious tracts in his hand. I was all for turning him out, but the girls wanted some sport, and I couldn’t see the harm. He’d get an eyeful of quivering boobies and lewd winks, and be gone before you know it. He settled himself demurely on the horsehair sofa, an arm’s distance from the nearest bint, and drank a cup of tea while he invited us all to attend next Sunday’s morning service.
“What’s the topic of your sermon, Reverend?” I asked. “The Immaculate Conception?”
Lucinda leaned over and slapped his knee. “If you need any help with some of the particulars, I’d be happy to offer my assistance.”
The girls guffawed and Calthorp’s blush ripened into full-fledged embarrassment. Well, what did he expect from a roomful of whores? Polite chitchat about the church fete and missions among the cannibals? Serves him right, the pious little prig. He at least had the grace to smile feebly at Lucinda’s witticism, though you could tell he wasn’t amused.
He sipped his tea perfunctorily and fixed his mild brown eyes on mine. “I’m surprised to find you all so jolly.”
“Jolly?” I asked.
“Yes, considering that one of your fellow ...” He paused. “Er, colleagues has gone missing.”
Until that moment, I’d mostly forgotten the events of the previous day, focused as I was on whipping Molly into shape and dealing with the daily minutiae of running a first-class brothel in an unfriendly business climate. (The damned Contagious Diseases Act had been amended, for the third time, just a few years ago, and it was all I could do to keep my bints from being hauled in, examined for disease and registered as prostitutes. Up until 1859, soldiers and sailors were examined routinely, but in their infinite wisdom the parliamentarians deemed that exercise too humiliating for the poor fellows and decided whores were much less likely to have personal feelings about the subject.) At any rate, I hadn’t given a thought for most of the day to Latham’s missing case or the missing whore. Calthorp’s question brought it all back in a flash.
“To whom are you referring?” I asked, though I knew damned well who he meant.
“Arabella Cloud, of course,” said the padre, sipping his tea and wincing at Mrs. Drinkwater’s version of this most innocent of beverages. “I understand that she is no longer with you.”
“And how did you come by that information?”
Calthorp looked vaguely around the room. “Why, I believe Mary told me, on Sunday afternoon when I visited.”
Mary looked mystified at this revelation; no doubt she’d been hitting the bottle again. Between her and Mrs. Drinkwater, it was beginning to feel like the local at closing time.
“It’s a feature of this vocation, Reverend. Girls come and girls go. Isn’t that right?” I looked around the room for confirmation, and several of my ladies nodded.
“’Tis indeed,” said Lucinda. “The grass is always a shade greener on the other side of the street, so to speak.”
“Still,” said Calthorp, “I’d have thought you might have been concerned about Arabella. Something might have happened to her.”
“And she might be sipping a gin and bitters at the White Hart right now,” I said.
“Yes, but she could be lying injured somewhere or be in some kind of trouble.”
“She’s in trouble with me,” said Mary. “She run off with my new tortoiseshell comb.”
Calthorp looked at me beseechingly, his soft brown eyes glistening with moisture. “I have a premonition that Arabella is in danger and needs your help.”
I laughed. “I think that’s very unlikely, Reverend. Arabella Cloud can take care of herself.”
“Still,” he persisted. “Anything might have happened to her out there on the streets. Have you any idea where she might have gone?”
“None at all. She should never have left if she wanted to stay out of trouble.” I rose briskly. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why Calthorp was so obsessed with Arabella’s whereabouts. Once she’d left Lotus House, she was as good as forgotten, from my point of view. Perhaps she was the proverbial hundredth sheep in Calthorp’s eyes, the other ninety-nine being comfortably ensconced at Lotus House out of harm’s way. In any case, I’d had just about enough of his interference.
“Girls, run along upstairs and make yourselves presentable. We’ll have customers soon.” I extended a hand to the clergyman. “I must take my leave of you, Reverend. I’ve some letters to write. Good day to you.” I swept out of the room, not leaving him a moment to protest.
Mrs. Drinkwater caught me up in the hall, veering down on me like a high-altitude balloon navigated by a shortsighted charts-man. “Oh dear, miss. Something shocking.”
This snared my attention, for after the death of Bowser and Arabella’s flight and the appearance of the mysterious stranger, I shuddered to hear what Mrs. Drinkwater found shocking. But it was only the lack of Cuban cigars, the stock of which had mysteriously vanished from the humidor in the parlor sometime in the wee hours of Monday morning.
“’Twas that vicious little mongrel, Vincent,” Mrs. Drinkwater growled. “He’s no respect for the property of others.” I daresay she was right.
“I’ll walk to the tobacconist’s shop and pick up a supply for the evening,” I said. “It’s not gone five yet. I’ve plenty of time.” I pinned on a hat, selected a fetching little cape, took up my parasol and let myself out the front door.
The lamplighters were at work by then. Dusk had come early tonight, what with the thin drizzle and the nasty yellow brume that seeped into the streets. The gloomy atmosphere reminded me of my last stroll through these streets, when I’d gone in search of Vincent and returned to Lotus House to find someone loitering across the street. I’d no doubt now that the watcher had been the dark stranger who had arranged for Bowser’s body to be found. As I passed the point at which I’d seen the spurt of flame on Sunday night, I peered into the shadows as a precaution and breathed a sigh of relief to find no one there.
An hour ago, the streets had been full of people hurrying home for their tea or on their way to down a pint at the local, but the crowd had dwindled. I passed a fellow traveler occasionally, tilting my chin politely in response to murmured greetings. The tobacconist’s shop was only a few blocks from Lotus House, down a damp and narrow thoroughfare littered with horse droppings, wet straw and the bedraggled remains of the daily papers. I ducked in just as the proprietor was closing, haggled with him over the price of two dozen of his finest, and waited patiently while he wrapped and tied the parcel for me. The lock clicked shut behind me as he closed the door.
I threaded my way through the garbage choking the pavement, fending off the ragged brats who came out of nowhere to request a bit of the ready (polite term for it, really, actually more like being accosted by a group of Apache horse thieves). I used my parasol to rap one across the knuckles and hamstring another, and the whole troupe of little gangsters tore off in search of easier prey, leaving me alone on the deserted street.
A hansom cab turned the corner and rumbled to a halt twenty feet from me. The horse stamped and tossed its head, its harness jingling loudly, and the driver cursed and jerked the reins taut. Two burly men in billycocks and dusters alighted and huddled together on the sidewalk, reading the signs on the shops, scratching their heads and otherwise looking like two gents who’d been told to meet their friend at the Old Contemptibles only, look Bert, there ain’t no such pub anywhere on the street. As I passed, the men lifted their hats in unison; the last time I had seen hands like that was on the lowland gorilla at the Regent’s Park Zoo. I returned their pleasantries, but there was something about them that raised my hackles and made me half turn to look at them over my shoulder after I had passed. It might have been their eyes as they met mine, for theirs were as frigid as the Firth of Forth. Or it might have been those great hairy paws on the brims of their bowlers. Those weren’t the hands of gentlemen of leisure. Whatever it was, I felt an icy arrow along my spine, and I quickened my pace.
But not fast enough. As I brushed past the two, a hand snaked out and caught my sleeve. “Pardon me, miss,” a basso profundo voice muttered in my ear.
I swung away from the man and took a firm grip on my parasol. “Yes?”
“Someone wants to see you.”
“I’m at home every afternoon between two and four,” I said.
The man’s smile could easily have been mistaken for a snarl. “Ain’t you amusin’? Popular with your customers, I’ll bet. Keep’em laughin’ while you skin ’em out of their pants and their money.”
I glared at him. “Obviously you know who I am, but I’ll be damned if I know where we’ve met. I wouldn’t let the likes of you in my house.”
The other fellow laughed. “Oooh, Billy. She’s a fireball, ain’t she?”
I yanked my arm from the man’s grasp. “Unhand me,” I said. I really must stop reading those trashy novels.
I raised my umbrella threateningly, but the action did not have the effect I’d intended, for the two men burst out laughing, squawking like a pair of lunatic parrots.
“You’re a spirited filly,” said the one on the left, and reached out for my arm. It’s astonishing how far the point of a parasol will sink into a man’s groin. It certainly surprised my assailant. He hit the ground like a felled ox, grasping his balls and squeaking urgently.
His companion’s head swung menacingly in my direction. “Here, now. There’s no call for that. You come along quietly now, and there won’t be no trouble.”
I lashed out with my parasol and clobbered him on the left ear, dislodging his billycock and sending it flying. He staggered a few steps, put his hand to his earlobe and stared incredulously at the smear of blood on his fingers. He shook his head like a horned Hereford bull and looked at me reproachfully. “I’m nearly vexed, I am. Now either you settle down and be quick about it, or you’ll force me to take drastic action.”
I pointed the tip of my parasol at him. “Do your best, you bloody baboon.”
Then strong arms encircled me from behind, pinioning my own arms to my sides. I’d forgotten about the driver.
It was a sullen group that occupied the hansom cab. Billy sat with his hands in his lap, bemoaning the decrease in value of the family jewels and pausing only long enough to glare venomously at me. The other fellow’s ear was beginning to resemble a cauliflower, and his collar was rusty with dried blood. We rode in silence. I strained to see out the window, trying to track our progress through the city, but the thug with the damaged ear leaned over and pulled down the shade.
“This is kidnapping,” I said. “I most certainly intend to press charges against you.”
The man fingered his ear gingerly and snorted. “Righto. And we’ll tell the officer we picked you up in the Haymarket and already agreed to a price when you got stroppy.”
There are disadvantages to being a whore, and one of them is that relations with the Metropolitan Police Force are, shall we say, delicate. After that, there was nothing to do but wait and wish that Billy and his friend hadn’t had sausages and beans for lunch.
After half an hour, the cab stopped with a jerk, and the man raised the shade and peered out, nodding in satisfaction. “We’re here, Billy.” The only answer from Billy was an inarticulate groan. The driver jumped down and opened the door, and I was bundled roughly out of the cab and onto the street, before a great pile of grey stone that shimmered wetly in the light from the gas lamps. Before I had a moment to look around and orient myself to my surroundings, the two men each grabbed an elbow tightly (Billy displayed an enthusiasm that brought tears to my eyes) and hustled me inside the building.
Relief swept over me immediately once we were inside. I’ve more than a passing familiarity with most of the stations of the Metropolitan Police Force, and this wasn’t one of them. It looked more like a bank or trading house or government offices. There were no signs of activity about. The place felt as empty as a tomb, an impression that was reinforced by the echo of our footsteps. The floors were a dingy black-and-white tile, worn and scuffed from the tread of many feet, and the narrow hall was dimly lit by electric bulbs. Heavy oak doors, each numbered with a brass plate, opened off the passage, revealing cramped offices. The desks inside were strewn with papers and neat stacks of documents tied with black ribbon.
“I swear I’ve paid my property tax,” I said. “If you gentlemen hadn’t been in such a hurry, I could’ve produced my receipt.”
Billy grunted and dug his fingers into the soft skin just above my elbow. “That’s a regular comedy routine you’ve got there. I wonder why you ain’t on the stage.”
Deep in the bowels of the building, we came upon a marble staircase with a banister of filigreed iron that wound upward into the gloom. We proceeded to climb, the two men lugging me between them like a sack of meal, my boots barely touching the steps. At the top of the stairs we turned down another long hallway, but at the end of this one, a wedge of light could be seen spilling out into the passage from an open doorway, and the distant murmur of voices reached our ears. The sound of our footsteps must have been equally audible to the persons in the room, for a shadow blotted out the light and a split second later a figure appeared in the hallway. With a sinking heart, I recognized my nemesis from Sunday evening.
He was just as aloof and unflappable as I remembered, giving me an appraising eye and the briefest of nods before he stood aside and my escorts ushered me into a long room with a fire blazing briskly in the hearth at the other end. It was a swell’s office, all mahogany paneling, Persian rugs and leather-bound books lining the shelves on either side of the room. The fireplace sported a carved marble mantle and a painting of our Royal Highness, looking particularly lugubrious, as though she’d just learned that the Prince of Wales had been seen sporting with another actress. Two men stood before the fire, crystal glasses in hand, regarding me somberly.