The Twelfth Night Murder (15 page)

Bizarre as it all was, this was an oddly familiar tableau. Suzanne had once been accustomed to such scenes, and realized the only difference between this and the brothel she’d lived in years before was that she was the only woman here and the brothel had been scrubbed a bit more thoroughly. The girls at Maddie’s had dressed as bizarrely as these men, and some had been as young as the youngest boys in this room. Never having lived anywhere but London, she didn’t know what life might be like in the countryside, but here in the city, where anything at all could be found for sale, men liked their whores young, pliant, and relatively risk-free for disease. She didn’t like it, but there was no denying this deplorable scene was nothing new.

Her guide was asking after Master Higgins, and the man who had answered the door considered the request. He said, “You know he don’t like visitors.”

“Right, he don’t. But this here mistress has got some young ones. The oldest is nine. Not all girls, neither.”

The other man looked at Suzanne, who gave a nod and a smile. Her son was well old enough to take care of himself, and so she was perfectly willing to give up children that didn’t exist. He said, “Very well. Come with me.” He turned to make his way toward a spiral stairwell, and she followed. Her guide tried to follow also, but the other man told him to go home.

Suzanne said, “How will I find my way back to the Haymarket?”

“Not to worry,” he said, and declined to elaborate. But as her guide left the building and the man in the dress proceeded up the stairs, she decided there was little choice but to go along and hope to work out the rest of it later.

The room at the top of the stairs was less well lit than below. A single hearth threw light into the room, but there were no candles about, so leaping shadows, like dark, crazed doppelgangers of the room’s occupants, covered the far walls and ceiling. A man lounged on a chaise in the middle of the room, half covered by a sheer silk drape, and attended by a young man. The older one wore an elaborate wig of masculine style, long enough for its curls to drape over his bare, shaved chest. The silk covered only his private parts, giving Suzanne the impression it had been drawn over him hastily on hearing footsteps on the stairs. His expression was of irritation and impatience. The young attendant standing behind the chaise appeared dressed as Adam. He wore nothing but a large leaf that may or may not have been from a fig tree, attached to his privates with a string. He had no wig, and his thick black hair was carefully and artfully arranged to appear wild and uncombed. The arrangement was so precise, the sides swept back and the top tumbled forward over one eye, it must have taken hours to achieve. He stood with his arms crossed, his eyes narrowed as he waited to return to whatever he’d been up to.

“What is it, then?” said the testy man on the chaise. He tugged at the silk to be sure it covered enough but not too much. Apparently part of his dignity was to flaunt himself exactly as he pleased. No more, no less.

“Business, my lord.” The man in the dress gave a deep curtsey, then he bounced to his feet in ludicrous imitation of a young girl. The floor trembled with his weight.

“What sort of business?”

“This woman’s got a daughter she says she don’t need.”

Suzanne said, “You’re Mordecai Higgins?”

He sat up and put his bare feet on the floor. “I am. Who sent you?” His gaze fluttered over the man’s garb beneath her cloak, and he seemed terribly interested in it.

Suzanne wasn’t likely to bring Little Wally’s name to this man, and no longer needed the fiction of a daughter for sale, so she pulled a nearby chair close to the chaise and perched on its edge. She leaned close to say, “I don’t really have a daughter, Master Higgins. My name is Suzanne Thornton, and I’m here to learn the fate of Lord Paul Worthington, who was killed some several days ago.” All in now, and heart pounding, she awaited his reply and watched his face closely for any indication she needed to flee. She probably wouldn’t even make it to the stairs in that eventuality, but she would at least try to escape.

For a long moment there was no reading Higgins’s face. He stared at her with an utterly blank expression, and she readied herself to be ejected from the room. Or taken and murdered like Lord Paul, but she hoped she was right about him. She had a sense that this man was not a murderer. Not, at least, the murderer of a young boy who had been worth a tidy sum of money to him.

Finally he made a delicate and utterly graceful gesture to his attendant, who brought him a pair of velvet breeches and a brocade jacket, both of a rich burgundy color that was nearly black in the dim light. Higgins also gave a smooth, insouciant dismissal to the man in the dress, who obediently disappeared down the stairwell. He donned the breeches and jacket, every movement as artful as dance, then sat back down on the chaise and crossed his legs. To his attendant he said, “Be a good boy and bring us some wine.” Adam went to comply, moving as smoothly as a fine lady. Higgins leaned forward to speak to Suzanne in a soft, low voice. “I ask again, how did you find me here?”

A lie came to mind, but as she spoke it she realized the lie could very well be true. “A musician friend of mine saw a man fitting your description at the Goat and Boar the night Lord Paul was murdered. He described a handsome, elegant man who moved like a cat. He said the man was not a client, and that the boy knew him and liked him. I asked around about a harlot’s attendant who manages boys, and your name quite naturally rose to the top.”

“I have a reputation among ordinary folk?”

“I’m hardly ordinary, Master Higgins. I am a tart myself, of long history, and move quite freely among those who know you. I assure you, your name came quite easily to me, and goes no further than myself regarding this matter. Whatever information I might obtain this evening.”

Higgins leaned back again as his young servant came with a tray loaded with wine and glasses and set it on the chaise next to his master. He poured, and handed a glass each to Higgins and Suzanne. Then he left again via the spiral stairs. One deep draught, and Higgins said, “I miss him.”

Suzanne wasn’t certain whom he meant, then realized. “Lord Paul.”

“He was a joy. A delight to have about.”

“His mother felt the same way.”

“She didn’t deserve him. He was miserable in that house, with those horrible, despicable parents. He belonged with us.”

“To be exploited?”

“He earned his keep. Just as, I expect, you did in your earlier life.”

“I was quite a bit older when I made my choice to leave my father’s house.” Her
error
. She’d spent many long years regretting her blunder in rejecting a proper marriage in favor of bearing the child of a man who was not in a position to support her. But that was then and was far removed from the subject at hand. She continued, “How did you find that boy, in theory protected by his parents? How did you separate him from his home?”

“Rescue him, you mean. I rescued poor Paul, and separated him from parents who beat him and ridiculed him, and who then exiled him from that home.”

“It couldn’t have been so bad.”

Higgins leaned forward again, and placed his hands on his knees to thrust his chin at her. “You think you know so much? You think you know how it is for a boy to be a stranger in his father’s house for being too much like a girl?”

“I know what it’s like to be beaten and otherwise ignored for not being born male.”

That gave Higgins some pause, and he considered her words. “Perhaps, then, you can understand why Lord Paul was unhappy at home.”

“You think he was happy with you?”

“I know he was. Just as you must have been happier in a brothel than with someone who beat you.”

“I must say I’m far better off now, free to make my own decisions, than I ever was in the custody of another, man or woman. But that’s neither here nor there. You were seen with Lord Paul that night before he was killed. You were in the Goat and Boar.”

“I was.”

Suzanne’s heart leapt with hope at this lucky news. “What was your conversation with Paul that night? Tell me what happened.”

“Naught but an accounting of what money he’d taken in and whether it would be worth his while to return to that public house in future. ’Twas his first time there. We wished to learn what money could be had from the ordinary folk in Bank Side.”

“Why was he selling himself as a girl? Surely there’s more money to be made from men who would have him and know he was a boy.”

“More money from each man, ’tis true. But far more risk. Well enough for a select clientele, but when such men are not readily available or not plentiful enough there is far easier money to be made in an ordinary public house filled with ordinary men who don’t look so closely at the women they buy. Very quick, very lucrative, very low risk. And then there is that Paul enjoyed the thrill of fooling them all, as if it were a contest. He loved being thought a real girl, and I think fantasized that he actually was one. He adored the chase, and relished the attention he received from men who fancied themselves the conqueror. He often laughed about it. That boy was very good at it, you know. He was more feminine than most whores who are actually women.”

“I know. I saw him before he was killed. It took a sharp, sober eye to tell he was false.”

“And what did you think when you saw what he was?”

“It amused me. A male friend of mine had his arm around him, and when I saw my friend was wooing a boy I thought it funny.”

“You laughed at your friend.”

“For the same reason you laugh at clients who think they’re with a girl. It’s always funny when someone acts the fool.”

Higgins gazed at her again for a long moment, as if thinking something over. He appeared to be reconsidering his original opinion of her. He said, “Do you have any idea who killed him?”

She shook her head. “Some have pointed a finger at you. I was told you are dangerous.”

He made a disgusted noise and shifted in his seat. “Bah! Fie on anyone who would think I could do that to any of my boys! Or the girls, for that! Each one is a treasure.”

“Each one is worth money.”

“I love them all.”

“That’s not the consensus, unless you mean it in the physical sense. I’m certain you have violated each one personally.”

“They’re precious people because they’re mine, and I let it be known I will protect them with whatever means is at my disposal. I would kill, for a certainty, but never my own! I would personally murder, with my own hands, anyone who so much as threatened someone under my protection.” Anger clenched his teeth and his hands balled up in fists. Suzanne began to believe he did miss Paul, in his own, bizarre sort of way. Even more she saw how much she did not understand about this sort of man. It disoriented her and made the world seem shifty and untrustworthy.

She could see this interview was not having the desired result. She pressed the question that bothered her the most. “Tell me, who brought you Lord Paul? How did you know his situation, and how did you steal him from his parents? I don’t expect it happened that you met him at a dinner party in Westminster and became fast friends.”

“Cawthorne’s coach driver. He’s one of us. A longtime client. He came to me with the story of that poor boy who wished for a refuge from his father and the beatings.”

“The driver, you say? The one who was supposed to take Lord Paul to Kent? Thomas?”

Higgins shrugged and nodded. “I suppose so. His name was Thomas, at least.”

“I’m told he was let go. Do you know where he is now?”

“I’ve no idea where he was supposed to take the boy, and not the slightest notion how he accomplished bringing him here. If you say Paul was sent to Kent, then I cannot dispute that. I knew little about the mechanism by which the boy was taken. I paid for him, of course, and it was a fair penny. But I didn’t care much to know how the thing was done. When Paul arrived, he was not unhappy.”

“How did he seem?”

“Like anyone starting a new life, he was a bit apprehensive. But we all did our best to make him feel welcome, I assure you.”

Suzanne wasn’t certain how to view this statement within context. Having observed the scene downstairs, she thought Higgins’s idea of “welcome” and “not unhappy” might be a shade different from hers. Her imagination presented a wide-eyed and terrified twelve-year-old. In her mind’s eye she saw a trembling child taken from his mother and thrust into a strange world peopled with bizarre creatures who dressed and behaved strangely. However, she had to admit to herself she’d seen Paul that night nearly a week ago and had not had any sense that he was frightened. She said nothing in reply, not knowing what to think. There was something missing in the picture. Something that should have been there but was not, and she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was. “Did he ask the driver to bring him here, or was he coerced?”

“I only know that Thomas told me of him, then the boy appeared at my door and he was put to work within a week.”

“After having been starved and beaten into submission.”

Higgins sat up straight, indignant. “We beat nobody here. We don’t need to. Flies and honey, you know.”

“But it took you a week to bring him around to his new life.”

“There were things he needed to learn. We showed him the ropes.”

“And whips and chains?”

Higgins laughed, as if she’d made a joke, and she supposed it would have been a funny joke at the Goat and Boar, but not so very amusing at the moment.

She continued, an edge of anger to her voice, “Lord Paul is dead. He didn’t need to be. It’s my opinion your actions led to his unnecessary demise. You are largely to blame for the murder, and should be held legally accountable for his abduction.”

“Fortunately for the both of us the crown is unlikely to pursue the matter.”

“Both of us?”

“Had I actually felt threatened by your words, you can be certain I would never let you leave this house alive. However, since I fear nothing from you I will let you go so long as you never return to Haymarket in search of me.”

“You won’t help me find the murderer?”