Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels) (8 page)

Two men wearing black half-capes over their evening clothes emerged from the brougham, one tall and slim and elegant, the other a bit shorter and stocky, with hunched shoulders and small eyes that shifted constantly about as though looking for hidden dangers behind every lamppost. They paused to don masks: the slim man a half-mask of pressed gold with black eyebrows and a pencil-thin black mustache champlevé that covered eyes and nose but left the mouth visible, and the stocky man a black puffy-faced half-mask that covered the nose but left off at the mouth and the brown beard below it.

A third man, enfolded in a great dark blue cape with a blue muffler wrapped around his face and a squat top hat pulled low over his eyes, dropped off the brougham and settled for a long wait outside the château walls. The brougham pulled away.

Passing through the wrought-iron gate, the two masked men crossed to the heavy oaken door of the château and knocked. A small square opening appeared in the door and an eye peered out, and the tall man dangled his talisman by its gold chain in front of the eye and giggled. “Cybele,” he whispered in a high, piercing whisper, and giggled again.

The door swung open, and a large man, dark hued and imposing of girth, dressed in breeches and tunic of red and gold brocade and wearing a gold turban, bowed and bade them welcome. Not quite suppressing a final giggle, the tall man tucked his talisman back under his shirt and advanced into the marble-tiled entrance way, followed closely by his companion. A cloakroom was just inside the door on the right, and behind its counter a comely young girl, unclothed except for a man’s bow tie and a cummerbund, stood ready to receive their capes. The tall man passed his over with an elegant sweeping gesture and then handed the girl a white pasteboard on which had been hand-printed the word
PECCAVI.
The card was promptly put through a slot in a locked cherrywood box. Each member picked his own private word, which identified him for mundane financial purposes, and only Master Paternoster possessed the book that coupled the member with his chosen word.

Beyond the entrance was an ebon, gold, and ivory hallway, the ebony polished to a gleaming shine, lighted by a row of small gold gas lamps set along the left-hand wall, inches from the ivory ceiling. A gaily colored fresco along the ceiling depicted scenes of the sort found on Greek vases of the classical period. The vases on which these sorts of scenes were found were kept in the private rooms of museums, for viewing by serious scholars only.

There were eight rooms along the hallway, each decorated in a different style. The first on the right was a re-creation of chambers in the seraglio of an Eastern potentate, or at least what a well-read European might imagine such chambers to look like. It had red and green silk drapes descending from the ceiling at seemingly random intervals; the floor was covered with an oversized Isfahan carpet, on which round leather-covered ottomans were scattered with a casual hand. A smattering of habitués were lounging about talking softly and accepting an occasional glass of champagne, hock, madeira, or absinthe from one of the girls in their frilly white chemises, or one of several young lads clad in the uniforms of some of Britain’s better public schools.

On the left was the library: easy chairs with conveniently placed lamps, desks at which to write or read, racks with current newspapers and magazines, and dark cherrywood bookshelves, ceiling high, filled with books bound in buckram, leather, linen, and silk. Books on history, religion, and natural philosophy filled the shelves, along with classical authors and a smattering of fiction, but the great majority of the works fell into that class known variously as erotica, exotica, and French. There were the works of Ovid, Catullus, Sappho, Boccaccio, Petronius, Mlle. de Sapay, Chevalier Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and the Marquis de Sade. An unbound copy of the rare first edition of Burton’s
Kama Shastra, or the Hindoo Art of Love
was in a closed case, but a dozen leather-bound copies of the later, expanded
Kama Sutra
sat on the shelves. There were multiple copies of
The Misfortunes of Virtue, Venus in Furs,
and
The Secret Manual of the House of Jade.
There were books on rough paper with flimsy covers and titles like
Six Months of Sodom
,
A Man and a Maid
,
The Naughty Schoolgirl
,
What Miss Flaybum Remembers,
and
The Book of Bad Boys.
On the shelves holding artwork there were erotic paintings, etchings, and prints covering a span of many centuries, and a fine assortment of penny postcards that could not conceivably have been sent through the mails.

One of the housemen, dressed all in black and wearing a domino mask, stood in the hall, and the tall man beckoned to him and murmured a few words in his ear. The houseman nodded and turned. “Follow me, please,” he said.

The houseman led the tall man and his companion past the delights of these two rooms and the next two, whose doors were closed, and turned in at the third room on the left. It resembled a boys’ locker room, with several rows of lockers and between them wooden benches at which the boys could change. Around the walls of the faux locker room were red and black leather couches, where the adults could sit and watch the boys at play. There were a dozen or so barely pubescent boys in the room, sporting about with towels or wrestling in a friendly manner, as boys will. Particularly if the boys have received instruction in just what sort of sporting about will please such older men as are pleased at the sight of young lads sporting about. The houseman saw his two charges in and bowed briefly to them, and then left the room, closing the door behind him.

Five men rested on various of the encircling couches, watching the young lads as they flicked each other’s bottoms with towels and scampered about. Several of the men were smiling, savoring their memories and expectations. Several were staring intently, as though there were mystical secrets to be discerned in the flashing limbs and heaving torsos of the wrestling youths.

The tall man sprawled his angular body on a couch and regarded the youths with interest. His companion sat primly next to him, hands laced together, face—what could be seen of it below the mask—devoid of expression. His posture suggested a blending of vigilance and detachment.

After a time the tall man rose and beckoned to one of the lads, seemingly at random. “You,” he said. “Come!” He turned around and pulled open the door, leaving the room without a backward glance, and the boy followed. The second man pushed himself slightly back on the couch, but otherwise remained where he was, motionless and unsmiling.

The tall man climbed the wide staircase to the floor above and nodded at Natyana, who sat in a heavily brocaded chair at the head of the stairs. She looked at him and his boy companion and returned the nod. “Room six is empty and freshly made up,” she said. “To the left.”

He nodded again and winked and giggled a brief giggle, then, taking the lad by the hand, crossed to the room and entered, closing the door gently behind him.

The hall porter, a skinny, wiry old man with a wandering eye, a twisted lip, and a freshly starched white jacket, emerged from a closet behind Natyana and stared with his good eye at the closing door. “
Peccavi,
that gent calls hisself.” he observed. “I wonder which of our high-and-mighty clientele he would be when he’s at home. Quite a toff, but there’s sommat strange about him.”

Natyana shrugged. “There’s something strange about all our clients,” she said. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“I do my noticing elsewhere,” the porter told her.

After a short while sounds of squealing, laughing, giggling, thumping, whipping, and high-pitched screaming could be heard faintly through the well-insulated walls of the room. No more than could be expected, given the nature of the establishment. Sometime later all sounds ceased.

Some forty minutes or so after he had entered the room, the tall man opened the door and exited, closing it behind him. Nodding to Natyana and giggling a final giggle, he went down the stairs, bouncing slightly from step to step as though unable to contain whatever emotion it was that he felt. His companion joined him almost immediately and, retrieving their cloaks with wide smiles and a more than appropriate
pourboire,
they left the premises.

It was some time before it occurred to Natyana that the lad had not emerged from the room. She crossed the hall and knocked sharply on the door to rouse him. “No shillying or shallying,” she called. “The night isn’t over. Come on out, Istefan.” Hearing no response, she opened the door.

A sharp intake of breath, and then her hand flew to her mouth.
“Lyi tann!”

“Pardon?” The hall porter looked up from the pastry that he had produced from one of the many pockets of his white jacket.

Natyana used the door to hold herself up. “It’s … There’s been … Don’t look, there’s no reason for you to look. I think you’d better gather the staff, and see if you can locate Master Paternoster.”

The porter put the tartlet aside, pushed himself to his feet, and joined Natyana at the door. He glanced into the room and then, with a sharp intake of breath, took two steps farther in and peered at the object on the floor. Then he turned away and put his hand to his mouth. “Cor blimey!”

“I told you not to look,” Natyana said.

“I wish I hadn’t,” he agreed. “Is he—no, never mind the question—’course he is. What are we going to do?”

Down the hall a door opened and a fat man with puffy gray side whiskers and a red nose trotted out with his arms around the shoulders of a short, very blond young girl in a red camisole. She had her arms as far as they would go around his middle, clutching on to his tattersall waistcoat front and back, and was staring up at his face. “Oh my!” he said, perhaps to the girl, perhaps to himself. “Oh, but certainly that was invigorating. Give and take, I always say. Yes indeed, give and take.” He trotted toward Natyana, the girl shuffling along with him, and before Natyana thought of closing the door to conceal the horror inside, the fat man was nodding cheerfully to her and pausing to look into the room.

He froze in midstride and his mouth dropped open.

The girl turned her head to see what her cull was staring at. At the back of the room the nude body of a young boy was spread out on the red and tan Baluchi carpet, his chest and stomach splayed open, his various internal organs placed carefully around him like offerings to an obscene god. The pools of blood surrounding him had not yet begun to dry.

For a second the scene seemed not to register; then her eyes widened and the color drained from her face. Slowly, and with a sort of innocent grace, she fell unconscious to the floor.

The man screamed. Not a full-throated scream, but a sort of loud, hysterical gargle. It was enough, it would suffice.

The remaining nine rooms on the floor were soundproofed, so no one within heard anything amiss. However, there were three men on the stairs who came rushing up at the sound.

By this time Natyana had regained control, gently but firmly closed the offending door, and taken the fat man by the hand. “There’s been a horrible accident,” she told him. “We must call the police. Perhaps it would be wise for you to leave before they arrive, don’t you think? I’ll attend to the girl.”

The three men from the stairs came tumbling over to them. “An accident,” Natyana repeated to them. “This gentleman will tell you all about it. He’s had a bad fright. You might want to help him downstairs.” She paused, then went on, “It is probably a good idea for all of our guests to vacate, to go home now.”

“What happened?” one of the men demanded.

“Beyond what this gentleman can tell you,” Natyana replied, “you’d best not know. Downstairs, please.”

The three men exchanged glances and, finding no better course of action, turned and headed back downstairs, taking the fat man with them, leaving the fainting girl lying in the corridor.

“What now, do you suppose?” asked the porter.

“Pick up the poor girl—it’s Agnes, isn’t it?—and lay her on the divan by the stairs.”

“Yes. Of course.” The porter complied, laying the girl down gently with a cushion under her head, and smoothed what there was of her clothes.

“Now,” Natyana said, “I imagine, we must have any remaining guests leave. P’raps you should alert the rest of the staff and see to it.”

“What are we going to tell them?”

Natyana considered. “Trouble with the pipes should do it. Although I fancy they’ll hear otherwise soon enough.”

The porter nodded and then asked, “Why’d you tell those three that the fat gent would tell them all about it?”

“Because he was going to anyhow,” she said. “No way to stop him.”

“Ah!”

“You’d best get Master Paternoster up here. I’d go myself, but I had better stand cové over this door.”

The porter shook his head. “Five years I’ve been here, and never nothing like this. Nothing remotely like this. What are we going to do?”

“Considering that most of our members will know about this before they leave, I fancy we have little choice in the matter.”

“You ain’t really nohow going to call the rozzers, are you? We ain’t calling in no rozzers, are we?”

“Master Paternoster must decide, but—I don’t see any way around it. Luckily there are a couple of select, ah, rozzers that we can call. Gentlemen who spend time here in a private capacity, although they spend their days at Scotland Yard. They may be willing to help us in our time of need, but our members had better be long gone before they arrive.”

[CHAPTER SEVEN]

RELEASE

When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,

The mother of months in meadow or plain

Fills the shadows and windy places

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.

—ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

THEY CAME FOR MORIARTY AT FIVE IN THE MORNING,
tramping down the narrow passage, two men in mufti with the unmistakable ramrod-stiff comport of army officers. Jacobs the warder led the way, huffing, coughing, wheezing, and stomping. The sound of their coming awoke Moriarty, and he sat up and pushed the rough brown blanket aside.