Where Serpents Sleep sscm-4 Read online

  Something of his lack of interest must have shown on his face, because Miss Lil said, “Perhaps you would like to order a bottle of wine to share with the ladies. Get to know them some before making your selection?”

  The three Cyprians stared back at him with the bold assessment of women for whom a man is just another customer, a mark. One, a tall, ebony-skinned woman with a regal neck, smiled at him and said in Jamaican-accented English, “I’m Tasmin.” Beside her, a plump, heavily rouged Impure with the jet-black hair and pale skin of Ireland pursed her lips and blew him a kiss. The third, a dainty gamin with a riot of short flaxen curls, wrinkled her childlike nose and laughed merrily. The impression was one of youthful innocence. But looking into her rainwater gray eyes, Sebastian suspected she was considerably closer to twenty-five than to fifteen.

  “A burgundy would be nice,” said Sebastian.

  Miss Lil nodded to the flaxen-headed Cyprian. “Becky will fetch it.”

  “I’m interested in a woman my friend was telling me about,” said Sebastian, going to settle on one of the striped silk cushions. “A tall, thin woman with light brown hair and green eyes.”

  Becky, who had reappeared bearing a bottle of wine and glasses on a tarnished tray, faltered for one telling instant, her gaze flying to meet the Jamaican’s startled stare.

  “Oh?” said Miss Lil, calmly pouring the wine.

  “I think he said her name was Rose,” Sebastian continued, “although I could have that wrong.” It had occurred to him that the woman might easily have made up a new name to give the Quakers at the Magdalene House. “My friend claims she is charming, with the manners and accent of a duchess.”

  From upstairs came a thump and a woman’s startled scream, quickly cut off. None of the women in the room even turned her head.

  “Your friend must have made the acquaintance of Rose Fletcher,” said the abbess, handing him a glass of wine. Her fingers when they brushed his hand were unnaturally cold, as if the woman never saw the sun. “Unfortunately, Rose is not here this evening. But I think you’ll find Becky an entertaining substitute.”

  Sebastian took a slow sip of the wine. It was surprisingly good. “If I come back tomorrow will Rose be here?”

  Sebastian was aware of the dark-skinned woman, Tasmin, studying him with a fixed expression. But not a breath of emotion showed on the abbess’s carefully made-up face. She stretched her lips into a smile. “I’m afraid Rose has left us. You know how restless some girls are: never content to stay in one place. If Becky doesn’t capture your fancy, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy Tasmin.”

  Sebastian raised his wine to his lips again. “Any idea where Rose might have gone?”

  Miss Lil’s smile stayed plastered across her face. “I’m afraid not.” For one brief instant, the abbess’s steely gaze flickered to the Jamaican. The girl rose gracefully to slip from the room.

  “What a pity. I quite had my heart set on the girl.” Sebastian cast a searching glance around the parlor. “My friend also asked me to give Mr. Kane his regards. Is he here?”

  “Mr. Kane?”

  “That’s right. Mr. Ian Kane.”

  Miss Lil’s pale blue eyes held his. The tension in the room had suddenly become palpable. She set aside her wineglass with a snap. She was no longer smiling. “It seems none of our girls strikes your fancy. I think the time has come for you to leave.”

  Sebastian stretched to his feet. From somewhere overhead came the sound of a door slamming and a woman’s drunken laughter. “Thank you for joining me for a glass of wine,” he said. He dropped a coin on the table to pay for the bottle and inclined his head to the two remaining Cyprians. “Ladies.”

  Outside, Sebastian paused at the top of the house’s steps and let the cool breeze blow away the lingering, suffocating odors of the place. A couple of linkboys darted past, lighting the way for a carriage drawn by a nicely matched team of grays, their torches filling the air with the scent of hot pitch.

  He had learned three things from his visit to the house. That Rose “Jones” had indeed practiced her métier at the Orchard Street Academy. That she had once called herself Rose Fletcher. And that the circumstances surrounding her precipitous departure from the house were of such a nature that the very mention of her name was enough to throw the house’s remaining inhabitants into a state of consternation.

  Idly swinging his walking stick, he descended the steps to the cobbled street. As he turned toward Portman Square, a large, burly man detached himself from the shadowy alley beside the house and walked right up to him.

  “Why ye nosin’ around ’ere, askin’ all them questions?”’ the man demanded, his grizzled face shoved close enough that Sebastian breathed in raw gin fumes. “And what’s yer business with Mr. Kane?”

  The man had the look of an ex-prizefighter, with a broken nose and a cauliflower ear. In his late thirties or early forties now, he was beginning to run to fat. But he was still a powerful mountain of a man, standing a good half a head taller than Sebastian and with nearly half again his weight.

  “I have a message for Mr. Kane from an old friend,” said Sebastian, tightening his grip on his walking stick.

  The man’s lips pulled back to reveal broken brown teeth. “Mr. Kane don’t associate with the clientele. What is it ye really want? If ye ain’t ’ere to sample the merchandise, you’ve no business ’ere. It’s my job to make sure there’s no trouble in the ’ouse, and yer kind’s always trouble.” He reached out to crush Sebastian’s lapel in one meaty fist. “Don’t ye be comin’ back, ye ’ear? We don’t want yer kinda business ’ere.”

  “You are creasing my coat,” said Sebastian.

  “Yeah?” The man’s smile widened. “Maybe I ought to crease yer skull instead.”

  Moving calmly and deliberately, Sebastian swung his walking stick back and then up, driving the full force of his body behind it. The ebony stick sliced up between the bouncer’s legs to whack against his testicles. The thug’s eyes bugged out, his breath wooshing out of his body as he released his hold on Sebastian’s coat to bend over and cradle his genitals in both hands. Reaching down, Sebastian grabbed the man by the front of his greasy waistcoat and shoved him backward until his shoulder blades whacked up against the alley’s brick wall. “Maybe you ought to consider answering a few questions.”

  Gritting his teeth, the bouncer groped his right hand toward a long blade sheathed in leather at his side. Sebastian whacked the man’s wrist with the walking stick. The man howled and dropped the knife.

  “That was not smart,” said Sebastian, shoving the length of the walking stick against the man’s throat, pinning him to the wall. “It’s also not a very nice way to treat a customer. I’ve a good mind to complain to Mr. Kane.” Sebastian tightened the pressure of the stick against the man’s windpipe. “Where can I find him?”

  The man’s mouth hung open, slack with fear. “I cain’t tell ye that!”

  Sebastian withdrew the walking stick from the man’s throat and swung it down to whack him across the right knee. The bouncer went down in a crooked, crumpled heap. “You might want to reconsider your reticence.”

  The man lay with one hand splayed over his knee, the other hand still cupped protectively around his genitals. “I tell you, I don’t know!”

  Sebastian lightly tapped the man’s other knee with the stick’s silver tip. “That’s not a very clever answer.”

  The bouncer licked his lips. “He’s at the Black Dragon. In Dyot Street, near Meux’s Brewery.”

  “How will I know him?”

  “ ’E’s a good-looking cove. Copper-colored ’air. Spends most o’ ’is evenin’s in ’is office on the ’alf landing, paintin’.”

  “Painting?”

  “You know. Pictures. ’E likes paintin’ pictures o’ whores and o’ the river and the city.”

  “I’d like my visit to Mr. Kane to be a surprise,” said Sebastian. “Let’s make a deal, shall we? You don’t tell him I’m coming, and I won’t tell him you’re
the one who spilled the information that enabled me to find him. Do we understand each other?”

  The bouncer wiped the back of one hand across his loose lips. “You bloody bastard—”

  Sebastian thrust the tip of his walking stick beneath the man’s chin, forcing him to tilt his head back at an awkward angle. “Do we understand each other?”

  “Aye, aye. Jist git that bloody stick away from me, will ye?”

  Sebastian dropped the tip of his walking stick to the knife lying on the wet cobbles and, with a flick of his wrist, sent the blade clattering into the darkness of the alley. “Pull steel on me again and you’re dead.”

  Chapter 12

  Sebastian pushed his way through darkened streets crowded with ragged beggars and smocked workmen Shurrying home to their suppers. The air was heavy with the scent of boiling cabbage and frying onions, and it occurred to him in passing that he hadn’t eaten dinner himself. Appetite, like the desire for sleep, had eluded him for so long that he merely noted the passing of time without any accompanying urge to seek sustenance.

  He was vaguely surprised to find himself involved, once again, in an investigation of murder. He’d survived the past eight months by tamping down all emotions—not just love and anger, but also curiosity and a desire for justice, even simple interest. He’d found lately that he could sometimes go as much as a day at a time without thinking about Kat, without remembering the scent that lingered on her pillow, without wanting her with an ache that left him ashamed and afraid.

  But there was a reason he’d deadened himself with alcohol and sleeplessness these past months. It was as if one emotion were linked to the other. Open up to one, and the others came flooding back, out of control. He thought about the way he’d welcomed his encounter with the ex-pugilist of Orchard Street, and the realization troubled him. Violence could be seductive. He’d seen too many men lose themselves in the heady embrace of death and destruction during war. He knew what it could do to a man. What it had almost done to him, once. What it could do again.

  He smelled the brewery now, the pungent scent of malt mixing with the ever-present odors of coal smoke and horse dung. Dyot Street ran just to the northwest of Covent Garden, in that part of London known as St. Giles. A wizened, black-clad woman with a fire in an old barrel was doing a good business selling roasted potatoes on a corner just opposite the Black Dragon. Sebastian paused to buy one as an excuse to linger for a moment, his gaze on the tavern across the street.

  It was a long, rambling place, built early in the last century with a second story that overhung the first. From the looks of things, its clientele was a mixture of local tradesmen and riffraff from the nearby rookeries. For a moment he considered returning to Brook Street to change into a less conspicuous form of dress, then decided against it.

  He became aware of a hollow-cheeked girl of eight or ten standing in the shelter of a nearby doorway, her thin hands clutching a ragged shawl about her shoulders, her brown eyes fixed longingly on the potato in his hands. “Here,” he said, holding it out to her.

  She hesitated a brief instant, then snatched the potato from him and took off, her heels kicking up the torn hem of her dress as she ran. Sebastian waited for an overloaded brewery wagon to rumble past, then crossed the street toward the Black Dragon.

  Halfway up the block he found a black-haired woman with a brazen smile and a low-necked, threadbare yellow dress who would have retreated down the nearest alley with him and done anything he asked of her for a few shillings. She gasped when he pressed a crown into her hand.

  “No,” he said when she would have led him into the beckoning darkness. “I’ve something else in mind.”

  Her dark eyes peered up at him with uneasy suspicion. She was probably no more than twenty-five, maybe thirty. Once she had been pretty, and traces of her youth still lingered. But she’d obviously had a hard life.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  She sniffed. “Cherry. Why?”

  “This is what I want you to do, Cherry. I want you to wait two minutes, then follow me into the Black Dragon. You’ll see me standing in the back, near the stairs. Ignore me. All you need do is create some sort of ruckus. If you’re successful there’ll be another crown for you when I come out. Do you understand?”

  “A ruckus?”

  “That’s right. Enough of a disturbance to attract and hold everyone’s attention but not so much as to land you in the roundhouse.”

  “I can do that,” said Cherry.

  “Good. Now remember, wait two minutes.”

  Sebastian pushed open the tavern’s door and walked into a murky, low-ceilinged common room that smelled of savory pies and warm ale and warm men. A crescendo of talk and laughter rolled from the leaded windows overlooking the street to the narrow wooden-railed staircase at the back that led up to the first floor. Sebastian could see a closed door on the half landing.

  Heads turned as he threaded his way between men in blue work shirts and rough corduroy coats. He found a place at the end of the bar nearest the base of the stairs and ordered a half pint. Turning his back to the bar, he rested his elbows on the ancient boards and let his gaze wander over the scattered tables and darkened booths. Right on cue, Cherry walked into the room.

  A gust of wind from the open door shuddered the flames in the tin lamps, sending dancing light across her black hair and pale round shoulders. She hesitated for a moment, her gaze scanning the crowd as he had done. Her eyes flicked over him without a hint of recognition, then settled on a potbellied, gray-whiskered man sprawled on his own at a table near the center of the room.

  She planted her fists on her hips, her chin coming up in a display of fury that was utterly convincing. “There ye are, ye good-fer-nothin’ mutton monger!” Her quavering, outraged tones cut across the murmur of male voices. The man with the gray whiskers paused in the act of raising his pint of ale to throw a quick glance behind him.

  “No point lookin’ behind ye like ye was expectin’ to find St. Peter hisself standin’ there. I’m talkin’ to you, ye bloody belly bumper.”

  Gray Whiskers set down his ale with a thump and swallowed hard. “I don’t know you.”

  “Don’t know me!” She descended on him, her arms akimbo, her black eyes flashing. “Ye don’t know me, ye say? I suppose ye don’t know yer own ten poor wee bairns then, either?” Quivering with outrage, she stalked up to him. He was still pushing back his chair when she brought up her open hand and walloped him across the face.

  The smack of flesh against flesh brought a sudden hush to the assembly. A gangly, half-grown lad with a tray of empty tankards quickly set aside his burden to grab her arm. “Now there ain’t no call to—”

  She wiggled free of his restraint. “Let go of me, ye bloody madge cull.”

  A bald-headed man with a broken nose reared up from a nearby table to collar the stripling with one beefy fist. “Hey. That’s no way to treat a lady.”

  Gray Whiskers surged to his feet, one hand clamped to his stinging red cheek. “Lady? You callin’ her a lady?”

  The man with the bald head swung around and planted one of his meaty fists in Gray Whiskers’s potbelly.

  A cheer went up around the room. Someone threw a punch at the stripling, who ducked and fell back against a wooden chair, splintering it beneath him. Sebastian heard the door on the half landing jerk open and turned to see a burly man in a moleskin waistcoat come barreling down the stairs into the melee. “Here, here, what’s this? We’ll have none o’ that at the Black Dragon.”

  Sebastian quietly slipped past him up the stairs and into the chamber on the half landing.

  After the dim haze of the common room, the chamber’s blaze of lights made Sebastian’s eyes water. Two branches of wax candles burned on the mantelpiece, with three more scattered on the tabletops around the room. Ian Kane stood before an easel in the center of a good Chinese rug. Of medium height and build with hair the color of burnished copper, he was stripped down to his breeches, shirt, and
waistcoat, and held a piece of charcoal in his hand. Some ten feet in front of him, a winsome young thing with soft white flesh and a halo of golden curls sprawled on a blue velvet divan. She wore pink slippers and a pearl necklace, and nothing else.

  At Sebastian’s entrance, Kane glanced around. The girl jerked, but Kane said, “Don’t move,” and she froze.

  “Nicely done,” said Sebastian, coming to look at a half-completed charcoal sketch somewhat in the style of Ingres.

  From the room below came the sound of breaking glass and a man’s hoarse shout. Kane reached for a rag and calmly wiped his fingers. “I presume you started that for a reason?”

  The faint echo of a Lancashire burr was still there in the brothel owner’s speech, but he’d obviously made considerable efforts to eradicate it in the ten or fifteen years that had passed since he’d fled the mines. His breeches, coat, and waistcoat could only have come from the best Bond Street tailors. Sebastian could easily see Pippa from the cheesemonger’s shop taking this man for a gentleman. However nefarious the nature of his current businesses, Kane was working hard at obscuring his origins. But unless he’d dyed his hair, Pippa was unlikely to have described him as “dark.”