Where Serpents Sleep: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery Read online

  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 h
is 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.”

  “I thought our conversation would be more congenial without the presence of one of your gentlemen of the Fancy,” said Sebastian. He wandered the room, his gaze roving over the series of canvases on the wall. Done in oils in much the same style as the charcoal sketch on the easel, the paintings included both London street scenes and views of ships on the Thames. One particularly striking image of the church of Allhallows Barking caught in a stream of sunlight was only half finished. But most of the paintings were of naked women in a variety of languid poses.

  “I suppose that’s one of the advantages of running a brothel,” said Sebastian. “There can’t be many artists with such ready access to a houseful of women who are more than willing to take off their clothes.”

  Kane merely set aside his rag and grunted.

  “I wonder,” said Sebastian, “did you ever paint Rose Fletcher?”

  “Who?”

  “Rose Fletcher. Up until last week she was one of the dashers at the Orchard Street Academy. I understand you’re the proprietor.”

  Kane picked up a short piece of charcoal and traced a neat line along the hip of the figure in his sketch. “I have more than one house and employ scores of women. Do you think I know them all?”

  From below stairs came a loud thump, followed by a bellow of rage. Sebastian said, “This woman left your house precipitously and went into hiding. I’m wondering if she was hiding from you.”

  “What do you think?” said Kane, keeping his attention on his work. “That I stock my houses with traffic from some nefarious white-slave ring?” He had a slickly handsome face and a wide mouth full of straight white teeth he showed in a smile. “Why would she hide from me? Every soiled dove on the street would have you think she was kidnapped and forced into the trade. It’s all a fantasy. The girls in my houses are there because they choose to be, and they’re free to leave whenever they want.”

  Sebastian glanced toward the Cyprian on the divan. She made a small movement, then lay still, her rosy-tipped breasts rising gently with each breath. A faint flush of color had spread across her cheeks. It was one thing, evidently, to pose naked for Ian Kane, but something else to do it in the presence of a stranger.

  Sebastian said, “You weren’t angry that she left?”

  A muscle jumped along Kane’s suddenly tight jaw. “Whores leave all the time. They usually come back. But even if they don’t, do you think I care? There are always more where they came from.” He jerked his head toward the street below. “You can’t walk a block without tripping over half a dozen strumpets.”

  “Perhaps. Yet Rose Fletcher was undoubtedly afraid of someone.”

  “Most whores are afraid of someone. A husband maybe, or a boyfriend who’s a little too handy with his fists.” Kane cocked his head to one side, studying the sketch before him. “What I’m wondering,” he said, carefully smudging the line he’d just drawn, “is why a fine gentleman like yourself would take an interest in a piece of Haymarket ware. Surely you don’t fancy her for yourself?”

  “Not exactly. She’s dead. She was one of the eight women murdered at the Magdalene House last night.”

  The suggestion that the fire at the Magdalene House was no accident didn’t seem to surprise Kane. But then, word traveled fast on the streets. Without looking up, he said, “You think I did that?”

  “I think you’re hiding something.”

  There was a pause, after which the brothel owner appeared to come to a decision. He reached for a finer piece of charcoal. “You’re right. Rose Fletcher was at the Academy. She was there the better part of a year. I don’t know why she left. She never gave any indication she was unhappy there.”

  “Rose Fletcher wasn’t her real name, was it?”

  “Probably not. They all take noms de guerre.”

  “Do you know where she came from?”

  Kane gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Women like her are a commodity. You think I care where they come from? We’re not talking fine wine here. The provenance is immaterial.”

  Sebastian glanced toward the naked woman on the divan. The flush in her cheeks had deepened.

  “Did Rose ever have trouble with anyone at the Academy?”

  “You mean customers?” Kane shook his head. “We’re very careful with our clientele. Those who like it rough learn to go someplace else.”

  “Did she have any special customers?”

  “She was a popular piece of merchandise.” His eyes narrowed as he layered in defining detail to his sketch of the woman’s breasts. “But as a matter of fact, there was one particular customer that I know of. He was so enamored of her that he offered to buy her away from the house.”

  “Buy her? I thought you said these women aren’t slaves.”

  Kane shrugged. “She had some debts. Most whores do. They work to pay off what they owe.”

  It was the usual practice: Advance the women just enough money to keep them in a perpetual state of debt so that they couldn’t leave even if they wanted to. It wasn’t technically slavery, but that’s what it amounted to.

  Sebastian studied the man’s smooth face. He had a faint blue line, like a tattoo, that ran across his forehead. Sebastian had seen marks like that before, on miners. Coal dust settled into healing cuts, leaving a mark that never disappeared. Kane had obviously spent some time in the mines himself as a lad, before fleeing to London. Sebastian said, “What was the name of the customer who tried to buy her?”

  “O’Brian. Luke O’Brian.”