Anne Perry's Christmas Vigil

by Anne Perry

  “Who was it, Lucien? Niccolo? Rosa? Or Sadie?” Henry asked him.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who is Niccolo?” Squeaky put in. “Did you bring him here?”

  “Yes,” Lucien said quietly. “Months ago.”

  “Who is he?” Squeaky insisted.

  “A young man with social pretensions,” Lucien said with slight contempt. “His father made a lot of money in trade of some sort.”

  “So why’s he here in this gutter, then, not in Society?” Henry said. He glanced to left and right. “This is hardly pretentious.”

  “You’ve got to be born into the sort of Society he’s aiming at. You can’t buy your way in. I don’t know his history, and I don’t care.” Lucien half-turned away.

  Squeaky grabbed Lucien’s shoulder and dug his fingers into his flesh.

  Lucien winced and cried out.

  “Don’t you get superior with us, you useless little toad!” Squeaky hissed at him. “Who else’ve you brought to Shadwell?

  “Only those who were more than willing.”

  This time Lucien was angry.

  “Did Niccolo come for drugs, torture, or just women? Sadie in particular?”

  “Women,” Lucien said. “Sadie wasn’t for him.”

  “Rosa?”

  “Yes. He liked Rosa. She was pretty as well, very pretty. But there was a kind of innocence about her, where Sadie could make you believe she knew everything there was to know about pleasure, from the beginning of man and woman—from Eden.” For a moment Lucien’s memory seemed to drift back into another time.

  “Were they on cocaine as well?” Crow asked.

  With an effort Lucien forced his attention back to the present. “Who, Rosa? Not so far as I know.”

  “And Niccolo?”

  “Brandy and cocaine.”

  “From Shadwell?”

  “Probably.”

  “What else did he want from you? What do you do for him that makes you worth his time and his best woman? Sadie was the best woman, wasn’t she?” Henry persisted.

  “Yes.”

  “Lucien!”

  “He wanted me to bring in better, richer people, friends from my own social class, young men with money who are bored with the tame pleasures of Society.” He shrugged very slightly, to avoid causing pain to his wound. “Men who want to escape the predictable, the safe marriage to some nice, tedious young woman and the endless round of the same dinner parties, the same food, and the same conversation for the rest of their lives. They want wild dreams, passion, discovery of new places of the mind, fevers of the imagination and the senses.”

  “They want the poppy, or cocaine.” Henry summed it up. “To give them the dreams they can’t create for themselves. Then what are they going to do when they wake up, and all that is left is ashes?”

  “Take some more,” Lucien said huskily. “I know that. I didn’t do what he wanted, which may be why Niccolo might be dead. To teach me the cost of disobedience.”

  “So Niccolo was dispensable?” Henry asked with a touch of bitterness.

  Lucien looked angry, and his expression was answer enough.

  Squeaky stood up, his knees creaking. He was cold and sore and so tired he could have slept almost anywhere, except this filthy sty.

  “Right. Then we’ve got to find Niccolo, or Rosa, whichever of them is still alive,” he said to all of them. He pointed at Lucien. “You’re staying here. You’re too sick to be any use, even if we trusted you—which we don’t. And someone’s got to look after you, which had better be Bessie. You do whatever she says.”

  He lowered his voice to a grim whisper. “And if you hurt her, or let anyone else hurt her, believe me, you’d rather fall into Shadow Man’s hands than mine. He has some use for you, so he probably won’t kill you. You’re nothing to me, so I’ll kill you in a heartbeat—except I won’t. I’ll do it slow. Got that?”

  Lucien smiled, a little crookedly, but there was warmth to it, no self-pity. “I believe you,” he answered. “If Shadwell gets you, which I expect he will, I suppose you expect me to get her back to some kind of world above this one?”

  Squeaky was startled. It was the last answer he had looked for. “Yes,” he agreed. “That’s just what we expect.”

  Lucien’s very quiet laugh ended in a cough. “Poor Bessie. God help her.”

  Bessie stiffened.

  “Never mind God!” Squeaky snapped. “You’re all we’ve got—so you’ll do it!”

  They bought a good supply of food: mostly bread, cheese, and a little sausage. Henry found enough firewood to keep the stove going, barely, for a couple of days. Crow rebandaged Lucien’s wound, then Henry, Squeaky, and Crow left the room quietly and set out on the quest to find Shadwell.

  They descended farther into the world of pleasures.

  “It’s pointless,” Squeaky warned. “Even if we find this Shadwell, he can’t help Lucien, and he isn’t going to try.”

  He was walking beside Henry as they came to the bottom of a flight of steps and turned left along a passageway with little alleys off to either side. The sound of laughter drifted from the left, along with the smells of wine, smoke, and human sweat, and something else indefinably sickly.

  They both stopped.

  “This Shadwell isn’t keeping Lucien here against his will, you know,” Squeaky said to Henry. “Finding him isn’t going to do any good.”

  Henry ignored him, walking again with his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. It was bitterly cold down here and they were eager to reach a place crowded with people.

  In one of the cellars it was definitely warmer, but the air was so thick with opium fumes it made Henry gag. Even Crow put his scarf around his mouth. In the dim light they saw more than twenty figures sprawled in a mockery of repose. Some seemed conscious, though not fully aware. Their eyes were glazed; they saw nothing of their surroundings, only the hectic world within their own minds.

  Henry tried speaking to one or two of them but received no answers of which he could make any sense.

  “Don’t bother,” Squeaky told him. “They wouldn’t know their own mothers. Come to think of it, they probably never did. We aren’t going to find Shadow Man here. The poppy’s his servant, not his master. We’ll do better going after the whorehouses. At least the customers will still be conscious.”

  Crow peered into the faces of some of the smokers. They were mostly men but included a few women. “He’s right,” he conceded. “This lot can’t tell us anything.”

  They turned to leave, but found their way blocked by a bald-headed man with tattoos on his neck and the parts of his hands that they could see. His right thumb was missing.

  “And what would you be doing in ’ere?” he said with a pronounced lisp, as if his tongue were malformed. “Yer lookin’ ter come ’ere without payin’, then? That ain’t the way it works, gents. Yer come in, yer pays.”

  “We smoke, we pay,” Squeaky told him tersely.

  “Yer come ’in, yer pays,” the man repeated. He jerked his hand sideways sharply and another figure loomed out of the haze to join him.

  Henry put his hand into his inside pocket to find money.

  “Yer wanna watch ’im!” Squeaky warned, seizing Henry’s arm and holding it hard to prevent him from moving. He felt him wince. He would apologize later. Right now he must stop him from revealing that he had any money, or they would all be robbed blind, and lucky to get out uninjured. His instinct was to fight, and they couldn’t win. These men would be armed with knives and razors, and possibly garottes as well. Opium was expensive, and therefore worth protecting. Henry had no idea what he was dealing with. With an ounce of a brain Squeaky could have stopped this idiocy before it got this far. He was getting slow, and that was his own fault. He was out of practice. Out of brains, more like.

  “ ’E works for Shadow Man,” he said to the others, but nodding his head at Henry. “ ’E looks like ’e’s a gent, and ’e was, once. And them that started as gents, when
they hit the gutter, they’re worse than them as was born in it. ’E used to be a surgeon. What ’e can do with a knife,” he held his finger and thumb a couple of inches apart, “just a little, very, very sharp knife,” he said, shuddering, “you wouldn’t want to know about.”

  Henry froze, his jaw dropped in amazement.

  Crow smiled, showing all his teeth. “We call him the Bleeder.” He caught the spirit of the act. “Looks like butter wouldn’t melt, don’t he?” He regarded Henry admiringly. “Looks like that until he gets right up close to you. Then it’s too late.” He raised his right hand so quickly the bald man did not even see it until it was almost at his throat, and then gone again before he could thrust it away.

  Crow’s smile widened.

  “Oh, really!” Henry protested.

  Squeaky looked at Henry sternly. “No, Bleeder! Not this time. ’E’s only trying it on. ’E don’t mean it.” He turned to the bald man. “Do you, sir? Say you don’t, an’ I’ll get ’im out of ’ere, no trouble, no blood. Blood’s no good for business. People come ’ere for a little peace, a little escape. Blood puts ’em right off.”

  “Don’t you come back, or I’ll get you next time!” The bald man said it grimly, but there was no conviction in his voice. He stepped back, leaving them plenty of room.

  As one, Crow and Squeaky took Henry by both arms and swung him around. Then they marched him back up the stairs into the alley, right to the far end and out into the narrow square before letting him go.

  The fog was growing thicker, and the cobbles were slick with ice. The lamps in the street ahead were almost invisible, little more than smudges against the darkness.

  “That was preposterous!” Henry exclaimed, but even in this dim light it was clear to see that he was smiling. “What on earth would you have done if he’d not believed you?”

  “Put me fingers in his eyes,” Squeaky said without hesitation. “But that could have ended real nasty.”

  “We’d better keep moving,” Crow advised. “We can’t afford to have one of that lot catch up with us.”

  “We want either Rosa or Sadie, whichever of them is alive,” Squeaky said. “I’m thinking they aren’t bought by just anyone with enough money. I’ll wager anything you like that they do the choosing, not the clients, although they might think they do. Shadwell doesn’t find their customers for them, they find them for him.”

  “You’re right,” Crow agreed. “So how do we get to where they’ll find us?”

  Squeaky gave him a disparaging look, which was largely wasted because the light was too dim for Crow to see it.

  “Yeah? An’ which one of us is a woman like Sadie going to go for, then?” Squeaky asked sarcastically.

  “Definitely Crow,” Henry replied without hesitation. “You and I are too old, and don’t look the part anyway.”

  Crow’s jaw fell. He struggled for words but none came to him. For once even his smile failed him.

  Henry patted him on the shoulder. “Your turn,” he said cheerfully. “I think we had better fortify ourselves with as good a meal as we can find first. It’s going to be a long night.”

  As it turned out it was two long nights and many wasted attempts before they found the right place—a small, very discreet club where an excellent champagne flowed and both men and women made their availability startlingly plain. There seemed to be endless doors to side rooms, curtains, laughter, farther doors beyond with locks. People wore all kinds of costumes. Some were colorful, even picturesque, borrowed from history or imagination. Others were merely obscene. In some cases it was easy to be deceived as to whether the wearer was male or female. Some appeared to have bosoms and yet also wore large and very suggestive codpieces.

  Almost every distortion of appetite was catered to. Two or even three men together was illegal, but commonplace enough here. A near-naked hermaphrodite, clearly possessing rudimentary organs of both sexes, turned even Squeaky’s stomach.

  A slim, pale boy offered himself for sexual asphyxiation, and Henry averted his eyes, his face white. Squeaky wondered how long it would be before someone lost control and the boy ended up dead.

  “Would you fancy something to eat, gentlemen?” another young man asked. “What’s your pleasure, sirs? Oysters to spark the appetite a little? Champagne? Chocolate, perhaps? Soft, dark chocolate to lick off a woman’s body?” He giggled. “Or a man’s if you prefer? Got a nice young boy that nature was generous to …”

  For once Henry was lost for a reply.

  Crow shook his head.

  “We’ll find our own!” Squeaky snapped, surprised to hear how hoarse his voice was. “Don’t worry—we’ll pay.”

  The man swiveled on his heel and went off in a pettish temper.

  Squeaky looked at Henry’s too-evident distress.

  “Take that look off your face!” he hissed, digging his elbow sharply into Henry’s ribs. “Yer look like you just bit into a rotten egg.”

  “I feel like it,” Henry said, gasping and coughing. “What in God’s name has happened to these people?”

  “How the hell do I know? Look, I never dealt in this kind of thing!” He was indignant now. Did Henry really think this was commonplace to him? “What kind of a …”

  Henry shook his head. “The question was rhetorical.”

  “What?” Squeaky was hurt.

  “A question that does not expect an answer,” Henry explained. “I don’t really imagine that you know, any more than I do, what creates this out of people who must once have been … normal.”

  “Oh.” Squeaky was relieved. A heavy, stifling weight had been lifted from him.

  He was straightening his jacket and beginning to look around him when he saw her. She was standing almost ten feet away from them, leaning slightly backward against one of the pillars that held up the ceiling. It was not her laughter that had caught his attention, or any movement of the man facing her, it was the extraordinary grace of her body. Her face was lifted to look at the man, her profile delicate, her long white throat smoothly curved. Her hair was jet-black and her lips artificially red. She was the only person in the noisy, hysterical room who was absolutely motionless. And yet her very stillness was more alive than any action of the rest of them. It was Sadie. It had to be. Which meant Rosa was dead—or Niccolo.

  “Crow!” he hissed urgently. “Crow!”

  Henry looked at him, then turned to Crow, touching him on the arm.

  Crow swung around, then froze. His eyes widened.

  “Go on,” Henry urged. “Now.”

  “But she’s …” Crow protested.

  “We’ve got no time to waste,” Henry told him. “Do it now, or I’ll have to.”

  Crow hesitated.

  Squeaky moved behind him and gave him a hard shove in the middle of his back.

  Crow shot forward with a yelp and stopped a yard short of Sadie.

  She looked at him, smiling with amusement. “That’s original—even inventive.” She looked him up and down, quite openly appraising him.

  The young man she had been speaking to snatched Crow’s arm hot-temperedly and said something almost unintelligible to Squeaky, who was watching.

  Henry was clearly anxious. He started to intervene.

  “No!” Squeaky said sharply. “Leave him!”

  Crow gave the young man a dazzling smile, all white teeth and wide-open eyes. Then he kicked him very hard in one shin. The young man howled with anger and surprise. Crow seized Sadie and marched her away to a moderately empty space hard up against the wall.

  Henry and Squeaky followed almost on her heels.

  “They’re my friends,” Crow explained simply. “We need to talk to you,” he added.

  “You’re Sadie?”

  She nodded.

  Sadie was amused. Crow was unusual-looking—not unattractive, just eccentric. Perhaps that appealed to Sadie more than the typical spoiled and demanding sort of young man who frequented such places. Also, he was sober and did not have the faded, rather past
y look of so many of the other inhabitants of the night world of the West End.

  Sadie raised her elegant eyebrows. “Really? About what?”

  “About Lucien Wentworth,” Henry replied.

  Sadie’s smile froze.

  Squeaky moved around to stand closer to her to block her retreat. At this particular moment the dim lighting of the room was an advantage; even the crowding helped. They could hear from the distance cries and moans of all sorts, raw farmyard emotions under the gaudy paint of sophistication.

  “He’s … dead,” she said, her voice faltering.

  “No, he isn’t, any more than you are,” Squeaky snapped. “It was Niccolo or Rosa who was murdered, and you know that. Maybe both. Lot of blood on the ground. Who was it, Sadie, and why?”

  She kept her face toward Henry, as if he were the one most likely to believe her lies. “I don’t know. I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “You may not have held the knife,” Henry agreed. “But you sharpened it, and gave it to someone. Who? And why?”

  She swallowed. The pallor of her skin was almost ghostly in the subterranean light. Her eyes were brilliant, very wide, with black lashes. There was a feline grace to the way she held her body. Her beauty was strangely disturbing, but there was something ephemeral about it.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she said angrily. “If somebody’s dead, it’s nothing to do with me.”

  “That’s a clumsy lie,” Henry told her. “You don’t survive here not knowing who’s been murdered, and why. If it was Niccolo, then you’ve lost a lover. If it was Rosa, then it could be you next.”

  She stared at him with venom naked in her eyes. “You bastard!” she said between clenched teeth. “You touch me and I’ll make you pay for it in ways you can’t even imagine. You’ll wish someone would put a knife to your throat—quickly!”

  “Is that what it was?” Henry asked, his expression barely changing. “Revenge? Discipline for taking something that belonged to you, perhaps?”

  She looked harder at his face, and saw in it something she did not recognize. Perhaps it stirred in her a memory of some better time.