And then he heard the unmistakable sound of a hand cracking across a face, and the cry that Eliza gave out when she felt it. That was enough for him. He stepped out.
“Leave her alone,” he said. He turned to Eliza who was rubbing her cheek.
Mrs Fulwood looked him over with something like contempt.
“Miss Marian,” she called out behind her. “Miss Marian, you’d better come and take a look at this.”
Miss Hilliard came around the corner, wrapped in a large grey shawl.
“Well, well, Mr Carswell. What do you have to say for yourself?” she said, looking at him as if he were a disobedient child.
“If you address me in that tone I will not answer.”
“Respect is something that must be earned, sir,” she said.
“For once I must agree with you, Miss Hilliard,” he said.
“Fulwood, Eliza, please go back to your work,” she said. “And perhaps you, sir, should go back to yours.”
“I think my work is here.”
“I have made my views clear on that. You are not welcome here and I consider your appearance here in the light of trespass. I would ask you to leave my property.”
“Your property?” he said. “You take a great deal on yourself, don’t you, ma’am? I shouldn’t be at all surprised if you don’t think yourself quite above the law. In fact I’m sure of it.”
“Be careful what you say.”
“Be careful what you do, ma’am,” he retorted. “Because I will find you out, be sure of it!”
“Oh, really, sir?” she said, her features forming into a slight smile. “I do not think so.”
And she strolled away, leaving him in the company of the great sow, who, having gorged on the slops, had fallen asleep.
***
How exactly he was going to find the lady out seemed increasingly less obvious as he rode back into Northminster.
Going back to The Unicorn was out of the question in the immediate future so he continued on to The Three Crowns, which he reckoned was the least likely place he would run into Major Vernon.
His flash bay mare did indeed buy him a certain respect with the stableman and servants, which he had to admit he enjoyed. Ignoring the sorry state of his pocket book, he ordered dinner and a bottle of claret. While he waited, he had a brandy and hot water to take the edge off his nerves, and smoked a cheroot while he waited for it to arrive. The brandy acted rather briskly on his empty stomach, but it was not an unpleasant feeling. He lit another cheroot, and ordered another.
He had just finished the second drink when he saw John Rhodes at the entrance to the dining room. He in his turn noticed Felix and strolled across to his table, where he leant on the back of the empty chair. Felix hoped he was not going to sit down.
“Are you here to keep an eye on me?” Rhodes said.
“No. I’m here to dine.”
“Have you caught the devil who killed my cousin yet?”
“You mean you didn’t kill him?” said Felix.
“Is that why you pawed all over my quarters?”
“Routine inquiries,” Felix said.
“So where is Major Vernon?”
“No idea,” said Felix, pouring himself a glass of the wine that the waiter had just brought to the table. “Nowhere here about, I trust.”
Rhodes laughed.
“A taxing man to work for, I should think,” he said. “Oh God,” he said, pushing his hand through his hair. “What a business, what a damned business!” He waved to the waiter. “You’re making me thirsty. What’s that you’ve got there? The 32? It’s not bad, is it?” He turned to the waiter. “Perry, I’ll have a bottle of the 32 and two beefsteaks. Send them up to my room.”
“Yes, sir,” said the waiter.
“Wine, women and song,” Rhodes said, turning back to Felix. “It’s the only answer. You look as though you could do with some company.”
“No, not really.”
“I don’t mean me. I mean female company. There’s a little sylph knocking about here – I had her the other day. She’s most amusing. Sissy, she’s called. Quite the antidote to grief, I’d say. I wonder where she’s got to. I’m otherwise engaged tonight, but I’d recommend her.”
“I wasn’t looking for company.”
“Oh, and the moon is made of green cheese. You’re a red-blooded man. You look in desperate need. That’s what this doctor prescribes!”
“I’ll bear it in mind,” said Felix.
“Do that,” Rhodes said, and made a pistol-like gesture with his hand, as if he were taking aim at Felix’s head. “I see my own sylph has appeared. Mustn’t keep a lady waiting, must I?”
And he left to meet the girl who had just come in through the door.
***
“Mr Rhodes sent me, with his compliments. Says you mended his head. He sent me instead of a fee.” The girl spoke with the broad, flat dialect of the city.
Felix, who was just finishing his indifferent but expensive dinner, stared at her. She was wearing a dirty white satin dress, profusely trimmed with grubby blonde gauze and tarnished spangles. It had been cut to reveal a softly curving bosom but she was too thin for it. All he could see was her jutting shoulder bones and her scrawny chest.
“I’m Sissy,” she went on. “What’s your name?”
“He paid you to come over here?”
“Gave me a guinea. I’m yours for the night. If you want me.” She gave a sort of coquettish shrug that did not quite work. “Are you eating that?” she added, pointing at the slice of treacle tart that Felix had pushed away.
“No.”
“Don’t mind if I have it, do you?” she said. “I’m starving.”
“Eat it,” he said. “Please.”
“Thanks,” she said, her mouth already full. She had picked it up with her fingers.
“You can sit down if you like,” he said. “There’s some bread and cheese here as well.”
“Lovely,” she said, and sat down. Felix signalled to the waiter and ordered him to bring another bottle of claret, an extra glass and another piece of the tart. It would have been uncharitable to send her away without a decent meal. He watched her demolishing the treacle tart, which he had found stodgy and unpalatable. To her it was clearly nectar. She licked her fingers when she had done, which he found he smiled at, so methodical was she.
“What are you smiling at?”
“You.”
“Think I’m pretty?”
“I think you’re hungry. When did you last eat?”
“I’m always hungry. I’d like to be fat. Keep me warm, it would. And the punters like a bit of fat sometimes. Well, at least the ones round here, but that Mr Rhodes, he said he likes ’em slim. What do you think?”
“I don’t know what I think any more,” said Felix, refilling his glass.
“You’re not from here, are you? I ain’t seen you here before.”
“No. I just came down from Scotland,” he said, pushing a glass of wine over to her.
“I’ll have to show you the sights, then,” she said.
“The sights, here? What sights?”
“Well, it’s not very lively in here, is it?” she said, leaning forward, her elbows on the table, her chin resting on her knotted hands. “I mean it’s all right for people like Mr Rhodes, old people, but I expect you’d like something a bit more lively. Do you like dancing?”
“Depends.”
“Of course. Depends who you’re dancing with. You could take me, if you like.”
“You like dancing?”
“Depends who with. Fat old smelly farmers, no. Fat young smelly farmer’s sons, no. Good looking young doctors, well, maybe.”
“Is that the usual thing, your usual punters, I mean?” Felix asked.
“On Market day I can clear up,” she said. “Old Katie takes her cut, but I still do all right.”
“I spoke to her the other day, I think. Will she take a cut of your guinea?”
“Doubt it. She’s been at the gin. Sh
e’s been out of it all day. What the eye don’t see...”
“The heart won’t grieve over,” Felix said. “Has she got a heart?”
“Shouldn’t think so,” Sissy said and emptied her glass. “Oh, that’s nice. Very nice. And I think you’re very nice. Much nicer than usual,” she added as he refilled the glass. “And I got a guinea!”
“That’s more than usual?”
She nodded. “Mr Rhodes must be a millionaire,” she added.
“He makes money at cards,” Felix said.
“I should get him to teach me how he does it. That seems like a good lark to me.”
“He’d charge you for that,”
“I could pay him in kind, couldn’t I?” she said. “He seemed to think quite a lot of me. Maria-Louise was in a right bother about it – the goose, she thought he wasn’t looking about him. She’s a right idiot, falling for his talk like that. He won’t take her back to London with him, will he?”
“Doubtful,” said Felix, lighting a cheroot.
“Give us that,” she said, reaching out for it. He surrendered it to her. “I like these.” She took a long drag and then exhaled. “Never trust a man, my mam said. Never.”
“Good advice,” Felix said, lighting another for himself. “You know what – my mother was in your line.”
“What?”
“In your line. In Paris.”
“Really?”
He nodded, meeting her eyes. “That’s all I know about her, though. My parents – my adopted parents, that is – told me that much, and no more.”
“Well, weren’t you the lucky one,” she said.
“I think I was,” he said. “Do you still want to go dancing?
Later, much later, after they had danced and drunk a great deal more, and then listened to bawdy songs sung by a man who could not sing, but which had seemed amusing enough to Felix, Sissy said she wanted to go to bed. “You might as well come with me. My room’s only a step or two away.” So he took her hand and told her he would go with her.
In some quiet corner of his now considerably disordered mind, Felix had a vague notion that later he would regret this. But for the moment, standing in her shabby room with a stone bottle of gin in his overcoat pocket, he could not quite bring himself to the necessary pitch of inhibition. He wanted to be there. That was the simple truth of it.
Quickly, with the air of one getting down to business, Sissy had taken off the white satin dress and was now sitting on the bed in only her shift and a pair of grubby pink stays. She had her legs crossed, showing off her black and red striped stockings, one of which had a large hole in it. There was something about that hole, so sordid and pathetic, that appealed to him more than anything.
But his head was swimming. He turned away and poured out some of the gin into a chipped tea cup.
He turned back to see that she had rearranged herself in a provocative manner and had hoisted her shift up by her waist, and raised her knees. He took another swig of gin and came over and took her outstretched hand.
“You’re a funny one,” she said, looking up at him, as he stood there feeling the bones in her hand. He decided that in order to test his faculties, and to calm himself, he would recite the names of the bones as he felt them.
“Distal phalanx,” he said. “Middle phalanx, proximal phalanx...” But he found he was stumbling over the words. The gin was making him talk nonsense.
“What are you talking about?” she said, pulling him down onto the beside him.
“Those are their names. The bones in your fingers. That’s what they’re called.”
“And what’s the fancy name for that?” she said, laying her hand on the fall of his trousers. “What have you got in there? Feels like a big one to me.”
“You probably always say that. I bet you do.”
“There’s no pleasing you, is there?” she said, unfastening the buttons. “Maybe this’ll do it.”
She slipped her hand inside and he felt her cold fingers stroking his already solid member. He found himself grimacing, almost unable to bear it, that impossible mixture of shame, fear and absolute pleasure. He felt certain that he could not bear it a moment longer, that it would only be a matter of moments before he was spent. Perhaps that would be better.
But if he was going through with this, he was going through with it. Properly this time. He was going to cross the threshold, reckless though it might be. He was too old to be a virgin any more.
In a spirit of resolution, he pulled away her hand and stood up again. He stripped down to his shirt and climbed onto the bed, kneeling between her skinny spread legs with what he hoped was jaunty confidence. But when he looked down at her, he felt he might be looking death and madness in the face. With a shaking hand he reached out between her legs and started to touch her. He would feel for chancres first, it would be utter folly not to do that little thing, before it was too late.
But she sat up and pushed away his hand.
“Let’s just do it, shall we?” she said, and grabbed his cock and guided him into her.
After that, it was only a few moments’ work. He felt himself driven as he went into her, as if by some unseen force. He felt like a dumb beast driven by the touch of an invisible whip and very little pleasure came to him through it, only a sense of mounting incredulity that he was doing this at all, with this girl, who was nothing to him, in a dirty room, on a broken-down bed that was doubtless full of fleas. If he only caught lice, he would be fortunate. But he could not stop. He was a slave to his own base desire now, and he pushed on and on until the thing was done and he felt himself crack open and explode into her.
He felt as if his heart had stopped for a moment. Every inch of him was leaden with effort and he sank onto top of her. There were tears in his eyes and looked away quickly to conceal this from her.
“Get off, then,” she said, and began to push him away from her. He heaved himself up and found himself on the narrow ledge of the bed, on the verge of falling off and onto the floor. He wanted desperately to curl up and just sleep, but she made it clear that the bed was hers and hers alone now. The guinea had ceased to work its magic. “Get off with you.” He stumbled onto his feet and watched, as like some insect retreating into a sheltered place, she rolled herself up in the quilt, tucking herself up tight.
The room was icy cold and he began scrabbling round for his clothes. He climbed into them with great clumsiness and his fingers seems to struggle with everything. His lack of dexterity unnerved him more than anything. He was shaking and fumbling like some old beggar in the grip of a palsy. He was battling with nausea too, his stomach lining in active revolt from the assault of so much rough spirit.
He managed to get into his boots and began hunting round for the chamber pot. He was just about to vomit into it, when Sissy, caterpillar-like in her quilt cocoon, rose up on the bed and said: “Don’t you dare throw up in here! Out with you, now!”
It was something of a miracle that he did not fall head-first down the dark stairs with his arms full of his clothes, his balance was so uncertain. He burst out into the street, into the lash of the rain-soaked night, in only his shirtsleeves and stumbled along only a few yards before he had to stop. With one hand resting on a wall, since he did not trust his legs, he vomited copiously into the gutter.
Catching his breath for a moment, he heard a sash being pushed up. He turned and looked up to see Sissy, candle in hand, looking down at him.
“You forgot this,” she said and out of the window fluttered his black satin cravat. It landed in a deep muddy puddle.
He was scrabbling around trying to retrieve it, trying to fight off another bout of nausea, when he saw the constable coming round the corner.
Chapter Twenty-one
That night Giles was tormented by strange dreams.
He dreamt he was back in India, and lying ill somewhere, gripped in a fever, on a camp bed under a tent of muslin, alone and wretched, until suddenly a woman in a white dress was bending over him,
gently washing his face with blissfully cool water. And he looked up at her, at her beautiful and solicitous face, and realised it was Miss Hilliard. Smiling, she reached out and washed his face again and he took her hand and kissed it. And then she climbed onto the bed, straddled him, and began to give him very different attentions. She laid herself down on him, and rubbed herself against him, seeking her own pleasure as much as creating his own.
He woke then and found himself thoroughly aroused. He threw back the covers and got straight up from the bed, and began to pace the room in an effort to stem the tide of his desire. It did not, and he sat down of the bed again, rocking back and forward with disgust at himself, his head in his hands.
To be a married man and yet to have all the comforts of marriage denied to him! To be always alone like this, without hope of his condition ever changing. He hated his own selfishness, for undoubtedly his own sufferings were nothing compared to hers, but at five in the morning, on a bleak January day, sitting on the edge of his bed in his nightshirt, excoriated with lust for a woman, it was all too easy to give in to self-pity.
He indulged himself only for a moment and dragged himself together. He stripped and gave himself a vigorous sousing with cold water, scrubbing himself dry with a rough, unforgiving towel. He sharpened his razor and gave himself a careful, close shave, and then got dressed, all the time pulling his mind back into order for the tasks of the day ahead.
The night duty constables would soon be reporting back, and the day watch assembling for duty. There was plenty to be done. Thank God for work, he thought. His situation would have been unbearable for an idle man. Since he had time in hand he would go down to the constables’ mess and do a spot inspection of the kitchens, before taking the reports of the night and issuing the day’s orders.
Buttoning up his coat as he entered his office, he was confronted by the mass of case notes he had pinned to the wall. The draught from the open window was making them rattle and flap like a flock of starlings taking flight. He closed the window and stooped to pick up one that had fallen down.
“Datura stramonium.” He had written it in large letters and he frowned at the sight of it. He would have to speak to the Lepaiges again, though a more unlikely murderer than Lepaige he could not imagine. Could someone who was sentimental about killing a pig inflict that level of damage on a man?
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