I heard a hullabaloo from the foyer, with the front door swinging open to crash into the wall, startled exclamations from the army boys and a bass voice (presumably the major’s, as it was loud enough to be heard over cannon fire) barking commands. I had half-risen from the sofa to inform the major and his compadres to remember that I ran a respectable establishment and I’d be grateful if he’d gag his lads, when Mrs. Drinkwater reeled into the room, swaying like an ancient cart horse on the way to the soap factory.
“Ish thash Eddinsh woman,” she mumbled. “I tried to shtop her.”
Blast. The chap who’d delivered my note to Mother Edding must have described me to her, no doubt for a small fee. Still, with thousands of whores in London, what were the odds that Mother Edding would have recognized India Black? I paused a moment to consider the fact that I had obviously become a known figure among the other madams of London, my fame reaching (apparently) even into the bowels of Seven Dials. I had only a second to enjoy this revelation, for Mother Edding charged through my study door like a Jersey cow whose calf I had taken for weaning. She was a stout old bawd, with a Falstaffian girth and a coarse grey moustache fit for a sergeant major.
“I’ve come for me girl,” she said. The bass voice in the hall had belonged to her. This was not reassuring.
“I’ve no idea what you are talking about,” I said. Well, I’ll admit it’s always a bit of a stretch for me to act innocent, but it was worth a shot in this situation. One can always resort to force if necessary.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know wot I’m talkin’ about. Conjure ’er up speedy like, or you’ll need a bucket to collect your teeth.”
So much for innocence. A harder line would be required.
“You don’t own the girl. Martine is free to work at Lotus House if that’s what she wants.”
“Wot you want with that dirty bit of muslin, anyway?” Mother Edding asked. She waved a hand, which I noticed was the size of the average stoker’s. “You got a fine house ’ere. I’ll bet you can get any girl you like to work ’ere. Martine’s me best earner. I need ’er. Don’t be a greedy sow.”
“She won’t be coming be back with you,” I said. “I’ve hired her and that’s the end of it.”
Mother Edding drew herself up to her full height, which was almost as tall as her full width. “Oh, yes? We’ll see about that. Martine!”
The chandelier quivered, and my bone china vibrated on the shelf. The hum from the drawing room, where the guardsmen and the bints had resumed their flirtations, ceased abruptly.
“Martine!” the old abbess shouted again, rattling the panes in the window.
Well, that fired me, it did. It had been some time since the collection plate at Lotus House had been full, and I wasn’t about to let this brawny madam ruin the evening’s festivities.
“You will leave my house immediately or risk the consequences,” I said, stalking toward her. I hoped to intimidate the old stump into leaving peacefully, for in truth, I wasn’t entirely sure how to make good on my threat.
Mother Edding cackled. “You’ll ’ave to ’eave me out on me ear, India. But I’ll ’ave Martine wif me when I go.”
Bloody hell. The wretched woman was proving confoundedly difficult. My temper was not improved by the sight of half a dozen bints and as many guardsmen gathered outside my study door, collectively holding their breath. The bints looked worried; the blokes, titillated. It is times like these that make me wonder what the Revered Bewhiskered Fellow was thinking when he created the male sex.
Major Rawlins pushed his way through the crowd. “May I be of assistance, Miss Black?”
Yes, I thought, you bleeding well could. Except if I rely on a customer to toss out my interloper, it will be all over London before the night is through that India Black is incapable of protecting her brothel and her whores. Every madam in my neighborhood would be swanning into Lotus House, tempting the sluts with promises of greener grass once they jumped the fence, and quicker than you can say “Snip, snap, dragon,” I’d be back where I started. I wasn’t going there.
“Thank you, Major, but I can manage. I would like you to escort the young ladies and your men back into the drawing room. Please enjoy the refreshments and pay no mind to any sounds you may hear from the study.”
He looked a bit shocked but nodded stiffly and herded the tarts and the soldier boys from my door. I closed it behind them and turned to Mother Edding.
“Now, look here. I’ve no intention of letting Martine leave with you. However, I’m an abbess too, and I know what a blow it is to lose a good employee. Let me pay you something in compensation. Say, the equivalent of two weeks of Martine’s earnings. That should give you enough time to find another girl to take her place without losing any income. That’s a fair deal, I think.” If there’s one thing I know, it’s brothels. Mother Edding had probably already found another desperate soul to fill Martine’s place and was paying her half what she’d paid Martine. The old girl hadn’t come here expecting to get Martine back; she just wanted to make the point that I shouldn’t waltz in and snatch her trollops out from under her nose, at least not without some recompense.
It pains me to admit when I am wrong, but in this case, I was mistaken. Badly mistaken. Instead of accepting my generous offer, Mother Edding reached into the folds of her clothing and produced a pigsticker.
I admit to feeling some consternation at the sight. My rapier was in its case on the mantel; my Webley Bulldog revolver in the drawer of my desk. I conned the room rapidly for a weapon within arm’s reach. The closest object that fit the purpose was a crystal vase of slender proportions or a Georgian silver candlestick on the chest by the wall. I chose the latter.
Mother Edding smiled grimly beneath her moustache. “So that’s ’ow it’s goin’ to be, is it? Well, come on, then. Let’s get this over wif. The sooner I slice your pretty face, the sooner I leave ’ere with Martine.”
I did not react to these sinister words; I daren’t give the stocky figure the least impression that she had frightened me. I took three swift steps to the chest and picked up the candlestick.
“Hah!” crowed my opponent. “You takin’ me on wif that?”
“Why not?” I said. “You’re old and slow. It wouldn’t be a fair fight if I had a knife.”
She let out a blood-curdling scream and lunged at me. I’d have thought the old girl was about as a spry as a Clydesdale, but she moved with surprising speed. My fencing lessons stood me in good stead, though, for just as she came barreling in with the knife outstretched, I swiveled my hips and dodged the blade. She might be fast, but stout as she was she had trouble halting once she had a head of steam. She sailed past me, the knife waving in the air, trying to locate my heart. I brought the candlestick down on her arm as she swept by me.
She stumbled and cried out, and I thought I’d had the best of her, but the blasted creature floundered upright, the knife still in her hand, and turned a venomous glare upon me.
“Oi, you’ve done it now, you little slag. You’ll be in ’ell before the night is over.”
“Be reasonable, Mother Edding,” I said soothingly. “You know quite well that we can play this game for some time, and I’ll win every round. Your heart will go while you’re trying to chase me down. Why don’t you just accept the money I’ve offered? We’ll shake hands and call it square, and we can both get back to running our businesses.”
She answered with a snarl, a switch of the knife to her other hand and another galumphing charge in my direction. I feinted right and went left and by the time she’d pulled up, I was on the other side of room, taking my Bulldog from my desk drawer. I leveled it at her as she turned.
“That’s quite enough of this. Drop the knife.”
She did so but with ill grace. Then she spat on my Turkey carpet.
Blimey. The bitch had no idea what that carpet had cost.
“Sod you,” I said. “I was going to give you the money I offered and send you on your way, but now that
you’ve done that, you can just take yourself out of here before I do something rash.”
“Sod yourself,” she said, sneering.
“What a riposte. Now get out.”
She walked heavily through the study door, casting murderous glances at me over her shoulder, and I followed her down the hall to see that she exited the front door.
She paused on the step and looked back at me. She was shaking with rage. “You’ll regret this.”
“I don’t, and I won’t,” I said, locking the door in her face.
I knew I’d made an enemy. So had she.
FIVE
It’s all well and good for Dizzy and Superintendent Stoke to sit in their offices, creating elaborate schemes to achieve their objectives, and moving agents and chief inspectors and ministers and other such creatures about like so many pawns on a chessboard. I reckon it amuses them to imagine themselves in control of the board. It would do them both a world of good to come to Lotus House sometime and see how difficult it is to actually execute their plans. All this is by way of saying that over the preceding weeks, Martine had developed the characteristics of a brick wall. The girl had stymied me at every turn when I tried to ingratiate myself with her. Oh, she was pleasant enough; she was clean and sober and good with the customers. In any other circumstances, I would jolly well have been thrilled to have her on the staff. But since my brief was to use her as an introduction to the Dark Legion, I needed more than just a model slut.
I was also hamstrung by the fact that within my own establishment and on the street, I had a reputation for cultivating a certain class of customer: politicians on the rise, sons of peers who would someday succeed their fathers and grace Lotus House with their titles, military officers who garnered attention in dispatches from the far-flung posts of Britain’s empire. Having worked hard to establish this clientele, I’d appear dashed odd if I began to advocate killing the very same fellows I’d been at pains to lure to my brothel. My whores would be confused, and my competitors would swarm like a school of piranhas, picking off the choicest customers with tales of my radical views.
Between my inability to penetrate Martine’s air of polite reserve and my reluctance to become a frothing revolutionary overnight, I was making little headway with my assignment. Oh, I certainly tried, dropping barbed comments into conversations with Martine about the shameful exploitation of us poor whores by the propertied few and indicating my general desire to see the class system abolished in Britain, but she just looked at me solemnly with those soft brown eyes and nodded thoughtfully, never offering so much as a hint of her own political views. I questioned her about her background and made noises about the bravery of the Communards in establishing their own government in Paris and wasn’t it a damned shame they had been turfed out and were now being hunted down all over Europe? This at least generated a spark in her eyes, but she still didn’t rise to the bait. Without some cooperation on her part, I was beginning to feel a bit desperate. I even worried that I was laying it on a bit thick, and I needed to scale back my attempts to portray myself as a friend of the working class or I was bound to rouse her suspicions.
You’d think Superintendent Stoke would understand that establishing relations with Martine without ruining my business would take a bit of time and ingenuity, but barely a week had passed since Martine had arrived when the bloody man started sending me messages, demanding to know my progress at prying information from the girl about the Dark Legion. I dithered and stalled and sent brief notes that indicated I was proceeding slowly and would have information for him soon, but after three weeks of that the officious clot sent a rather blistering missive indicating that he needed leads and he needed them now.
I gave the matter some thought, and then summoned Vincent.
* * *
Two days later I met Martine in the hall. I nodded cordially to her and started past her, then checked my progress abruptly as though I’d just experienced a revelation.
“I say, Martine. Have you a minute to spare?”
“Of course,” she said demurely.
“Come down to the study with me.”
She followed me obediently and when we arrived, I shut the door and locked it behind her. She looked startled for a moment, but I gave her a reassuring smile and went to my desk. I made a great show of unlocking the top drawer and fishing out a few sheets of foolscap and casting dubious glances at her all the while, as though I was debating whether to show them to her or put them back in the drawer for safekeeping. She watched me silently, though I thought I detected curiosity in her gaze.
I shuffled the papers and pursed my lips, giving a great impression of someone having a dreadful time making a decision. Then I took a deep breath and expelled it loudly, looking directly at Martine.
“Can I trust you, Martine?”
“Certainly, mademoiselle. You have treated me very well.”
“Excellent. Your demeanor and behavior have impressed me since the day I hired you. Consequently, I have decided to ask your assistance in dealing with a small matter.”
“But of course. I shall do anything for you.”
I hesitated momentarily (I might consider a second career on the stage) and then reluctantly handed over the papers to the girl.
“What is this?” she asked.
“These documents came into my possession a few days ago.”
“But how—”
I interrupted her. “It is not necessary that you know how I came to possess them. I want only to know if you can make use of them.”
“Make use of them? But what are these papers?”
“It appears to be a confidential memorandum from some bloke at Scotland Yard to his superiors, discussing his plans for the penetration of various anarchist cells.”
She lifted her eyes to meet mine, chewed the inside of her lower lip and then thrust the papers back at me. “I don’t understand why you are showing me these papers. I know nothing of any anarchist, what do you call them, cells.”
I ignored the outstretched papers. “Look here, Martine. I know you’ve been living amongst those Communards in Seven Dials. I read the newspapers. I know the entire area is overrun with radicals. I’ll be hanged if you don’t know a few of those chaps.”
She looked at me warily. I didn’t blame her for not trusting me. Why should she? This girl had learned the hard lessons well. I’d have to be patient with her, which was bloody inconvenient. Especially with Superintendent Stoke breathing down my neck.
I took the document from her outstretched hand and placed it on my desk. “I’d have thought,” I said slowly, “that among your acquaintances there might be someone who would like to know about the Yard’s plans.”
“Why should you want to give these plans to people who want to bring down your government?”
I feigned surprise. “My dear girl, this government is not mine. It belongs to the rich and the powerful. To the aristocracy and to the men who visit this brothel. Do they care what you or I think or want or need? Do they spare a thought for the starving children while they enjoy their champagne? Certainly not. We’re invisible to them. I’ll take their money, but don’t think I like the buggers. Why, I don’t give a tinker’s damn for the whole pack of them. If a few brave men and women are willing to eradicate some of these useless predators, then I’d be pleased to offer them what assistance I can. Right now, that assistance takes the form of this document.”
I’d worked myself up over the inequities of this world, and I was afraid I might have been a touch histrionic, but Martine proved susceptible to a bit of passion, as the French are prone to be. She held out her hand. I placed the papers into it.
“I have a friend who may be interested,” she said. “I shall take the memorandum to him.”
I nodded, looking very dignified and grave, as though we’d sealed a bargain of some sort, which, in a way, I suppose we had.
“If I leave now, I should be back in time for the customers this evening.”
�
�See to it,” I said, reverting to the role of madam and business owner. Well, it wouldn’t do for Martine to think she could take liberties just because we had become co-conspirators.
A few minutes later I heard the front door close and stepped to my window. Drawing back the curtain, I watched Martine stride purposefully away through a thin drizzle that coated the pavement with a nasty glaze. A moment passed, and then a disreputable youngster padded after her, dodging among the pedestrians who recoiled in horror at the smell as he passed, which is quite an accomplishment considering that this is London. Vincent was on the case.
Of course it wasn’t a real memorandum I had given to Martine. I’d drafted it up one night in my study, firing my imagination with a tumbler of brandy and a review of the background material Superintendent Stoke had provided me about the Dark Legion. You can be sure I did not disclose any plans to infiltrate anarchist cells by hiring young bints and masquerading as a radical madam. I included some rather anodyne prescriptions for chatting up mysterious foreigners in pubs known to be frequented by revolutionaries, following newly arrived immigrants from Russia, Germany and Italy, and attending public meetings of antigovernment organizations. Useless drivel, of course, but it wasn’t intended to be an accurate representation of Superintendent Stoke’s plans regarding counterintelligence in the anarchist community. All I needed was a plausible-sounding report to convince some paranoid types that Old Bill was paying close attention to their activities. Vincent had twigged immediately to my plan, and unsurprisingly had a chum who could make flash notes so pukka you couldn’t tell them from real bank notes. Faking a memorandum from Scotland Yard would be easy compared to that, especially when I supplied a specimen of the real thing from the pile of paper Superintendent Stoke had provided to me. The price seemed reasonable (although I was sure Vincent was pocketing a percentage), and I reckoned I could fiddle the account of expenses I’d deliver to the prime minister so that no one would be the wiser. I did not trouble myself about the number of falsified documents that would probably flood the city, allegedly issued by Superintendent Stoke. They’d probably run the gamut from orders to discharge a rum cove from gaol to warrants for the seizure of vast quantities of gin. I hoped Vincent made a fair sum from such proceedings, as it is unlikely he’ll ever turn his hand to gainful employment.
India Black and the Shadows of Anarchy (A MADAM OF ESPIONAGE MYSTERY) Page 6
