by L. J. Greene
“Sure, sure,” I said, nodding at him. “Well, if you’re done with that paper, I’ll take a look. Haven’t seen the news today.” I snatched it from him before he could protest, and waved goodbye with it as I slipped back into the house. “Next time, Freddie! And be sure to phone through the details.”
I went straight up to my room and peered out. By that time, Gabriel had hoisted the bag into King’s open trunk, and King slammed it shut. He tipped back his hat again and shook his finger in Gabriel’s face, then towards the house. I didn’t have to hear them to know what the conversation was about, and if I wasn’t bursting at the seams with curiosity, I might have felt sorry for Gabriel.
Once King got back in the car and drove off the show was over, so I hightailed it back to Leo’s room and barged right in. I wanted to re-examine the hidden room.
But it was too late, I realized, just as I burst through the door.
Leo was home.
Chapter 34
“Good Lord,” Leo said, astonished at my abrupt entrance. He was poised with his jacket in hand, hanging it in the wardrobe. “Is anything the matter?”
Just as Fred King had gaped at me, so my mouth hung open as I tried to think of an excuse. Leo must have come home while I’d been having my confrontation with King out the back. “No,” I said at last. “Just wanted to…”
“Wanted to what?”
I did the only thing I could think of, half dressed as I was, and started to unbutton my pants. Leo said, “Oh,” and turned his back on me, arranging his jacket on the hanger and pushing aside clothes in the wardrobe to make room for it. “After the last few days, I assumed your affections had begun to wander.”
My fingers faltered on my zipper, but I played dumb. “I don’t get your meaning.”
“Don’t you, lover?” he asked coolly. He closed the wardrobe door and leant up against it, hands behind his back. “Why, I meant that you seemed rather more alert than usual with Alice involved.”
I knocked off the coy act. “You were the one who wanted me to do as I was told,” I pointed out. “She kissed me; was I supposed to shove her away? And it was your mouth I was in, after all. Not hers.” It was crude and disrespectful to Alice, and I felt ashamed of myself as I said it, and as I added, “You know I’m cuckoo for you, Leo.” It had the desired effect. His frown gave way to a bashful look down at his feet. I pressed my advantage. “Crazy. Nutso. Why else would I bust in here like I did?”
“And you simply can’t wait?”
My tongue felt thick when I swallowed. “I’ve been waiting all day,” I said, hoping that it would sound like a whine rather than fear.
He crossed the room to me, and took my face in his hands to kiss. “Alright, angel. Since you’ve been waiting all day.”
I simpered as best I could. He started to help me undress, but I pulled away, remembering the envelope in my back pocket.
“Quicker if I do it,” I said. “Why don’t you undress yourself?”
His smile didn’t drop, but it felt to me like he’d seen through me somehow. “I think I’ll stayed dressed. Won’t you let me help you? I’d like to.” His fingers approached my waistband, and again I took a step backwards.
“You’ll get messed if you keep your clothes on.”
“Laundry is due for pick up tomorrow,” he said. “I may as well get my money’s worth.”
I had to make my decision, so I did. “Actually,” I told him, looking down at my hands as I tugged at my zipper, “Gabriel took out the laundry earlier.”
Leo stiffened, and then strode over to the bathroom. After he disappeared inside, I took the opportunity to remove my pants in a hurry, and hang them on a chair so the back pocket, with its envelope peeking out, was covered.
He came out of the bathroom slowly, and leaned against the doorframe, looking at me. “Yes, I forgot. Reggie asked for an early run this week. Still, Gabriel should have known better than to come in to my quarters without permission.”
I turned, and put my hands on my hips. “He had permission. He asked me to accompany him, and I did. So there’s been no snooping.”
“I see,” he said, and somehow I managed to keep his stare. “I can’t abide snooping,” he said after a pause. “It never ends well.”
“Forget about Gabriel and the snooping he didn’t do,” I said with a sigh. “Come to bed.” I made it convincing, and I could see Leo’s uncertainty; he wanted to believe me.
“I need a moment,” he said, and then added, “Why don’t you sit on the bed and see if the rabbit will come out of his burrow today?”
I resented him for the dig, but I did as he asked, and sat on the bed to take myself in hand. I listened like blazes, though, and I could have sworn I heard him opening the second door in that bathroom. He was gone only a few minutes, and when he came back I’d made slight headway. My mind was completely preoccupied with the canisters and the envelope; the laundry service and Fred King’s guest appearance; the hidden room that must—must, I realized now—lie between Leo’s room and Cresswickham’s boudoir. Was it accessible from Cresswickham’s quarters?
“I can see he needs coaxing,” Leo said when he reappeared. He had taken off his pants and underwear, but his shirttails hung around his prick.
“Huh?” I said.
He removed my hand from my cock and knelt between my legs.
“Shy bunny,” he said. “Scared of the hound, perhaps.” He smiled up at me, teeth sharp and too-bared, and he did seem wolfish in that moment. “I won’t bite, not unless you beg me.”
He sucked me a little harder than I liked, used more teeth than seemed safe, and only let up if I hissed. I wondered then if he did it on purpose, to make sure I stayed limp despite his ministrations. He might insist he liked me that way, but it seemed to me his delight in it was diabolical. Kept him feeling in control, like he had something over me.
I pushed him away. “It might come up if you stop gnawing at it,” I snapped.
He laughed, his eyes sparkling, and leapt up. He loosened his tie and then wound it around my eyes before half-pulling, half-shoving me to the end of the bed. “You’ll spring up once you’re skewered,” he said, pushing me so I bent at the waist, hands on the bed. “You usually do.” I heard him oil himself, and then he started to stretch me with his fingers. “I suppose you don’t want much of this,” he said. “Being so desperate for it.”
“Get on with it,” I said, my teeth clenched.
He laughed. “Why, you are impatient today, bunny,” he said, and shoved into me.
The devil of it was, he was right about the skewering. Feeling him pierce me made me come up soon enough. Whatever else the man was, he was talented. I shifted my weight to one arm so I could use the other hand to pull myself off, but he grabbed at my wrist.
“No.”
We wrestled for a moment, until he pushed me forward and I sprawled on the bed. He hustled me over so I was lying on my back, and he bent close enough to me that I could feel his breath flurry across my cheek.
“What—” I started.
“I said, no.”
He stabbed back inside me and pushed my legs up, arms hooked under my knees, so I couldn’t push away from him, or do much other than take what he was giving. He was deep inside me, pressed up so hard I could feel his shirttails rubbing between us. He seized my wrists. I might as well have been hogtied.
“I’m hard,” I gritted out.
“Yes.”
“Will you bring me off?”
He leaned down over me, forcing further into me until I felt like there was no more room inside me at all. I was stuffed to the brim with him, packed tight, and it made me sick that it excited me.
He said: “If you’re a good bunny, I might.”
I made myself agreeable, and arched up to meet him. He let my wrists go soon enough, and I clutched at the bed covers, because the thought of touching him seemed like surrender. He raked over my most sensitive point with each thrust. I hadn’t forgotten, though, why I was t
here. As long as I kept his attention, I would succeed. That was secondary to my pleasure.
But it was hard to remember that in the midst of it. Suddenly my release seemed important. Essential. I reached out to find his face, touch it, slip my fingers into his mouth. He trapped them there with his teeth.
“Please,” I said, and he bit harder on my finger. “Please, please. Please.”
He dropped my legs and pulled my hand from his mouth. “Hold your legs up for me,” he panted, and I obeyed, pulling them wide, the way he liked best.
A hand wrapped around my throat, and I gave a stifled moan. His other hand wrapped just as firmly around my shaft, and he took me like that, choking me with as much vigor as he jerked and fucked me. I was a dancing puppet underneath him; I was dying. I let go my legs and scrabbled at his fingers on my neck, but they were immovable. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, and there was a rushing noise in my ears. But my cock was straining as much as the rest of me, and I popped just before I blacked out.
I wasn’t out for long. The world came rushing back with the pulse hammering in my head. He was dabbing at my hole, cleaning me with one of those innumerable silk handkerchiefs.
“Too much,” I said hoarsely. “That was too much, Leo.” I coughed, retched, and pulled the tie off my eyes. He helped me sit up and pressed a glass of water into my hand. I drank and coughed again.
He stayed kneeling between my legs, his arms wrapped around me and his head pressed into my chest. I couldn’t do anything but embrace him with one hand, and drink down my water with the other.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said at last, and gave me a light nip over my heart. He pulled back to look up into my face. “I was rather excited and I let myself get carried away. It won’t happen again.”
The golden glow of my orgasm settled into the same crawling gratitude I always felt after such a rough go of it, and I hated myself. Had to remind myself the man was a phony, a liar, a snake.
But: “It’s alright,” I croaked. “Just be more careful next time.” I rubbed my throat tenderly. From the corner of my eye I caught sight of the rosary. “Pray for me, why don’t you,” I said. It was supposed to be a joke, but it came out hollow with dread.
He leaned over, opened the drawer of the bedside table, and swept the rosary into it. “A relic of my Papist youth. I’m C of E now, of course.”
“Of course,” was all I could think to reply.
“Reggie," he said, like it explained everything. I coughed again. "Go and shower,” he suggested. “I’ll send for hot tea with honey. It will help your throat.”
I loathed tea, because it reminded me of Cresswickham. But it sounded good to me, the way Leo put it then. He insisted I use his en suite, and I agreed readily enough because I had a purpose to it. I started to take up my clothes, but Leo stopped me. “Wear my robe,” he said, as beneficently as though he were offering me the Koh-i-Noor. “And pass me my cigarette case, would you?”
I brought him the case obediently, and his eyes followed me every step of the way. I turned back to gather up my dress pants again. “These’ll do,” I told him. “I’m always taking your robes. I’ll have a whole closet full of them at this rate.”
“But those clothes are soiled. And you’ll have to change for dinner, anyway.” When I turned to look at him, he stared back meditatively, and then dropped his gaze to my pants.
“I prefer these,” I said. “It’s just to wear down the hall, anyways.”
He blew out a stream of smoke so long it almost reached me like a ghostly, accusatory finger. “It’s a very small matter. Why are you making it so mountainous?”
I tried again. “Your robe has his initials on it.”
“Then take one that doesn’t.”
I could see I’d have to drop it and hope for the best. I plucked out the plainest robe he had in his closet—soft white cotton, with a decorative sapphire silk binding—and went into the bathroom. Once I’d turned on the shower I tried the opposite door, twisting the knob as quietly as I could. It was no good: locked. I didn’t like to jiggle it too much in case Leo heard me, so I washed as fast and I could and pulled on the robe. When I came out, steaming tea had appeared as promised, along with a dishtowel containing several ice cubes. Leo insisted on holding them to my throat as I drank the tea, but once that was done I said I’d better get back to my room before Cresswickham found us.
“He wouldn’t mind,” Leo said. “Not at all, not this sort of thing. He’d ask to watch.”
“And I don’t mean to let him watch,” I growled. “Besides, I need to work.”
“Yes,” he said. “Work.”
“I’ll see you at dinner,” I pointed out, gathered up my pants, and left. As soon as I got back in my room I turned my pockets inside out, searching for the envelope.
It was gone, of course.
Chapter 35
I swore a blue streak until I ran out of breath and collapsed on the chair in front of my typewriter. My eye fell on the scrunched-up paper Fred King had been reading. I’d tossed it on my desk when I ran back up to make sure he took the laundry bag with him. As far as clues went, it was a poor substitute for the envelopes and the film canisters, but it was all I had. I set about smoothing the newspaper out until I could read it.
Cause of death had finally leaked in the Incubus case: garroting, and with her own pearl necklace according to the Examiner. That explained the new photograph, not to mention the headline. I wondered if Bella’d had a hand in tipping off the press. And just how friendly might she be with the Coroner’s office? I wouldn’t’ve put anything past her, not after watching her handle Alice and Leo.
The paper jived up the story with a multitude of adjectives. I felt a wave of professional bitterness. I could’ve done a better job half-drunk. Still, I searched through, looking for something that might have made King so nervy. The facts, reiterated in glowering, censorious terms, were simple: Lynette Rochelle, twenty-two years old, low-rent jazz singer, found dead in an alley downtown and, as far as I could make out, intimate with a man in the preceding hours.
Quite what angle the paper was taking with this, I couldn’t tell. The writer’d done his job so poorly I couldn’t see whether I was supposed to pity the girl or not. Or maybe that was the point; maybe they were hedging their bets and waiting to see what the outcome was before they declared her saint or sinner.
Low in the piece, I came across a sentence that made my ears go cold. I could tell the paragraph had only made it to publication because it was a slow day and they needed to fill up some inches.
Miss Rochelle’s agency, King Management, booked her a regular job at the Birdhouse as the house singer, where she was known as The White Orchid for wearing all-white costumes during her performances.
The writer went on to speculate about whether her sartorial choices were a sign of purity or blasphemy, but my attention was already caught. King Management was my agency, too. I knew Fred King dabbled in management of a variety of industries: acting, dancing, writing. Even an illustrator and an infamous solicitor were on his books. It made sense he’d have a singer too, to round out his collection.
King.
King giving me the trumped-up interview with Cresswickham; King turning up to collect the ‘laundry’; King acting as manager for Lynette Rochelle and probably making dime off her murder now by giving exclusives to the Examiner. This was a coincidence that couldn’t stretch quite as far as it was trying. The new picture, published courtesy of King Management, made Lynette look fragile, her neck thin and delicate under the heavy pearls as she tipped her head back to laugh. I felt an unexpected cramp of grief for the dead girl.
Did Bella know, I wondered? Did she know who King was, had she spoken to him? In my mind’s eye I saw again Fred King’s hands, big and powerful, convulsing around the newspaper.
Garroted, I reminded myself. Not strangled. I closed the newspaper. GARROTED, the front page insisted. But they were kissing cousins, garroting and strangulation.
I shivered. The room seemed chilly and much darker than when I’d entered. The day was slipping away again. I felt empty, enervated, like I would never be alert or free or happy again. I crawled onto my bed, just to rest my head for a moment, and closed my eyes.
When I woke it was dark. My watch told me it was coming up for three in the morning. I’d slept right through dinner and into the deep night. I rolled myself off the bed, my joints complaining, and washed my face. I had a dull headache throbbing at the base of my skull, and no amount of stretching out my neck would get rid of it. I got into my pajama pants and nursed my head, but what I needed was my Kentucky remedy. My bottle was near dry. I’d have to head downstairs to refill my comfort.
The household should have been safely in bed; even on our latest nights we were all tucked away and enjoying our nightmares by two. Yet the chandelier in the foyer was still burning, and when I entered the drawing room, I noticed the door to the screening room was ajar. I crept up to it, and gazed down those dark steps into the yawning black. For a moment I imagined something was staring back, and pulled away again. I didn’t need any more monsters peering into my soul, and even less did I want to run into anyone.
I grabbed the decanter of bourbon from the side table and was about to head back to my room with it when I heard a metallic clunking float out from the screening room.
I set the bourbon on the bar again and crept slowly, soundlessly through the doorway and down the carpeted stairs. A bluish light flickered enough for me to see my way down, and when I peeped round the doorway at the bottom, I saw a silhouetted figure slumped on the love seat. His hair was in disarray, but I knew him at once: Lord Reginald Cresswickham.
I needn’t’ve worried so much about keeping quiet. He was transfixed by the movie he was watching, and the clattering noise of the running reel helped muffle my footsteps as I slipped behind him to hide behind one of the pillars that stretched floor to ceiling. The room was small, windowless, and I could see dust teeming in the air where the beam from the projector stretched towards the screen. From my vantage point I could see the Englishman almost in profile. The light flickered across his face and bleached all color, turning him into a chiaroscuro tableau. There was no sound, but the projector was loud enough to cover my steps. When I was sure he hadn’t noticed me I turned my attention to the screen, and what I saw made my head spin.
