The Gilded Scarab (6 page)

I dropped my hands and reconsidered the idea of spirituous liquors.

“He’s something big at the museum, and his man there was likely a bit wary of you, seein’ as you’re a stranger,” remarked a voice behind me, from inside the Tavern. The man laughed and jerked a head toward the inside. “Which is right stupid, since I got a place full of visitors from all over the Imperium. The museum draws ’em like wasps to a honey pot. Can’t see why. Load of old stuff in there and most of it’s broken.”

I let out a breath in a silent sigh. “Londinium’s full of visitors from all over the world, not merely from the Imperium.”

“None of the other bits are British. They don’t count. Drink, sir? I got a really nice bottle of daffy here as would suit a gentleman of your stamp.”

“Is unthinking patriotism more appalling than drinking gin at this early hour?” I matched the publican grin for grin. “Not now, thank you. Do you know who it was?” I had the vague idea of making a complaint to someone. If I could think of anyone to complain to.

The publican shrugged. “One of them big Houses. He don’t come in here.”

All the more reason for me to patronize the Tavern, then. “Thank you. I’ll be back to taste your best bitter later in the day, I promise.”

“Lookin’ forward to it, sir.” The publican touched his forehead in lieu of a nonexistent hat and faded back into the pub.

I turned my attention to the coffeehouse.

It looked to be the right sort of place for a man conscious of the need to practice strict economy. Shabby usually meant affordable, if not downright cheap. I crossed the road to peer in through a window. The inside cried out for a coat of paint as loudly as did the outside. Whoever the owner was, he didn’t appear to hold with redecoration. The seating area was full of big soft-looking armchairs and mismatched tables. There were a couple of threadbare sofas, whose springs were sagging, but which looked like they would mold themselves very comfortingly, not to say clingingly, around the human form. An elderly man stood at the counter reading a newspaper, wreathed in steam from the big coffee machine behind him.

Well, if it were good enough for some House eccentric who was something big to do with the museum, it was good enough for Rafe Lancaster. So I pushed open the door and went inside.

Chapter 5

T
HE
HOUSEMAID
at the hostel was a pretty girl from the country, somewhere Essex way. According to Agnes, she wouldn’t last six months before being inveigled into a life of vice and shame. As Agnes made this prophetic announcement, looking like a demented Sibyl in a dingy lace cap and paisley shawl, she gave me the sort of hard, suspicious stare I’d only ever seen before on the bony faces of the Wiltshire Horn sheep that had been my father’s passion. Or on the bony face of Commander Abercrombie. Come to think on it, there was a remarkable resemblance between all three of them, although I’d give the sheep the palm for beauty.

I treated Agnes to my most charming smile in reply. It wasn’t as though I were interested anyway, and even if I were, I had never been one to seduce innocents. To counter my cousin’s unmerited suspicion, I treated the maid with great politeness and did not once flirt. Not once. Consequently, young Phryne appeared to develop a tendre for me by the end of my first morning in the hostel, thereby proving the essential contrary nature of all women. Phryne reddened whenever I looked at her and refused to meet my eyes. She pressed the heels of her palms into her cheeks to try and chase the red away, stammered when she spoke to me, and sometimes squirmed. The squirming was particularly uncomfortable. It made me feel unaccountably guilty, and I don’t like feeling guilty when I haven’t done anything to deserve it. Or even when I have.

When, a couple of days after my arrival, I asked her to steam press my evening clothes, the girl was incoherent while trying to tell me how honored she was that I trusted her with them.

Good grief. It was my evening clothes, not my hand and heart. And what’s more, rather worn and old-fashioned evening clothes. I really couldn’t fathom her enthusiasm for garments at least a decade old. “They aren’t up to much, Phryne, but then, I didn’t have much need of them in the service. I suppose I should get some new ones.”

“You leave it to me, sir. I’ll rub them up something bright with benzoin, I promise.” Phryne paused, her arms full of jacket and evening trousers and my old opera cloak. “Are you going out somewhere nice, sir?”

I smiled at her. “Oh yes,” I said. “Thank you, Phryne. Yes, I am.”

I
NDEED
, I
felt my return to civilization merited a celebration. A night at my club beckoned.

Not White’s, of course. I’d been a member once, but I had allowed my membership to lapse while I was away on active service. Not that it mattered. White’s was the stuffiest club in the stuffiest part of the metropolis, and frequented by the stuffiest sort of old fogey. My father had been a member, for heaven’s sake, and my brother still was. That spoke volumes. No, I wanted something not nearly so venerable or traditional. One of my other clubs. One of the stimulating and exciting kind.

Sadly, many of the establishments catering to the most unstuffy of gentlemen were no longer in existence. Ever since the Cleveland Street scandal a decade earlier, and doubtless following the Wilde trial since, they’d been transient places, careful to avoid police notice and cautious about their members and activities. They would set up somewhere for six months and then quietly and discreetly move on. My memberships of those clubs had lapsed too, mostly because I had no idea where to send the annual fees.

The one exception, and one I was certain was still operating, was Margrethe’s Hotel in Covent Garden. It had been a fixture there for the last century. From the outside it was a typical small hotel catering to the visitor come to sample the delights of the capital. But if the visitor were of a certain type—there with his wife and six children, perhaps, or a visiting bishop or a jolly country squire, or a spinster up to shop in town—then they would be met in the beautifully appointed reception hall by the most profound regrets that the hotel was full and given directions to the nearest establishment able to accommodate them.

Of course, if the visitor were there sans family and if he, along with the bishop and the squire, sported a small, unobtrusive badge enameled with a daisy on the underside of his lapel, then the hotel delighted in welcoming him. The spinster qualifying for the daisy would still be gently redirected, but to a sister establishment set up on the Sapphic principle. Margrethe’s catered solely to gentlemen.

To the cognoscenti, Margrethe’s offered comfortable smoking lounges, a fine restaurant with a French chef and handsome young waiters, and a dozen bedrooms available at short notice for an appropriately large fee. Margrethe’s was all privacy and discretion, hushed voices and exquisite service. And if the worst came to the worst and the police did come—which had never happened in living memory—the hotel had links with the import-export offices next door. On every floor a discreet cupboard with a false back led to the offices, and from there the gentlemen could make their way to the Covent Garden piazza and mingle safely and inconspicuously with the opera and theater crowds.

I loved Margrethe’s.

I loved the company of witty and handsome men. I loved dining like a prince on dishes such as
le tourin d’ail doux
followed by
poulet basquaise with carottes Vichy
, created by the hands of a master. But most of all I loved dessert. That would keep me going to Margrethe’s if the best the hotel could manage in the way of haute cuisine was a dried up pork chop the local public house would spurn as beneath its notice.

Dessert made Margrethe’s the place it was.

T
HAT
EVENING
,
Phryne, still blushing and squirming, brought back clothes looking as good as new. I wrapped up in my opera cloak, found an umbrella, and walked across town from Bloomsbury to the market at Covent Garden. I could have taken the Underground, but that meant arriving all soot and smuts and ruining Phryne’s careful refurbishment of my clothes. As for an autohansom, well, the walk wouldn’t kill me, and Margrethe’s was expensive. I needed all my spare cash.

It was a chilly evening, and an invigorating walk. It was a little early to dine at the hotel, so I cut through to the Lowther Arcade to reach my tobacconist. In my father’s day, the Arcade had been a place for the wealthy to fritter away their money on luxuries. Now, like the rest of Covent Garden, it was down at heel and the haunt of actresses and ladies of dubious reputation. The shops were still there, selling leather goods or fine tobacco or jewelry, but less bright and clean. Windows were murky with dirt, and the merchandise looked, in some cases, as though it had been there for a long time. A very long time.

More than one girl in beautifully fitted street clothes and an elegant hat stood in the alcoves between the shops, shivering despite close-fitting coats and high-heeled red leather boots. They were fashionably dressed. In Bond Street or Piccadilly, they might have passed as ladies up in town to do some shopping. But not loitering here in the Arcade. There were no ladies here. Only doxies.

They gave me faint, flirtatious smiles, holding back their shoulders to make their bosoms more prominent. It was too early for the theater crowd heading for Drury Lane or the Opera House, and they were probably looking to fill the time before their main customers came later. Well, they were out of luck with me. I avoided eye contact where I could. I had other quarry in mind that evening, but it was hard to evade the girls entirely. Indeed, one lay in wait for me as I left the tobacconist, a woman with dark blonde hair and sad brown eyes. She pushed her bosom into my arm and smirked.

Poor girl. But I couldn’t pretend an interest I didn’t have. “Not tonight, my dear.”

“Ten shillings to a fine-looking one like you.” The travesty of a bright smile widened. She put both her hands on the arm her bosom had rested against so invitingly. Even in gloves, her fingers trembled with cold. She wasn’t skimpily dressed, like some of the streetwalkers in poorer parts of town, but she must still be cold on the bitter November night, standing around hoping to catch the eye of a customer. This was no weather to ply one’s trade in the streets. “I’d do it for nothing, you’re such a handsome boy! Ten shillings, now. That isn’t too much to ask for an hour of a lady’s company, now is it? Come along, dear! I can show you the nicest time.”

Lovely patter she had there! Almost tempting. But I smiled, kissed her powdered cheek, and shook my head. “You’re very pretty, but, erm….” I leaned in close and said in her ear, “I rather wish you were your brother, my dear.”

The doxy stared, then laughed heartily. It was far more genuine than the professional smile she’d greeted me with a few minutes before. “I wish I was too, sir! Well, that’s a disappointment and no mistake. The prettiest ones are not for the likes of me, it seems.” She slipped the two half crowns I gave her into a slim leather bag hanging from her wrist. “The best of luck to you, sir.”

“And you, pretty one. Keep warm tonight and good hunting.”

“You too, sir, but you don’t know what you’re missing.”

Well, she was wrong there. But I did know what I wanted. I made my way out onto Garrick Street and went north toward Floral Street.

They don’t call us Stravaigor for nothing, the House of vagrants and vagabonds. We’re all rovers at heart, content to wander the earth, always seeking new things to see. We have feet that itch from birth, and we spend our lives with our heads up and our eyes open, drinking in the sights and smells around us. Walking Londinium’s streets is a favorite pastime of mine. There is always so much to see and so much happening. All right, I would agree it’s a cliché to say the metropolis never sleeps, but I don’t believe the streets are ever empty. All human life is there. I can only liken it to passing a series of small theaters, in which people come onto the stage and perform their piece before fading back into the shadows.

The market itself had been long over, of course, by the time I got there. Most of the fruit and vegetable sellers would have been there before dawn, and had long since dispersed around the metropolis. But still there was evidence of the trade everywhere. A sack of turnips, mostly rotted from the smell, stood propped against an alley mouth with a ragged woman bent over it, rooting through to find some sound enough to eat. Perhaps she had once been as pretty and jaded as the girl in the arcade. I parted with another couple of half crowns. No, of course I didn’t want her thanks, poor girl, and I had to scramble to get away from her gratitude. There was a real difference between my sort of genteel hard-up-edness, and literally not having two ha’pennies to rub together. I could spare a little silver.

I had to dodge around a group of urchins kicking moldy oranges about as if they were footballs and hooting with delight every time one disintegrated on the toe of a boot. They glanced at me with bright, indifferent faces. Healthy-looking young Yahoos they were, and more than one guffawed when I slipped. I caught my balance with a downward jab of my umbrella and a muttered curse. A million cabbage leaves had been ground into the flagstones, making them green with slime. The pavements were slippery enough with sleet and ice, without that.