Anne Perry's Christmas Vigil (21 page)

“We have to know whether it was him or not,” Henry said quietly. “How can we do that?” He looked first at Squeaky, then at Crow.

It was Bessie who answered, her mouth still full of toast.

“In't no use lookin' fer the corpses. If it's Shadwell wot done it, 'e'll put 'em where the rats'll get
'em. Rats are always 'ungry, an' bones all look the same.”

Crow stopped eating, as if he could not swallow the bacon in his mouth.

Henry closed his eyes, then opened them again slowly. “Have you any idea where else we should look, Bessie?” he asked.

“ ‘We can't find Sadie, we could look fer 'oo owned 'er,' ” she replied. She took another piece of toast and bit into it, then wiped her hand across her chin to rub away the excess butter. “She's a fly piece, an' all, but worth summink. 'Ooever 'e is, 'e's goin' ter be as mad as 'ell if she's dead. Yer gotta look after yer property, or anybody'll take it from yer. 'E's gonna make sure as 'ooever did this pays fer it, so's it don't 'appen again. Keep respect, like.”

She was suddenly conscious of the three men staring at her. She lowered her eyes and rubbed her sleeve across her chin, just in case there was still butter there. She wasn't used to food like this. In fact, she wasn't used to having her own food at all, specially set out for her alone, on a separate plate.

Squeaky knew she was right. He was annoyed that he hadn't thought of that himself. He should
have! He really had to get out of Portpool Lane; his brain was curdling.

“Course,” he agreed a little sourly. “That's the one thing we know. She were the woman dead, so someone's going ter be mad as hell, 'cause he's been robbed. By all accounts she were something real special. Drove men mad for 'er. Who knows how many more, before Lucien.”

“Excellent,” Henry approved wryly. “A little sleep, and then we shall begin again. That is, if you are all still willing? I would be extremely grateful for your help.”

“Course,” Bessie said immediately.

“Yer'd help anyone on two legs, fer a piece o' toast an' jam,” Squeaky said with disgust.

She gave him a radiant smile. “ 'E don't 'ave ter 'ave two legs,” she corrected him.

Henry and Crow both laughed aloud. Henry patted her gently on the shoulder. “I suggest we find somewhere with a place to sleep, reconvene at dusk for something to eat, and then continue on our way.”

Crow turned to Bessie. “I'll find you somewhere.” He stood up. “Come on.”

She rose also and followed him obediently, leaving Squeaky feeling oddly alone. Crow was
out of line: Squeaky was the one looking after her, not him. He did not notice Henry Rathbone's smile.

T
hey spent the greater part of the following night asking discreet questions of pimps, tavernkeepers, barmen, and other prostitutes. Again they bribed, flattered, and threatened. No one admitted to having seen Sadie, and it began to look more and more likely that she, and not Lucien, had been the victim. Unless there had been two corpses, and that was still unclear.

Some time toward morning the four of them sat in the corner of a public house in an alley off St. Martin's Lane, eating steak and kidney pudding with a thick suet crust and plenty of gravy. Outside the sleet was falling more heavily. Hailstones rattled on the window behind them. In the yellow circle of the lamplight on the pavement they could see the white drift of them filling the cracks between the cobbles.

“Cor! Sadie were a blinder, eh?” Bessie said with growing respect at what they had learned of her. “That Shadow Man must be ready ter tear the
throat out o' 'ooever done 'er in.” She shivered. “I'm glad I in't 'im. I reckon as 'e's goin' ter die 'orrible.”

“I'm afraid you are right,” Henry agreed. “But if it is she who was killed, it is hard to have much pity for him. If he were caught he would most certainly be hanged.”

Bessie looked at Henry with a sudden gentleness. “It's a shame, 'cause Lucien were nice. I 'ope it weren't 'im. But if it were, 'e'll get worse, yer know. They always do.”

“Yes, I imagine they do,” he conceded softly.

Squeaky felt a sudden and overwhelming rage take hold of him. Damn Lucien Wentworth, and all the other idle, idiotic, self-absorbed young men who betrayed the love and privilege that was theirs and broke people's hearts by throwing away their lives. They had been given far more than most people in the world, and they had destroyed it, smeared filth over it until there was nothing left. It was a kind of blasphemy. He saw that for the first time, and it overwhelmed him. The whole idea of anything being holy had never occurred to him before.

“Do we agree that it is almost certainly Shadwell who owned her?” Crow asked, eating the very last of his pudding.

“Accounts conflict,” Henry answered. “But at least some of the lies are clear enough to weed out. Shadwell seems to inspire a great deal of fear in people, which would suggest that he is the ultimate power in this particular world. Whoever is responsible for Sadie's death will be running from him, and he will be pursuing them.” Without asking he refilled everyone's glass with fresh ale.

“But is it Lucien who killed her, or not?” Crow asked, directing his question at no one in particular.

“We will take Bessie's advice,” Henry asserted. “We will look for whoever else is seeking the killer, because Shadwell will need to have vengeance for her death, even if only to preserve his own status. His resources will be immeasurably better than ours.”

Squeaky sighed, his mind searching for an excuse to end this futile chase. Whatever they discovered, it wasn't going to be good. Either Lucien was dead, and in a way that his father would have nightmares about for the rest of his life, even if that wasn't long, or else Lucien had murdered the woman who had apparently betrayed him, if you could use that word for such a creature. Only an idiot, or a man drugged out of his wits, would
have trusted her anyway. Squeaky had known many women of that sort. He had bought and sold them himself, not so very long ago. Well, none as beautiful as Sadie seemed to have been, but women anyway, some of them pretty enough. But he wasn't going to offer any advice on the subject because he would much rather Henry Rathbone didn't know that. Or Crow either, for that matter.

And if Lucien were still alive, then the situation was even worse. They'd have to lie. They could never tell his father about this. Better he think him dead.

“You know …” he began. Then he looked at Henry's face and realized he would be wasting his breath to argue.

T
hat evening they began to descend even deeper into the world of addiction and despair. The broad streets of the West End of London were glittering bright on the surface. They walked along Regent Street and into the Haymarket, passing theaters of the utmost sophistication. Bessie lagged behind, staring at the notices, the
lights, the fashions. Several times Squeaky had to yank at her hand to drag her along.

The lamps were lit, and the gleam off of them caught the pale drifts of snow, touching it with warmth.

“Come on!” Squeaky said sharply, but Bessie was watching the carriages clattering up and down the center of the street, or swiveling around to look at people walking arm in arm, men with greatcoats on, women in capes trimmed with fur.

They turned off Piccadilly into an alley, and within twenty yards there were fewer lights, and in the shadowed doorways prostitutes plied their trade, ignoring those huddled within feet of them, half asleep, sheltering from the icy wind and the sleet.

Crow led the way down the steps from the pavement into a cellar, and through that into a deeper cellar. He began asking questions, discreetly at first, full of inventive lies.

“Looking for my sister,” he explained, then described Sadie as well as he could, from other people's words.

A gaunt-eyed drunkard stared at him vacantly. “Don't know, old boy. Won't care,” he drawled. “Got anything fit to drink?”

Crow passed by him, and Squeaky, still holding Bessie by the hand, spoke to a fat man with a face raddled and pockmarked with old disease.

“Lookin' fer a man who owes me money,” he said grimly, then described Lucien. “I don't sell my women for nothing.”

But the answer he received was equally useless.

They wasted little more time there before going out the back into a half-enclosed courtyard, then down more steps into a subterranean passage leading toward the river. Here there were more rooms indulging darker tastes. Even Bessie seemed disturbed. Squeaky could feel her fingers digging into his flesh, gripping him as if he were her lifeline.

Henry said nothing, perhaps too appalled to find words. They saw men and women, and those who might have been either, in obscene costumes, practicing torture and humiliation that belonged in nightmares.

Bessie shivered and leaned her head against Squeaky's shoulder.

Patiently Squeaky described Sadie and was greeted with raucous laughter from a man with hectic energy as if fueled by cocaine. His limbs
twitched, and he seemed to find it difficult to contain his impatience.

“You too?” the man said, then laughed again.

“Someone else looking for her?” Squeaky said immediately.

“Yes! Oh yes! The long black hair, the beautiful eyes. Sadie—Sadie!”

“Who?” Squeaky urged.

Suddenly the man stood still, then he started to shiver.

“Who?” Squeaky lowered his voice. “Tell me, or I'll slit yer throat!”

Henry drew in his breath to protest, then changed his mind.

“Shadwell,” the man replied very softly. Then he swiveled around, pushed his way between two men sharing a bottle, and disappeared.

Squeaky looked around at the vacant stares of the opium and laudanum addicts, the rambling half conversations of the drunkards, and gave up. He jerked his hand to direct them onward, and gripped Bessie more tightly as they followed a short, heavy man out into the alley.

Squeaky saw these people now with deepening disgust precisely because he had seen them all before. He had just forgotten the sheer and useless
misery. Suddenly respectability, whether it dulled your wits or not, had a sweetness nothing else could match. It was like drinking clean water, breathing clean air.

Standing here in this filthy alley, he wanted to turn and run, escape before it caught hold of him again, or before he woke up and realized that everything he had now was just a dream. Hester Monk would despise him if she ever saw this. The thought of that made the sweat break out on his body in a way no physical fear ever had.

He hurried on, asking questions discreetly, in roundabout fashion, as if looking for pleasure himself.

It was obvious that Henry Rathbone found it repugnant to see people's misunderstanding as to his intent, but he offered no explanation. The distaste, the embarrassment lay in his eyes and the faint pulling of his mouth, almost impossible to read in the garish light of gaslamps. Squeaky saw it only because he knew it was there.

They did not mention Lucien's name, only his description, and regrettably there were many young men of excellent family and considerable means, even in the most depraved places, where
any kind of sexual pleasure was for sale, the more bizarre the more expensive.

In one wide tunnel close to the river, laughter echoing along its length, magnified again and again, water dripping down the walls, Henry mentioned Shadwell again, as if it were half a joke. It was met with sudden silence. The blood drained from the skin of the man they were talking to, or perhaps it was a woman. In the flickering light and under the paint it was hard to tell. His naked shoulders were pearly white, blemishless, and without muscles, but his forearms were masked by long pink gloves, up to the elbow. Crow had seen such things before, but Henry was clearly uncomfortable. Still, he refused to let anything stop him in his quest.