God Is an Englishman (71 page)

“That’s the Seville dancer, Esmerelda, isn’t it?” Vosper confirmed that it was, adding that Mr. Avery had been squiring the lady about town during her recent engagements at the Star and two other music-halls.

“He squires a great number of ladies. Is there anything particularly significant about this one?”

Vosper looked away and Adam had the impression that anxiety concerning his personal future was doing battle with Vosper’s pro fessional discretion as the valet of an acknowledged rake.

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“It’s my belief, sir, she’s bled Mr. Avery white. Her and her part ner. He sometimes accompanied her here.”

“They’ve been here? Recently?”

“As recently as a few days ago.”

“And Mr. Avery? When was he last here?”

“Two days ago. I didn’t see him, sir, I was marketing and it seems he called for a change of clothes and left again in a matter of minutes. He left my wages and this note. It doesn’t help us much, I’m afraid.” He produced a sheet torn from a pocketbook on which was written, in Avery’s neat, legible handwriting, “
Stay here until I write. J.A.
”

“When did the man you thought of as a police-officer call?”

“Two hours later, towards evening. He had no warrant but he was civil enough.

I told him I believed Mr. Avery was on the Continent and he asked if he could look round the house. I told him not without a search warrant, and he seemed disinclined to press the point and left. Did I do right, Mr. Swann?”

“Quite right. I daresay he’ll be back however.”

“Yes sir, he indicated as much.” Then, doubtfully, “I should feel happier if I could let Mr. Avery know about the call.”

“Have you tried his lawyers, in Portugal Street?”

“Yes, sir, but they haven’t seen him in weeks. Neither has he written.”

“Where would I be advised to look for him? It seems to me he might need a friend, and I don’t know that he has many, do you?”

“No, sir. A great number of acquaintances but few friends, Mr. Swann.” It was strange, Adam reflected, that he should say that. Five years had passed since his reassociation with Avery began on that same note. He said, “I think he would consider me a friend, Vosper. If not, then he hasn’t got one, apart from yourself.”

Vosper said, hesitantly, “There are certain places you could try, sir. Do you know Kate Hamilton’s establishment, in Princes Street, Leicester Square?”

“Who doesn’t?”

Vosper did not smile but ran a hand around his jowls. “You might get news there, sir. I don’t know that he’ll thank me for saying that.”

“I’ll try and if I run him down I’ll insist he writes giving you proper instructions.”

“Thank you, sir, I should be glad of that.” He paused and seemed to reflect deeply. “I’ve valeted him for a good many years now, sir. Sometimes I’ve thought I should find a more predictable situation, but I was never one for change and GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 377

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Mr. Avery has been kind to me in his way, sir. I’ve no family, you see, but I’m not getting younger and one would like to feel more settled as regards the future.” He seemed to be addressing himself more than his visitor, but when Adam picked up his hat he emerged from his reverie, saying, “It isn’t just a matter of debts, sir.

There’s something about it that I don’t understand. Mr. Avery has been behaving very strangely of late. As though…know ing him it must seem a little absurd sir…

as though he was person ally disturbed.”

“Wouldn’t he be that in any case if he owed more than he could find at short notice?”

“No, sir. He’s very comfortably off. The sale of property would see him through the worst of it, and, as I say, he was never a man to worry about money matters.”

“It’s the woman then?”

“Yes, sir. I’m not one to pry but one overhears certain things. The last time that dancer and her partner were here there were high words when Mr. Avery showed them to the door. The partner, he’s another foreigner, sounded…well, sir, high-handed and threatening. I wouldn’t have been much surprised if it hadn’t come to blows.”

“Mr. Avery was always able to take care of himself in that res pect, Vosper.”

“I’m sure, sir, but…” suddenly he put aside his doubts, reluc tantly but resolutely. “I’d take it as a favour, sir, if you could call at a certain address in Chelsea that I happen to know Mr. Avery once rented on that woman’s behalf. I’m virtually sure no one but myself knows about it. It isn’t her formal lodging. She was staying with her partner at the Surrey Hotel but I know she and Mr. Avery went there on occasion.” He crossed the room and opened a small bureau, tak ing from it a black notebook and thumbing swiftly through the pages. “It’s the Chanticleer Gaming Club, not a formal club you understand but a somewhat rough house, patronised by young bloods and women of a certain kind. There is an apartment immediately above—three or four rooms, with a separate entrance in a mews leading down to the river off Cheyne Walk. You’d find it easily enough. I took a case of wine there shortly before Mr. Avery disappeared.”

“Why haven’t you looked there?”

Vosper hesitated again and then said, “Mr. Avery’s instructions were very explicit on that, sir. I think he was afraid of my being fol lowed, and I do know it was his wish the rendezvous should remain a close secret, particularly from the lady’s partner, possibly from some of the people he associated with from time to time.” A fleeting gleam of humour lit the manservant’s pale face and then disappeared. For some reason it reminded Adam of the Irish Member’s reference GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 378

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to Sir Robert Peel’s smile, “the wink of a silver plate on a coffin lid.” “There’s considerable competition for the lady’s favours, I believe.”

“I’ll give it a try but not tonight,” Adam told him. “He hasn’t paid me the compliment of getting in touch with me and whilst it’s urgent I see him on commercial matters I don’t intend to lose sleep over his junketings. If I do find him I’ll let you know, Vosper. I take it you’ll do the same for me?”

“You can rely on it, sir.”

Vosper preceded him to the door and let him out into the darken ing street. A cutting wind kept the evening drizzle at bay, chasing leaves from adjacent plane trees along the pavement. No cabs were in sight so Adam turned east, heading for the Gray’s Inn Road, where he knew there was a rank. At the corner of Theobalds Road, however, something caused him to stop and scrutinise a hoarding that he had seen out of the corner of his eye. It was a playbill broadsheet, adver tising the weekly change of programme and in large type, near the head of the bill, he saw the words “
Notable Attraction
,” and below them, in bolder type, “
Esmerelda & Figaro,
Exotic Dancers from Spain
.” What really checked him, however, was not the bill itself but a yellow sticker pasted crosswise over the Spaniards’ names, overprinted with the words, “
Replaced by Monsieur Vidocq, Noted Escapologist
,”
indicating that there had been an abrupt change of programme.

He stood studying the hoarding some time, aware of a sense of unease and wondering what the link might be between Avery’s eccen tric capers and the cancellation of a dancer’s contract at a music-hall. That there was some link he felt certain and his doubts extended beyond Avery and his troubles to his own financial situation that was, to a large extent, dependent on the man. A mood of depression en tered into him, matching the cheerless autumn evening and the soft skitter of dead leaves in the wind, so that he had an uneasy certainty that he was approaching another, unlooked-for crisis, like the mo ment he had sat his horse outside the walls of Jhansi, or when he watched the riot build up in Seddon Moss and again, when he went into the double-room at Tryst and saw the corpse of Luke Dobbs in his hearth. He muttered, “Damn it, I’ll go there now and if I don’t find him I’ll take a cab to Kate Hamilton’s. If anyone can put me on his track she can,” and moved on into Gray’s Inn Road.

The cab set him down at the western end of Cheyne Walk and he located the Chanticleer within minutes. It was a seedy-looking place, half a public-house, half a club, not at all the kind of establishment he would have thought a buck like Avery would have patronised. There was, as Vosper had indicated, an outside entrance to rooms above, an open door and a flight of uncarpeted stairs GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 379

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leading up from the mews at the side. The windows above were curtained, and the place looked unoccupied, although there was a certain amount of early activity going on at the Chanticleer to the thin accompaniment of a piano tinkling out a music-hall dirge. Standing there in the dark Adam experienced a rare sensation of futility and indecision but then it passed and he went up the stairs to a wide landing, moving with a caution not solely imposed by the blackness for, although a strong draught implied the landing window was open, there were no lamp-standards in the mews below. He struck a match and in its glare saw two heavily framed doors facing him. He tried both but they were locked and without much hope he knocked on the panels and when there was no response called, softly,

“Josh? Are you there, Josh? It’s me, Swann.”

He could not be sure but he thought he detected the sound of a scrape on the far side of the door farthest from the stairs and called again, “Josh? It’s me, Swann, and I’m alone.” He heard a definite movement then, very laboured and deliberate, almost as though some heavy object was being removed from the threshold and then the key was turned and the chain moved in its groove and Avery’s voice, very hoarse and somehow disembodied, came to him out of the darkness, a darkness that smelled stuffy and cloying, like the smell that would issue from a long-locked chest full of clothes that had been put away damp and left to moulder.

“Adam? Just you?” and on a rising note of urgency, “Step inside, for God’s sake.

Quickly, man.”

Adam went in and the door closed, the key being turned and the chain readjusted.

“What the devil is going on here?”

He heard Avery laugh but there was no mirth in the sound. “A penny-dreadful with a cast of three. You sure you want to make it four?” Adam’s irritation mounted. “How do I know until I can see you?” Avery said, soberly, “You might not like what you see. However, you came of your own accord. My advice is to leave by it. I’m in deep, my friend, and a great deal deeper than I bargained for. Stand where you are, I’ll light up.” He moved away and Adam, even in the darkness, noted his drag ging step, as though he was drunk or handicapped in some way. Then, from a corner farthest from the window Avery struck a match and applied it to a table lamp that burned low, casting fantastic shadows round the large room.

It was, as he saw at a glance, in the wildest disorder. Furniture was overturned and one curtain had been ripped from its rings and hooked back over the bracket GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 380

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to shut out any light from the street below. The remains of a china group of figures, nymphs, and a satyr, lay in the fireless hearth and fragments had been crushed to powder underfoot. The room was evidently a parlour adjoining a bedroom reached through closed, folding doors, and a plush table-cloth had been half-dragged to the floor and hung like a discarded banner. Its folds shrouded the upper half of a man sprawled on his back, the toes of his yellow, calf-leather boots pointing to the ceiling. Adam took it in at a glance and then looked at Avery, standing in front of the folding doors, blinking as though his eyes were having difficulty adjusting to the light. He looked ghastly, with his clothes stained and rumpled, two days’ growth of bristles on his chin, and a pallor the shade of old parchment. His left arm was resting in a roughly made sling. His right hung down and in the hand, loosely held, was a four-cham bered revolver of a kind Adam had never seen. As he stared Avery made a characteristic attempt to outface the circumstances. “Not pretty, eh?” and he drew back his lips in a grimace that was more of a snarl than his usual cynical smile.

“For Christ’s sake, what kind of mess are you in, Josh?” Avery relaxed, laid his pistol on the lamp-table and poured brandy from a near-empty bottle into a tumbler.

“No worse than you’d find yourself in if anyone saw you come in, Adam.”

“No one saw me come in. Vosper had this address and gave it me at the last moment. Very reluctantly. Who the hell is that on the floor?”

“A fool,” Avery said, offhandedly. “Take a close look. You’ve seen dead men before.”

Adam bent and lifted the trailing edge of the table-cloth. The single eye of a young man with dark, handsome features stared up at him. Where the other eye had been was a hole sealed by long-con gealed blood. There was more dried blood on the carpet where the slug had emerged from the back of his skull.

A foot beyond lay a short, broad-bladed dagger, with blackish stains spreading almost to the hilt. He stood up and his eye rested on the bulge in the upper part of Avery’s left arm. “You’re hurt?”

Avery shrugged and the movement made him wince. Adam said, “Lie on that couch and let me take a look at it.”

“Presently,” Avery said, “after you’ve seen what you’ve walked into. There’s still no reason why you should stay. If I was in your situation I should walk out of that door, and forget you paid a call.”

“You wouldn’t,” Adam said, “and you must know that I can’t, so don’t pretend to heroics. They don’t suit you, Josh. What else do you want me to see?” GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 381

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Avery pushed gently at the folding door with his foot and motioned Adam over the threshold. There was light in the bedroom issuing from two half-burned candles, set one on either side of the bed. In contrast to the parlour everything here was in order, with curtains drawn and the white coverlet stretched tight, its folds meticulously arranged. On the bed, looking exactly like a marble statue carved by a master sculptor, was the dancer, Esmerelda. She was naked save for a wisp of muslin laid crosswise under her breasts and the piece of fabric looked so incongruous that Adam’s attention was at once drawn to it. The flesh under the transparent material was dark, as though heavily bruised, and the small blemish emphasised the start ling whiteness of the rest of the body, composed and stilled, as was the face with eyes closed and blue-black hair carefully arranged on a spotless pillow. The photograph Vosper had shown him did not come close to doing the woman justice. Stark naked, and in death, she had the perfection of a sleeping goddess painted by someone like Botticelli or Giorgione. He said, over his shoulder, “You killed her too, Josh?”