The Affair of the Porcelain Dog (23 page)

"Well?" I demanded. "Is it true?"

"That there have been others? Yes," he said cautiously. "And they did leave unexpectedly after experiencing complaints similar to your own. I'd hardly call two a 'legion,' though," he added to himself. "Ira, this is quite an accusation. Do you have any evidence?"

I let out a long breath. There was no doubt Collins had disposed of the rose hips and scrubbed the knife and plate clean. All the same, it was plain from the way Goddard's eyes kept darting between my face and the ring on my finger he wanted to believe me.

"Strange noises woke me last night," I said. "I went to investigate and caught him up to his elbows in rose hips, with a paring knife in his hand. If you examine your rose bushes, I'm quite certain that you'll find that their fruits have been harvested recently."

There was no point in revealing it was Lazarus who had made the connection between Goddard's roses and my affliction. Once Goddard heard another man had had my trousers down, he wouldn't have listened to another word.

"I see. Assuming you're correct, why would he do such a thing?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but thought better of it. The last thing I wanted was for him to think I'd accepted his offer on false pretenses. Was there such a thing as undecided pretenses?

"He seems to think that you'd be better off without the distraction," I said instead.

"Hmm."

Put like that, it
did
sound hollow. But the man's transgressions spoke for themselves. His motive was unimportant.

"I'm not making this up," I said.

"No. I don't believe that you are. But, Ira, why didn't you wake me immediately to tell me what you saw?"

It was a question I'd been asking myself since the lock had clicked shut behind me the night before. The answer was true, and as pathetic as Collins's excuse for his sabotage. I tossed back my whisky and set the glass on the desk.

"Between the blackmailer and wondering whether some ill-conceived coupling in my past was coming back to haunt me," I said, "I was so panicked I could hardly breathe. I had actually thought to speak to you, but I wanted a cigarette first to calm my nerves. I took one out onto the front step, and then..."

I paused. He was looking at me with an expectancy that made me loath to disappoint.

"I locked myself out."

A hint of a smile twitched at one corner of his mouth.

"Blasted Chubb lock," I said.

Goddard's smile widened until it eventually reached his eyes. Chuckling, he stepped forward and straightened my collar. He shook his head indulgently, running a finger down my jaw.

"I don't suppose you had your picklocks with you," he said.

"I did, but they're no bloody good against that thing, and you know it."

He laughed loudly. Then his expression became serious.

"It still doesn't explain how you came to be arrested at a brothel. St. Andrews informed me of your narrow escape, but you'll forgive me if I find the idea of you clandestinely working for him to be a little far-fetched."

I blew out a long breath.

"It's a long, embarrassing story," I said.

"I'd very much like to hear it."

I picked up my empty glass and gave it a shake. Goddard refilled it while I lowered myself into one of the armchairs that faced the cold fireplace. The chair was deep, but the leather was firm and I couldn't suppress a sigh of satisfaction as I sank into it. Goddard set my glass on the table near my elbow and claimed the other chair for himself. Once the whisky was burning its way down my gullet, I related the whole wretched chain of events--my barefoot run through the park, the gruesome discovery in Acton's basement, the raid, and my last-minute rescue by Goddard's nemesis and my own. When I came to Nate's death, my voice cracked unexpectedly, and I had to fortify myself with another belt of Goddard's finest before finishing.

There was a long silence.

"As much as it pains me," he finally said, "I suppose I owe St. Andrews a debt of gratitude. If you'd gone down for gross indecency, neither one of us would have fared well."

"Is that all you have to say?" I asked.

"I am sorry about your friend. Will you allow me to see to his killer?"

I'd have paid to see that, actually. But as much as I respected Goddard's ruthlessness and his dedication to whatever task he set himself, I wasn't at all certain of his ability to take on someone who pimped children to aristocrats and come out of it intact.

"St. Andrews requested that you reconsider his offer of a truce," I said instead.

"Over my dead body."

"He seemed sincere."

Goddard rolled his eyes. "If nothing else, the man is sincere."

"No, it makes sense," I said, turning in my seat to face him. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that."

Goddard looked amused. "You're quoting Chinese philosophy now?" he asked.

"I'm quoting you. Look, I don't know what happened in Cambridge--"

"No," he said. "You don't."

"Then why don't you tell me? No one else will," I added.

His fingers tightened around his glass. His mouth became a hard line. For a moment I was certain that he would chuck me out. But he turned away and let out a long breath. When he finally started to speak, he kept his eyes fixed firmly on the gilded cigarette box on the mantel, hands circling the whisky glass that now sat on the chair between his knees.

"I met Andrew St. Andrews and Nicholas Sinclair during my first, and, sadly, last year at a position that I'd thought would be my life's work. The year was 1872. I was a fellow in classics at Trinity."

He smiled ruefully, reciting the facts as if he'd made this speech to himself many, many times before.

"I had distinguished myself early on. However, I hadn't the background necessary to truly fit in with my colleagues. The less said of my origins the better, but suffice it to say that my lack of connections ensured that even after having fought tooth and nail for my position, I'd always be regarded as an outsider. I suppose this was the reason I took up my, shall we say, extracurricular pursuits as an undergraduate. Don't let the popular claptrap about heredity fool you, Ira. I chose the criminal path, and by the time I began at Trinity, it had made me very wealthy. Of course, at that time, there had been no way to enjoy it without arousing the suspicion of a faculty already uneasy about accepting me into their ranks, and yet, in light of my superior qualifications, unable to turn me away."

He set the glass back on the table before standing and walking to the mantel for a cigarette. He conjured a flame from the round lighter beside the cigarette box and took a long pull. I noticed the lavender letters had disappeared. He exhaled as he turned back to contemplate me through a fragrant haze.

"They were my students, as you might have guessed. St. Andrews was just eighteen, and brilliant. If not for his inability to settle into a single course of study, he'd have ended up one of those odd but much-loved birds renowned for his genius yet incapable of tying his own shoes. Sinclair was different. He was intelligent enough but, like myself, a businessman. And even if he had harbored academic ambitions, his impending marriage would have put a stop to them. Upon his graduation, Sinclair was to go to work for his father-in-law. No, Sinclair was never going to amount to anything as a scholar," he concluded. "But his business acumen was second only to my own."

I shifted in my seat. The boldness the whisky had lent me was dissipating, and my head felt like lead. I rested it against the cool leather. Movement in the window caught my eye. Eileen was in the garden, carefully shoveling manure onto the ground at the bases of Goddard's rose bushes. Goddard continued.

"When he came to me one day, bearing a rough diagram of my organization, my first thought was that he was about to try his hand at blackmail. My second thought was what a shame it would be to have to kill him. It was embarrassing, really. I'd thought myself so discreet. I lived in rooms appropriate to my station and always comported myself with the self-consciousness expected from one of my humble origins. Yet somehow Sinclair had managed to get a good handle on my enterprises. Not everything, of course, but enough.

"He'd been losing interest in his studies for some time, and it showed. It was only a matter of time before he tried to extricate himself. Given his lack of subtlety, I'd have expected him to use the information he'd gathered to coerce me into brokering some sort of honorable exit. But, as it turned out, he was interested in continuing his education in a different direction. After I recovered from the shock of being so unceremoniously exposed, he showed me some of his own ideas and offered me a cut if I helped him get started."

"Did you?" I asked.

Goddard's mouth went hard, his regret at the decision more evident in his expression than in anything he might have said.

"Of course I did. I was flattered, and his plans, though clumsy, had merit. Moreover, I thought that it might be useful to have a protege, especially one who was bright, but not too bright, ambitious, and grateful for my assistance."

I sat up abruptly.
Protege
was how Goddard sometimes introduced me to those who knew that he had no use for a private secretary.

"Protege?" I asked suspiciously. "You mean like me?"

Goddard made a moue of distaste.

"A rat-faced little upstart like that? Never. Besides, he seemed quite taken with his future bride. No, my interest laid not so much with Nicholas Sinclair as with his connections."

"Like Edward Acton?" I asked.

The times when I'd caught Cain Goddard off his guard were few and precious. I savored his sharp inhalation, the flare of his nostrils, and the way his left eyelid twitched.

"It's his brothel on Fitzroy Street," I said. "And Sinclair, our blackmailer, is the manager. You can't tell me you didn't know."

He cleared his throat. All that remained of his cigarette was a brown-edged twist of paper. He narrowed his eyes before tossing the butt into the cold fireplace. I could sense him trying to figure out how much more of the story I knew, and how much more he should admit.

"How I came upon this knowledge is another long story," I said. "Suffice it to say St. Andrews confirmed it. He also said you've made alliances with some very dangerous people in the opium trade, and those alliances aren't as stable as you think they are. Are you doing business with Acton, Cain?"

He exhaled heavily.

"What if I am?"

"High-alkaloid opium?"

Goddard wasn't comfortable with this line of inquiry coming from me. He tried to keep me out of the inner workings of his organization, for his own safety as well as mine. But the situation was getting more complicated and perverse by the minute. Sinclair was siphoning off high-alkaloid opium from the brothel and re-selling it to Zhi Sen. Goddard was getting the same from Acton, but cutting Zhi Sen out of the loop. Zhi Sen and Sinclair were going into business with the goal of driving Goddard out. But why was Acton selling to Goddard and not to Sinclair? Was he playing them off against each other? As tight a rein as Goddard kept on his criminal network, it didn't take a Trinity professor to see that it would soon be spinning even out of Goddard's control.

"You need to stop," I said.

Goddard laughed and reached for another cigarette.

"I'm serious, Cain. Acton is unspeakably dangerous."

He looked up. "So am I."

"Not like this. He's...he's evil."

Goddard's eyebrows shot up, and he forced back another laugh.

"And I'm Father Christmas?" he asked.

"St. Andrews says--"

"St. Andrews can be such an old woman sometimes," Goddard scoffed.

"I think he's right."

Goddard popped his cigarette between his lips and held it to the lighter, inhaling until the end glowed.

"What do you know of it?" he asked, leaning back against the mantel.

I couldn't tell Goddard what Lazarus had told me. It was Tim's story to tell. More importantly, if things started to go bad, Goddard might try to curry Acton's favor by handing him Lazarus.

I couldn't allow that to happen.

"What went wrong between you and Sinclair?" I asked instead.

Goddard made an impatient noise, but having already begun the story seemed resigned to finishing it. He took a quick drag from his cigarette, flourishing it in a professorial gesture.

"I'd been trying to protect you, Ira. But since you already seem to know everything about the situation..."

He paused to blow a fragrant plume toward the ceiling. The smoke spread out, swirling lazily above his head.

"After the three of us left Cambridge, Sinclair of his own volition, and St. Andrews and myself against ours, Sinclair and I became partners. Sinclair had married Acton's daughter, so Acton was anxious to see him get along in the business. Acton was highly placed in the East India Company at the time, though the company would be dissolved some two years later. He was heavily involved in the company's opium importation operations. Sinclair worked in company records, and found that he could skim quite a bit from the company's stores without being noticed. He brought me in as a distributor, and that's how I entered the opium trade.