C. Harris - What Darkness Brings

“Didn’t you know?” Smug amusement bordering on derision suffused the other man’s face. “He was quite the nasty old sot, your Eisler. He’d loan money to pretty young things, and then when they couldn’t pay his ruinous interest rates, he’d offer them a choice: Either let him tumble them on that ratty old couch or have whatever trinket they’d pledged declared forfeit. He offered the same deal to men who were late on their payments-if they had a pretty wife.”

When Sebastian remained silent, Tyson laughed out loud. “Don’t believe me? Ask that sybaritic nephew of his.”

“You mean Perlman? What would he know of it?”

“Far more than you might think. I’ve heard that one of the ways Perlman kept in his uncle’s good graces was by providing him with whores.” Tyson paused as the church bells of the city began to chime the hour, one after the other ringing out over the wet streets. “And now, you really must excuse me. I did mention I was meeting someone at four.”

Sebastian let him go.

Under ordinary circumstances, he’d have been inclined to doubt just about anything a man like Tyson said. But he kept remembering that dank, foul room with its heavy, old-fashioned chimneypiece and a small pair of cheap blue satin slippers peeking out from beneath a worn horsehair sofa.

The discovery that Eisler had been engaging in a nasty combination of blackmail and sexual exploitation had the potential to open up a vast array of new suspects, most of them unfortunately both nameless and faceless. If Yates and Tyson were telling the truth-and Sebastian suspected that in this, at least, they were-then London must be so full of men and women who’d nursed a secret but powerful reason to murder the old bastard that it was difficult to know where to start.

Sebastian was seated in the drawing room, the blue satin slipper held thoughtfully in his hands, when Hero came in yanking off her wet bonnet and gloves.

“I’ve been looking for the black cat,” she said. “I can’t find him anywhere.”

“Calling what? ‘Here, cat, cat, cat’? You need to give him a name.”

“He’s not my cat; he’s yours.” She went to stand at the window, her gaze on the rain-washed pavement below. “One of the housemaids saw a man hanging around who sounds like Foy. She said he was trying to coax the cat to come to him with what looked like sardines.”

Sebastian knew a moment of disquiet. But all he said was, “The cat’s probably just taken shelter from the rain someplace. He’ll be back. Where else is he likely to get roast chicken and a bowl of cream?”

She gave him a tight, strained smile and nodded to the slipper in his hand. “What’s this?”

Sebastian held it up. “It’s one of a pair that I found tucked beneath a tattered old horsehair sofa in Daniel Eisler’s parlor.”

She lifted the shoe from his hand. “This is not a lady’s slipper.”

“No, it is not.”

She looked up at him. “You say both shoes were still there?”

“Yes.”

“How odd. I wonder if he gave their owner a new pair and she simply left the old ones.”

“Eisler? I suspect that old bastard never gave anyone anything-excepting perhaps an inclination for suicide.”

“Then I’d say the shoes’ owner must have left the premises precipitously.” She handed the shoe back to him. “Somewhat like Cinderella.”

“Only, I doubt this Cinderella was worried about her coach turning into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight.”

Hero said, “Apart from the fact that walking in one’s stocking feet would be decidedly uncomfortable, these shoes-however cheap I might consider them-would nevertheless represent a significant investment for their owner. I doubt she left them behind willingly.”

“I’m thinking she might have been there when Eisler was shot.”

Hero frowned down at the tiny, worn shoe. “And ran away in fear?”

“That’s one possibility.”

“Are you saying you think your Blue Satin Cinderella might have shot him?”

“Perhaps.”

“So who is she?”

“I have no idea. But I know someone who might.”

“Oh, God. Not you again,” exclaimed Samuel Perlman when Sebastian came upon him in the showrooms of Christie’s in Pall Mall.

Sebastian ran his gaze over the framed sepia-colored draw-

ing of a woman’s head that Perlman was examining. “I’d have thought you just inherited enough of this sort of thing from your uncle to satisfy the acquisitive urgings of even the most ardent collector.”

“I like to keep an eye on what’s available,” said Perlman, leaning forward to squint at the drawing’s signature. “Do you think it’s really a Leonardo?”

“You tell me.”

Eisler’s nephew had changed into tight, buff-colored trousers, a claret-and-white-striped waistcoat, and a monstrously wide cravat meticulously arranged in a complicated style known as the Waterfall. He straightened. “After our previous conversation, I’d hoped I’d seen the last of you.”

Sebastian showed his teeth in a smile. “Let that be a lesson to you: If you don’t care to see me again, you might consider being a bit more forthcoming in your answers to my questions.”

Perlman breathed a resigned sigh. “What now?”

“I’ve been hearing some interesting tales about your uncle and women.”

“Women?” Perlman gave a high-pitched titter. “Don’t be ridiculous. My uncle was an old man.”

“Not that old.”

Perlman moved on to a massive, heavily framed oil that took up a considerable section of one wall, his attention all for the darkly swirling scene before him.

Sebastian said, “I’m told you used to provide your uncle with whores.”

Perlman cast him a quick sideways glance. “And precisely who, one wonders, told you that?”

“Does it matter?”

When Perlman remained silent, Sebastian said, “I think your uncle may have had a woman at his house the night he was shot. Did you send her to him?”

“I did not.”

“But you’re not denying that you did sometimes act as his procurer.”

Perlman kept his gaze on the vast oil. “What an ugly little word.”

“You have one you prefer?”

“I won’t deny I did occasionally perform certain. . commissions for him.”

“Define ‘occasionally.’”

“Every few weeks. . or so.”

“Where did the women come from?

“The Haymarket. Covent Garden. Really, Devlin, you know as well as I do where to find women of that sort.”

“Are you saying you supplied him with common women you picked up off the street?”

Perlman swiped the tip of his nose between one pinched thumb and forefinger and sniffed. “That’s the kind he liked.”

“I’ve heard he also liked another kind of women. Pretty young gentlewomen who owed him money-or whose husbands owed him money.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” said Perlman loftily.

“You wouldn’t?”

“I would not.” He cast a quick glance around, but the auction rooms were nearly deserted in the gloom of the rainy afternoon. “Listen: I am not denying my uncle had an appetite for women. He did. It was. . unseemly. But to my knowledge he satisfied those needs with whores. Now, if you’ll excuse me? You are distracting me. This is not a leisure activity, you know. Art collecting is serious business.”

“In a moment. So you would have me believe you never heard of him coercing a gentlewoman to share his couch?”

“I have not, no.”

Sebastian smiled. Unlike Tyson, Samuel Perlman was a terrible liar. “Then tell me this: Who owed your uncle money?”

Perlman gave a tsking huff of derision. “That sort of information is privileged. I couldn’t tell you, even if I knew.”