Anne Perry - Death in the Devil's Acre

“Then it is time we had fewer gentlemen-and a greater number of police, or whatever it is that it takes to get something done!” he retorted. “I, for one, do not desire to see any more mutilated corpses turning up in London.”

She looked at him wearily. “We have few enough gentlemen already. I would wish there were more, not less!” She turned and walked away, leaving him with the feeling that he had lost the argument in spite of the fact that he was in the right.

The following day, Christina had luncheon with her mother but declined to go calling. Balantyne found himself in the withdrawing room alone with his daughter. The fire was blazing halfway up the chimney, and the room was full of warm, flickering light. It seemed familiar, comfortably timeless, almost as if they could have slipped back into his youth and her childhood, when affection was taken for granted.

He sat back in his chair and stared at Christina as she stood by the round piecrust table. Her face was remarkably pretty: the small features, rounded lips, wide eyes, shining hair. Her figure, in its fashionable dress, still had the freshness of a girl’s. She was a strange mixture of child and woman-perhaps that was her charm. Certainly she had had many admirers before she married Alan Ross. And, to judge from the social occasions at which he had seen her, she still had, even if they were now more discreet.

“Christina?”

She turned and looked at him. “Yes, Papa?”

“You knew Sir Bertram Astley, didn’t you.” He did not allow it to be a question, because he would not accept denial.

She faced him when she spoke, but bent her eyes to a china ornament on the table. The subject was trivial, not worth a conversation.

“Slightly,” she replied. “One is bound to meet most of the people in Society at some time or another.” She did not ask why he had mentioned it.

“What sort of a man was he?”

“Pleasant, as far as I could judge,” she answered with a slight smile. “But quite ordinary.”

She was so confident that he could not disbelieve her. And yet he knew she moved in circles that were neither bland nor artless. She was far less innocent than he had been at her age-perhaps than he was even now?

“What about Beau Astley?”

She hesitated a moment. Was there a touch of color on her skin, or was it only a reflection of the firelight?

“Charming.” she said without expression in her voice. “Very agreeable, although I admit I do not know him well. It is something of a hasty judgment. If you are expecting me to come up with any profundity, Papa, I am afraid I shall disappoint you. I had no idea Sir Bertram had perverted tastes. I fully thought he was after that silly Woolmer creature, and meant to marry her. And since she has no money at all, and no family to speak of, I can only imagine it was for the most physical of reasons.” She glanced over at him. “I’m sorry if I shock you. Sometimes I find you incredibly stuffy!”

He was aware that she found him so, but it still hurt to hear it in such words. He did not wish to pursue the matter by defending himself and, at the same time, was conscious that he should. She had no business to speak to him with so little respect.

“Then either he did not go to the Devil’s Acre for the reason supposed-or else he was a man of very diverse tastes,” he said dryly.

She laughed outright. Her hands held the china ornament up in the air; she had beautiful fingers, small and slender. “You know I quite expected you to be furious! Instead you turn out to have a sense of humor.”

“A sense of the absurd,” he corrected, which was a pleasant feeling. “If Bertie Astley was as diligent in his pursuit of Miss Woolmer as you suggest, I find it hard to believe he was also satisfying quite different appetites in the Devil’s Acre. Or had Miss Woolmer declined him?”

She gave a little snort. “Far from it. She grasped onto him like a drowning woman. And her mother was even worse. If they can manage it, they’ll catch poor Beau now! She’s a great lump of a girl, like clotted cream.”

“And ‘poor Beau’ is unwilling?”

Again she hesitated, her fingers tightening on the ornament. “I really have no idea. As I said before, I do not know them except in the briefest way. It is really none of my concern.” She set the ornament down and smiled, turning from the table to come toward the fire. The light shone on the satin of her dress, gleaming brilliantly for a moment, then falling into rich shadows again.

“Have you ever heard of any of the other victims?” As soon as he said it, he knew it was a ridiculous question, and wished he could withdraw it. “Apart from Max, of course!” he added by way of making it at least logical within itself, even if it was stupid in the whole.

Perhaps some memory of Max’s service in this house stirred in her. She swallowed. He felt guilty for having mentioned it.

“Hardly,” she said casually. “Wasn’t one a doctor and one a schoolteacher, or something? Not exactly my social circle, Papa. Isn’t there a saying about necessity making strange bedfellows, or something of the sort?” She laughed a little harshly. “Maybe they were all possessed of the same vice. Maybe they gambled in the Devil’s Acre, and lost. I seem to have heard that Bertie Astley gambled. Not to pay one’s debt is a social sin of monstrous proportions, you know. Didn’t they teach you that in the officers’ mess?”

“They blackballed welshers,” he said soberly, watching her. “They didn’t kill them and-” He hesitated to use a graphic word in front of her, embarrassed for himself, and then ashamed of his embarrassment. Why should he falter around in euphemisms like an old woman? Why should he speak of masculinity in a whisper? “Castrate them,” he finished.

She did not seem to notice the word. The firelight on her face made her skin warm anyway; he could see no extra blush.

“We are not dealing with officers and gentlemen in the Devil’s Acre, Papa,” she pointed out with some sarcasm. “Blackballing them would hardly serve!”

Of course she was right. Whatever use would that threat be to a man? It would get the gambler not a penny of his debt repaid. The losers would simply go to another place in future-if not in the Acre, then in some slum back room elsewhere. And the man owed would not dare broadcast the fact or he would lose face everywhere, and from then on no one would pay him.

“Actually,” she continued, turning to look at him, “I would have thought that this method would be most effective. I’m amazed it has needed four men dead to have made the point.”

“It is more than amazing.” He spoke slowly, turning it over in his mind and finding himself inexplicably cold. “In fact, it is incredible.”

She was not looking at him. The light on her dress accented the slender curve of her body as she turned away. She did not look very different from when she had been seventeen, yet he felt as if she were unreachable. Had she always been so, and only his complacency had allowed him to imagine he knew her because she was his daughter?

“One does not hate someone so passionately over a gambling debt.” He went back to the subject because he had not yet exorcised it.

“Perhaps they are mad?” She shrugged. “Who knows what it was? Really, it is a most unpleasant affair, Papa. Must we discuss it?”

An apology was on his tongue, and then he changed his mind. “Do you find you can dismiss it?” he asked instead. “I cannot.”

“Apparently.” She had an excellent shadow of Augusta’s cold scorn. “Yes, I can. I do not find the goings-on of the denizens of the slums as fascinating as you do. I greatly prefer the society in which I was brought up.”

“I thought you found it tedious.” He was surprised how sharp his own tongue had become. “I have frequently heard you say so.”