Anne Perry - A Christmas Odyssey

“Off Oxford Street,” Squeaky said knowingly. “Nothing cheap. This woman likes money an’ class. No fun in getting a couple o’ drunkards rolling around on the floor. You can see that anywhere.”

Henry winced.

Squeaky saw it. “You sure you want to find this Lucien?”

“I am,” Henry replied, his voice low.

Crow said nothing, but he was clearly unhappy. He did not argue with Henry. Possibly he even understood, in his own way.

Squeaky rose to his feet. “Then we’ll get started.”

They went to one public house after another, following the trail of those who had seen or heard of Sadie, or the names Lucien and Niccolo. The songs were ever bawdier as the night went on. In the galleries above the makeshift stages, prostitutes stalked up and down until they attracted the attention of a customer. Then they disappeared into one of the many side rooms provided for the purpose.

There was much drink flowing, mostly whisky and gin. And, with the right request, and accompanied by the right money, laudanum, opium, and various other, stronger substances such as cocaine were available to enhance the vividness of the experience, or to block out a grief that might intrude upon pleasure.

Henry Rathbone masked his distaste, but it was obvious that it was with great difficulty. Then as the evening wore on, Squeaky saw in his eyes a look that he knew was pity.

Crow asked questions, but Squeaky realized how acutely he was watching the people he saw, understanding the pasty skins, the scabs no paint or powder could disguise. A feeling of hopelessness settled over him.

It was near Piccadilly, in a narrow, gaslit old music hall, toward morning, when they met Bessie. She was perhaps fourteen or fifteen. It was hard to tell because she was thin and narrow-chested, but her skin was still blemishless and had some natural color. She was fetching and carrying drinks to people for the barman, who was pouring out and taking money as fast as he could. Bessie wove her way through the crowd with a certain grace, but in spite of her air of innocence, she seemed quite capable of giving back as good as she received in any exchange. One man who ventured to touch her caught a full glass of cider in his lap. He leapt to his feet in fury, to much laughter and jeering from those around him.

“Yer lookin’ fer Lucien?” she said in answer to Henry’s question. “ ’E in’t ’ere no more. Gone after that Sadie.” The expression on her face was not so much disgust as a weary kind of sorrow. “Yer’d think a man like that’d know better, wouldn’t yer?”

“You know him?” Henry said quickly.

She shrugged a thin shoulder in an oddly adult gesture. “Talked with ’im some. Listened to ’im, more like. See’d ’ow ’is face lit up when ’e told us about ’er. Think she was like Christmas come. More like bleedin’ ’alloween, if you ask me. Let the devils out that night, din’t they? God knows wot yer’ll meet with.” Then her face was wistful. “But she were pretty, in a mad sort o’ way.”

“Do you know where they went?” Henry asked her. “I am a friend of his father’s, and I would dearly like to give him a message.”

She shook her head. “I can guess, sort o’,” she admitted. “I in’t never been there meself, but I ’eard.” She hesitated.

“What?” Crow asked quickly.

“I dunno.” She snatched the tray on which she carried the glasses and pushed her way back into the crowd.

Crow swore under his breath.

“Do you think she knows something?” Henry asked dubiously. “She’s only a child.”

Squeaky got up off his seat and forced his way between two men with glasses full of whisky. One slopped over and he swore with low, sustained fury. Squeaky ignored them, and the group of painted women beyond them, flirting desperately. A man and a woman in a red dress argued over the price of opium, another two over cocaine. Squeaky caught up with Bessie again as she neared the barman.

“What were you going to say about Lucien?” he demanded. “You know where we could look.” He wondered whether to offer her money, or if it would insult her. She certainly must need it, but those who were the most desperate were also at times the most easily insulted. “We need your help,” he finished. If she asked for money, he would give it to her—Henry Rathbone’s money, of course.

She looked him up and down, her lips pursed. “ ’E won’t go with yer,” she told him.

“I know that,” he replied. “But Mr. Rathbone don’t. He’s … a bit innocent, like. He won’t stop until he finds out for himself.”

Bessie shook her head. “In’t goin’ ter do any good. But I can ’elp yer, if yer want.”

“Show us?”

She hesitated, a flicker of fear crossing her thin, soft face.

“We’ll look after yer. Yer won’t come to no harm,” Squeaky promised rashly, aware even as he said it that he was speaking wildly out of turn.

“I s’pose,” she agreed, looking down at the floor, then suddenly up at him, her eyes bright and afraid.

Squeaky cursed to himself. He really was losing his grip.

O ver the next two nights Squeaky went with Henry, Crow, and Bessie deeper and deeper into the squalid world of illicit pleasure. In New Bond Street they turned into an alley westward and immediately found themselves on steps down into a garishly lit cellar where both men and women were lying around, some on makeshift beds, others simply on the floor.

Henry stopped a few paces in, his mouth pulled down at the smell.

“Don’t stop,” Squeaky warned him. “It’s opium, an’ sweat, an’ sex. Don’t take no notice.”

Henry started moving obediently. A little ahead of them a man in a black coat reeled on wobbly legs, laughing at nothing. To his left someone was weeping; in the red light it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman. It was hard for him to think of this as a place of pleasure, and yet these people had come here willingly, at least to begin with.

He watched a man rocking back and forth, his face distorted as in his mind he clung to an ecstasy so brief, so illusory it slipped from him even as they watched.

Bessie led them, occasionally faltering. Often she looked back to make certain they were all there, as if she feared suddenly finding that she was alone, and somehow betrayed. At times she clung to Squeaky, gripping his thin hand so her hard, strong little fingers dug into his flesh. He found it painful, and yet the couple of times she let go, he was hurt, as if she had stopped needing him.

“Squeaky, you’re losing your wits,” he said to himself with disgust. “You always thought being respectable was stupid. Now you know for certain.”

To Henry Rathbone it was a descent into a kind of hell that was not just visual. The noise of it, and the stench of body fluids and stale alcohol were almost worse. His stomach clenched at the sight of ground-in filth mixed with the harsher stench of sewage. Voices were loud, angry, then whining. Ahead of him someone laughed hysterically and without meaning.

To Crow it was a series of sicknesses. A man shambled across the floor with the gait of the drunkard and collapsed sideways. His nose was swollen and broken-veined, the skin of his arms flaccid. Crow recoiled without meaning to, and knocked into another man who turned on him. His face was scabbed and ulcerated, yellowed with jaundice, the whites of his eyes the color of urine.

The nightmare grew worse.

Crow bumped into a couple who seemed to have no control of their limbs, and little awareness of where they were, their eyes vague, unfocused.

The man, no more than thirty years old, reached to grasp a bottle, only to have it slip from his fingers and smash on the floor.