Lawless and the Flowers of Sin Read online

  As the Pixie set him upright, I complimented her artistry.

  She looked at me, gesturing with her violin, but made no reply. The little waif was mute.

  “Wait till later.” Bede gave an obscene wink. “You’ll be able to view a lot more of our artistry in the after-hours show.”

  The Pixie made signs to Bede, some query about me. Together, I supposed, these two mites could function, almost as one able-bodied soul.

  “No, Pixie.” Bede observed me uncertainly. “I doubt it very much.”

  Molly had an uncanny knack for knowing when she was being discussed. “What’s this unspeakable allegator alleging, Bede, old fellow?”

  The boy blushed. “Nothing, Prof. She just wondered if you and, er, your sergeant here—”

  The Pixie nudged Moll, running her finger down the curve of her violin with silent laughter.

  “Certifiably not.” Molly glanced at me, wavering between disgust and scorn.

  I wondered how much of Payne’s task for me she had gathered—and his vague threat. Her knowledge of the underside of London could be invaluable to me, but I had better watch my step.

  * * *

  I looked askance across the crowd. When Prince Bertie writes the guest list, what can you expect but Masons and magdalens, Delilahs and dandies? Rich men, poor men, philistines, pressmen. Fijian footballers, Red Indian raindancers. Aborigines in cricket whites, Patagonians in tail coats. Scientific atheists and soporific aerialists. Yankee abolitionists. Groggins, the elocutionist. A Baltic Sea heiress, a Battersea cellist. Garibaldi’s Colonel Peard, in bright blue cape and ginger beard. George Eliot with a puss so sour, it turned the cream in the Eton mess. Wilkie Collins and unwed spouse, on opium tincture for his gout.

  Everybody was scandalising each other. They flaunted fascinators and florid waistcoats in violation of the Queen’s mourning. Ladies gossiped of the latest sensation novels, gents of dirty chapbooks.

  “Still reading Lady Audley’s Secret?”

  “The Female Spy’s better, but Aurora Floyd’s a hoot—”

  “Isn’t that a dirty book?”

  “No, that’s Maria Monk. Tosh!”

  “With the invigorating engravings?”

  “If you like that, try Indiscreet Jewels. The ring describing where it’s been…”

  I exchanged glances with Molly over this endless giffle-gaffle: chatter of conquests and concubines, bawdhouses and laudanum. I’d even heard rumours of some salacious index of prohibited books doing the rounds of the flash gents.

  A gentle laugh acknowledged my discomfort, while making light of it. The grey old pipe-smoker stood at my side. None other than Felix Sonnabend.

  “Mr Sonnabend. I had no idea—”

  “Oh, please call me Felix. That’s how we do it among the Quarterhouse Brotherhood.”

  “Felix, then. When we met earlier, I didn’t—”

  He wafted my excuses affably away. “They do go on rather, don’t they?” He gestured to the society chatter around us. “It’s today’s social milieu, I suppose. In my day, we discussed opera and poetry, not scandal and share prices.”

  I nodded. “Fashion, eh?”

  “You’re right.” Felix gave me a disarming smile. “We must forgive them. After all, what are their lives worth? They fight their way to the City every day to trade slips of paper. Return to sterile homes, where perfectly dull wives organise perfectly drear dinners. Let nanny raise the perfectly dreadful children, destined for Eton, Oxbridge and the cabinet. Or anything equally turgid, as long as Papa approves.”

  Molly’s Oddbody friends, normally a tough audience, tittered at this diatribe.

  “I’m not scandalising you, am I? The Brothers tell me I must watch my continental candour.” He brushed back his silvery hair. “They moan about slavery in Manchester manufactories and Shadwell workrooms; but is the moral degradation of the rich any lesser?”

  “How so?” I asked. His forthrightness was refreshing amid the chatterers and chunterers.

  “Well, they’ve written themselves a cheque they never can cash. Driven always to outdo, they must be distrustful at work, envious always of their neighbours. Expectations of abundance, but lives barren. The manufactories may be a form of slavery, but at least they foster camaraderie.”

  “Fine words, sir,” said Molly, “and there may be something in ’em.”

  Bede piped up. “What is it you do, may I enquire, makes you so different?”

  He smiled in self-reproach. “Guilty as charged.”

  It tickled me that he devoted the utmost attention to these street children, quite ignoring the aristocrats clamouring for his attentions. Journalists were waiting to talk to him about his Foundation, fine ladies admiring his profile.

  Felix didn’t notice any of them. “I’m a grumpy old Austro-Hungarian refugee, never content, always criticising these Englanders who welcomed me so kindly. I am an artist, like your friends. Retired now. But I’m—I was once a violinist, like your little friend.”

  Miss H’s Dancing Academy appeared. As the hoofers took to the stage, Molly gave her friends the nod. “Back in your schwassle-box and disport yourselves shamelessly.”

  The Pixie swept up Bede in her arms and carried him to the peepshow, where they would give their after-hours display: rather lewder, I imagined.

  “I almost forgot, my felicitous friend.” Molly reached quizzically for Felix’s jacket and pulled a card from the top pocket. “Jack of diamonds?”

  Felix was suitably impressed. “The very fellow.”

  Moll marched off with a triumphant gait.

  “Quite a performance,” Felix smiled, drawing me confidentially aside. The socialites waiting to congratulate him turned back to the entertainments. “I do apologise, Sergeant. I shouldn’t dismiss a life I never led. I just feel a dreadful lack—don’t you?—at the heart of London society. The dearth of—how can I say it?—of rapture.” His eyes sparkled. “I see I am frightening you with my wild talk.”

  “Not frightening.” I glanced at his crippled hand. “Only puzzling.”

  The shadow of sorrow passed across his face. “I have been blessed in my work. In my life.”

  “And this?” I looked across the quadrangle of revellers. “The Phoenix Foundation for Fallen Women?”

  “My way of expressing gratitude. I benefit from charity: the Quarterhouse Brotherhood house me and thirty fellows like me, fallen on straitened times. Why not help poor women still less fortunate?”

  “Forgive me, but how can an impoverished artist start a charitable foundation?”

  “My artistic contacts I still have, though my performing days are done.” He spread his hands in apology. “Money men—like Mr Brodie—like to share their good fortune, and what’s more, to be seen doing it. I suppose he is speculating on Quarterhouse’s charitable capital, gaining readers, and influential friends. It costs him little. I see no harm in it, indeed considerable advantage on all sides.”

  I found myself mesmerised. It was as much the honesty of what he said as the magical timbre of his voice. But it was time for me to shoo away the ladies tarrying roundabout, near enough to absorb his musicality, or smell his cologne. The puppet show had been decent enough, but this dancing was not for them.

  “Go, of course,” Felix bade me. “Lawless, I do hope you’ll join us later. At Brodie’s, you know. I could do with an ally.”

  As I ushered dawdling ladies back to the Master’s Lodgings, I glanced back at him. Why should I be so taken with Felix? I had the foolish conviction that he was sharing intimate notions, never to be repeated, never expressed, were it not for the esteem in which he held me and my efforts on his behalf. Such contentment he exuded. No, not contentment; that is too level a word. Vitality that needs no stoking. These chattering people might be too conceited to see it, vying for witticisms to outdo each other. Felix cared nothing.

  “What a life he has led.” A lady addressed me calmly. While the other women hurried past us, she asked me what I knew of Felix
, for she had observed us chatting.

  “Nothing,” I admitted. Much as I wished to hear more about him, I could not take my eyes from the lady. I am not blind to feminine charms: the shapely waist, the delicate neck. As I stood, pointing her peers to safety inside, she spoke unhurriedly, her low thrilling voice setting me aglow. She told me of Felix’s life: music, Italy, love and loss, war and exile.

  Our first encounter. I won’t describe her. Only that the gaslight betrayed strands of grey amid her dark hair. Her tear-shaped eyes hinted at sorrows, but laughter welled quickly within her. But I promised myself I wouldn’t describe her.

  The trumpets sounded a salacious change in the tempo. With mock alarm, she excused herself, grasping my hand. Rather forward, but there was no longer anyone to witness, the women within, the men absorbed in the shows. “I’m afraid I’ve bored you.”

  “Not at all. What a lot you know about our patron, Felix.”

  She tilted her head in modesty. “I am fanatical for music.”

  “I should like to know more.” Suggestions and implications danced in the air between us. At last, I relinquished her gloved hand. “Shall I see you again?”

  “You shall, Sergeant—”

  “Lawless. Campbell Lawless.”

  “—if you’ll permit me to write to you, care of Scotland Yard.” She indulged me with a smile: I too had made an impression on her. And she was gone, muttering only her name. “Alexandra.”

  SURVIVORS

  Bawdy laughter behind me. Across the quadrangle, Gabriel Mauve was tossing a silver coin up and down, pouting. His cronies lolled by the back cloister, as the servants carried out the brazier and brought benches around it. The girl, with no more bubbles to chase in the dark, was turning cartwheels. Mauve winked again to his clique of sycophants. He flipped the coin high into the air, to land on the sullied snow. Sure enough, he hooked his prize. The girl pirouetted over. She snatched it up—whether a florin, or half-a-crown, it was a sight more than she’d filched from me—and turned a celebratory cartwheel.

  The gents applauded. The remnant of the merrymakers huddled around, and I joined them, as the servants stirred up the brazier to roast sausages and mallow sap on the glowing embers. A party in the snow, confound the folly of it.

  The girl lowered her head, bashful, and threw herself into a double spin. As she wheeled, her dress fell up and over her knees and thighs, and she had not adopted the modern style of drawers and petticoats; that is to say, she showed more than she ought.

  The younger men gave a roar. I averted my gaze, though I could not help but see that she was still more grown-up than I had thought. Gabriel Mauve, cabinet member and our voice in the political world, gazed at her unabashed. “Like a breeze,” he said to me. “She’s like a breeze.”

  It was true. The girl didn’t even know she was beautiful; and yet a suspicion of the spell she cast was dawning on her, which heightened the titillation. She lowered her shoulders and stared at us, for an instant mature and womanly; then the shoulders hunched once more and made her girlish again.

  Mauve smirked. “You’re Lawless, aren’t you? Not a bad effort, this bash. I’m grateful, too, for the efforts you’re about to embark on.” He bit his protuberant lip. “Sir Richard has spoken to you, hasn’t he—?”

  “Gabe! There you are.” A full-bodied gown twirled from the cloisters, as colourful as a peacock. Only now did I recognise his tutting wife. These were the days before every scandal was luridly engraved in the illustrated press, and every headline adorned with portraits of the latest politician, the latest singer, the latest dustman, styled as Greek heroes. “Gabriel Mauve, are you drinking? You know what happens when you lush.” Without a glance at me, she shook back her luxuriant locks, reached down and rubbed his groin, unabashed. “Remember Brodie and his blasted news hounds. Well, well. A woman will be satisfied.” The celebrated wife strutted off, shaking her finger.

  It was Mauve and his wife who made this the hot ticket in town. That he struck me as an odious crawler and she a vainglorious ostrich scarcely mattered. The Prince of Wales and his Danish poodle were too dernière saison: when Queen Victoria’s son and heir offered to throw the party himself, it was deemed unroyal for Bertie (now married and respectable) to launch a fund for harlots and hussies, though harlots and hussies were dear to his heart.

  There indeed sat the prince, dancing girl on his knee, his young wife gone to bed. The faithless cad owed me a favour from his bachelor days, when he was prone to errant impulses. When Inspector Wardle retired, Bertie had asked for me as his personal aide; his mother preferred a toad-eating flunky to report his indiscretions directly to her. Pimping for a prince was delicate work, and I was better off out of it. Yet, since that crisis underground, on the new Metropolitan Line, I’d been consigned to the worst jobs in the Yard. Policing was not always thrilling. It could be menial work, with poor reward. I’d done my share of filing, night shifts, court time, parliamentary duty, and informing the bereaved, while Darlington monopolised vice and Jeffcoat earned glory untangling enigmas. Of my new commission from Payne I was unsure, but it would at least see me back in the wicked world.

  “A breeze across a wheat field,” Mauve muttered again.

  I frowned. “But who is she?”

  “There’s always hangers-on at these things.” He smiled. “To cater to all our needs.”

  The girl stood mesmerised by the falling flakes; they fell on her dark hair and stayed intact for a moment before melting from the heat of her body. She scooped up a handful of snow and ran forward, but stopped short of us, wary of Mauve’s ribald gaze. She seemed a delicate creature. She sized me up, judging me a kindly old sot. Just as she threw her snowball playfully up to me, Mauve pinched her cheek.

  She flinched away.

  I caught her snowball and held it out to her.

  She hesitated, just out of reach.

  “You have an admirer, officer.” Mauve snorted. “Some have a way with children. I have five—or is it seven?—and I never have got the hang of them.”

  “And yet,” I said, “you reform our education laws year after year.”

  Mauve walked off in search of his wife.

  The girl stood dumbly before me, hair tied in bunches and eyes shining.

  “Dear lady,” I said, “your snowball.”

  She reached out, but it fell at our feet, turning to slush. She squealed, wheeling away in delight, only to slip and fall in the snow.

  Mauve’s toadies made ripe comments.

  “Gentlemen.” Feeling like an aged schoolmaster, I helped her to her feet. I wrapped a scarf around her neck, and away she waltzed.

  Rosy hints of dawn to the east. In the half dark, muttered conversations, glimpses of bare thigh. Molly’s players mingled with the surviving gents. They had saved the day, gyrating tassels and suggestive refrains. If the dancing academy had given offence, nobody was complaining. At this time of the night, there was no problem in the social orders mingling. The dancers were scandalising the gents with picture books.

  “Ah, a contortionist.”

  “That’s a python, I presume?”

  How many of these women would I end up counting for Sir Richard Payne? The pleasures they offered were far from the rapture that Felix spoke of. But my new duties need not begin tonight, nor my euphoria be tainted by my ludicrous task: to improve the irredeemable. Tired of enchantments, I slumped on a bench near the brazier and leant toward the warmth. The Pixie took up her fiddle, and Bede, grinding an organ, reprised Orpheus’s doleful serenade. We all leaned toward that plangent rhythm, huddling together, with the music and the sausages. Felix watched them from the shadows, wiping away a tear.

  I breathed in the cold night air. It was marvellous. As I began to forget my woes, I felt the gentlest of nudges on my elbow. The cartwheel girl shrugged off my scarf and pressed a cup of cider into my hands; she must have seen me shiver. The music stilled my mind. Before I knew it, the girl had insinuated herself onto my lap. I laughed. What harm i
n it? She peeked inside my jacket, where she found my policeman’s badge.

  “Yes.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m a policeman.”

  Pointing her fingers, she made the noise of a gun, her voice a surprising rasp.

  “No pistol. Only a cosh.” Laughing, I showed her the truncheon hid in my inside coat pocket. “Is there someone you need to fight off?”

  Wide-eyed, she drew her finger across her throat.

  I glanced around theatrically. The head caterer was still at the brazier, toasting the last of the food. “Is it him? Kill him, shall I?”

  She opened her mouth but thought better of telling. The caterers were done and Molly’s troupe packing up, but the girl kept perfectly still, as if praying nobody would notice her bedtime was long past. I cast my eyes into the embers. The organ music swelled; my gaze darkened. The girl pinched a fold of my trousers at the knee; back and forth she rolled it, in rhythm with the music, stroking the nap against the seam. It was the habit of a child playing with her blanket, an intimacy so heedless that I was thrown into a reverie. Yet she was heavy on my lap, and whatever Mauve said, she must be with someone.

  The mesmeric music filled me with peace. I could recall words softly spoken, utterly familiar, at another fireside long ago, as if I could hear again my mother’s voice. As a child, sat on her knee, by the fire in Morningside, I would lean into her shawl, as she pinched a fold of my nightshirt, rolling it back and forth between her fingers; such solace it brought me that even here, years later, everything was right with the world.

  Flash! Pendants of ice sparkling on the old stone walls.

  Bede’s music faltered. Flash!

  I started to my senses—and the girl was gone. It was the confounded photographer, her apparatus set by stealth to capture these last loafers. Flash! Must everything these days be preserved for posterity?

  “Taken unawares, Sergeant Lawless?”

  With a familiar mix of pleasure and discomfort, I looked up to see Miss Ruth Villiers, my librarian friend. More than friend, I might nearly say.

  I blinked at her. I had written her an invitation, knowing this kind of charitable nonsense appealed to her, not to mention her aunt; but I was not sure I had sent it. “I feared you had not received my invitation.”