Subtle Blood

by KJ Charles

  “God?”

  “An oath, not a correspondent.”

  “I was wondering. You all right?”

  “Not really, no. I suppose I should speak to Stratton, that’s the lawyer, and I dare say I owe Harry a call, but the rest... Ugh. The South of France is sounding better and better. Or South America? South of anywhere except England. I’m open to ideas.”

  “You could just plug the damn ’phone in and deal with it all.”

  “You deal with it, if you’re so keen,” Kim said. “Actually, do you want a job? Private secretary, duties entail telling people to sod off for me. Excellent salary.”

  “No, but I’ve got one going for a book scout and dealer. Small obscure shop somewhere nobody’s going to look for you. As long as you like.”

  Kim met his eyes for a second, then propped an elbow on the table and his head in his hand. “I’d take you up on that except I’d bring the combined forces of my father and the Press down on you. Christ, I’m sorry about this.”

  “It’s not your fault in the slightest,” Will said strongly, then was forced to add, “Just goes to show, there’s a first time for everything.”

  “Never change, Will. As if you would. Ugh. I need to call Stratton. And Harry, and Rennick. And Thompson of course.”

  “Who’s Thompson?”

  “The fellow who has all those books on approval. He needs to make a decision today, and that’s a twenty-guinea order. He can’t sit on twenty guineas forever.”

  Twenty guineas was pocket change to Kim and they both knew it, but he always treated bookshop money with the value it had to Will, not to himself. That had sat a bit oddly at first since it was—not a lie, Kim had promised not to lie to him any more, but a pretence, because money didn’t have the same meaning to them. It might have felt patronising, and Will was sensitive to patronage. And it was a reminder that the first few times Kim had come to the bookshop, he’d done the exact opposite: ignored Will’s values, imposed his own, done things his way.

  But Kim was trying to change, and that mattered.

  So many things mattered about Kim. The way his deep brown eyes lit when he smiled, the intense concentration he brought to work or to bed. How he had made undrinkably weak tea for Will just once, watched him make his own with catlike attention, and got it spoon-dissolvingly perfect ever since. There were so many tiny wisping moments of trust and truth and vulnerability that had slowly become something real and solid between them, and Will didn’t want it to slip through his fingers. Not again.

  He didn’t say any of that. He said they could give Mr. Thompson a couple more days’ leeway, and Kim said if you gave a book-collector an inch he’d take a mile, and they argued about it for long enough to eat the platter of sausages, toast, and mushrooms that Peacock brought in.

  It was a fragile bubble of normal life that they both knew couldn’t outlast breakfast. Kim finished his tea-coloured water, and pushed his plate away. “I suppose I’d better get on and make those calls. Good God, it’s past nine. Do you need to get to the shop?”

  “It does the customers good to wait. I’ll stay as long as you want me.”

  “Oh, don’t say that,” Kim said. “Don’t promise me that unless you mean it.”

  Will blinked. Kim gave him a twitch of a smile. “Sorry. I spent too much of last night thinking rather than sleeping.”

  “You want to tell me what you were thinking about?” Will asked cautiously.

  “Nothing good. I don’t want this to happen, Will. I’m avoiding plugging in the telephone because I am dreading the news that the stupid oaf has been arrested and then the downward slide begins. How long does it take from arrest to the noose these days?”

  “Is this,” Will began and then rephrased the question into, “How bad is this going to be?”

  “For—?”

  “You. Us. Him indoors.” He jerked a thumb. Kim gave him a questioning look. “Mr. Peacock seemed a bit worried about what this might mean for him.”

  “As well he might.”

  “Why? Are you going to sack him and get a posher valet? Someone more suitable for his lordship the marquess?”

  It came out a touch more belligerently than he intended. Kim didn’t point that out. Instead, he got up, checked the kitchen was empty, and returned to the table. “Between us, Peacock did two years for embezzlement.”

  Will had to have misheard. “Say again?”

  “Embezzlement. He took a significant amount of money off Lord Carnforth, for whom he was butler, and went to Pentonville accordingly. They released him to the war and he did sterling work in France, but he couldn’t get a new place afterwards. So I made him an offer.”

  That seemed perverse even by Kim standards. “Why?”

  “Because he couldn’t get work. I needed someone who’d keep his mouth shut about my personal and professional life.”

  “Are you joking? If he was ready to turn over the last bloke he worked for—”

  “His wife’s an invalid, with a wasting disease,” Kim said. “That was what he stole the money for. Carnforth worked him all hours, she was worsening, and he needed to ensure she was cared for. I pay him extremely well and give him whatever time off he requires, and I got them a small flat downstairs so he’s always close to her when he’s needed. He would be a fool to throw this place away. I don’t think he’s a fool.”

  “No.” Will tried to picture the dour Mr. Peacock consumed by love to the point of crime. His imagination balked. “I suppose you know what you’re doing.”

  “Of course I do. Actually, he was overjoyed when you turned up, for a very Peacockian definition of joy: it let him demonstrate his exemplary discretion at last. You must have noticed you barely set eyes on him for months.”

  “I thought that was just—I don’t know. Good timing?”

  “His good timing, executed with the precision of a surgeon. You might have gone on thinking this flat was staffed by friendly elves forever if I hadn’t put my foot down.”

  “He was pretty invisible,” Will admitted.

  “I expect he needed to get it out of his system. He was poised to ignore me bringing men home on a nightly basis, and was quite annoyed I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Certainly not. That’s what discreet hotels are for.”

  “Come off it. You brought me here quick enough.”

  “But you were always different,” Kim said simply, as though the words wouldn’t punch into Will’s gut and leave him breathless. “Anyway, that’s Peacock, and don’t even think about letting on that you know. We do not discuss it. But if some enterprising newspaperman identifies him and runs ‘Criminal Household of Noble Killer’ or what-have-you, dredging it up—”

  “Hell.”

  “I don’t know how to avert that. I don’t know how to avert trouble from you either, and don’t tell me you can look after yourself. I know you can, but this is not your world.”

  “What sort of trouble are you expecting?”

  “All of it. The Press, my father. The future, unless you’re planning to tell me it won’t affect you in the slightest that I might become a marquess, and that we’ll be able to carry on as we like without any suspicion or inconvenience. But you aren’t usually a liar.”

  “That makes one of us,” Will said automatically. He didn’t want to face up to everything Kim had listed, not yet. Not ever, really, but if he had to, he needed thinking time first. “Talking of liars, are you going to tell me why you wanted me to distract the doctor last night?”

  “Eh? Oh, that, yes. Fairfax had a tattoo on the underside of his wrist.”

  Will had been leaning back in his chair as they talked. Now he jolted forward so hard that tea sloshed out of his cup. “What?”

  Wrist tattoos were the mark of Zodiac, the criminal organisation with whom they’d had two very unpleasant run-ins. Their leader Lord Waring had branded his lesser accomplices to guarantee their loyalty. Will took a deep breath to question why Kim hadn’t told hi
m this earlier, but he was already holding up a restraining hand.

  “Hear me out. He wore a wristwatch with a wide strap, which I couldn’t undo without attracting the doctor’s attention, but I could see the edges of the tattoo around it, and it was rather larger than the usual Zodiac size. Almost certainly irrelevant, hence I didn’t think to mention it.”

  “Fair enough,” Will said, settling down. “Anyway, surely the Private Bureau has arrested all the Zodiac bastards by now.”

  “I would hope so. Probably they have and this is something else; the most unlikely people seem to acquire tattoos these days. All the same, I’ll ask Rennick if I can have a proper squint at the corpse, just to be sure.” He exhaled. “I should make those calls now.”

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  Kim shook his head. “You’ve a shop to run. Thank you, though. I’ll drop over later if I may.”

  “I’ll have the kettle waiting. If you need me, I answer my telephone.”

  Chapter Four

  The day felt odd, possibly because Will was more used to experiencing trouble than to watching it happen to other people. He got on with work, for lack of any better ideas. He went out at lunchtime to buy the special editions, and found very little he hadn’t already known. Mainly he gathered that someone in the club was taking money from a journalist, because the report in the Daily Telegraph was pretty detailed. There was a brief interview with Eric Knowle, the Secretary, who flannelled politely, and two quotes from anonymous club members about the murdered man’s stand-up row with Lord Chingford, who was famous for his bad temper and physically strong. It probably wasn’t libellous, but you’d have to be fairly thick to miss the implication.

  The Daily Mail had a useful spread on the Symposium Club for the delectation of its readers, none of whom would ever see its insides for themselves. It was a gentleman’s club founded in Regency times, with a famous chef presiding over the dining room, offering lavish luxuries and a home from home to the select few. There was a brief list of a few famous members, which included Chingford in a very non-committal way, and finished with Kim.

  Lord Arthur Secretan, the younger brother of Lord Chingford, is said to have been expelled from the Symposium in 1917 for his extreme political views and refusal to fight. The Symposium would not confirm or deny this. Lord Arthur recently became notorious for the killing of man-about-town Johnnie Cheveley in shocking events at Lord Waring’s ancestral home. No blame was attached to Lord Arthur by the Coroner’s jury.

  “They commended him, you shits,” Will growled at the paper.

  Of course the jackals had dragged that up. They couldn’t yet say Chingford was a murderer but by God they could prepare the ground, and when he was arrested... Will didn’t even want to imagine the editors salivating over the Secretan family dirt.

  “Bastards,” he said a bit too loudly, causing an affronted customer to scuttle from the shop.

  The telephone rang about three o’clock. He snatched it up. “Darling’s Used and Antiquarian, who is it?”

  “Me.”

  Will felt a slight sag of relief in his shoulders that made him realise how much he’d feared Kim not calling, not communicating, not coming back. “Are you all right?”

  “I’ve had better days. Would you come to the Symposium with me?”

  “Yes. What? When? Why?”

  “Good God, Will, it’s not a grammar lesson. What: you, me, the Symposium to ask some questions. When: now. Why: because I want my questions answered, and because I could use your presence. I’ve had as much hostility as I want to experience for one day.”

  He sounded a bit ragged. “Of course I’ll come,” Will said. “They’ll let us in, right?”

  “For now. Look smart, if you would, and I’ll see you there in half an hour.”

  WILL TURNED UP A FEW minutes early, shaved and respectable. He didn’t even try knocking but lurked across the street, very aware that Pall Mall was not a good place to lurk. It was a great deal too clean and classical for that.

  Kim arrived before anyone had started giving Will funny looks. He was perfectly dressed down to the arrangement of the lilac handkerchief in his breast pocket, but he was extremely weary around the eyes.

  “Hello,” Will said. “Do you need a drink?”

  “Yes. Not yet, though.”

  “Anything I need to know before we go in?”

  “I went to see the body. The tattoo was rather amateurish: a mermaid frolicking in the waves, done with somewhat heavy lines. A peculiar thing for a banker to have on his wrist, since he was never a seafaring man so far as I can learn. I spent twenty minutes with a magnifying glass and I couldn’t decide if it’s a cover-up of a different tattoo, or simply a clumsily done bit of work. So that was tiresomely inconclusive. Chingford’s fingerprints have indeed been found on the ice pick. Oh, and Rennick asked to see his handkerchief after we left, and was informed he’d dropped it somewhere.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Quite. They haven’t found it, or any other bloodstained linen, so it’s not conclusive but it doesn’t look wonderful. On the positive side, Rennick told me a few useful things, including that one of the Club members reported a suspicious encounter with Fairfax. We’re going to speak to him today if we can.” He checked his watch. “Come on. Harry should be coming to get us any moment.”

  He crossed the road, Will at his heels, and stopped at the base of the grand stairs.

  “We’re not just ringing the bell because...?” Will enquired.

  “I need Harry’s authority to get in. They don’t let strangers wander around, and I’m persona non grata.”

  “You were expelled, right?”

  Kim gave him a sour look. “I see you’ve been reading the Daily Mail. I was not expelled. After my tribunal, numerous members informed the Committee that they would prefer my room to my company and started a petition to have me kicked out, so I resigned. I didn’t feel up to another round of public humiliation at that point.”

  “Resigned, not expelled. Does that make a difference?”

  “Oh, yes. I really can’t overstate the impact of expulsion: they might as well take out an advertisement in the newspapers to state that you are not fit company for gentlemen. When a man is forced out of a club, formally or otherwise, the news is all over Clubland in hours. Careers can be ruined. That’s why it’s significant that Chingford was being threatened with removal if he didn’t apologise to Fairfax. Intolerable humiliation either way.”

  Kim was speaking in that clipped don’t-care tone he used when things hurt. Will glowered at the magnificence in front of them with a vague urge to kick things. “What’s so good about this place anyway?”

  “You know the saying, an Englishman’s home is his castle? Well, the Symposium is a home and a castle. There’s a well-stocked library, a reading room, and a writing room. Card rooms and the billiard room for play, plenty of spaces for casual conversation, reading the papers, and so on, even a silence room where speech is strictly forbidden. A dining room with an excellent chef, drinks for the asking. Two floors of bedrooms so you never have to leave. Everyone from waiters to porters to doormen knows your face and your name. Nobody enters but members and approved guests. You saw for yourself how jealously the entrance is guarded, and members are Not At Home unless they specifically state otherwise. It’s designed to be the most pleasant, welcoming, comfortable place in one’s life, full of good company, where no importunate wife or bothersome business associate can trouble you.”

  Will mentally replaced the membership’s idea of ‘good company’ with his own, leaving the rest of it in place, and felt a solid spike of envy. “That sounds pretty good,” he admitted. “Is your other club like that?”

  “The Junior Antinous? No, that’s just gin and queers. Oh, finally.”

  Harry Mitra, looking decidedly furtive, had stuck his head out of the door. “Kim? There you are. Come on. Mr. Darling,” he added with a nod to Will.

  “I feel like contraband,” Kim m
urmured as they slipped in.

  “That’s because you are,” Mitra said. “Just try to keep a low profile, will you? What do you need?”

  “Knowle first, please. Then I want to find George Yoxall”—Will pricked up his ears—“and I’d also like to wander around a little and ask questions.”

  “Knowle might have views on that,” Mitra said as they crossed the hall and headed up the stairs. “He’s got enough on his plate without complaints about strangers. What’s Yoxall got to do with the price of fish?”

  “He had an issue with Fairfax. I’d like to ask him about it.”

  “Did he? Well, I’ll see if he’s around, but I can’t promise anything.”

  “I appreciate the effort. Thank you, Harry.”

  Mitra gave him a rueful smile. “Sorry I can’t do more. Any light on the horizon?”

  “Only that cast by everything on fire.”

  “Sounds about right. This way.”

  “Remind me who we’re going to see now,” Will said, as Mitra led the way into a corridor which he recognised as the one with the billiard room.

  “The Secretary,” Kim said. “He’s the fulcrum, as it were, connecting the Club as a collection of gentlemen to the Club as a profitable commercial enterprise. He has to know everything that’s going on, reconcile grating personalities, whether of members or important staff, smooth over tensions, and preserve the Club’s reputation.”

  “Sounds like a big job.”

  “It is. A good club secretary might end up as confidential secretary to a millionaire, or managing the Savoy, or goodness knows what.”

  “Knowle is excellent,” Mitra said. “We don’t want to lose him, so don’t give him ideas. Round here.” He led the way into another corridor off at an angle, knocked sharply on the door, and waited for a cry of “Enter!”

  The harried man from the other night was sitting at a desk with two stacked in-trays and an account book in front of him. He was perhaps early forties, medium build, his hair receding significantly, and he looked at Kim with a startled confusion that rapidly turned to annoyance. “Lord Arthur,” he said without notable enthusiasm. “May I ask what you are doing here? Because the exceptional circumstances of last night—”