“No, no. I should remember,” I said warmly. “A pleasure to meet you.” I cast a glance at Ruth. “But can this really be your maiden aunt, Lexie? You have sold her short in your descriptions.”
Ruth snorted at this outright flirtation. “Because I am jealous of her beauty.”
“If you’ll excuse me, Lexie,” I said carelessly, “or do I too call you Aunt Lexie? I must look at these fearful books. I’m after one in particular, about Italian prisons.” I walked rudely away.
Ruth apologised on my behalf. “That’s Scotsmen for you. Excuse me, Lexie. I spy a vicar gasping for roulade.”
I leaned in the recess of the garden wall, my mind awhirl. I wanted something from her, some kind of recognition, or forgiveness. She hovered alongside me, picking at books on the trestle tables. The rain started up in earnest, spattering the awnings, and the crowds scurried for shelter. Satisfied we were hidden by the camellias, she inserted her finger through the buttonhole of my lapel, drew me to her, pushed me away, drew me to her, pushed me away. I gazed into her tear-shaped eyes with their hint of long sorrows.
She smiled.
I revelled in that smile. But I promised myself I wouldn’t describe her. I said I wouldn’t, and I have.
She breathed in the fresh spring air. “And Felix’s daughter? Have you found her?” Seeing I had understood so little at our final meeting, she began telling me the history again: that Felix’s interest in fallen women was due to his daughter, lost in the wars, then apparently found. The girl at the opera must be—
I interrupted. “When did you find out that I knew Ruth?”
She bit her lip. “I knew. From the start, I knew. I just couldn’t resist.” She smiled. “Wicked, wasn’t it?”
We both burst out laughing. I laughed to think how I had resisted offers of Kate’s girls, Skittles’s charms and sirens all over London, but succumbed to her.
Ruth appeared, a book in her hand, and Alexandra walked away, without a word or a backward glance. I saw the similarity between them: the delicious knowingness in the eyes, neither sad nor ironical, but irresistible. There was no doubt they were aunt and niece.
Ruth frowned. “What was that you were talking of?”
“Oh, have you Felix’s book for me?”
“You seem rather intimate with the aunt.” She feigned unconcern.
“No, no.” I found the inscription:
Ruth, my darling niece,
To a life of rapture.
Love, Aunt Lexie.
This second volume of Felix’s memoirs I would devour on the train back to town. I shook my head, and looked up. “But the dreaded aunt has some good ideas.”
Ruth eyed me warily, shoulders tensed to rebuff a joke. “Such as?”
I looked into her emerald eyes and breathed in. “That I should ask you to step out with me.”
WHO IS THE STRONGER?
“You were disappointed with our friend, Kitty Hamilton,” said Brodie. “Right, Mr Scotland?” His accents still surprised me, the American vowels peppered through it like the grey in his hair and moustaches. We were back in his Secret Cabinet, where it all began, back in November. “Women, huh? Cleopatras, Catherines and Virgin Queens. When they’re not battling and murdering, they’re scheming how to satisfy those constant impulsive desires. Petticoat government, huh? We men would lie in the sunshine and eat lotuses, if our wives would let us. The stronger sex? The noisier. They want freedom of opinion, occupation? Let ’em. Let ’em be lawyers, prime ministers, editors, anything they like; but let ’em be goddamned quiet—if they can.”
“Mr Brodie.” I must unfold my final gambit. The first time I was here, I accepted his hospitality; I laughed along, I got drunk, I welcomed his open invitation. Now I felt sullied, but I kept up my smile, for now. “Mr Brodie, I know everything.”
He blessed me with that rare smile of his. “No chess this time, I’m afraid. Can’t get the staff. Will I suffice as entertainment?” He opened the drinks cabinet. “You want to threaten me with revelations? Oh, I’m scared. The touch of death you have. Mauve. The Irishman. Your sergeant friend. And darling Skittles. You, with your assignations, are gonna threaten me: your questionable women, high and low; improper entry into premises; and such a furious driver.”
“Oh, can’t we speak plainly? I know everything that’s going on. I’m not white as snow, I admit. What sins will you admit to?”
“We all like to feel a little besmirched.” He brandished the decanter, grinning. “Have you a lawyer prepared to pursue these poetic convictions of yours?”
A lawyer he couldn’t touch? Yes, by God, we had found one. I gave no answer.
“No? Then, frankly, Sergeant, go hang yourself.” Brodie took an unholy age measuring out my whisky. “How much have you lived? I mean really lived. I’ll wager that my hour is more than your month. What the hell? I realised early in life, I have a need. I felt it so strong, I was sure all men must feel something of the same. Am I not right, Mr Scotland?”
I took the glass of peaty brown liquor.
“The Apostle Paul’s advice: ‘Let your weakness be your strength.’ His weakness was so great, he was forced to rely on God. I, too, have such a proclivity. Don’t you?”
“If you mean to want women at my beck and call, no.”
“Women, girls, boys. No?” He eyed me strangely. “Well, I thought that if all men desire it so, even more than they want drink and games and gossip, then, on top of newspapers, racehorses and public houses, I better invest in bordellos. People are profligate; if someone’s going to profit, might as well be me. I made my fortune. Five times over, I made it. As the Lord says, I hid not my worth. To him who has will be given, and he will have abundance. I invested; I got back tenfold. And if I ever thought about sin, I told myself: see how the Lord blesses my enterprises; I cannot be sinful, or he’d punish me. The Lord sees all, and forgives all, and blesses all. Why be the moral fool, when I can be lord of all I survey? If not me, it’d be someone else running these affiliations. I tell you, a smaller-minded man could be pretty cruel.”
“You don’t think your organisations are cruel?”
“They could be one hell of a lot crueller.”
“Taking children from mothers—”
“Buying. What else have they to sell? And why not? Reward for their sufferings. Do you blame them? How caring your own mother must have been. I congratulate you. Mine was not.”
I sighed. “If you wish to play silly buggers, I have known about the thefts from the start. It took me a while to see what you stood to gain. Power over the powerful. Money from the moneyed. Felix, for example. Not just access to his charity: access to the women, access to their children.”
“Are you finished with your high horse?” Plucking a volume off the bookcase, Brodie thumbed through it. “These stubborn sins of ours. Such slack repentance! Promising, always promising. Then straight back on the path of filth. Ha! Forgive my extemporary version, Sergeant. You must know your Baudelaire. Les Fleurs du Mal. Spouts a heap of hogwash about our sins. But the circles of the Parisian underworld, those he imbues with spiritual grace.” In that small room, his gaze was fixed far off, like a beast patiently awaiting its prey. “You got to admit, there’s nobility in these syphilitic veterans of Venus.”
“Mayhew’s women speak with more poetry than any West End playwright.”
“You got it. A perverse dignity: the prostitute’s trivial life acquires tragical grandeur in its fatality. The tinge of transgressive melancholy.” He sniffed at his drink. “Our puritan lands consider organised vice insolent and shaming. Where is the Japanese geisha? The Parisian cocotte, that pinnacle of pleasure and imitation?” He threw back his whisky with evident pleasure. “As long as prostitution is a fecund evil, it will flourish in the dirt.”
“Were you aiming to make it respectable?”
“Let’s just say I liberated myself from my native Puritanism.”
“Now you’re liberating London.”
“Look, some wo
men are too amorous; but it’s frigidity that more often ruins our lives. Wouldn’t you say, Sergeant?”
“That’s hardly your papers’ tune. Nor does it license propositioning.”
“Flirting is to marriage what free trade is to commerce. Test a woman, and you judge what sort of wife she’d be. If you conceive a passion for each other, you should be entitled to indulge it, morally. Surely you’re not so old-fashioned as to disagree with that.”
I managed a smile, gritting my teeth. It was hard to speak civilly with a man who in my mind was the architect of evil, careless of crimes, manipulations, and ruined lives. Everything grist to the mill of commerce: decency, privacy, life itself. I must keep in mind what I hoped to achieve. “And Felix’s girl. You persuaded her family to sell her for ten pounds.”
“Ten? Never so much.” He laughed. “Don’t take much persuading, I tell you, those northerners. What’s the problem? The girl learnt a trade. She made something of her life.”
“Did she? Where is she now?”
“Ain’t my business, Mr Scotland. Ask your friend Felix.”
I stared. “Felix will not speak again.”
“No? A shame. An eloquent soul. That’s the struggle for life, ain’t it? The strong survive, the species develops.” He poured himself another whisky; mine I soaked into my handkerchief, the trick inspired by Cora; best he think I was matching his drams. “I only give people what they want. He and his girl both.”
“But you tell people what they want, in the headlines, daily.”
“No, no. My influence ain’t so strong. I listen to what they want, and I amplify it.” He took a file from the shelf and stroked the leather cover. “Say, ain’t it strange how we ban love, yet endorse murder and mutilation? Actors and novelists may give people whatever they want; courtesans not so.”
What exactly did Brodie mean by his proclivity? “You mean prostitution?”
“Oh, Mr Scotland.” He rolled his eyes. “So small-minded.”
“What happened to Gabriel Mauve?”
“You set the plough a-rolling, you mow down flowers.”
“Did he get what he wanted?”
“In spades. Mauve was a fool. He took chances; he lost out.”
“Lost out?” I was not alone in suspecting Mauve’s suicide was assisted. Easily orchestrated: slow asphyxiation in the midst of erotic games.
Brodie, flicking through the file, gave no answer.
“And Groggins?”
“Who, the Irish gabbler? A big mouth he had. I was wrong to choose him for such a delicate task.” He tapped at the file. “Though he had talent. The twisted verbiage he churned out, it got me right here—”
“And the girl?”
“Felix’s girl? You care about her?” He looked at me squarely, resting his chin in his hand. “What did you think you could do, boy? Expose me? Had your chance.”
“True.” I cast my eyes downward. I had suffered public humiliation; he believed I’d given up, and that was all the better. “I thought you’d be big enough to admit your crimes.”
“Ha!” He looked at me. “You ain’t free from sin yourself.”
“Not like that. Nothing like the things you’re involved in.”
“Oh, that was love, was it? Extramarital, though. Not typically Presbyterian.”
I sighed. “Haven’t you dragged me through the mud enough?”
“I could have gone much farther.” He pointed at me, as an Englishman never would point. “I still could. If you’re determined to expose my services, and the good folk who enjoy my services, go ahead. I can provide you with photographic images we showed the judge, if you like. You may find the pictures distasteful.”
These threats, these games—I was tiring of it all. “And Felix. What of him?”
“You go close to the fire, you get burned.” He set the file down carefully beside me and sat back in his armchair. “You want to style me as some black-hearted mogul, tossing people into the ditch in pursuit of profit. It won’t hold. It’s a caricature.” He took a cigar, bit the end off and lit it calmly. “Newspapers ain’t just for profits. They’re a public service. I won’t pretend sales don’t matter; a business has to pay. But I could aim much lower. Look at the Illustrated Police News, with its cat headlines. Always damned cats: cats suffocated, cats crowned, cats beheaded. When did cats become so entertaining? It’s a parade of freaks, I grant you. But I take my duty to inform the public seriously. The readership has doubled during my tenure. I backed the Chartist riots in ’48. I’ll back the new reforms when they come.”
“Don’t pretend you’re for reform.”
“Of course I am. Enfranchised people are inquisitive people. They read papers, they get angry. Good for society, good for me.”
“That doesn’t follow. You hint that Mauve died in a bizarre sexual game, and your sales quadruple.”
“Don’t they have the right to know? The misery most men endure, ashamed of their natural urges, and their wives still more ashamed of theirs.” He tapped the file. “This stuff keeps men out of trouble, just like prostitution safeguards marriages.”
“Do you believe that?” The temptation to indulge these romantic versions of commercial sexuality was strong, but it couldn’t stem the cruelties. I shook my head. “And the casualties?”
Brodie shrugged. “Not my fault.”
“Nor blackmail. Trafficking. Baby farming.” The Enquiry had not linked any of these crimes to him, not yet. I wanted him to admit it all. That was why I had come. It was a long shot, but I had thrown everything into the pot; if I lost now, I was beyond caring. “Not your fault.”
He sat wide-eyed for a moment. He was actually shocked that I knew—and that shock meant I was right.
“Your web of tainted trades,” I said, “you can never free yourself from. Even if you’re never brought to justice, you know your heart is black. I know. And the whole of Scotland Yard knows.”
Brodie tilted his head, considering me, as if making a decision. He sprang, with a spry energy, over to his cabinet of curiosities, opening it with an ornate key, as if from a fairytale. “You done your job, Mr Scotland. You ain’t no big shot at courtroom bluff. But as a policeman, you done what Sir Richard asked, the cowardly bigot, and goddamn if you ain’t done what he ought to have asked. You plough where you never sowed. I admire that.” The cabinet was locked again; he had extracted three stones he had shown me all those months ago: pieces of the Colosseum. He tossed them up and down. “What you’re saying about Scotland Yard, though, is horse manure. And those same horses are gonna trample you down.”
“Threaten me all you like, Brodie. Power has to obey universal laws. I hoped to expose you in court as a charlatan, a kidnapper, a seducer.” As his gaze burned into me, I brought the last drop of whisky to my lips, but did not drink it. There was a smell hidden in the peat, nutmeg or almond. “And—”
“And what?” he mocked. “You failed, if you recall.”
“And the rest you know.” I counted off on my fingers. “Murderer of innocents. Erotomaniac. Pederast, with a liking for—but you know your own mind. Can you be sure the rest will not come out tomorrow? Don’t you wish to leave town tonight and flee the shame?”
“The Socratic option? Run before they bring the hemlock?” He snorted. What a man, comparing himself to Socrates, though the pederasty doubtless rang a bell. “I have no shame to flee from.” He began juggling the rocks; Molly would have been proud. “Your testimony is done. It’s my turn in court tomorrow. You can’t make no reply. You can’t say nothing—if you’re dead.”
I sat bolt upright. My heart juddered. What mischief was at play? I stared about: the door was bolted tight. If he meant me harm, he must do it himself. Did he mean to fell me with a rock between the eyes? That’s David’s trick, not Goliath’s. I looked around, wild-eyed, as he kept on juggling. “Killing me won’t help you. Everything I’ve said is written and witnessed, with proofs, at Scotland Yard.”
Those crafty eyes. “Sure it is.”<
br />
“To be opened in case of my death or disappearance. Certified copies in the possession of a lawyer, which even you cannot get at.” I was afraid; I was sweating and short of breath. But I was right. If he thought me worth killing, I could still ruin his reputation; I might even send him to jail.
“Feel all right?” He put down the confounded rocks, unconcerned. His eyes twitched toward my glass, his mouth twisting into a smile. “Another Scotch, Mr Scotland?”
Strange smell of the whisky. Poison. He was waiting for me to fall; and then what? Let us find out. I stepped towards him, looking about theatrically. “The Scotch?” Raising my hand to my throat, I staggered, overdoing it a bit. “Foul play.”
He jerked away, as if I would fall at his feet. “What a shame, Sergeant. If these depositions of yours are so powerful, and so safely stowed, I may yet have to retreat.” He sighed. “You cast aspersions on my colleagues. Disrupt my businesses. The inconvenience alone would be worth killing you. I have enjoyed dominating London. If I must go, I’ll go. New York’s an improving sort of a place, and they read newspapers.”
“Don’t you think the scandal shall follow you? I shall make sure of it…” I trailed off, clutching at my heart.
“You, Sergeant, shall do nothing more. A few convulsions, perhaps. Your heart will stop. Your body will be disposed of by men who owe me so much, they would think nothing of assassinating the Queen of England.”
I tumbled at his feet and convulsed, as he had described, before falling still.
Brodie walked right around me, breathing calmly, like he was studying a meteorite fallen to earth. He rifled through my pockets, as if by habit; it made me think of his father arriving in New York without a penny. He poured himself another drink.
I hadn’t noticed, until now, the ticking of a clock in the cabinet: an old Bohemian mantel clock, by the sound of it.
“Ah, Sergeant. It never ceases to amaze me how you little men overestimate your value. It’s almost disappointing. Nobody will notice you’re gone. No eulogy. Your story will be forgotten: another cop, snuffed out by some whore’s bully.”
Lawless and the Flowers of Sin Page 25