How and when I would be disposed of, he took no thought for. A matter for the servants, no doubt; this was a man who never needed to clear up his own mess; and he wanted me to feel sorry for him about his beastly mother?
He prodded me with his expensive shoe. “Have you even anyone who loves you? Who will miss you?” He sniggered. Brodie was still talking to me; even having killed a man, he felt the need to belittle me. Yet he feared me; he feared what I could reveal; he feared me enough to kill me. “Oh, the ageing dowager, of course. But she broke that off, right?”
This was too much. I charged at him, roaring. His eyes nearly popped out of his head as I rose from the dead, lifted him by the lapels of his jacket, and shoved him into the glass cabinet.
The fear in his eyes fed my fury. I finally knew this odious beast was as human as I am, no better, no grander, and he feared for his life, just as I had. I crashed him up through the panels, as easily as if he were a child. The lead flashing warped, the glass cascading upon him in a sparkling waterfall. He batted it away, ducking into my assault. I grasped his greying hair, and twisted it, pressing his face to the wall.
“How is it I am to die?” I leaned close, enraged, so the breath of my anger would sting his eyes. “Vomit bile? Is that it? Spasms? My goodness, what a shame if these spasms cause me to drag a shard of glass across that tender neck of yours. If the poison somehow entered your blood. Involuntary, mind. I’d be as innocent of killing as you are. It’s always been done by others on my behalf.” I took out my handkerchief and held it near his face. “I’ve half a mind to make you drink my whisky.” As I thrust it over his mouth and nose, he threw up his arms in panic at the cyanide smell, snorting and coughing. How his terror delighted me.
I would not kill him. I grabbed his head in both hands, jerking it backwards. More glass. Cuts on his face. My hands bleeding. He punched me. I was too close for him to get a good swing; in my fury, I barely felt the blow. Drinking in his fear, I threw him to the floor. He cowered away. How petrified he was at seeing me rise from the dead. All thanks to the nights I’d spent pouring away drams at Kate Hamilton’s in the hope of defeating Cora at chess.
I reached into the broken cabinet and took the mediaeval scimitar. It was bright and polished.
“Do you mean to kill me, Scotland?”
I brandished the scimitar in warning. Brodie panted for mercy. How I longed to finish him off. He had ruined, rutted and killed with impunity. He had done it for years. And he had meant to dispose of me, without a thought. But there was no escape from his own black soul. These stains would never wash off. If he did flee, tail between his legs, his power was broken. If he did not, we would have him. He could not corrupt the whole world. “To ruin your name will hurt you more.”
“You don’t want to bring those charges against me.”
“Oh, no? I have proof to link you to them all. All your despicable trades.” The Phoenix Foundation, Quartern Mews, the Flowers of Sin, and hundreds more. I was sure, almost sure, we could prove it, if they came forward to testify.
“No, no. I don’t think you’ll want to bring those charges against me.” He pulled himself upright. He rocked back and forth, head in his hands. “Not when you see what I have in that book.”
The black volume he had laid on the table was embossed Efil Terces Ym on the spine. On the title page, M—S—L—, then the same chapter headings Groggins had stashed as insurance policy. But here, beside the chapters, were not initials, but names. Names I knew. Names every Briton would know. Names I cannot write, even here. Beside, in different colours, were named the women: some courtesans, to be sure, but also madams and ladies, abbesses and actresses, countesses and dames. I flicked through the pages. The subchapter titles already made me blush:
* * *
A frisky governess—Male & female aromas—Seeing & feeling—My prepuce, & another’s—An aunt exposes herself—A tumescent bath—Forcing my cousin—Bilked by a whore—A fat-rumped Devonian—Erotic madness—Torn again—Remorse—
* * *
This was Groggins’ manuscript for the printer, which Dugdale-Hotten so longed to publish: My Secret Life. It was not, as presented, the autobiography of a single soul, but an anthology. Erotic recollections of a host of London gents: autonomous depositions, whether stolen or offered, reports of courtesans collated by Groggins, the whole scheduled to be printed by Dugdale-Hotten for their avid subscription list.
This subsidiary venture was to be the Flowers of Sin’s eternal bloom. Brodie had enabled the capital’s rakes’ wildest adventures, and Groggins was capitalising on them through this lavish magnum opus. And Brodie kept his master copy book, with its key to this kingdom of filth.
Brodie himself sat quiet now, eyes closed in defeat. I replaced the scimitar in the cabinet and took up the file. Chapter 1 told of first viewing ladies abed, written by an earl. Chapter 2 mingled bedtime amusements with spying on an aunt’s bath, by a public school headmaster. Chapter 3 began with nursery frolics (minor royalty), musings on armpits (a famous novelist) and a servant’s thighs (a judge)…
On, and on. Precocious youth, through depraved manhood, into lascivious old age. All was arranged to create the story of the most voracious rakehell of our time: the pseudonymous “Walter”. What a curious mix of the erotic and the everyday.
My hand roved about her bum, belly and notch. I asked her to undress. Desire increasing by the feel of her thighs made me inquisitive.
Bawdy, strange, tawdry, familiar. Never have I read such obsessive reflections. I thought of Brodie’s defence of pornography. Why should writing of it be so wrong? Why should doing it?
Grace was always frigging herself, and after she had seen Bob frig himself, she got spoony on him. Very soon Bob spent his seed up Grace’s receptacle, instead of on the floor.
Was this the story of London’s gentlemen? Brodie’s audacious insurance. True enough, this black book carried ammunition enough for society’s destruction.
“Let me feel it,” said I. “My—God—no,” said she, astonished. “You may come home with me, if you’ll be quick.”
How many London gents were implicated? Those who wrote their own confessions, and those whose transgressions were recounted to Groggins by the well-trained women, his Flowers of Sin. Easier to count the innocents.
“No use burning it,” Brodie whispered. “I have a copy.”
My anger was extinguished. He picked himself up. “And Felix? Is this how you imposed yourself on him?”
“Felix asked me to help with the Foundation.”
“So you stole his money?”
“On the contrary, Scotland. He pays me.”
“A good man signed his charity across to you, and you turned it to dirt.”
“Good man, bad man.” Brodie shook his head. “Meaningless. People ain’t good and evil. Deeds, maybe.”
He was wrong, he must be. I wanted to demonise him, just as his papers and his brothels dehumanised people, exalted them, destroyed them.
Brodie sat down opposite me. “Felix was lost. I offered him something beautiful. He grasped it with both hands. I gave him the first taste of happiness he’d had in fifteen years.” He picked up my Scotch glass and puzzled at it. He poured the dregs on to the floor. “Your obsession with Felix is amusing. Just one of hundreds of men living out fantasies because they can afford it. Society is riddled with it.” He pointed at the black file. “To make all this public—I mean, with the key to its authors—would cause an unparalleled shake. You are no fool. We both have our insurance policies.” He rubbed his nose, doubtful of getting his way for once. His eyes flashed to the scimitar, and I tensed; but it was too late for violence now. “If you and I fought to the death, we’d leave a thousand reputations tattered beside our corpses. What say you we walk away?” He had seen the fury in my eyes, but he did not know the hatred he had aroused in my heart. “Face the facts, Scotland. You can’t prove a thing, can you?”
“Curses upon you. You may sleep, but you have forfeited y
our dreams. And if you should dream, let those dreams be cursed until the last day of your life. May no doctor heal you, no priest confess you, no family mourn you, no gravedigger bury you, the devil take you. If you have deserved one thing, it is the pain of the mothers whose babies are bags of bones in the Regent’s Canal. Your papers cast their judgements, but you, you shall be judged the lowest of all creatures.”
How I longed to say this to him. But I must keep my secret, just a little longer, and of my curses I said nothing. I slumped back in the chair. Yes, now we could prove he was the force behind the mechanism: prostitution, pregnancies, baby farming, trafficking, enslaving, buying, selling, blackmail and fraud. I was sure of it.
Out loud, I agreed. “All right. The Flowers of Sin will never be brought to book. Let them slip away into London’s dark past.”
“Something will come in their place, no doubt.” He chuckled. “Would you still advise me to flee? I can see you’re sore, Scotland. Better climb down from your high horse. Think of your own peccadillos.”
“She doesn’t care about being exposed.” I thought of Alexandra and her modern ways. But I would care; Ruth would care.
“And the girls?” Still manipulating.
“Girls?”
“One at the Foundation party. You recall. You were rather intimate. I’m just saying, Lawless, reveal my misdemeanours, and you’ll be leaving London too.” He peered to see if he had scored a hit. “And if you make revelations about so many powerful people, why, you will never be forgiven.”
My testimony might have been stingless, but there was no turning back. It was out of my hands.
“You admitted you used Kate’s night house, Scotland.”
“That’s not what I said—”
“Nobody batted an eyelid. Policeman’s benefits. Drinks here, bribes there, a fumble in the dark. I know all about your integrity.” Brodie jabbed his finger at me. “Then there’s the girl you killed. None of them know about that.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
He smirked, convinced he had found his mark. “The girl you ran over.”
“She didn’t die.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“She’s one of the girls we’ve rescued from your nursery. One of the hundreds kidnapped, or seduced, or whatever you want to call it, into your academy.”
“Hey, I give ’em an education, don’t I? What’s so wrong with that?”
“To hang around street corners. Until she is old enough—no doubt soon—to be trained in your erotic cohorts.”
“Hold on. A rustic slut, who can’t write and barely speaks English? I bring her to the Big Smoke, clothe her, teach her to speak nice, make her a lady, so she can be loved by the finest gents—”
“Loved? That’s a good word for it.”
“Scoff all you like. A kept lady in Kensington or Mayfair is superior to any wife in terms of dignity and income. She has finery, she has jewellery, a box at the opera. She has society’s respect. When the relationship ends, they go their ways, she to her next lover, he to his or, woe betide, to a wife. It’s the wives who are the slaves, not my girls. Wives have no freedom: pure and self-denying forever, with a husband’s chafing their only assurance, and finally his disgust. I give people what they want. What greater love can a man have than the love that he has lost? This is my venture. To give it back to him.”
This was his boast of the Flowers of Sin and its ministry. “You delude people.”
“I offer hope.”
“For the rich. For the poor, enslavement.”
“They get what they want, too: gossip, gambling, drink, sex. You puritans want everyone to live drab and equal. Why? Why not let ’em dream?” He went to the cabinet, brushing away glass and straightening his collection. “We all harbour dreams that cannot come true. Love denied, love forbidden, love lost. Things we want more than anything, more than riches and empire, I provide. I have no regrets.”
I sat in silence, contemplating his crazed vocation. No regrets? Not of that beautiful, pristine bedroom to which virginal youths were delivered as if to the Minotaur; nor of the dungeon in Southwark. Did he travel the country seeking them out? Did he drop by schools and farmsteads, hospitals and poorhouses, plucking them out with a pat on the head? It struck me that we would find a branch establishment, near the Flowers, for boys. What unmentionable things had he done, right here in this secret chamber?
Brodie closed the broken cabinet, as best he could, with a fastidious delicacy. Our struggle was done. “What should we do? Arrest you for your traffic incident? Manslaughter?”
“She didn’t die.”
“I can produce twenty witnesses who say she did.”
“She is alive and working, and I know where, because we rescued her. Or do you have a death certificate?”
He was pleased I was putting up a fight. “The girl at the party you can’t deny.”
“Ridiculous. Nothing happened. Nobody would believe you.”
“Stories of men who should know better misbehaving with girls. People might believe it. Especially with this.” He drew a picture from the shelf. “What a story it will make: the copper that’s fighting depravity, caught with his pants down, seducing a little ’un.” He passed me the daguerreotype.
The Quarterhouse party. It is the morning; the snow lies thinly on the ground. A group stands at the embers, by an iron bench. None of the typical strangled smiles: these survivors are lost in gay abandon, some heads blurred with movement, gazes challenging the photographer. There we all are: Brodie, Payne, Mauve and his wife—or another’s wife—even Felix, intertwined with tumblers and dancing girls. The cartwheel girl was curled up on my lap as if she were my lover. It looked every inch like I was implicated with her. “She was one of yours,” I gasped. That was why there was no one watching her, no parent, nobody. Already in training, at that age.
“If you like her,” Brodie nodded. “I can get her for you.”
“For a fee.”
“You’re poorer than our normal clientele, it’s true.” Still shuffling the damned cards. “Throw in a mention of your lady friend and the girl you ran over, holy moly, would that make a sensational article.”
He could threaten me all he liked. It was his turn to be scared. Tomorrow would close those newspapers. I hoped it would send him to jail. “And Felix’s girl. Where is she?”
“Ask Felix.”
“Felix can’t speak,” I repeated (a lie, but a canny one).
“Of course. I forgot.” It was his doing, or his men’s; his careless reply betrayed it.
I narrowed my eyes. “And her: what have you done with her?”
“Nothing to do with me. Felix’s responsibility. Ask him. Except you can’t.”
I said nothing. I still hoped to surprise the Enquiry with the testimonies of Felix and the Pixie. But there was another who would do better. I must call for extra protection at court. It could be a matter of life and death. Once this one testimony was delivered safe into the public domain—one incontrovertible witness to open the gates of truth—there would be no reason to hurt her except revenge. Brodie was capable of vengeance, no doubt of it, but to pick on one beloved of princes, dukes and cabinet ministers would be foolish, even for him. Sometimes, sometimes the law works to protect those who are brave enough to stand up against power and oppression. No doubt Brodie was a foe to be feared. But he was not the only one with friends in high places.
TRIUMPH (ENQUIRY VII)
Browbeaten, sleepless, I made terms with Brodie. Under this armistice, I was to accompany him to the Enquiry; there I would suggest to Justice Fairchild that the whole affair should be sewn up and packed away.
Rain, rain, rain, and every corner of the city ready to burst into life. These mad March downpours washed away the last of winter. I hadn’t seen it until now. You can stare at the bare grassy earth and think it dead, but once you notice a movement—an ant, a worm, a blade of grass—your eye adjusts, and you see that the whole mossy bank is crawling wi
th life. Hyde Park had been desolate for months. Now the ecstatic daffodils gave evidence how wildly the roots had flourished all winter. Above the budding trees of the Serpentine, a skein of geese glided in a V formation off to foreign skies. How I longed to go with them. Instead, I sat by this monster without complaint, him thinking I accepted his vices and endorsed them—as if they were laughable eccentricities shared between friends.
I should have been dead tired, but I had never felt so alive. The horror ran in my veins, but I would not show it. Every sinew was electric. I must travel with him; I must make certain he was there.
* * *
The rains doubled and redoubled.
Just before my long night at Brodie’s, having devoured Felix’s memoir on the train up from the book swap, I had stopped at Mrs Boulton’s café. The storm was looming over Waterloo, rattling at the windows.
Steph was more at ease as a manageress than she ever had been as a whore. Acton was right after all: some women just passed through prostitution, like a stop on the underground, to reach their destination more swiftly. “I’m lucky,” she said, “that I have prosperous friends. Without them to pay those first bills… Well, I’ll attend your trial after all. I’ve an old friend to return to town. She’ll be here in the morning.”
* * *
Brodie and I were late. He was surprised to find the gallery full, for he thought my humiliation had ended the thing for good. I was not.
In the morning, before the sensation, the societies and foundations made their reports; Brodie slept right through, though these statistics were anything but soporific. I’d studied the information: some girls are lazy, some love clothes, others drink, or pleasure; but most are ruined against their will, curtailing pregnancies or giving their children away; seduced, ruined, abandoned. Would many women choose this life?
It was this attestation, from the Society for the Rescue of Young Women and Children, that made the gallery gasp:
Lawless and the Flowers of Sin Page 26