House of Bliss

by T T Thomas

  Sabrina was almost too depleted from Annabel’s imaginative displays of gratitude to continue their evening, but somehow she rallied and agreed to accompany the talented woman to the Chinese sector.

  Furtively they walked down several dark alleys Sabrina would never enter during daylight. Annabel seemed unconcerned with their safety and familiar with the area. They entered an unmarked door off the alley, and in the entryway, a man gave a half bow to them.

  Annabel whispered something to him, and Sabrina paid the small man a large sum of money. They were led into yet another room, larger, darker, and smelling of something unfamiliar.

  Thereafter…during their relationship, they made numerous visits to the Chinaman’s den, usually once every ten days or so.

  Sabrina was hooked from their first visit. But the journey to hell was rife with danger. Even the relaxation from their sexual congress did not allay Sabrina’s nervousness as they prowled through the dark alleys of neighborhoods foreign to most London citizens. She even thought they were being followed on more than one occasion.

  Annabel’s response was always the same: she looped her arm with Sabrina’s and pulled her closer, whispering calm assurances. “Everyone comes to this area for the same thing,” she explained, “and they want to reach their destination more than they want anything from us.”

  Except that one night.

  As Annabel turned to see who Sabrina was whispering about, she clutched Sabrina tighter. She turned around several more times and increased their saunter to a crisp stride. Annabel led them down paths Sabrina didn’t recognize from previous excursions. Once they were inside the Chinaman’s den, it took Annabel a long time to relax. Sabrina looked at her expectantly. Annabel shrugged and said, “Being extra cautious. Pays to vary the route now and then. It was nothing.”

  She didn’t know that she ever fully forgave Annabel for introducing her to the revenge of the pretty poppy flower. In the amorous arts, though, Annabel was more generous to her than she deserved, so she kept her counsel and held no real animus toward her.

  The last time she saw Annabel, she was lying alongside her, smoking opium in a room full of strangers with whom she had a newfound affinity.

  The last time.

  There was no next time.

  When Sabrina showed up at Mrs. Tornage’s house one night over a year into their relationship, the landlady said Annabel had moved on, and no one knew where. Sabrina was shocked, first, then disappointed, then worried. She forced herself to go alone to the opium sanctuary to inquire about Annabel. No one had seen her, but naturally, the owner encouraged Sabrina to partake of available ministrations.

  Several subsequent visits to Mrs. Tornage’s house revealed no further word from Annabel. On her last visit, Mrs. Tornage looked at Sabrina with sadness. “I’m not believing she’ll return,” she said.

  Sabrina pressed—Why? Had something happened? Was Annabel ill? Had she left the business? Sabrina’s upset shook her whole body. Her face was splotchy red, and her eyes brimmed with unshed tears.

  “Her last customer…she knew him. She was afraid of him. Terrified.”

  Sabrina was struck silent. She thought, she understood, Annabel had agreed to let Sabrina help her. Move her to her own flat. Give up the drugs and give up the customers. In fact, Sabrina thought she was Annabel’s sole paying client.

  “Her last customer? But, Annabel was paying you rent.”

  “She was waiting for you that evening but he arrived first. He saw her and agreed to pay triple for her. She refused initially, but he said something to her, and suddenly, she agreed. I regret. I regret I didn’t talk her out of it. He was so insistent. And threatening.”

  “Who was he?” Sabrina said through clenched teeth. She sank down into the nearest chair, enraged and depleted by this new information.

  Mrs. Tornage shook her head. “I have never seen him before or since. I don’t know. But he stayed less than a quarter hour.”

  Another woman, Lena Thornbrook, was sitting in the chair next to Sabrina. “She always spoke so highly of you,” Lena whispered. “I am sorry. Please feel free to talk to me anytime—I didn’t know her well, but…”

  It was hard to believe that was nearly three years earlier—so much in Sabrina’s life had changed since those heady, dangerous nights of hungry ravishment and drug-fueled delirium. The ardent, rapacious lust expended and the nearly nauseating vapors of disinterest and oblivion inhaled was a contrast her heart could not recapture and her mind avoided.

  Estimable penitence, exquisite catastrophe.

  As she drifted off, she wondered for the thousandth time what had become of Annabel. She had mourned her for months, hurt by the apparent abandonment, even angry at herself for becoming so emotionally involved.

  In time, she thought she had begun to understand that Annabel spoke between the lines. She was vague but wise. She was gentle but strong. She was refreshing, but she had a history. She was without guile, but she was cautious. She had her inner angels, and she had her demons.

  There might never be anyone who moved her as Annabel had, but somewhere in her despair, she had eventually responded to Lena’s invitation to talk. It seemed to do them both good. And the talk led to more.

  And tonight she fell asleep with Lena’s scent somewhere near her ears or on her hair. Jeremy’s words repeated in her brain. Hmm. Yes, it had been worth it.

  True: No one was Annabel. Sabrina did not wish to believe she had been betrayed…and abandoned, but in the end, absent any contact, or clarity, she concluded she must not have known Annabel at all.

  Incautious obsession, improvident love.

  Chapter 5

  February 1906

  Lady Glynnis Glyver was not as pretty as the former Mrs. Glyver, but she was wealthier by magnitudes. Her standing in society, as the youngest daughter of the Earl of Winthorpe, was unassailable, despite her being slightly older than most marriageable young ladies. Then, too, there were the amorphous undercurrents of scandal because Glyver was a divorced man, but that had more to do with the reputation of his ex-wife than him. Besides, his immense wealth ameliorated the faint scent of disgrace, the whispered aspersions of slander. Nothing, though, could offset his dour personality.

  Although he was a commoner, Hugh Glyver was a man of substantial means by virtue of well-timed investments in South African mines. Although he suffered personal humiliation during his much publicized and celebrated divorce from Bel Glyver, it could have been worse. A fussy, obsessive man of deep-seated insecurity and arrogance, he would have rather saved his money than his pride, but his own attorney preferred to save both.

  Bel had accused him of physical and emotional damages, multiple instances of ‘private violence’ and abandonment. Glyver in turn sued her for infidelity.

  As neither side was able to show incontrovertible evidence of most of the allegations, one to the other, the judge in the case, Lord Chief Justice Sir Michael Hale, dismissed the case without finding in favor of either party.

  Within a few weeks, Mrs. Bel Glyver’s attorney secured for her a lump-sum stipend and a small monthly allowance until such time as she should remarry, and Glyver obtained his uncontested divorce decree. Mrs. Glyver’s attorney recommended the single endowment award to end the negative publicity which was accruing faster than Mr. Glyver’s attorney could squelch it.

  Afterwards, Bel seemed to vanish. Glyver knew she had left Celia Spring’s house because Celia was an old friend of his, and he pressured her to ask Bel to leave. A month or two passed when Glyver found himself looking for his ex-wife on the streets. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. Caught somewhere between furious lust and angry retaliation, Glyver wanted to know for certain that Bel was suffering.

  Not content to leave well enough alone, his burning desire to hurt her and her solicitor increased with each trip out. He even thought he had a glimpse of her once in a fast passing transom. Her lips. He’d recognize her lips anywhere. He’d bide his time. As for her lawyer, the feisty
but mannerly Mr. Louis R. Blissdon, Glyver read his obituary in The Times. He made note of a surviving daughter. Glyver would settle that score last.

  His business connections were able to confirm that the monies were disbursed from Bel to what Glyver thought must be a fictitious younger sister, but those funds were then forwarded to a blind trust account in London. She had never mentioned a sister, perhaps an old aunt. Hugh lost the money trail, but he continued to look everywhere for his former wife until the need for a socially acceptable second one took up most of his free time. His attorney convinced him that a second marriage would erase all whiff of gossip. It wasn’t true, but Glyver believed it.

  Glyver forbade anyone to mention the first marriage or divorce in his presence, but that didn’t prevent him from stewing about it to obsession. Although the stipend was minimal and had virtually no impact whatsoever on his financial status, Glyver was a peckish, testy man given to resentments, secret rages and recriminations in the privacy of his own diseased mind. Publicly he was polite, understated.

  Tonight was his third wedding anniversary with Lady Glynnis. He relaxed on the chaise in his sleeping quarters while she rested in her own boudoir for the dinner party. She was everything Bel hadn’t been: refined, cultured, poised and well bred. She was also averse to his romantic overtones, at least the sexual ones. That had a swift and demoralizing affect upon his fragile psyche. It hadn’t happened right away, but within a few months of their new conjugal bed, Glynnis seemed unmoved by his requests and laughed at his pouty face.

  “Oh darling, must we? I am so depleted from this day. Please don’t be cross with your pet. She will make it up to you.”

  She would lean in and kiss him chastely, and that was the end of the conversation. She rarely made it up to him. In that sense, she was quite the opposite of Bel, a woman of generous and lusty appetites. Hugh closed his eyes, remembering. As scenes of carnal pursuits with Bel played out behind his eyelids, the reservoir of hatred he felt for her mixed uneasily with the lust her memory could still stir. The storm funnel twisted in his guts even as it stirred in his loins. She could have had it all.

  He’d heard rumors over the past year. Bel walking the streets. Bel dancing with some corpulent, cigar-smoking merchant. Bel attending the ballet on the arm of some lesser foreign nobleman from some inconsequential country. Bel drinking to excess. Bel in poor health.

  He wouldn’t be surprised if it were all true. She was whorish in every way. But she was pretty and dressed to advantage thanks to his money. Some months ago, though, he heard other rumors…of a pregnancy. His source, the present Mrs. Glyver, heard all kinds of gossip. She implied other men in his social set sought out his former wife for dalliance—and she knew this because women in her set knew these things.

  His face remained placid when she casually disclosed this information. “I doubt she’ll be able to wear a corset much longer—that bit of news is several months old.”

  Glynnis told him that nearly six months ago. It made him realize the new Mrs. Glyver didn’t care about his feelings, and he didn’t really care about hers, either. But the information about Bel ate away at his fragile ego.

  The bastards had always wanted to possess Bel. He wondered how many she had seduced while married to him. He wished them all an unpleasant death. His wife’s voice roused him from his dark fantasy.

  “Darling, I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.” He could tell by the sing-song lilt in her voice that she was already sipping champagne.

  He rose and dressed quickly in the Navy blue suit his valet had laid out for him. When he was all finished save for the cufflinks, he rang for his man who dispatched the cufflinks and gave his suit coat a nice brushing. A quick look in the mirror satisfied his vanity.

  Perhaps tonight, later, he’d escort his tipsy wife home and put her to bed, asking her indulgence to go back to his Club for a nightcap. She would not object.

  As the carriage pulled up outside his club, Glyver saw Bailey Mendicott standing next to another officer to the side of the brick walled entrance to the Garrick. Glyver often saw Mendicott around this neighborhood since his promotion to Chief Inspector. There was always one murder or another that tainted the dangerous alleyways and darker corridors of Covent Garden, and none of those hidden passageways was far from Garrick Street. To the casual observer, the slight nod of acknowledgement that passed between the two men was indiscernible.

  To everyone except Glynnis.

  Glyver put his arm to Glynnis’ elbow and escorted her inside. Once seated, Glynnis looked around to see who else was in the club.

  “Where are all the usuals, tonight, I wonder?”

  “Oh, you know how people are. They hear someone got killed five miles away, and they won’t go within ten miles of the area.”

  She shuddered. “Someone was killed? Is that why your detective friend is out front of the club?”

  Glyver shrugged. “Mendicott is not really a friend,” he clarified. “And yes, maybe so.”

  “Looking at him makes my flesh creep,” she said. “Who was killed?”

  “He’s a decent bloke,” Glyver said, opening the menu. “Saved my man Markham a few times at Oxford.”

  “Because you paid him to,” she added, opening her menu, too.

  “Yes, well darling, that why he’s important to know. Probably another prostitute. Do you fancy the grilled chops this evening?”

  Glynnis gave her husband a veiled look of suspicion. She knew more about her husband’s friends by virtue of his bragging and boasting to her than by dent of first-hand knowledge. She had met Markham, of course, but as he had no wife, the Glyvers rarely socialized with him as a couple.

  “Oh, Markham. Another one who qualifies as patently uncouth and odd at best, no matter his title.” Glynnis sniffed the air, a clear sign that she didn’t accept his explanation.

  “I know you, Hugh. Something is being leveraged for something else. What do you have on George Markham—or does he have something on you, darling?”

  She gave him a triumphant smirk.

  Glyver laughed, and allowed her an apparent win in a pretend game of one-upmanship. He marveled secretly at how, without knowing, she knew.

  But he didn’t try to explain. Didn’t tell her that he and Mendicott formed a most mercenary alliance to relieve Markham from having to answer for his crimes—crimes that reflected lack of character if not outright felony. And he didn’t tell her it was Mendicott who delved into Markham’s ancestry and came up with information that Glyver would use to mastermind a host of devious and deviant predilections.

  Yes, leverage.

  “You are too intelligent, by half, for me, darling,” he said. “Now let’s us have a just-the-two-of-us evening.”

  Glynnis bestowed a genuine smile upon him, a smile that reflected a mind that had not yet comprehended how close she was to danger.

  He’d always have his driver slowly canvass the streets in Covent Garden while he scanned the faces of the women for one he recognized. They tended to gather and loiter at the entrances to the many dark alleys off the main streets. After an hour, he’d send the driver away and make arrangements to meet him at the designated spot later for the ride home.

  Then he’d walk the area. Dressed as he was, it wasn’t hard to get all the women to look his direction. Plus, he had his network of informants, and the reward for the choicest piece of information could be worth a handsome amount. Someone had to know where she was. Maybe tonight he’d be lucky enough to find her. But if not her, then another would do.

  The women in and around the Chinese sector were most receptive to his apparent interest. They always wore their dresses open on the top, a visual enticement to the bounty therein. He had become good at spotting the right candidates as they visually boasted their endowments in an attempt to appear more beguiling to their betters. But he had to get up close to them and pull out his small torch to confirm up close what he glimpsed at a distance.

  The women seemed amused as he scanned the
ir bosom with his light. If he didn’t find what he was looking for, he’d curl his lip and walk quickly away, while the lady in question hurled colorful profanities at his back. Some of them spoke about the odd encounters among themselves, but life on the streets was hard. They accepted it as coming with the territory.

  If he found his mark, any dark alleyway would do. He’d pay her first, then relieve himself…He forbade the women to speak. He didn’t need their usual vulgarities to encourage his libido.

  The sexual encounters were easy, but the later killings did not go smoothly. One ought to plan murder.

  He hadn’t planned to kill the first time, and that was the source of his error. The desire came over him one night as he sated his lust with a particularly attractive woman. She ignored his request for silence, and she spoke words with a sweetness that was at once erotic and profane. She told him what he needed. She seduced him with intuition. She sounded like someone he knew, but she wasn’t…in his fury at her ability to arouse him, he became someone else.

  Her voice. He grabbed her by the hair and twisted her head toward him…she gave him a haughty smile. She felt him go limp. “I can save it for someone else,” she taunted.

  There! There was the recurring affront. She had Bel’s voice, but she wasn’t Bel, and Bel had never said those words. But he knew she thought as much.

  Once unleashed from restraints of sanity, his compulsion was out of his control. The rope wasn’t tight enough to strangle the woman, and she fought him with a ferocity he hadn’t anticipated. He stabbed her repeatedly. As she weakened and sank to the ground, he ripped her corset off her, and then tore it in half with his two hands. She crawled away, but her wounds were mortal. She was found half naked and dead a few feet away from her bloodied, split corset.

  But he learned from that disgustingly inept adventure.

  The second one went smoother because he’d become slightly more adept at throwing a rope around a streetwalker’s neck while simultaneously sweeping his left arm under her chin. He’d stab her several times, then rip off her dress. He’d bend over her body and, being careful not to soil his coat with blood, he’d slash the corset to shreds on her body, blood oozing from the cut wounds through the fabric.