Now that Eldon knew he’d earned our fullest attention, or at least the closest we were ever likely to accord him, he made a great show of pouring another two fingers into his glass and settling back before continuing. There was also a rakish grin teasing the corners of his mouth. “My mother was quite ill when she carried Kaylin. She kept to her room nearly the entire time, which left my father to chase Mrs. O’Keefe about like a middle school boy. This is quite some time ago.” He chuckled and allowed himself another sip of his drink.
“While I was certainly very young, I was not blind to the incongruity of my father and Mrs. O’Keefe sneaking about, especially with her giggling like a coquette whenever my father was nearby. It was all very appalling, which is precisely why I remember it. Why is it that such things stick in our brains while that which is most cherished is as fleeting as a cut rose?”
“Are you asking me?” Colin asked as he continued to buff the knife blade. “Or am I still just listening?”
Eldon’s brow furrowed. “Really, Mr. Pendragon, you’re being most uncivil when I’ve only just come to tell what I know.”
“Yes, yes,” he muttered. “Very obtuse of me.”
Eldon seemed to ignore Colin as he held his glass up right in front of his eyes with a look of great enticement. “I should think you would find it interesting to hear that our dear Mrs. O’Keefe began putting on weight while my own poor mother was lying about upstairs trying to ensure the safe arrival of our Kaylin. I remember it because I said something to my nanny about the suddenly expanding Mrs. O’Keefe and was quite soundly thumped for my cheek. It was only some years later that I realized what had likely transpired.” He leered.
I clamped my mouth shut to keep my jaw from unhinging, certain I must be misinterpreting his meaning. Even Colin kept still for a protracted period of time before finally screwing up his face and asking, “Are you suggesting that Mrs. O’Keefe was with child at the same time as your mother?”
“Ah . . .” Eldon grinned roguishly as he tipped his glass. “There’s the sleuth the papers adore.”
“And you’re saying your father was responsible?”
“Come now.” Eldon took another sip as he stretched out on the settee. “Is that really so hard to believe? We’ve already established his propensity for a tryst, and you cannot deny that he was fully capable.” He swept a hand across his body with a flourish, clearly meaning to present himself as the truth of that statement.
“How old were you at the time?”
Eldon heaved a sigh as though bothered by such a banal thought. “I was just about six and very precocious, and would’ve remained so if I hadn’t been driven to spirits by the time puberty seized me.” He scowled. “Mrs. O’Keefe got fleshy,” he continued after a moment, “and then she was gone.”
“Gone?”
He looked up at us and in that instant his usual derision had returned. “Packed off like the embarrassment she had become,” he said gleefully. “She was gone for about four months. Who the hell can remember. But it was a bloody long time, that’s for sure. Certainly long enough—” He let the sentence hang in the air.
“Where were you told she’d gone off to?”
He seemed to consider the question a moment as he cast his gaze about and pursed his lips. “I don’t really remember anymore. Sisters? Aunties? Dog pound? Hard to say.”
“I see . . . ,” Colin muttered, and I could practically hear his brain whirring. “Suppose she had gone off to have a baby . . . what of it?”
“Well, there’s the thing.” Eldon nearly crowed his enthusiasm. It was evident he was taking great merriment in our skepticism, which I could not help but find unsettling. “Not long after Mrs. O’Keefe went missing—it couldn’t have been six or eight weeks later—I awoke sometime in the night to a great deal of commotion. Dear Mother was not well, you see. There were all manner of people bustling about, and my cursed nanny kept trying to shoo me back to bed. But I wasn’t having any of it. I hid in the shadows of the hallway until I saw them carry my mother past on a stretcher. There was a great crowd of people around her, so I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear her crying. I remember being quite terrified.” He let out a caustic laugh. “Can you imagine?
“My father finally noticed me lurking about and yanked me back to my bedroom with his usual brute affection,” he chuckled again, “but not before I caught sight of the blood. There was a towel heaped on the floor of my mother’s room that was saturated and a puddle of it near her bed. A young boy remembers a thing like that.” He lifted his glass slightly and twirled its contents around a moment before deciding to continue. I couldn’t tell whether he was drawn to the memory or repelled by it. “And do you know what my father told that snot-nosed, weepy-faced boy after pulling him back to his bedroom? He said: Buck up, you little turd—your mother might not make it and we can’t have you sniveling about.”
I don’t think I had really expected to hear anything much different, yet it remained striking just the same.
“I suppose your father was practical if nothing else,” Colin said as he set the knife he’d been buffing back onto the mantel and stooped to poke at the fire. “But your mother did return and she brought Kaylin with her.” Colin stood up and turned to Eldon. “She did bring Kaylin with her?”
A sly grin slowly grew on Eldon’s face. “So clever, Mr. Pendragon. Kaylin came. Eventually. About a fortnight after Mother had returned from the hospital and just days before Mrs. O’Keefe made her own discreet homecoming. They told me dear sister had been sick and almost died, but as I got older and remembered all that blood, I began to wonder who was fooling whom.”
Colin moved around and dropped back into his chair. “If what you’re insinuating is true, why would your mother agree to such a ruse?”
“And that’s the thing.” Eldon finished off his scotch and pounded the glass onto the table with finality. “I believe this was perpetrated on my mother without her ever having the slightest notion. She wasn’t around to see Mrs. O’Keefe’s gradually burgeoning shape. And once my mother was in the hospital it would have been easy for my father to control what information she received. How he must have loved having her raise his daughter as though she were her own.”
“Why would any doctor agree to such a sham?”
Eldon laughed. “Oh, come now, Mr. Pendragon, don’t you know they’re the worst type of addicts? They’ve got access to every sort of drug. And doesn’t it take one addict to recognize another? That fact would never have been lost on my father.” There was an odd note of pride in his voice.
Colin fished a coin out of his pocket and quietly began flipping it between his fingers. “Of course,” he said after a moment, “this is all strictly conjecture on your part. Long-ago memories of a very little boy.”
“Guilty.” Eldon winked. “But surely a man of your prowess has noticed how Mrs. O’Keefe dotes on little sister. And even now she remains the only one of us who gives a whit that Father’s dead. Wouldn’t she just be forever grateful that she had been able to tend to her own daughter all these years, even if the poor, stupid girl didn’t know the truth.”
“So why are you telling us this now?”
“Suppose my mother recently found out the truth? Suppose she discovered the fraud he’d been perpetrating on her all these years. How enraged do you suppose she would be?” He beamed with mischievous delight.
“So you are suggesting she may have had something to do with your father’s murder then?” Colin’s tone remained smooth and steady even though the very idea that Eldon had come to dangle such an accusation was entirely repellent.
“Oh,” his smile dropped, “I’m more than suggesting it. My parents were a venal pair. If it wasn’t for my inheritance I would have left that horrid place years ago.”
“And how have you fared with your inheritance?”
Eldon shoved himself off the settee and stretched. “Everything my father owned has reverted to me.”
“And Kaylin?”
He waved
Colin off. “She inherits in name only.”
“What specifically?”
“Everything.”
“Your sister is a part owner of an opium den?” I blurted out, unable to contain myself.
“In name only, I said!” Eldon barked. “She has some ridiculous notion about liberating the women who work there. I told her to stick to her bloody horses and leave the rest to me. In fact, I think I may just go to the club tonight to claim what’s rightfully mine from that maggot my father was in business with.”
“Indeed.” Colin’s face turned grim. “Then perhaps we should come to your club tonight as well.”
“Oh,” he flushed, “you really must. Warren Vandemier had best beware, for tonight he will be made to pay. . . .”
I detested the idea of watching a surly and intoxicated Eldon Arnifour harangue against an equally addled Warren Vandemier. Even more so now that Eldon had so joyfully come to implicate his own mother. But most of all, I dreaded the thought of being inside an opium club again.
CHAPTER 28
We arrived just after eleven that evening, both dressed plainly in an effort to be inconspicuous, although we’d had to use Eldon’s name to get in. Colin had managed to refrain from asking if I was certain about accompanying him here again, but I could tell by his surreptitious glances that the question did not hover far from his lips. Everything looked familiar: the dense and seductive haze that wound through the scattered groups of people sharing pipes and the occasional loners randomly huddled about. Most of the doors to the private rooms lining the entrance hallway were closed, with the sheer drapery hanging around the main space affording what little privacy the rest of the clientele was accorded.
“You like company tonight?” asked the lovely Oriental hostess who ushered us inside.
“We would.” Colin tossed her a dazzling smile. “Might you be available?”
She giggled behind a hand as she threw a glance toward the overbuilt man seated behind the door. “You funny,” she giggled again, “but I only let customer in tonight. I find someone special for you.” She looked at me. “You want two?”
“One,” Colin answered. “We needn’t be greedy.”
She giggled yet again as she led us to a small area at one side of the room where several unoccupied lounges were arranged. We made ourselves comfortable, an easy task in such a setting, while she struck off to arrange a companion for us.
“The trick . . . ,” Colin leaned in close to me, “. . . will be to get our new friend to partake without actually doing so ourselves. Tell me you’re okay.”
“Now don’t start that,” I warned.
He offered a wry smile. “All right then. Then I shall concentrate on worrying about myself.”
“No worries!” A beautiful Oriental woman with the slightest figure I’d ever seen sidled up to us. She had delicate features and straight black hair that fell below her waist. “You relax,” she said as she settled onto the lounge across from us, setting the water pipe she was carrying next to the candles on the table. “I take care everything.”
Colin passed her a few pounds as she pulled a small pouch from the bodice of her dress. The pouch was little more than a tiny piece of fabric tied together at one end to form a teardrop shape. I knew she would be carrying more than a handful of these. Business, and her pay, depended on it.
She carefully set the little package on the table between us and tugged at the string binding it, revealing an oily black goop at its center. I was mesmerized as I watched her scrape the gummy substance into the thimble-sized metal holder also strung around her neck. With a practiced hand she slowly waved it over the open flame of a candle.
After no more than a minute she pulled a hairpin from behind her ear and gently coaxed the mixture into a thick, honeylike paste. As the pungent aroma gradually rose and drifted between us, swirling about and deftly stealing into our minds, she tipped the contents into the pipe’s bowl and smiled at us.
“Who first?” She turned the pipe toward Colin.
“The honor is yours.” He smiled back at her. “I must insist.”
“No, no, no . . .” She shook her head and thrust the pipe out again. “Not right. Honor belong to customer.”
“I insist.” He snatched one of the candles and tilted it toward the bowl. “Now don’t make us wait. . . .”
The young lady flicked her eyes left and right, clearly checking to see if anyone might catch her breaking what was certainly a house rule. Evidently satisfied, she quickly leaned forward and took a tug off the pipe without so much as touching it. She collapsed back onto her chaise and held the smoke deep in her lungs, her head lolling back as she stared up at the ceiling. After a few moments a gentle burst of smoke shot straight up from her mouth, mixing with the already murky air. “Wunnerful,” she sighed. “Now you.”
Colin snatched the pipe from her and made a great show of lighting it himself, bugging his eyes and alternating a sort of sucking and blowing combination that seemed to succeed in releasing a great deal of smoke without his apparently inhaling much. Still, it was more than I thought I could bear given the already toxic atmosphere swirling about my brain. So I was greatly relieved as I watched Colin push the pipe back toward our flushed attendant.
“No, no . . .” She giggled. “Not my turn. Is turn for friend.” And as if to illustrate her point, she picked up the candle and waved it toward me. “You next. You have fun too.”
“My friend started earlier this evening,” Colin smoothly informed her as he lifted the candle from her hand and turned it, and the pipe, back in her direction. “Your turn. We have to catch up.” He winked at her, sending her into a second round of soft-pitched giggles. This time, when he leaned the candle toward the bowl our companion didn’t even bother to demur, but quickly swooped in and took a great, long pull.
“You very kind,” she said, smoke leaking from the sides of her mouth. “I do you service in return.” She smiled boldly, glancing from Colin to me. “I get us room. Show you trick with smoke.”
Despite my foggy head, I managed to keep from laughing as Colin leaned forward and patted her knee. “No services. We’ve got that covered. What we’d really like is a little information. Could you help us with that?”
She looked deflated, since that was money that would have gone directly to her. “But I best in club. I please everyone.”
“I’m sure you do. But what would be most pleasing is if you would tell us a little about the club’s owner.”
The woman scowled and shook her head. “I not like that. I work in club. Make people happy.” She pushed the pipe toward me and gestured determinedly with the candle. “Your turn. No say no. Trust me. No talk about owner. Tonight, you owner.”
“You misunderstand.” Colin lifted the pipe from her hand and put it up to his own mouth, leaning forward and giving his elaborate show of smoking. “I’m a friend of Mr. Vandemier’s. I just want to make sure he’s treating you well.” He sent a great discharge of smoke into her face, which she instinctively inhaled.
“Oh.” She smiled. “No worry. Sometimes people say bad things, but I have no bad things to say.” She took the pipe from Colin and pressed it into my hands. “You have some. Way past time for you.”
“Way past time . . . ,” I repeated numbly, lifting the pipe to my lips as I leaned in toward the nearest candle. I clenched the metal nipple between my teeth and tipped the candle forward, and instantly a rush of familiarity overwhelmed me in a sickening yet somehow welcoming way. With the sound of my heartbeat rocketing in my ears, I sucked on the pipe until I felt the first smooth tendrils of smoke curl into my mouth. It tasted soft and soothing, like a dear friend who’d been gone too long. My lungs struggled to reach up and draw it in: one inhalation . . . one weedy taste . . . just one . . . but before I could be thusly seduced Colin yanked the pipe from my hands and ground his heel into my foot. I yelped, expelling the smoke in a single coughing burst.
“There, there,” he muttered with mock concern, slappi
ng my back a bit too heartily. “Let’s not be greedy.”
“No,” I stammered, my eyes watering as I looked up and spotted the concern behind his eyes. “No,” I repeated, more for myself.
“Would you say Mr. Vandemier is a good man?” Colin turned his attentions and the pipe back to our young attendant. “Is he fair? Kind?”
“He not owner. He only manage. You say he friend . . .” She slid the pipe out of Colin’s hand and began to refill it. “How come you not know that?”
“He told me the club was his.” Colin hiked an eyebrow as he watched her. “Has he been feeding me a line of trifle?”
The young woman giggled. “He no own. Owner dead.”
Even with the miasma fingering about my mind I understood the profundity of her words. If she was right, if she was telling the truth, then Warren Vandemier had far overstated his value in the enterprise. There would be a great deal more for him to explain.
“Are you certain?” Colin pressed as he snatched up the candle and lit the refreshed bowl for her.
“Oh yes. Everybody know he dead. Somebody kill him.”
“I meant Warren Vandemier. Are you certain he’s not the owner?”
She shrugged as she took another tug on the pipe. “He always getting yelled at. Make him mad. He take it out on us. With owner gone now he happy. Say he own place, but he still only manage.”
“Then who’s the owner?”
“Owner dead.”
Colin smiled and leaned forward, tipping the candle to relight the pipe for her. “But if the owner’s dead . . . ,” he said with remarkable patience, “. . . then who’s the owner now?”
“Why don’t you ask someone who knows?” came the tight, grating voice of Warren Vandemier.
I turned to face him and caught a glimpse of the hostess who’d seated us the first time lurking in the shadows. She had done us in—again. I wondered whether she’d recognized us or if perhaps she’d caught us ministering to our young companion’s obvious habit.
“I thought I’d put an end to the two of you skulking about!” Mr. Vandemier growled.
The Arnifour Affair Page 19