Devil's Food (17 page)

‘Deep play was a Georgian prerogative,’ observed the elderly man. ‘As a practitioner of the love which, once upon a time, dared not speak its name and now appears to shout it incessantly, I was appalled by the noise of the clubs in this city and the unbridled behaviour of the patrons.’

‘Noisy indeed,’ I agreed.

‘Definitely unbridled,’ said Daniel, sipping his wine.

‘So when I inherited this building and was minded to set up a club for my co-amorists, I thought — what is missing from my sex’s world? Quiet, that is absent, and so is civility. In the eighteenth century there were places of homosexual resort called Mollyhouses. I decided that I should have a Mollyhouse. Then I thought, it is unfair to the heterosexual to deprive them of this, so both genders are encouraged to enjoy our facilities. When my dear friend wanted to have a cafe which reflected his own Rumanian homeland, nothing could have been easier. During the day he has his cafe. During the night I have my Mollyhouse. Who is most likely to find this attractive? The goths, who value historical accuracy, good food and music. Here they can sup well, dance sedately and conduct their amours where they can see their partners, and perhaps choose more wisely than those who go home with someone they met in flaring red light and a daze of exhaustion and sweat.’

‘What a very good idea,’ Daniel commented.

‘And your artist has done a wonderful job with the trompes l’oeil,’ I said. ‘It looks like Vauxhall or Ranelegh.’

‘Do I speak to a fellow historian?’ he asked, eyeing me narrowly.

‘No, I just read a lot of Georgette Heyer,’ I admitted.

His sharp face softened. He patted my hand and poured me another drink. ‘Who did not?’ he asked rhetorically, and we began to discuss his favourite Heyer,
The Grand Sophy
. I argued passionately for
These Old Shades
. Daniel, unable to contribute to this feast of reason and flow of soul, watched the people.

The room was filling up. Pretty youths drifted by in sketchy eighteenth century attire. Pretty maidens in various garments wandered up to the bar and bought drinks. My lord D’Urban-ville was forced to half rise and greet several people as they passed and bowed. Finally he pleaded a further engagement, ordered Abigail to bring us another bottle, and left us.

Daniel grinned at me. ‘What an amazing old person! And what a good impression you made! Should we tell him about someone selling weeds in his precious club?’

‘Not if we can avoid it, he’d be terribly upset. How do we go about finding Kylie’s friend Bo?’

‘I suppose we could ask around,’ he answered. I always thought detectives had secret means for doing things, but it looked like Daniel was in the same class as the rest of us. He smiled and poured some more wine.

‘Never mind, ketschele,’ he said. ‘Have another drink.’

I had another drink. After all, it was free. And the sweet music played on my ear, tantalising me. I began to watch the string quartet. They were worth looking at. Very handsome people, those musicians.

The violin was played by a young woman with a thick plait of blonde hair down her back. The second violin by another, so similar that they might have been sisters. The viola by a thin dark young man with both whiskers and spectacles, and the cello by a blonde girl with the face of a Botticelli Madonna. They were all dressed in tidy dark blue and looked competent and sane.

And I had the work, at last, it was the Propitia Sidera by Muffat, the concerto grosso XII. Oh, such music. And they were playing it very well, with the effortless unison only achieved through endless muscle-racking rehearsal. Daniel got up and held out a hand.

‘If madame will favour me with this dance?’ he asked.

I put my hand in his. I didn’t know what the dance was called, but neither did most of the people who now filled the room. All I had to do, following the old Noël Coward advice, was to say the lines and not trip over the furniture. I thought I could probably do that. And I did. I paced carefully beside Daniel through what I thought might be a modified pavane, a dance which cannot be bungled provided that the aspirant can reliably walk.

I surveyed the crowd. It was mixed. Several trannies in immaculate eighteenth century costume — though one had strayed into Elizabethan and was having trouble with his ruff. Several straights in costume, differentiated by their chest hair and wigs. Dancing in front of me was a gay boy in buckskins into which he must have been poured, twitching his buttocks insolently. They were, however, very pretty buttocks indeed. Beside him was a slouching, bored girl in a bedraggled gown which her mother might have given her for dress-ups.

Daniel was suppressing a giggle. If the display was for him it was wasted. We turned and reversed. Now in front of me was a tall young man in an extensive collar and blue coat with a sprightly elderly lady, who was skipping to keep up with him.

‘I think it’s going to be a strange night,’ I said to Daniel. He squeezed my hand. But we had barely begun to ask around — I had received only two proposals and Daniel three, all utterly indecent — when a plump young man sat down next to me and said, ‘I’m Bo. I think you are looking for me. Though I can’t imagine why.’

The man who was becoming a murderer found that if he thought very hard about blood and death, he could shut out the voice. His dreams dripped with gore. Blood from the wounds of the crucified man streamed down the cross.

CHAPTER TEN

‘Have a drink,’ I said, pouring out more of my lord D’Urbanville’s wine. ‘I’m Corinna and this is Daniel. You are not in any trouble. We just want some information.’

‘If it’s about who’s screwing who,’ he said, flushing all over his very fair skin, ‘then I won’t tell you.’

‘We don’t care who is screwing whom,’ I said, getting it grammatically right as well. ‘We want to know who sold Kylie those weight loss herbs.’

‘Didn’t they work?’ he asked, dismayed.

‘Er …’ I began. Did we want to tell him they were poisonous? This was a nice boy. He had ‘nice boy’ written all through him, like Brighton Rock. I hated to hurt his feelings. Daniel smiled at Bo and inspired fresh revelations.

‘You see, we have to be thin,’ he said, tossing off the wine and refilling his glass. ‘The beautiful boys won’t look at you unless you’re slim. Muscular, of course, with perfect abs and all, but slim. My friend Tobias …’ His voice trailed off.

‘Tell us about your friend Tobias,’ I prompted gently.

‘Took it all to heart,’ said Bo. ‘Stopped eating. Didn’t take anything but the herbs. Now I don’t know where he is. I’m worried about him,’ he stated, suddenly sounding mature.

‘Where did he get the tea?’ asked Daniel.

Bo looked frightened. ‘I don’t want to tell you,’ he said.

I laid a hand on his. ‘But you are going to,’ I told him.

He looked down at the table as though he had never seen a hand before. I felt his fingers flex. His hand was soft, as though he had never done any manual work. Poor, sweet, soft, buttery boy.

‘The apothecary,’ he whispered. ‘He comes around most every night. With the witch. She can sell you a maigre doll to witch away your fat. He can sell you a tea to melt it away. At a price,’ he added bitterly. ‘But only to special customers.’

Daniel palmed fifty dollar notes. Four of them.

‘Buy us some?’ he asked. Bo paused. ‘Please?’ asked Daniel and smiled his melting smile.

‘All right,’ said Bo. ‘But he isn’t here yet.’

‘Then we shall wait for him,’ I said. ‘And we won’t tell him you told us. How will we know him?’

‘Hat,’ whispered Bo. ‘He wears a tall hat.’

Then he got up and scuttled away amongst the dancers. Daniel and I looked at each other.

‘A maigre doll,’ I said.

‘A tea of herbs,’ he answered.

‘Charlatan,’ I decided.

‘Poisoner,’ Daniel added.

The quartet started playing the fireworks music. The polite gathering danced. Daniel and I danced, too. We awaited the arrival of the apothecary and the witch and listened to the music of a sprightly minuet.

The night people had woken, as Abigail had said, and were filing into the formal drawing room. Vampires. Not for these the wild antics of the crypt; these were genteel. Only a flash of fang or an unwary glance at dilated eyes showed that Daniel and I were in the presence of the undead. They paced a pretty measure, presumably learnt in Prague in the old days, before the defenestration.

Daniel was cut out and I was whirled away in the arms of a black clad gentleman of substantial girth. He smiled, showing sharp teeth.

‘You have such beautiful, white, plump flesh,’ he drooled. ‘It demands to be bitten.’

‘Not all gentlemen appreciate plump flesh,’ I rejoined.

He grunted a laugh. ‘Fools. A thin woman is a bed full of bones. You can bruise yourself on her hips. Now you — you could take my weight …’ ‘But I’m not going to,’ I told him. He whirled me round again and contrived to shrug. Not easy to do while dancing.

‘No harm in asking,’ he commented. He danced very well and was affable so I agreed.

‘No one minds being asked,’ I said.

Over my vampire’s shoulder I could see Daniel dancing with a skeletal blonde dressed in wispy grave clothes. Her face was painted pale green with charcoal highlights and she looked ghastly — which was the idea, of course.

My boots were beginning to hurt my feet so I had my cavalier leave me at the little table. He tripped off to find another plump lady and I dropped back into my chair to survey the crowd. They were very good looking. It was hard to tell how much of the nerd-pale complexions were real or produced by cosmetics. Against them the bright eyes and pink cheeks of the musicians and wenches seemed over-coloured, almost vulgar. How delightful to be a vampire, to wake when the world slept, to haunt the dark lanes, to fly the unfriendly skies and never, never to die. One could see the attraction.

The lights were getting low. The music was becoming, as Abigail had said, more cosy. One thing about the eighteenth century, there was always Handel, who had written so many operas and oratorios and songs that there was a Handel for every possible mood. Amorous Handel was charming.

But it was late and I was getting sleepy. I had, after all, arisen at four this morning — no, yesterday morning — and I was no longer at the Kylie and Goss age where I could stay up all night and never notice. I poured myself a glass of orange crush, which Daniel had bought, because more wine would just have made me sleepier.

Lord D’Urbanville alighted like a bird and I offered him some orange drink. He shuddered lightly.

‘No, I thank you. I will take wine, if you please. Are you enjoying my club, Mistress Corinna?’

‘Very much,’ I said, truthfully. I poured a glass of wine for the elderly man.

‘And yet you are not here entirely in pursuit of pleasure,’ he observed.

‘No?’ I asked. I retreated behind my fan, snapping it open.

‘Your escort has been recognised,’ he told me. ‘A private detective. A very toothsome one, I admit,’ he added. ‘What are you seeking here?’

I had to make an instant decision. After all, it was his club. He seemed honest and concerned.

‘The apothecary and the witch,’ I said. His old hand closed on my wrist with surprising force. His blue eyes were flinty under his white wig. His face had grown more lines. His voice hardly rose above a whisper.

‘You suspect them of selling … drugs?’

‘Not exactly. We are trying to trace some weight loss tea which made two girls very sick.’

The grip slackened a little. ‘Nostrums,’ he said. ‘I agreed to allow those two to visit the club because they added some very convincing period colour. But they assured me that everything they sold was harmless. And accurate. Well, I will let you deal with them,’ he added, getting up. He was now leaning on his cane for support. Poor man. His club was dear to him.

Vampires swirled past wearing very decorative opera cloaks and long skirts. One slim young man was dressed in every possible texture of black: silk, satin, velvet, lace. His hair was white and his eyes red; an albino. Only here, perhaps, could he be seen as a beauty. The Mollies were quarrelling over who got to dance with him next, and he was smiling a little smile.

As Abigail had promised, a supper was being laid out in the corner next to the kitchen trompe l’oeil. I wandered over to look. Pure Georgette Heyer: jugs marked ‘orgeat’, ‘lemonade’ and ‘ratafia’, little pies marked ‘game’ and ‘pate’, small dishes of artfully crafted vegetables for those vampires who had sworn off a carnivorous diet (perhaps they were teetotallers, like Terry Pratchett’s black ribboners who don’t use the b-vord), small dishes of sorbet, plates of almond biscuits, little sandwiches of roast chicken and roast beef with watercress. Daniel returned as I picked up a plate.

‘Allow me,’ he said. I curtsied and returned to our table. There Daniel brought me a selection of dainties and we picked at them as we surveyed the room.

‘That girl I was dancing with, she uses the weight loss tea,’ he said quietly. ‘And I could feel every rib, every knob on her spine. If she isn’t anorexic, I’m Pontius Pilate.’

‘And you’re not him,’ I said. ‘My lord D’Urbanville said that the apothecary and the witch swore that their potions were harmless.’