The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (45 page)

Then a solution came to him and he felt certain of its rightness. He would offer the flat to Mary. He was being paid quite well by the della Scala family. He could continue to cover the rent. She would have the independent life she so often spoke of with longing. In two years, when he returned, either of them might have new ideas, new plans. He was almost certain she would agree if she could be persuaded she was doing him a favour.

He sat down to write to her immediately, before he could change his mind. He laid out his ideas and said that he hoped she would accept. He read the paragraph through and thought it sounded extraordinarily stuffy. Remembering what Frances had said to him—that he should choose whether he waited or whether he grasped life—he added a final paragraph.

Perhaps I should have told you before that I was thinking of going abroad. There never seemed a right time to say it by letter while you were going through such a hard time. There are other things I should have said as well but I was too frightened of losing even what I had of you. I love you. It’s quite simple. But loving you comes at a price. Your loyalty to Pip is a grand thing but I cannot,
cannot
just be your friend. I find I can’t be the reasonable, honourable man I would like to be.

So I am going away. I shall be in Italy and you will, I very much hope, be here, where I am now, looking out over London. You will know where I am and I shall know where you are. I hope you will understand.

Almost as he closed and sealed the envelope, the church bell struck seven. As he left the house, he held both letters in his hand so that he would be sure to post them before he changed his mind. In twenty minutes he had sent his life in an entirely new direction.

He wanted to reach Tite Street before eight. If the house was still operating as it once had, he hoped to arrive while it was quiet. He was on the bus and heading towards Chelsea when he realised he wasn’t certain of the name of Robert’s sister. Miss Stone sounded more like the headmistress of a boarding school for young ladies. He had a feeling that a madame might take Mrs as an honorific, in the manner of a household cook. But there was little point worrying about it as the address might well be highly respectable by now.

That proved not to be the case, although certainly from the outside there was nothing to distinguish it from the other houses on the street. He had walked from one end of Tite Street to the other, passing a postbox into which he dropped both letters with only a second’s hesitation, before coming to the house with stucco sphinxes, gleaming white, at the far end. When he reached the door he was determined not to linger. Depending on what the neighbours knew of the house, he could only look dubious: either a man without the courage of his appetites or a potential burglar.

There was a well-polished door bell, which he pulled, but could not hear ring within the house. As the door opened he realised he had made a mistake. A formally dressed maid stood there, neat, with dark eyes and her hair in a bun. She bobbed to him.

‘M’sieur?’

‘I’m so sorry, my friend must have given me the wrong address,’ he said.

Her pretty mouth curved into a little moue of doubt. ‘I think p’haps not. You might come in and wet a little.’ Like a comic actress she pronounced it to rhyme with ‘beetle’.

‘Wet?’

‘Way-eet,’ she said. ‘Way-eet and have champagne? Make a new friend?’

He realised he had arrived at the right place. It was that simple.

He nodded. She took his hat and silk scarf.

‘Please,’ she said and led the way to an elegant, if over-elaborate drawing room. There was a muffled clang in the back of the house, at which she bobbed again and went out. He heard her open the front door, followed by a man’s voice, and realised it was another caller.

He was in a large room with two displays of waxy flowers, whose scent filled the air. At the window thick folds of lace hid the sights and sounds of the street. He looked around. His surroundings were rich in gold, peach and cream, more like a boudoir than a reception room. His eyes settled on draped curtains of toile de jouy. When he looked carefully, the shepherds and shepherdesses were all engaged in some kind of sexual activity. Shepherds with huge phalluses approached shepherdesses reclining on mossy banks, their billowing dresses drawn up, their thighs apart. While naked nymphs lay caressing each other by a stream, another shepherdess had a lamb nuzzling at her breast. A milkmaid had abandoned her pails to take one rustic in her mouth while another took her from behind. He had never seen anything like the design but a bit of him thought it clever as well as shocking and, despite himself, arousing.

He had just taken in the equally obscene carved figures which held up an ornate marble mantelpiece when the door opened and another man was led in by the maid; she already had his cape over an arm. The man acknowledged him with a sharp nod. A stunning young redhead followed him in, with creamy skin and long tumbling curls, dressed in an ankle-length lilac peignoir trimmed with swansdown. As she moved, her gown briefly revealed a white stocking tied above the knee with blue ribbons.

She smiled brilliantly and clapped her hands.

‘Champagne, gentlemen?’

She had the voice of a debutante. Laurence studied the other man. He was an ordinary sort of chap, in his forties, perhaps, with dark hair silvering at the sides, a fine moustache. Laurence had made the right decision to wear evening dress. The other man was obviously going on somewhere as he pulled out his watch.

‘Seems a waste,’ he said, more to Laurence than the two women, ‘but I’ve only got an hour. So I rather think some champagne would be just the ticket.’

He looked at Laurence: it was clear they would be sharing the champagne and the cost.

Laurence wanted to ask for the proprietor, ask if Robert’s sister was there, but the stranger’s arrival had complicated things. The maid disappeared, and he thought he could hear distant voices. The redhead struck another of her poses, this time opening double doors in front of them and acclaiming her achievement with one knee bent and her hand held out, indicating the next room, as if she were a magician’s assistant.

They passed through. This room was larger, with an oriental theme. Several ottoman sofas were scattered about and paper lanterns lent a glow to the dull gold of the walls and furniture. Low brass tables stood on Persian carpets. If there was a window, it was hidden behind bronze and crimson silk draperies. A picture close to him showed a kneeling woman, her hands lightly bound behind her back, her skirts raised to show plump buttocks, and a stern older woman standing over her, brandishing a cat-o’-nine-tails. He thought it was by Aubrey Beardsley.

The redhead returned with opened champagne and glasses. Laurence was alarmed to see it was a label he knew, if only as being exorbitantly expensive. While she was pouring, two other young women came in: one was dressed in a kimono painted with flowers, her hair black and bobbed. Despite her make-up, she seemed too tall to be Japanese. The other was pretty with the freshness of youth rather than beautiful, wearing a lacy chemise and stockings, her untidy waves of light-brown hair held up with ribbons.

The couple acknowledged neither man and sat side by side on a soft divan at the far end of the room. They faced each other and were talking in low murmurs. The dark-haired woman put up a hand to remove one of the younger girl’s ribbons and then stroked her cheek. The redhead was sitting on the arm of a chair and whispering in the other man’s ear. He drank his champagne fast and she refilled his glass, then got up languorously to fill Laurence’s. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dark-haired girl lean forward to roll down one of her friend’s pale stockings, revealing a very slender, very young leg. The girl had long calves and fine-boned ankles.

‘I wonder if I could speak to the owner—or the lady who runs the house,’ Laurence said in a whisper.

The redhead gave him a smile of complicity. ‘You can tell me,’ she said in a breathy voice. ‘Anything you want we can provide.’

‘No, I don’t want anything,’ he said. ‘I just need to speak to a Mrs Stone.’

The redhead was undeterred. ‘Everyone wants something,’ she said, ‘even if they don’t know it yet.’

The door opened and a fourth girl came in, saw the other man and uttered a cry of delight. He obviously knew her already and got up to greet her as if it was an encounter at a society party. Unlike the other girls, she was wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved white dress, tied with a blue sash, which showed off her good figure but covered her flesh completely, and dark stockings. Her long hair was tied back and her face was unpainted. She could have been still at school. She took the man’s hand and led him away. Across the room, the black-haired woman had opened her companion’s chemise and was caressing almost perfect breasts. The girl’s nipples were palest pink. The redhead had seen him watching and put her hand on his leg.

‘Having another think?’ she said. ‘Do you like them young? We have some very nice young girls here. Convent girls, only been here a day or two. More than one girl maybe?’

He wanted to move but didn’t want to offend her and he was inevitably aroused. He tried not to look at the couple on the divan or the dark head now moving slowly over the fairer girl’s breasts, her head turned at just the right angle so that he could see her tongue circle the now harder nipples, but the small sighs of pleasure, or faked pleasure, were unavoidable. He realised the whole show was for him.

For a second he felt a deep misgiving. It had always been unlikely that Kitty had been brought here but what if she had ended up in what was essentially a brothel, which specialised in young girls? If he had a taste for it, just how young a girl might they procure for him?

‘I really need to speak to Mrs Stone.’

He felt in his inner pocket and pulled out a wad of pound notes. She was watching him and her eyes held his. The money disappeared so fast that it was hard to know where she’d put it.

‘It’s not trouble of any sort. I just need to find a girl who once worked here.’

She gave him a sceptical look and he assumed a look of shame.

‘Rose. My sister. She went missing in the war. My mother is failing and I need to find her.’ He forced himself to look earnestly into her eyes but any appeal to sentiment was wasted.

‘It’s not a residential hotel,’ she said. ‘We don’t leave forwarding addresses.’ She seemed amused. ‘This is one world,’ her hand moved on his leg again, ‘outside is another.’

‘Please.’ He took out a further note and shifted so that her hand slipped off his leg.

Anyway, it’s not Mrs Stone, it’s Mrs Le Fèvre,’ she said, the debutante’s voice giving way to something harder and less refined. ‘And for all I know she’ll be too busy to see you.’

She got up abruptly and left the room.

Now he was alone with the two performers. The fairer girl was lying back on the cushions, her chemise around her waist. The girl in the kimono was stroking her thigh, pushing her hand higher and higher up the long pale leg. She bent forward, untied the sash of her kimono and, leaning over her, kissed her companion passionately on the mouth. As she did so her hand reached the apex of dark hair between her legs and started moving rhythmically.

Laurence looked away but there was nothing else to look at that didn’t carry its own erotic charge. Although the spectacle in front of him was contrived, it still affected him. With her face hidden, the dark girl’s neck and shoulders reminded him of Frances. The air smelled heavy with gardenias and musk. The younger girl’s gasps became louder and more uneven, the dark girl’s white hand more vigorous. The young girl’s head was tipped back so that her hair tumbled over the edge of the divan. If he stood up he would look a fool but he considered returning to the previous room.

Just as the girl arched her back and cried out, the door finally opened again. It was the maid, who appeared completely oblivious to the ecstasies being played out only feet away.

‘Mrs Le Fèvre will see you,’ she said.

He leaped up and almost collided with the redhead leading two youngish men into the room. They were already flushed and one laughed loudly. The maid took him back through the hall and up a flight of stairs, wallpapered with gold cherubs. The maid passed several closed doors. Occasionally he could hear talking and once a brief shout, but she moved on briskly up a plainer flight of stairs to a single doorway, where she knocked and waited. Laurence heard a female voice call out, ‘Come in.’ The woman before him, sitting at a bureau, apparently doing her accounts, was middle aged. She wore a dark dress and her long, thick hair, streaked with grey, was piled up on her head in an old-fashioned way. She was in the act of removing a pince-nez, rubbing the bridge of her nose between finger and thumb, an expression of vigilant doubt in her face. Behind her, an open door led into a sitting room. He could see quite a homely arrangement of furniture and pictures.

‘So what you do really want?’ she said. Her voice was deep with only traces of a London accent. ‘Mr—?’

‘Bartram,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for somebody.’

She looked down and rubbed the glass of her pince-nez with a handkerchief. When she met his eyes again, her expression had changed.

‘You’re a bit old to fancy yourself in love with one of the girls,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised I agreed to see you. I only did because Eugenia was pressing, which means you must be a generous man. Eugenia’s affections are regulated by the number of notes in her stocking top. And also because I have had enough of figures for an evening. But as for your young lady—frankly, Mr Bartram, if that’s really your name, if I had a penny for all the young men who want to find their “sisters”, I could close down tomorrow.’

‘But you wouldn’t want to, I think?’ It was a guess.

‘Probably not.’

‘So if I pay you better than I did Eugenia, you’ll tell me?’

She shrugged, and his comment sounded crass in his ears. ‘Actually it’s a man I’m after,’ he said.

Her finely shaped eyebrows rose in surprise. He doubted that she was often surprised.