A Christmas Odyssey cn-8 Read online

  A Christmas Odyssey

  ( Christmas novellas - 8 )

  Anne Perry

  Dedicated to all who look upward

  HENRY RATHBONE LEANED A LITTLE FARTHER forward in his armchair and regarded his visitor gravely. James Wentworth had an air of weariness in his face that made him look older than his sixty-odd years. There was something close to desperation in the way his hands fidgeted, clenching and unclenching on his knees.

  “What can I do?” Henry asked gently.

  “Perhaps nothing,” Wentworth answered. As he spoke, the logs in the fire settled deeper, sending up a shower of sparks. It was a bitter night, ten days before Christmas. Outside, the icy wind moaned in the eaves of this pleasant house on Primrose Hill. Beyond, the vast city of London prepared for holiday and feasting, carols, church bells, and parties. There was not long to wait now.

  “You say ‘perhaps,’ ” Henry prompted him. “So possibly there is something to be done. Let us at least try.” He gave a brief smile. “This is the season of hope—some believe, of miracles.”

  “Do you?” Wentworth asked. “Would you pursue a miracle for me?”

  Henry looked at the weight of grief in his friend’s face. They had not met in more than a year, and it seemed that Wentworth had aged almost beyond recognition in that time.

  “Of course I would,” Henry replied. “I could not promise to catch it. I cannot even swear to you that I believe in such things.”

  “Always honest, and so literal,” Wentworth said with a ghost of amusement in his eyes.

  “Comes from being a mathematician,” Henry answered. “I can’t help it. But I do believe there is more to be discovered or understood than the multitude of things that we now know all put together. We have barely tasted the realm of knowledge that lies waiting.”

  Wentworth nodded. “I think that will suffice,” he accepted. “Do you remember my son, Lucien?”

  “Of course.” Henry remembered him vividly: a handsome young man, unusually charming. Far more than that, he was filled with an energy of mind and spirit, an insatiable hunger for life that made other people think of new horizons, even resurrect old dreams.

  Pain filled Wentworth’s eyes again and he looked down, as if to keep some privacy, so as not to be so acutely readable.

  “About a year ago he began to frequent certain places in the West End where the entertainment was even more … wild, self-indulgent than usual. There he met a young woman with whom he became obsessed. He gambled, he drank to excess, he tasted of many vices he had not even considered previously. There was an edge of violence and cruelty in his pursuits that was more than the normal indulgence of the stupidity of a young man, or the carelessness of those with no thought for consequences.”

  He stopped, but Henry had not interrupted him. The fire was burning low. He took two more logs from the basket and placed them on the embers, poking them to stir up the flames again.

  “Now he has disappeared. I have tried to look for him myself,” Wentworth continued. “But he evades me, going deeper into that world and the darkness of those who inhabit it. I … I was angry in the beginning. It was such a waste of the talent and the promise he had. To begin with, when it was just overindulgence in drinking and gambling, I forgave him. I paid his debts and even saved him from prosecution. But then it grew far worse. He became violent. Had I gone on rescuing him, might I have given him to believe that there is no price to be paid for cruelty, or that self-destruction can be undone at a word, or a wish?” His hands gripped each other, white-knuckled. “Where does forgiveness eventually become a lie, no longer an issue of his healing but simply my refusal to face the truth?”

  “I don’t know,” Henry said honestly. “Perhaps we seldom do know, until we have passed the point. What would you like me to do?”

  “Look for Lucien. If I go after him myself, I only drive him deeper into that terrible world. I am afraid that he will go beyond the place from where he could ever return, perhaps even to his death.” He looked up, meeting Henry’s eyes. “I realize how much it is I ask of you, and that your chances of success may be slight. But he is my son. Nothing he does changes that. I deplore it, but I shall not cease loving him. Sometimes I wish I could; it would be so much easier.”

  Henry shook his head. “Those of us who have loved don’t need an explanation, and those of us who haven’t would not understand it.” His smile was rueful, with a little self-mocking in it. “I study science and logic, the beauty of mathematics. But without those things that are beyond explanation, such as courage, hope, and above all, love, there can be no joy. I’m not even sure if there could be humor. And without laughter we lose proportion, perhaps in the end even humanity.”

  He became serious again. “But if I am to look for Lucien, I need to know more about him than the charming young man I met, who was apparently very well able to hide the deeper part of himself from superficial acquaintances, perhaps even from those who knew him well.”

  Wentworth sighed. “Of course you must. That is still not to say that I find it easy to tell you.” He sighed. “Like most young men, he explored his physical appetites, and to begin with I did not find his excesses worrying. I can remember being somewhat foolish myself, in my twenties. But Lucien is thirty-four, and he has not outgrown it. Rather, he has indulged more dangerous tastes: drugs of different sorts that release all inhibitions and to which it is all too easy to become addicted. He enjoys the usual pleasures of the flesh, but with young women of a more corrupt nature than most. There is always the danger of disease, but the woman he has chosen is capable of damage of a far deeper sort.”

  For a few moments Wentworth stared into the flames, which were now licking up and beginning to devour the new logs. “She offers him the things he seems to crave most: a feeling of power, which is perhaps the ultimate drug, and of being admired, of being able to exercise control over others, of being regarded as innately superior.”

  Henry did not argue. He began to see the enormity of what his friend was asking of him. Even if he found Lucien Wentworth, what was there he could say that might tempt him to come back to the father he had denied in every possible way?

  “I’ll try,” he said quietly. “But I have little idea how to even begin, let alone how to accomplish such a task.”

  “Thank you,” Wentworth replied, his voice hoarse. Perhaps he was finally facing the reality that to try at all was little more than a kindness, driven by pity rather than hope. He rose to his feet as if exhaustion all but overwhelmed him. “Thank you, Henry. Call if you have anything to tell me. I shall not disturb you to ask.” He put one hand in a pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “Here is a list of the last places that I know he frequented. It may be of use.”

  Henry Rathbone awoke the following morning wishing that he had not promised Wentworth that he would help him. As he sat at the breakfast table, eating toast and marmalade without pleasure, he admitted to himself that it was a lack of courage that had made him agree to it. Even if Henry found him, Lucien Wentworth was not going to come home. He did not want to. His father might be spared a good deal of distress simply by not knowing for certain what had happened to him.

  But Henry had given his word, and now he was bound to do his best, whatever that might turn out to be. How should he begin? He had had a good deal of fun in his own university days, which were now at least thirty-five years behind him. He had sat up all night talking, certainly drunk more beer than was good for him, knew some women of a sort his mother didn’t even imagine existed, and learned some very bawdy songs, most of which he still remembered.

  But he had grown out of it before he was thirty. It was all a hazy memory now, which was not even worth exploring. What compelled Lucien was
something entirely different. It was a hunger that fed upon itself and that, in the end, would devour everything.

  He spread out the sheet of paper Wentworth had given him, the list of places he had found Lucien in the past. But by his own admission Lucien was no longer likely to be in such places. He had sunk deeper than mere drunken brawling and abuse, or even the simple womanizing many young men indulged in at the better-known brothels.

  Many of his own friends had sons who had disappointed them, one way or another, but a good man did not ask questions about such things, and if he accidentally learned of them he affected not to have. He certainly did not repeat it to others.

  Henry’s own son, who was perhaps London’s most brilliant barrister, had been both admired and deplored, depending upon whom he had represented most recently. He had also, at times, behaved in ways that Henry found difficult to understand, and would certainly not have wished to discuss with anyone outside the family—except perhaps Hester Monk. It had never been a matter of overindulgence. Actually he wondered at times if it might not have been better for Oliver to have let himself go occasionally, even at the cost of an error or two!

  Once, Henry had hoped Oliver would marry Hester, but he had realized some time ago that it would not have made Hester happy. She needed a man of more will and passion, like William Monk. Whether or not Hester would have made Oliver happy he was less certain. He thought perhaps she might have, but of course it was far too late now.

  However, Hester might be able to advise Henry in his quest for Lucien, and he could be honest with her. There would be no need for any pretense, which would be exhausting, and in the end also self-defeating.

  Hester had been a nurse in the Crimea during that wretched war, which was now—at the end of 1865—a decade gone into history. On her return home, she had initially dreamed of reforming nursing in England, in line with Florence Nightingale’s beliefs. However, the world of medicine was powerful, and unready for such advances. Hester had been obliged to seek one position after another in private nursing. Then she had married Monk, and found it difficult to work so far from home. As his work prospered, she had opened the clinic in Portpool Lane where she and others nursed women of the street who could find no other medical care for their most desperate needs. The funds came from charitable donations. Through these experiences, Hester might well have access to the kind of knowledge that Henry now needed.

  With a little spring in his step he increased his pace along the wet, windy street and hailed a hansom cab.

  “Portpool Lane, if you please,” he requested, climbing up and seating himself comfortably. It was not a long ride, even though the traffic was growing denser as the light faded in the winter afternoon.

  “Right y’are, Guv,” the driver said briskly, urging his horse forward along the Strand, and then left up Chancery Lane.

  The street lamps were being lit already. It was not long until the shortest day of the year, and they traveled in the murk of smoke and drifting rain. Henry could hear the clatter of hooves, the jingle of harness, and the hiss of wheels on the wet cobbles.

  “Happy Christmas!” a man called out cheerfully, his voice rising above the cries of peddlers and curses of those caught up in tangles of traffic.

  “You too!” came back the reply.

  “Get on, yer fool!” someone else yelled out, caught behind a slow-moving dray, and there was a roar of laughter.

  “Happy Christmas to you too!”

  They turned right briefly up High Holborn, and then left on Gray’s Inn Road. Just past the square Henry rapped with his cane to catch the driver’s attention. “This will be excellent, thank you. I can walk the rest of the way.”

  “Right, sir,” the driver said with some surprise. “ ’Appy Christmas, sir.”

  Henry paid him, adding a rather generous tip, prompted by the well wishes, even though he knew they were given for precisely that purpose.

  He crossed the road to the entrance of Portpool Lane and stepped onto the narrow path with confidence. The street lamps were few, and the vast dark mass of Reid’s Brewery dominated the farther end, but he knew his way.

  Inside the clinic, Squeaky Robinson was sitting at the table going over the accounts. It was his profession to keep the books—not that it had always been so. In the previous incarnation of the building he had owned it, and run it as a very successful brothel. He had been tricked out of its ownership by William Monk and Oliver Rathbone, Sir Oliver, as he now was.

  The loss of it meant that Squeaky, in his later middle years, had become homeless and penniless in the same instant. What was worse, he even stood in some danger of going to prison. That was a fate he had managed to avoid all his life, from childhood pocket-picking, with great skill—none of your ordinary stuff—right through his whole career until he owned this warren of buildings and made a handsome profit from them.

  But those days were over, and he greatly preferred not to think of them. He was now a perfectly respectable man, keeping the books and managing the offices of the Portpool Lane Clinic for Hester Monk, who was a lady of spirit, considerable intelligence, and formidable will.

  His attention was on the next column of figures when the door opened and a tall, lean gentleman came in, closing it behind him to keep out the bitter weather. Squeaky used the word “gentleman” in his mind, because years of experience had taught him to estimate a man’s social standing at a glance, and also to make a pretty accurate guess as to his intentions. In the past, his life had occasionally depended on that, and old habits died hard. This man he judged to be a gentleman by nature, possibly middle-class by birth, and a scholar by occupation. This estimate he drew from his unpretentious but well-cut clothes, his mixture of modesty and confidence, and the very slight stoop of his shoulders.

  “Mornin’ sir,” he said curiously. “Can I help you?”

  “Good morning,” the man replied pleasantly. His voice reminded Squeaky of someone, but he could not recall who. “My name is Henry Rathbone. I would very much like to speak with Mrs. Monk. If she is here, would you be good enough to ask her if that is possible?”

  Of course: He must be Sir Oliver’s father. That was the resemblance. Now why would he be here to see Miss Hester? Squeaky regarded him more closely. He had a mild, agreeable face, but there was nothing passive about those blue eyes. A very clever man, Squeaky judged, possibly very clever indeed, but—at the moment—also a worried man. Before he let him in to see Hester, Squeaky would like very much to know what he wanted so urgently that he came all the way from wherever he lived to a place like Portpool Lane.

  “She’s helpin’ patients right now,” he replied. “We had a bad night. Big catfight down Drury Lane, knives an’ all.” He saw the gentleman’s look of pity with satisfaction. “Mebbe I can help? In the meantime, like.”

  Rathbone hesitated, then seemed to come to some decision. “It is advice I need, and I believe Mrs. Monk may be able to guide me toward someone who can give it to me. When might she be free?”

  “Is it urgent?” Squeaky persisted.

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is.”

  Squeaky studied the man even more closely. His clothes were of excellent quality, but not new. This suggested that he cared more for substance than appearance. He was sure enough of himself not to have any hunger to impress. Squeaky looked into the clear blue eyes and felt a twinge of unease. He might be as gentle as he seemed, but he would not be easy to fool, nor would he be put off by lies. He would not have come to Hester for medical help; he would most certainly have his own physician. Therefore it was help of some other sort that he wanted: perhaps connected with the clinic, and the kind of people who came there.

  “Mebbe I can take a message to her?” Squeaky suggested. “While she’s stitching and bandaging, like. Is it about the kind o’ folk what come here?” It was a guess, but he knew immediately that he had struck the mark.

  “Yes, it is,” Henry Rathbone admitted. “The son of a friend of mine has sunk into a most dissolute life,
more so than is known to any of my own acquaintances, even in their least-attractive pursuits. I want to find this young man, and attempt to reconcile him with his father.” He looked a little self-conscious, perhaps aware of how slender his chances were. “I have given my word, but I do not know where to begin. I was hoping that Hester might know at least the areas where I could start. He is apparently concerned with a deeper level of vice than mere gambling, drinking, or the use of prostitutes.”

  Squeaky felt a sharp stab of alarm. This sounded like a story of grief that Hester would get caught up in much too much. Next thing you know, she’d be helping him, making inquiries herself. What really worried Squeaky was not just the harm she could come to, but the ugly things about his own past that she might learn. As it was, she might guess, but there was a great deal about himself that he had managed to keep from her, in fact to even pretty well wipe out of his own memory.

  “I can help you,” he said quietly, his heart thumping in his chest so violently he feared it made his body shake. “I’d be the one she’d ask anyway. I know that kind o’ thing. Some things a lady doesn’t need to find out about, even if she has nursed soldiers an’ the like.”

  Henry Rathbone smiled very slightly. “That would be good of you, sir. I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

  “Robinson. Most folks call me Squeaky.” He felt faintly embarrassed explaining it, but no one ever used his given name. He had practically forgotten the sound of it himself, nor did he care for it. “I’d be happy to oblige. Tell me what you need, an’ I’ll make a few inquiries as to where you can begin.”

  When Henry Rathbone had gone, Squeaky closed his account books, which were perfectly up-to-date anyway. He locked them back in the cupboard in his office where he kept them, and went to look for Hester.

  He found her upstairs. Her long, white apron was blood-spattered, and as usual, her hair poked out where she had pinned it back too tightly and it had worked its way undone. She looked up from the clean surgical instruments she was putting back in their cases.