A Christmas Odyssey Read online

  He watched now as Crow bent to clean and stitch the gash in Lucien’s side. His hands were lean and strong: beautiful hands. And his face was unusual: too mercurial to be handsome, too many teeth—that enormous smile. He was also skilled. Henry wondered why he had not qualified as a doctor, but it would be grossly insensitive to ask, inexcusably so. He maintained his silence, simply handing him the instruments as he was asked for them.

  It took a little while, and when Crow was finally satisfied, Lucien lay back on the rags, exhausted. “Thank you,” he said with a gasp.

  “What happened?” Crow asked.

  “Someone stuck me with a knife,” Lucien replied. “What the hell does it look like?” He was still speaking between gritted teeth.

  “It looks like you were caught in a fight,” Crow told him. “What happened to the person who stabbed you?”

  “Why?” There was a faint flicker of a smile. “You want to go bandage him too?”

  Crow ignored the question. “Are you injured anywhere else? Is there anything more I can do?”

  “No.” Lucien hesitated. “Thank you.”

  Crow put his instruments away and closed his bag. “I rather thought the other person might be dead—was it a man or a woman? Or one of each? Which was how they managed to strike back at you.”

  Lucien stared at him, moving a little so he faced him, his eyes wide, his face fallen slack with amazement.

  Crow waited, looking expectantly for an answer.

  Slowly Lucien lay back, relaxing against the rags with a wince as his muscles pulled against the bandage.

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” he said wearily. “It was a stupid fight over cocaine. Some idiot thought I had his and he attacked me.”

  “And did you?” Crow raised his eyebrows.

  “I don’t even use the damn stuff! I like opium … now and then.” His eyes looked somewhere far away. “I’m drunk on life, on laughter and passion, on dreams of the impossible, on Sadie, and something that seems like love, or at least seems like not being alone.” His voice dropped. “How in hell would you know what I’m talking about.” It was a dismissal, not a question.

  “No idea,” Crow replied, his sarcasm barely discernible. “The rich are the only ones who have any idea what loneliness is, or loss, or the sense of having failed. The rest of us are too busy with hunger, cold, and disease, and finding somewhere to sleep for the night—or at least to lie down.”

  Lucien stared at him, and Crow stared straight back. Very gradually something in Lucien changed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “That was stupid. I despise self-pity. Most of all in myself.”

  Crow gave him one of his dazzling smiles. “So do I,” he agreed.

  Squeaky returned with food and water. Bessie portioned it out and carefully fed Lucien his share before eating her own.

  When they were finished Henry turned to Lucien. “I came at your father’s request,” he stated simply. “He wants me to ask you to come home, but before that is possible, we need to clear up the matter of the murder of Sadie, or Niccolo.”

  Outside the wind was rising, rattling the windows.

  Lucien gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Clear it up! You mean explain it? Somehow make it all right?” His mouth twisted with contempt. “You’re an idiot. Go back and tell my father you couldn’t find me. It’s true enough. You have no idea who I am now, or what happened to the Lucien Wentworth you thought you knew.”

  “I intend to find out,” Henry replied.

  Lucien turned away. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Don’t be so incredibly arrogant,” Henry said sharply. “Do you think you are the first young man to indulge himself and throw away the life he was given? To tell other people that they wouldn’t understand is to give yourself a uniqueness you don’t possess. You are desperately and squalidly ordinary. The only thing different about you is that you had more to throw away than most of us.”

  Now Lucien was angry. “And what the hell would you know about it? You comfortable, complacent, self-satisfied …” He trailed off.

  “Self-pity again?” Henry inquired.

  “Self-disgust,” Lucien replied quietly. “Go back and tell my father that you couldn’t find me. It’s not a lie. You couldn’t find the son he wants back. That man died a year ago.”

  “Who killed him? You? Or Sadie?”

  Lucien gave an abrupt laugh. “Very good. I did. Sadie only helped.”

  “Where did you meet her?” Henry asked.

  “At the theater, with friends. She came to the party afterward.” He smiled briefly and for a moment he was lost in another time. “God, she was beautiful! She made every other woman in the room seem half-alive, leaden creatures without color, as if they lived in the shadows.”

  “Like Shadwell,” Henry remarked.

  Lucien’s eyes widened. “Don’t even whisper his name,” he said very quietly. “There was nothing of that in Sadie then. She was just … so alive. It was as if she could see the magic in everything. And she liked me. You think that’s my delusion, my vanity? It isn’t. There were loads of other men there with titles, and more money than I’ll ever have.”

  Henry said nothing.

  “She liked me,” Lucien repeated, but his voice wavered a little this time, the certainty gone.

  “Of course,” Henry agreed. “And it is very pleasant to be liked.”

  For an instant there was a devastating loneliness in Lucien’s face, then anger. “She didn’t ask for anything,” he said sharply. “Never money. She was more fun than any other woman I’ve known. She knew how to dress, how to dance, how to be funny and wise and more original than anyone else. She made the rest of them look like cows! Half asleep most of the time. Never saying anything except placid agreement, whatever they think you want them to say. I wouldn’t be surprised to see most of them chewing the cud!”

  “And she found you equally interesting,” Henry observed, a slightly dry amusement in his voice. “That must have been most agreeable for you.”

  “It was,” Lucien snapped. Then suddenly he seemed to crumple, and sweat broke out on his forehead.

  Crow looked across at Henry, frowning a little.

  “Where is Sadie now?” Henry asked. “Is she the one who was murdered, or was it Niccolo?”

  “I don’t know. I think it was Niccolo,” Lucien replied.

  “If you don’t know, that means you haven’t seen either of them.”

  “Yes,” Lucien agreed hoarsely. “I don’t know!”

  Henry allowed his gaze to wander around the cold room again, with its dark walls, its filthy windows now rattling in the wind.

  “Your father would welcome you home,” he said, looking at Lucien again.

  The color burned up Lucien’s face. “I can’t come,” he said very quietly, avoiding Henry’s eyes.

  “Why not?” Henry asked.

  “Shadwell—Shadow Man,” Lucien replied. “I … I do things for him. I owe him.”

  There was silence for a few minutes. Squeaky put another piece of wood in the stove. They’d be lucky if it lasted the night. Outside the rain was running down the gutters and dropping from the eaves. Bessie sat next to Squeaky, close to him for warmth.

  “Did you kill Sadie?” Henry asked Lucien.

  Lucien’s eyes opened wide. “No!”

  “Or Niccolo?”

  “No! I can’t think of any reason you should believe me, but I haven’t killed anyone, at least … at least not directly. God knows what I’ve caused indirectly. Poor Sadie. It was a hell of a mess.” His face pinched with remembered pain, and his eyes seemed to see the memory as if it were more real than Henry himself, or Crow sitting on the floor a few feet away.

  “But you saw it?” Henry challenged.

  “Only the blood,” Lucien replied.

  “What is it you do for Shadwell?” Henry asked.

  “Bring people here—young ones with money.”

  Lucien started to shudder. His body seeme
d to slip out of his control, and his teeth rattled.

  Henry took off his coat and wrapped it around Lucien, folding it over his thin body with gentleness. Then he sat back on the ground again, looking oddly vulnerable in his shirtsleeves.

  Bessie looked at him anxiously, but Squeaky put out his hand to stop her from interrupting.

  If Henry was cold, he gave no sign of it.

  “Bring people here to indulge their tastes, and then they find that they are addicted, and have to come back again and again? And if they become troublesome, who deals with them then?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucien stammered through his teeth.“Shadwell himself, maybe.”

  “Was Sadie troublesome? Was she no longer doing what he wanted of her?” Henry persisted.

  Lucien stared at him. Then he closed his eyes and turned away. “She always did what he wanted. She couldn’t afford not to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t be so damn stupid!” Lucien gave an abrupt, painful laugh that ended in choking. When he caught his breath again he went on. “He gave her the pretty things she liked, and the cocaine she needed.”

  “So then why did he kill her?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t him.”

  “Niccolo?”

  “I don’t know. He could be dead too.” Lucien gulped.“Maybe it was that verminous little toad in the lavender velvet.”

  “Ash. Why would he kill them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Henry waited.

  Lucien sighed. He looked away, avoiding Henry’s eyes. “I’ve crossed a few people, made enemies. If Niccolo is dead, whoever killed him probably thought it was me. We looked rather alike. In the half light of that passage, and if he was with Sadie …” He stopped. His face filled with regret and a peculiar kind of pain that was extraordinarily honest, without self-pity, as if he could see his loss with new clarity. “We were always headed to destruction, she and I.”

  Crow looked at Henry, his expression anxious.

  Henry nodded and moved away, allowing Lucien to rest, at least for a while.

  Bessie was looking after Lucien, who was lying close to the stove. Henry Rathbone sat in the corner with Squeaky and Crow, who were huddled in their coats. They were saving the last few pieces of wood for the early morning.

  “What do we look for now?” Henry asked, a note of desperation in his voice.

  “Pick him up an’ carry him out,” Squeaky said impatiently. “Before he gets us killed. Let his father deal with it.”

  Crow gave him a black look. “And of course this Shadwell will just let that happen! Next thing they know, the police will come to Wentworth’s door looking for Lucien for the murder of whoever it was who was knifed to death at the bottom of those stairs.”

  Henry straightened up. “Then we need to know who it was, and who killed them.”

  “And if it was Lucien?” Crow asked him.

  Henry bit his lip. “Then we find out how … and why, and decide what to do about it.” He was sitting with his back against the wall, the candlelight accentuating his features. Rathbone looked appallingly tired, and yet there was no anger in his face, no bitterness that Squeaky could see. Of course he was a fool. Without Squeaky and Crow to look after him he would have come to grief in minutes. He would have been robbed blind, possibly killed if he had put up any resistance. He seemed to believe anything he was told, no matter how obviously a lie.

  And yet there was a kind of courage in him that Squeaky had to grudgingly admire. And in spite of the stupid situation Henry had gotten them all into, Squeaky also rather liked him. That was another thing that had gone badly wrong lately: Since Squeaky had become respectable he had gone soft. Was this age catching up with him? Or cowardice? He had always been careful, all his life; to do otherwise would have been stupid. But he was never a coward! All his values had slithered around into the wrong place! Everything was out of control!

  “Makes sense,” Squeaky said at last. “If it’s Sadie who’s died, can’t see why he would kill her. Seems to have been fascinated with her. She’s the reason he got into this cesspit anyway. Likes his pleasures, that one. See it in his face when he talks about her. You get dependent on something, the bottle or the opium or whatever, then you don’t destroy it. Those things make you act like an idiot, but they get to be the most important things in the world to you. You never, ever forget to keep them safe. You’d poke your mother’s eyes out before you’d risk losing them.”

  “What if Sadie preferred Niccolo, and Lucien killed her in jealousy?” Henry asked.

  “He’d kill Niccolo,” Squeaky answered. “Taking her back. That’s property. You don’t smash something that’s yours. It would just be stupid. Slap her around a bit, maybe,” he conceded, remembering a few such acts of discipline from his brothel days. “Not where it shows, of course. Don’t spoil the goods. So if it’s him who’s dead, we’re in trouble.”

  Henry’s face twisted with bitter amusement and understanding.

  Squeaky blushed. He had not meant to give himself away so clearly. He would rather Henry merely guessed at his former life, rather than know it for certain. He wondered whether to try to improve on what he had said, then knew he would only make it worse.

  “Do you think he is telling the truth?” Henry pressed. “And he really doesn’t know who’s died?”

  “Not sure I’d go that far!” Squeaky protested. “Not … not entirely. He’s bound to lie about some things.”

  Henry smiled.

  Squeaky realized that he had just given himself away again. Now Henry would know that Squeaky always lied, at least a bit. Damn! Being respectable was a pain, and hard work!

  Henry turned to Crow. “And you?”

  “I’ve no need to lie,” Crow said with a grin, glancing at Squeaky, then away again. He straightened his face, suddenly very sober. “And I don’t think Lucien has either. He’s pretty well lost, whatever he says. No point really. Whether he did kill either one of them or not, he’s going to get blamed for it. Personally I think it was probably that disgusting little vampire in the lavender coat. He looks like something risen from the dead. I should think he likes knives.”

  “I believe him too,” Henry said quietly.

  “Hey, just a minute!” Squeaky protested. “I didn’t say I believed him. I just …” His mind raced. “What if Sadie told Niccolo to go to hell, and he killed her? Then Lucien comes along, sees her dead an’ covered in blood, an’ he slices him up? Ash had nothing to do with it.”

  Henry thought about it for several moments. “Then why would Lucien not admit that?” he asked. “Such an act would be justified, to the people here. And it seems they are all he cares about. This is his world—at least until we can get him out of it.”

  “Out of it?” Squeaky said incredulously. “Look at him! He’s drunk an’ he’s taking God knows what else to keep him awake, or asleep, make him laugh, or see what he wants to see, feel something like being alive, God help him. He belongs here. Hell don’t let go of people, Mr. Rathbone. Not that most people are willing to climb out of it, even if they could—an’ they can’t.”

  “First we have to find out if he killed either of the two victims, and if he did not, then who did.”

  “You asked us if we believe him that he didn’t kill either of them,” Crow interrupted. “And you say you do.”

  “I do,” Henry agreed. “It is not a certainty, of course, but I shall treat it as such, unless circumstances should make that impossible. Therefore we must proceed on the assumption that someone else killed whoever it was—even both of them.” He looked at Crow again. “What is your opinion of Mr. Ash?”

  “Syphilitic,” Crow said simply.

  Henry was surprised. “You know that so easily?”

  Crow smiled, but there was no pleasure in his expression. “He moved very little, but his hand slipped on the cane, as if he were not sure whether he gripped it or not, as if he could not really feel his fingers. His feet were the s
ame. That curious, slightly stamping gait is peculiar to advanced stages of damage to the nerves. He is probably more than a little insane.”

  “Then he might well have been violent,” Henry concluded.

  “Why would he kill them?” Squeaky asked. “Even a creature like that has to have a reason.”

  “You are quite right,” Henry agreed. “But one thing makes me wonder about the cane. Ash is quite small, and you say he has the signs of advanced syphilis?” He looked at Crow. “The cane in his hand slipped from his grasp. We saw it. Do you believe he could have attacked a healthy young man or woman and escaped completely unhurt himself?”

  “Not likely,” Crow conceded.

  “Lucien,” Squeaky said sadly. “He killed Niccolo, his rival for the girl, probably taking him by surprise—knife in the back. Then when she found them he attacked her too. That’s where he got injured himself.” He looked at Henry’s downcast face and felt guilty for having spoken the truth when he knew it would hurt him. “You can’t do anything for him.”

  Crow pulled his coat tightly around his shoulders. He had been staring at the ground, but now he turned to Henry. “We should put together all the evidence we can,” he said, looking from Henry to Squeaky and back again. “Even here, there has to be reason in things. There are a lot of questions we haven’t answered yet. What do we know about this Niccolo? Who was he and where did he come from? Did he and Lucien know each other before meeting here? In fact, did Lucien bring Niccolo here? Or the other way round?” He stopped for a moment, looking from one to the other.

  “Was it for women, or opium?” he went on. “Some kind of torture, or sexual appetite? Was Niccolo a sadist? A masochist? Did he love Sadie, or was he just using her?”

  Henry smiled at him. “Thank you, Dr. Crow,” he said gravely. “You are a voice of hope where there seems to be very little otherwise. Your suggestions are excellent. As soon as we have had a little sleep—if such a thing is possible in this place—we shall find something fit to eat, for ourselves and Lucien and Bessie, then continue our investigation.” He looked at Crow, then at Squeaky, his face grave. “If you are still agreeable to helping, of course?”