certainly not the best ones) concerning the greatish and goodish who have paid yours truly not nearly enough to be immortalized in oils.
«You are very indiscreet, sir,» laughed the old man, cheering up. «I am glad not to have confided any of my secrets in you!»
I smiled my wide smile.
Supple, for his part, talked at length about his time in South Africa and the great adventure a young man like me might have there. He told me about his own daughter — a great joy to the old man by his account — and I nodded and smiled with the air of sagacity I like to assume for such occasions. I put on a good show of being fascinated by his colourful account of dawn over the Transvaal as I took out my watch and stared at the second hand racing over the porcelain dial. I could hear the soft action of the tiny spring.
It was midway between the fish course and the pudding, as Supple opened his mouth to begin another interminable tale, that I did the decent thing and shot him.
A stain spread across the breast of his stiff white waistcoat like poppy petals emerging through the snow. How I wish I’d had my sketch-book with me! The scene was a riot of crimson possibilities.
There, now. I’ve shocked you, haven’t I? What the deuce can Mr Box be up to? Are customers in such abundant supply? Well, you’ll just have to be patient. All good things et cetera.
Supple’s face, never particularly smashing as you may have gathered, froze in an expression of pained surprise and a little bubble of red spit frolicked over his lips. He slid forward on to the table where his teeth met the rim of his pudding bowl with a shocking crack, like the knees of an out-of-practice supplicant.
I watched smoke curl from the end of the snub-barrelled pistol I’d used, then replaced the weapon under a jelly mould — silver and shaped like a sleeping hare — where it had been until recently ensconced.
Lighting a cigarette, I re-pocketed my watch and, rising, dabbed a napkin at the corners of my full-lipped mouth (it’s a very pretty mouth — more of it later). Taking up a dessert spoon, I dug it into Supple’s left socket and carefully removed the old fellow’s glass eye. It popped out with just a little poking and lay nestled in my palm like a gull’s egg. I looked at the iris and smiled. It was just the shade of green I had in mind for a new tie and now I had a match for my tailor. What a happy accident! I slipped the eye into my waistcoat and draped the napkin carelessly over the dead man’s head.
A large and ugly mirror hung over the fireplace of the dark little room. I checked my appearance in it (
The doors were opened almost at once by a huge woman in a daffodil-coloured frock. Her gin-flushed cheeks, abutting a long, blotchy nose gave her face the appearance of bruised knackers in a harness.
«Good evening, Delilah,» I said, with just the slightest turn from the mirror.
«Hevening, sir,» said the drudge. She shuffled a little awkwardly, glanced at the table and cleared her throat.
«Heverything in horder, sir?»
I turned, cigarette between teeth, adjusting my white tie with both hands.
«Hmm? Oh yes. The burgundy was deadly and the partridge a trifle high. Other than that a most satisfactory evening.»
Delilah nodded her massive head. «And the hother gentleman, sir?»
«Will be leaving us now, thank you.»
Delilah thrust both mitt-like hands under the armpits of the Honourable Everard Supple and dragged the one-eyed corpse with apparent effortlessness towards the doors. I hopped athletically over the dead man’s legs, sweeping up my cloak and topper from a chair.
«How’s little Ida?» I asked, clapping the hat to my head.
«Very good, thankyou for hasking, sir. No doubt be seeing you soon, sir,» grunted Delilah.
«No doubt,» I replied. «Ta, ta.»
I stepped over the threshold of the mean little dwelling and out into the sultry evening. Thinking I deserved a little treat, I hailed a hansom.
«The Pomegranate Rooms,» I said to the driver. Work was over for the moment. Time to play.
Twenty minutes later, I was dropped a short distance from said night-spot and made my way towards its mouldering wedding-cake facade. The slattern on the door opened it a crack and treated me to a quick view of her form. Poured carelessly into a garish oriental gown she had the look of a pox-ravaged sultana — both the potentess and the dried fruit.
I slipped through the grimy doorway.
«Any riff-raff in tonight, my sweet?» I enquired.
«Plenty,» she gurgled, taking my hat and cloak as persons on doors are wont to do.
«Splendid!»
The Pomegranate Rooms were small, sweltering and poorly lit by gas sconces stained tobacco-yellow, lending the whole a colour not unlike the bitter pith of the titular fruit. Rickety wooden tables littered the crimson carpets; spilled champagne formed great fizzing puddles in every shadowed corner. Each table was occupied by rather more patrons than was good for it; the majority of the sweating men in evening dress, or the remains of it, with a quantity of backless white waistcoats slung over the chairs; the women, and there were many of them, less respectably dressed, some scarcely dressed at all. It was all quite ghastly and I was very fond of it.
Such establishments erupt on to the bloated body of the capital with the unerring regularity of a clap-rash but the Pomegranate Rooms were something of a special case. A hangover from the fever-dream that had been the Naughty Nineties, I had once, within its stuffy, cigar-fume-drenched walls, espied our present monarch being «attended to» by a French noblewoman of uncertain virtue.
I dropped into a chair at the only free table and ordered up some plonk. A fat bawd close by, rouged like an
I ate something to take away the taste of the champagne and then smoked a cigarette to take away the taste of the food. I tried not to make it too obvious that I was on my lonesome. It is a terrible thing to dine alone. One stinks of desperation.
With as much nonchalance as I could affect, I examined the play of the light on my champagne glass whilst surreptitiously sneaking looks at the patrons in the hope of spotting something pretty.
And then, without any ado whatsoever, a young woman glided into the seat opposite me. In a white satin dress with pearls at her throat and rather gorgeous blonde hair piled high she looked like one of Sargent’s slightly elongated females. I felt a stir down below that could have been the beginnings of indigestion but probably had more to do with the way her dewy eyes were fixed on me.
I lifted the plonk bottle and my eyebrows enquiringly.
«You’re rather out of place here, my dear,» I said, as I poured her a glass. «I should say the Pomegranate Rooms rarely see the likes of you.»
She inclined her head slightly. «Got any fags?»
A little taken aback, I nodded and took out my cigarette case. It is flat and well-polished with my initials in Gothic script upon it, yet it has never been called upon to save my life by absorbing the impact of a bullet. That’s what servants are for.
«Armenian or Georgian?» I enquired.
She took out one of the long black specimens that cram the case’s right-hand side and struck a match off the heel of her elegant shoe, lighting the cigarette in one rapid movement.
Her brazen behaviour delighted me.
«Lor, I was dying for that,» said the vision, taking in great gulps of smoke. «Mind if I take one for later?»
I waved a hand. «Be my guest.»
She scooped up a dozen or so cigarettes and stuffed them inside her corset.
«You’re full of surprises,» I managed.
«Ain’t I, though?» She laughed and gave a hoarse cough. «You on your own?»
My performance had been penetrated. I poured myself another drink. «Alas.»
