Donatella Furz looked from one expectant face to the other, uncertain and angry. ‘How do you expect me to …’
‘Oh, very simple,’ said Jamieson with a radiant smile. ‘We’re going to talk to the Enigma, too.’
11
Harward Justin made his home in a luxurious apartment on the top floor of the BDL building. At one time he had considered living elsewhere, but he had rejected the idea. It was convenient to be able to call upon BDL service employees when one needed a cook or housekeeper or cleaning crew. With BDL people, he need not concern himself with maintenance, discipline, or remuneration, though he occasionally intervened in such matters. Justin was a believer in the stick, rather than the carrot, and the personnel department’s idiot insistence upon paying people more than they were worth often stuck in his craw.
Still, using BDL services people worked well enough for his day-to-day needs. Since they did not live in, he was not required to feed them. When they were gone, he had a great deal of privacy. And it was in privacy that he indulged the needs that required other and very special servants.
A neighboring windowless space had been walled off and cut up into two corridors of apartments and cubicles. This warren was connected to his own rooms with a locked and guarded door. Justin’s personal servants lived there – the ones provided for him by Spider Geroan.
Most people feared and hated Spider Geroan. Justin found him both interesting and admirable. He detected in Geroan’s manner a kind of kinship. Even Geroan’s face, which Justin had always felt resembled the face of a recent corpse, devoid of all life though not yet noticeably decayed, pleased Justin. He saw in that face a reflection of himself as he willed himself to be, remote and implacable. He found in Geroan a depth of silent understanding he had never received from any other human being. Justin suspected that others – ‘them,’ the world at large – would consider his amusements childish, on a level with cutting up live animals or terrorizing smaller children, the things boys did and then grew out of. However, Geroan did not seem to think him immature in his pleasures. Geroan knew all about the servants’ quarters. Geroan had recruited most of the inhabitants. Geroan knew exactly why Justin wanted them. Or one of them, from time to time.
Tonight, Justin was considering a particular one as he waited at the connecting door while the guard unlocked it. Inside this door to the left, another door led to the apartments of the professional servants: the doctor, the masseuse, the four social courtesans who acted as hostesses when Justin entertained, each with private and well-equipped quarters. To the right were the cells, tiny cubicles provided only with basic sanitation equipment. At one time he had thought to fill this corridor, but he hadn’t done so. Many of the doors stood open, revealing empty rooms. He went to a closed door, third on his left, and thrust it open. It was numbered with a ‘6,’ and it opened only from the outside.
The occupant was huddled against the wall.
‘Stand up,’ he ordered her.
She did not seem to have heard him. Cursing, he pulled her to her feet and she swayed against the wall, almost falling. She was dressed in filthy veils which left her breasts and crotch uncovered. At one time she would have tried to cover herself. She did not, any longer. She did not need to, any longer. The once voluptuous body, the once shapely legs were now mere bony caricatures. What had been a wealth of mahogany hair was now a greasy mop, hanging in lank strings.
‘Beddy-bye,’ he said to her, his code word, the word he had made her fear.
There was no response. No movement in the dull eyes. No twitch on the face.
Cursing again, he struck her and she fell against the wall to lie there without moving.
‘They’re not going to come after you, you know!’ he shouted. ‘They all think you’re dead. They’ve thought so for months. The same night I brought you here, we got a body that Geroan had worked over and put it with your clothes out behind the Priory. Everyone thinks it was you!’
There was not a flicker of response.
Harward stormed out of the room, letting the door lock itself behind him.
He let himself into the other corridor. The doctor’s apartment was second on his right. This time Harward made a perfunctory gesture of knocking before he entered. Professional servants worked better if one allowed them a pretense of privacy.
The man inside rose from the chair he had occupied, a finger marking his place in the book he held. He was neatly dressed in Justin’s livery, a gray-faced man of about thirty-five. His hands trembled. ‘Yes, Mr. Justin,’ he murmured.
‘Room number six,’ Justin demanded. ‘What’s the matter with her?’ Part of the doctor’s duties was to provide medical attention to those in both corridors.
‘Gretl?’
‘Number six,’ hissed Justin.
‘She’s dying,’ the doctor said, his voice quavering. The quaver irritated Justin. If she was dying, it was her own fault. He had intended her to be one of his courtesans, but she’d failed to please him.
‘Why? What’s the matter with her?’
The doctor’s voice became calm and quite emotionless. Only the trembling hands betrayed him. ‘She’s half starved. She’s been repeatedly raped and abused, and she wishes to die.’
‘Stop her.’
‘I’m afraid there is nothing I can do. I can force feed her if you like, or put her on euphoric drugs if you wish. She might go on living then, at least for a while. She’ll never look like anything
