So Sandman told her about Meg and how he had gone to the house on Mount Street and been told that all the servants had been discharged. 'They might have gone to the Earl's house in the country,' he said, 'or maybe they were just discharged.'
'Ask the servants,' Sally said. 'Ask the other servants in the street and all the other streets nearby. One of them will know. Servants' gossip tells you everything. Oh my gawd, is that the time?' A clock in the tavern had just chimed twice. Sally snatched up her coat, grabbed the last of the bread and ran.
And Sandman sat and read the broadsheet again. It told him very little, but it gave him time to think.
And time to wonder why a private club, a very private club with an angelic name, wanted a lady painted naked.
It was time, he thought, to find out. It was time to visit the seraphim.
CHAPTER THREE
It had stopped raining, though the air felt greasy and the stones of St James's Street glistened as though they had been given a coat of varnish. Smoke from countless chimneys gusted low on the chill wind, whirling smuts and ash like dark snow. Two smart carriages rattled up the hill past a third that had lost a wheel. A score of men were offering advice about the canted vehicle while the horses, a lively team of matching bays, were walked up and down by a coachman. Two drunks, fashionably dressed, supported each other as they bowed to a woman who, as elegantly dressed as her admirers, sauntered down the pavement with a furled parasol. She ignored the drunks, just as she took no note of the obscene suggestions shouted at her from the windows of the gentlemen's clubs. She was no lady, Sandman guessed, for no respectable woman would ever walk in St James's Street. She gave him a bold stare as he neared her and Sandman politely touched a hand to his hat, but gave her the wall and walked on. 'Too hot for you, is she?' a man shouted at Sandman from a window. Sandman ignored the jibe. Think straight, he told himself, think straight, and to help himself do that he stopped on the corner of King Street and gazed towards St James's Palace as though its ancient bricks could give him inspiration.
Why, he asked himself, was he going to the Seraphim Club? Because, if Sally was right, they had commissioned the portrait of the murdered countess, but so what? Sandman was beginning to suspect that the painting had nothing whatever to do with the murder. If Corday was telling the truth then the murderer was almost certainly the person who had interrupted the painter when they knocked on the door from the back stairs, but who that had been Sandman had not the slightest idea. So why was he going to the Seraphim Club? Because, he decided, the mysterious club had evidently known the dead woman and they had lavished money on a portrait of her, and the portrait, unknown to her ladyship, was to show her naked, which suggested that a member of the club had either been her lover or that she had refused to be his lover, and love, like rejection, was a route to hatred and hatred led to murder and that chain of thought spurred Sandman to wonder whether the painting was connected with the murder after all. It was all confusing, so very confusing, and he was getting nowhere by trying to think straight about it and so he began walking again.
Nothing marked the Seraphim Club's premises, but a crossing sweeper pointed Sandman to a house with shuttered windows on the square's eastern side. Sandman walked across the square and, as he came close, saw a carriage drawn by four horses standing at the kerb outside the club. The carriage was painted dark blue and on its doors were red shields blazoned with golden-robed angels in full flight. The carriage had evidently just collected a passenger for it pulled away as Sandman went to the door that was painted a glossy blue and bore no brass plate. A gilded chain hung in the shallow porch and when it was pulled a bell sounded deep within the building. Sandman was about to tug the chain a second time when he noticed a wink of light in the door's centre and he saw that a spyhole had been drilled through the blue-painted timber. Someone, he reckoned, was peering at him and so he stared back until he heard a bolt being drawn. A second bolt scraped, then a lock turned and at last the door was reluctantly swung open by a servant dressed in a waspish livery of black and yellow. The servant inspected Sandman. 'Are you sure, sir,' he asked after a pause, 'that you have the right house?' The 'sir' had no respect in it, but was a mere formality.
'This is the Seraphim Club?'
The servant hesitated. He was a tall man, probably within a year or two of Sandman's own age, and had a face darkened by the sun, scarred by violence and hardened by experience. A brutal but good-looking man, Sandman thought, with an air of competence. This is a private house, sir,' the servant said firmly.
'Belonging, I believe, to the Seraphim Club,' Sandman said brusquely, 'with whom I have business.' He waved the Home Secretary's letter. 'Government business,' he added and, without waiting for any answer, he stepped past the servant into a hall that was high, elegant and expensive. The floor was a chess board of gleaming black and white marble squares, and more marble framed the hearth, in which a small fire burnt and above which an overmantel was framed with a gilded riot of cherubs, flower sprays and acanthus leaves. A chandelier hung in the well of a staircase and its branches must have held at least a hundred unlit candles. Dark paintings hung on white walls. A cursory glance showed Sandman they were landscapes and seascapes with not a single naked lady in view.
'The government, sir, has no business here, no business at all,' the tall servant said. He seemed surprised that Sandman had dared to walk past him and, as if in reproof, was pointedly holding the front door open as an invitation for Sandman to leave. Two more servants, both big and both in the same black and yellow livery, had come from a side room to encourage the unwanted visitor's departure.
Sandman looked from the two newcomers to the taller servant holding the door and he noticed the man's good looks were marred by tiny black scars on his right cheek. Most people would hardly have noticed the scars, which were little more than dark flecks under the skin, but Sandman had acquired the habit of looking for the powder burns. 'Which regiment?' he asked the man.
The servant's face twitched in a half-smile. 'First Foot Guards, sir.'
'I fought beside you at Waterloo,' Sandman said. He pushed the letter into his jacket pocket, then stripped off his wet greatcoat which, with his hat, he tossed onto a gilded chair. 'You're probably right,' he told the man, 'the government almost certainly doesn't have any business here, but I suspect I need to be told that by an officer of the club. There is a secretary? A presiding officer? A committee?' Sandman shrugged. 'I apologise, but the government is like French dragoons. If you don't beat the hell out of them the first time then they only come back twice as strong the next.'
The tall servant was trapped between his duty to the club and his fellow-feeling for another soldier, but his loyalty to the Seraphim won. He let go of the front door and flexed his hands as if readying for a fight. 'I'm sorry, sir,' he insisted, 'but they'll only tell you to make an appointment.'
'Then I'll wait here till they do tell me that,' Sandman said. He went to the small fire and stretched his hands towards its warmth. 'My name's Sandman, by the way, and I'm here on behalf of Lord Sidmouth.'
'Sir, they don't permit waiting,' the servant said, 'but if you'd like to leave a card, sir, in the bowl on the table?'
'Don't have a card,' Sandman said cheerfully.
'Time to go,' the servant said, and this time he did not call Sandman 'sir', but instead approached the visitor with a chilling confidence.
'It's all right, Sergeant Berrigan,' a smooth voice cut in from behind Sandman, 'Mister Sandman will be tolerated.'
'Captain Sandman,' Sandman said, turning.
An exquisite, a fop, a beau faced him. He was a tall and extraordinarily handsome young man in a brass- buttoned black coat, white breeches so tight that they could have been shrunk onto his thighs, and glistening black top boots. A stiff white cravat billowed from a plain white shirt which was framed by his coat collar that stood so high that it half covered the man's ears. His hair was black and cut very short, framing a pale face that had been shaved so close that the white skin seemed to gleam. It was an amused and clever face, and the man was carrying a quizzing-glass, a slender gold wand supporting a single lens through which he gave Sandman a brief inspection before offering a slight and courteous bow. 'Captain Sandman,' he said, putting a gentle stress on the first word, 'I do apologise. And I should have recognised you. I saw you knock fifty runs off Martingale and Bennett last year. Such a pity that your prowess has not entertained us at any London ground this season. My name, by the way, is Skavadale, Lord Skavadale. Do come into the library, please,' he gestured to the room behind him. 'Sergeant, would you be so kind as to hang up the Captain's coat? By the porter's fire, I think, don't you? And what would you like as a warming collation, Captain? Coffee? Tea? Mulled wine? Smuggled brandy?'
'Coffee,' Sandman said. He smelt lavender water as he went past Lord Skavadale.
