'Stow it, Sam! I'm coming with you!'
Berrigan led the way, shaking his head. 'I don't know what it is,' he grumbled, 'the ladies tell you that life ain't fair because men get all the privileges, but the mollishers don't half get their own way. You notice that, Captain? It's bitch about this and bitch about that, but who gets to wear the silk, gold and pearls, eh?'
'You talking about me, Sam Berrigan?' Sally asked.
'True love,' Sandman murmured, then Berrigan put a finger to his lips as they approached a wide carriage gate set in a white wall at the end of a short street.
'What it is,' Berrigan said softly, 'is that it's a quiet time of day in the club. We should be able to sneak in.' He approached a small door set to one side of the gates, tried it, found it locked and so used his key. He pushed the door open, looked into the yard and evidently saw nothing to alarm him, for he stepped over the threshold and beckoned Sandman and Sally to follow.
The yard was empty except for a coach, its blue paint trimmed with gold, that had evidently just been washed for it stood gleaming in the dusk with water dripping from its flanks and buckets standing by the wheels. The badge of the golden angel was painted on the door. 'Over here, quick,' Berrigan said, and Sandman and Sally followed the Sergeant to the shadow of the stables. 'One of the lads will be washing it,' Berrigan said, 'but the coachmen will be in the back kitchen there.' He nodded to a lit window in the carriage house, then turned in alarm as a door in the main house was thrown open. 'In here!' Berrigan hissed, and the three of them filed into an alley that led beside the stables. Footsteps sounded in the yard.
'Here?' a voice asked. Sandman did not recognise it.
'A hole twelve feet deep,' another voice answered, 'stone-lined and with a masonry dome over the top.'
'Not much damn room. How wide's the hole?'
'Ten feet?'
'Christ, man, it's where we turn the carriages!'
'Do it in the street.'
Berrigan swayed close to Sandman. 'They're talking about building an ice house,' he breathed in Sandman's ear, 'been discussing it for a year now.'
'What about behind the stables?' the first man asked.
'No room,' the other man answered.
'I mean between the stables and the back wall,' the first man said, and Sandman heard his footsteps getting closer and knew it was only a matter of seconds before they were discovered. But then Berrigan peered out of the alley's far end, saw no one and dashed across a smaller yard to a door that opened into the rear of the house. 'This way!' he hissed.
Sandman and Sally ran after him and found themselves on a servant's stairway that evidently ran from the kitchens in the basement to the upper floors. 'We'll hide upstairs,' Berrigan whispered, 'till the coast's clear.'
'Why not hide here?' Sandman asked.
''Cos the bastards could come back in through this bleeding door,' Berrigan said, then led them up the unlit stairway. Halfway up he edged open a door that led into a corridor that was deeply carpeted and had walls covered in a deep scarlet paper, though it was too dark to see the pattern of the paper or the details of the pictures that hung between the polished doors. Berrigan chose a door at random, opened it and found an empty room. 'We'll be all right in here,' he said.
It was a bedroom; large, lavish and comfortable. The bed itself was high and huge, plump-mattressed and covered with a thick scarlet covering on which the Seraphim's naked angel took flight. A fireplace was there to warm the room in winter. Berrigan crossed to the window and pulled back the curtain so he could gaze down into the yard. Sandman's eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light, then he heard Sally laugh and he turned to see her gazing at a picture above the bedhead. 'Good God,' Sandman said.
'There's a lot of those,' Berrigan commented drily.
The picture showed a happy group of men and women in a circular arcade of white marble pillars. In the foreground a child played a flute and another plucked a harp, both ignoring their naked elders who coupled under the moon that lit the pillared arcade with an unearthly glow. 'Bloody hell,' Sally said respectfully, 'you wouldn't think a girl could do that with her legs.'
Sandman decided no answer was necessary. He moved to the window and stared down, but the yard seemed empty again. 'I think they've gone back inside,' Berrigan said.
'Another one,' Sally said, standing on tiptoe to examine the painting above the empty fireplace.
'D'you think they'll come in here?' Sandman asked.
Berrigan shook his head. 'They only use these back slums in the winter.'
Sally giggled at the picture, then turned on Berrigan. 'You worked in an academy, Sam Berrigan.'
'It's a club!'
'Bleeding academy is what it is,' Sally said scornfully.
'I left it, didn't I?' Berrigan protested. 'Besides, it weren't an academy for us servants. Only for the members.'
'What members?' Sally asked, and laughed at her own jest.
Berrigan hushed her, not because she was being coarse, but because there were footsteps in the corridor outside. They came close to the door, passed on, faded.
'It doesn't really help us being up here,' Sandman said.
'We'll wait for things to quiet down,' Berrigan said, 'and then we'll slip back down to the yard.'
The door handle rattled. Berrigan quickly stepped behind a folding screen that hid a chamberpot and Sandman froze. The footsteps had seemed to pass on down the passage, but the person now trying the handle must have heard the voices and crept back, and suddenly the door was pushed open and a girl walked in. She was tall, slender and her black hair was prettily piled on her head and held in place with long pins with mother of pearl heads. Her shoes had mother of pearl heels, she sported pearl earrings and had a string of pearls strung twice about her elegant, swan-like neck, but otherwise she was quite naked. She took no notice of Sandman, who had half drawn his pistol, but smiled at Sally. 'I didn't know you worked here, Sal!'
'I'm not really working, Flossie,' Sally said.
Sandman recognised the girl then. It was the opera dancer who had called herself Sacharissa Lasorda and who now turned and stared at Sandman and somehow, though she was stark naked and he was fully dressed, she made him feel out of place. She looked him up and down, then smiled at Sally. 'You got the good-looking one, didn't you? But he's taking his time, ain't he?' Then her eyes widened as Berrigan stepped from behind the screen. 'You having a threesome?' she asked, then recognised the sergeant.
'I ain't here, Flossie,' Berrigan growled, 'so close the door when you leave and you ain't seen me. I thought you'd left for higher things?'
'Didn't work out, Sam,' she said, closing the door but staying inside the room.
'What happened to Spofforth?' Sally asked.
'Faked off this morning, didn't he?' She sniffed. 'The bastard! And I need the bleeding rhino, don't I? And this place is always worth a few quid.' She sat on the bed. 'So what the hell are you doing here?' she asked Berrigan.
'What the hell are you doing?' he demanded in return.
'We sneak in here for a rest,' Flossie said, 'on account that no one looks in here in summer.'
'Well just you remember that we ain't here,' Berrigan said fiercely. 'We ain't here, you ain't seen us and don't ask us no questions.'
'Bloody hell!' Flossie gave Berrigan a very level look. 'Pardon me for bloody breathing.'
'And who are you supposed to be with?' Berrigan asked.
'Tollemere. Only he's drunk and snoring.' She sniffed again and looked at Sally. 'You working here?'
'No.'
'Rhino's good,' Flossie said. She eased off a shoe and massaged her foot. 'So what happens if I go downstairs and tell them you're here?' she asked Berrigan.
'Next time I see you,' Berrigan said, 'you get a thorough bloody kicking.'
'Sergeant!' Sandman remonstrated, though he noticed that Flossie seemed remarkably unmoved by the threat.
'She bloody well will get a kicking!' Berrigan said.
