Читать книгу Dangerous Games - Charlotte Mede - Страница 8

Built painstakingly by carpenters imported from Germany, the elaborately curved staircase wound its way to the second and third levels of Waldegrave Hall. King took one step at a time, the highly polished wood beneath his feet a reminder of how far he had come. Pausing on the landing, he inhaled deeply, the scent of beeswax and the rarest teak taking him back to the marshy landscape of Bombay.

So febrile and so fertile, and so ready to disgorge its riches, the insular archipelago had begun as his own private fiefdom and swollen to an empire that could easily compete with Russia to the north and, of course, with England, that juicy, lazy fly primed for swatting by a hard and heavy hand. His hand.

He smiled at the image before continuing his ascent to the second floor. The house was quiet, all the servants abed, the hallway unspooling before him with five bedroom doors, like soldiers, arrayed on either side. He stood absorbing the silence muffled by the cotton batten of luxury, a lifetime away from the heavy hum of bloodsucking insects, stifling destitution, and scraping servitude.

The distinction between east and west was the thinnest veneer. What was savage or primitive, after all? Between the willing Vesper and the groveling serf? Or the strangled maid heaped like so many discarded rags on his hearth and the Punjabi girl robbed of both hands by a machete for taking a scrap of leftover rice from the emir’s plate?

The memories collided and coalesced, firing his blood, the heat chafing his overweening ambitions. He loosened his elaborate cravat and began unbuttoning his waistcoat, pleased not to have his valet dancing in attendance and diluting his mood. Far too many servants in India, one more willing than the next to prostrate himself for the tiniest mercy. It really became quite tedious.

Much more challenging this evening with Vesper who had performed well, after all. As for St. Martin—

They had only met once, and briefly. Bellamy would never forget the encounter at the side of a rice paddy, the sun slanting hot and unforgiving overhead. Even then, the man was already a legend known to the barest few, his exploits whispered about in hushed undertones, one feat more unbelievable than the next. How much was true and how much was speculation? One of the advantages of coming from the stews, one learned quickly to distinguish the gold from the dross. Survival depended on it.

Few men could withstand the pressure forever. Even the seemingly indestructible Julian St. Martin. Particularly when it became personal, and Bellamy had guaranteed that it had. He narrowed his eyes. His sources told him that the man had become unhinged, unstable, the result of too much death and destruction, the stink clinging to him until it had become unbearable.

But then again, instability could and would prove useful.

Shrugging his dinner jacket, he carelessly tossed it on the newel post before continuing his walk toward the master suite at the end of the hallway. St. Martin’s weakness was the Crown’s loss and his own gain. A deep satisfaction settled over him. The queen, her consort, and the entirety of Parliament could go bugger themselves.

The gaslights had been turned down for the evening, bathing the hallway in a golden light. He wasn’t tired in the least—the recent proceedings in his salon exhilarating, both fueling his nerve endings and his labyrinthine thoughts. He continued his slow walk toward his suite and then changed his mind, stopping at the second door on his left. He never hesitated but leaned in carefully, his hand on the polished brass knob, coaxing open the oak door on its four silent hinges.

Moonlight poured through the sheer curtains covering generous mullioned windows, revealing a slender figure lost in the amplitude of the four-poster bed.

She was asleep. The bottle of laudanum on the nightstand beside her was half empty, the silver spoon tossed on the floor. Her face was turned away from him, facing the window. But Bellamy didn’t need the moonlight to remember those almond-shaped eyes shimmering with a combination of innocence and vice. He took a step closer toward the bed where Medusa slept, her serpents well hidden beneath a veil of virtue and artlessness.

A willing prisoner of his and of her own making, she did not stir under his gaze. He smiled at the thought of this graceful child-woman as just another weapon in his mounting arsenal. He raised his eyes to look out the window, the milky light a shroud for his poisonous deliberations. Out in the night, another woman waited for him. Lilly Clarence Hampton.

She would be disappointed or perhaps relieved to be rid of his oppressive presence this evening. He was under no illusions that the young widow in any way desired his company, other than for the protection he could provide. Not that it mattered. He released the band collar of his shirt and tossed it aside with the insouciance of the heedlessly wealthy. She needed him, just as her late husband had, and she knew it. Those wide eyes kept her secrets, or so she erroneously believed. An arrogant woman when it came down to it, with a keen intellect that would be her undoing. Probably at his hands, and as his wife, when he decided the moment was ripe.

He loosened the top two buttons of his shirtfront, moving closer to the window. From his vantage point he couldn’t see the Tower of London or the Crystal Palace, its construction completed, but instead he traced the marshy landscape of Hampton Heath, the fields and ponds wending their way to the outskirts of the city. To the Koh-I-Noor and the fat little queen.

This night had been a fitting beginning, the savaged servant chit an early trophy in the stalk for much bigger game. There were so many traps to choose among, after all. India had been his playground with its rich diet of violence and degradation. His pulse rose in tandem with every option he considered. He had mastered ever-greater challenges on his way to this night, perhaps the apogee of his triumphant career.

Impalement via the use of sharpened poles. Mustard and latex combination to blind a beast and make it easier to run down. Or the raja’s practice in Bengal of setting fire to grass ten miles around so beaters could drive fleeing tigers into a mile of netting.

His blood stirred at the memories. More wide awake than ever, he turned away from the window and strode across the room to the door, barely sparing a glance for the still figure on the bed.

Lilly Clarence Hampton would prove simple prey, but St. Martin was the real prize. He was without doubt the best living marksman in Great Britain, able to drill a gold sovereign from six hundred feet and hold off an army of marauding hordes for days. Who better to assassinate the queen?

And now demoralized and adrift, so far from the man he’d once been, St. Martin would blindly walk into the snare that had been set. And no one would question the outcome, accepting the fact that a madman, a former henchman of the queen, had simply come undone, unleashed his inner demons to accomplish the unthinkable. Regicide.

And the punishment would be death by hanging. So tidy. Even if St. Martin ever did regain his reason, he would tell no tales.

Bellamy sighed once again with satisfaction, closing the door behind him with a last contented glance at the still figure on the bed. He had traveled a long way, defeated insurmountable odds, committed unspeakable acts to straddle the pinnacle of an empire that spanned the globe. And no one would wrest that prize from his grasping hands. Hesitation, scruples, and conscience were for lesser men. Murder, torture, assassination conferred the levers of power—queen and Parliament be damned.

Aubrey Vesper regretted that he had never developed a taste for strong spirits. His hands trembled as he wiped the sweat from his brow with a damp handkerchief, despite the cold of the small parlor.

The fire in the grate of his modest home in Chelsea had reduced itself to ash and he could not bear to approach the hearth, the horrific events of the evening a bitter poisonous memory that he could not expel from his system. He startled at every sound, the wood of the staircase settling into familiar grooves, the night air whistling against the windows. Succumbing to nerves, that’s what he was allowing himself to do.

Digging a footpath into the already frayed carpet covering the parquet floor, he couldn’t hope to halt the images unspooling relentlessly before him. He shuddered, as unmanned as an unbreeched boy. Under his ministrations, St. Martin had become an unthinking, unfeeling, murderous machine. As for Bellamy, when Vesper recalled the unholy light in his eyes, the heavy breath, the obvious hunger for pain—

Crumpling the handkerchief in a fist, Vesper shoved it into the pocket of his jacket, his hand immediately recoiling from the cool metal of the pocketwatch, the instrument of his handiwork, nestled against his hip. A fresh layer of sweat beaded his brow.

If he was searching for justification of his actions, there was none. It was simple hubris and overweening pride that drove his insatiable desire for knowledge and experimentation. And like Faust, when the devil came calling, Vesper was ready to surrender for the opportunity of unlocking physiological and neurological mysteries that were perhaps better left in the realm of God. Bellamy had offered not only a handsome paypacket to do his bidding but also unfettered and unsupervised freedom to do what he wished with his patients—as long as the outcome proved ultimately useful. Vesper was wise enough not to inquire too closely as to the nature of Bellamy’s plans. Knowledge was a dangerous commodity.

As for the personal events in India, he didn’t know anymore. What was another child lost in the millions swallowed up in poverty and starvation and disease? Few white men would spend even an instant’s time in consideration of a misbegotten by-blow, the sorry result of miscegenation. All he did know was that his nerves were nearing the breaking point, the enervation of fatigue overtaking him. What he would do to be able to drift to sleep, consoling himself that at least he had survived another day. He feared sleep now, his home too quiet. In the distance he imagined his neighbors, and some distance away, he thought he heard a woman crying, or perhaps it was a child.

He stopped his pacing, listening to the creaking of the floorboards beneath his feet. If he paid heed, he imagined that he could hear a low moan coming from the depths of the cellar beneath the kitchen. Cursing swiftly under his breath although there was no one to hear, he wondered if he was loosening his grip on reason. A story he had read recently came suddenly and annoyingly to mind, a tale that had conjured the specter of a telltale heart beating beneath the floorboards, the fretful conscience of a murderer.

Ridiculous, fanciful nonsense. Almost without realizing it, Vesper again found his clammy fist clenched around the watch in his pocket. He of all people recognized that the haunting was the product of a diseased mind, of a psyche overwhelmed with guilt and remorse.

Another low moan, like a branch listing in a heavy wind. It was quite impossible. He had given the man enough laudanum to keep him subdued. The gunshot wound had narrowly missed its mark, and the man had bled profusely before Vesper had been able to staunch the blood. The damp, cold cellar was not the ideal place for someone in his condition, but it was the only area in the house—containing his laboratory and medical implements—that was not open to his housekeeper and scullery maid.

The scullery maid. Dear God, Lizzie. He hadn’t even inquired after her surname. His eyes filled from an excess of emotion and he removed his spectacles to wipe at them uselessly, smearing the lenses with his sweat and guilt. If she died, he would not see her in a pauper’s grave and, if he had the chance, he would see to a proper burial. The very least he could do.

The moaning was more audible now, his punishment no longer the fancy of his imagination but the keening of a man in pain. His eyes darted to his doctor’s bag, the leather scuffed and worn, sitting forlornly in the entrance hall. It held the instruments of his trade, a bottle of laudanum, and a syringe.

A few ounces more would surely not make a difference. And then he could get some much needed rest, far away from this inner torment whose tentacles were digging themselves, inexorably and relentlessly, into the innermost reaches of his increasingly febrile mind.

He shuffled to the narrow hallway and grabbed the bag. It felt solid and reassuring in his hands. Drawing himself up straight, he gripped the handle securely before making his final decision. Moments later, he disappeared down the darkened cellar stairs.