Chapter 43
Chapter forty-three
London
The room was thick with an odd smell that reminded Penny of burnt rubber.
The light was very low, and inside were curtained alcoves where drowsy human forms mumbled and shifted and lamps flickered.
A woman with a painted face, a black wig, and Chinese-style robes walked up to her, eyes narrowing.
“Evening. Are you looking for someone, miss?” she asked. Her eyes were lined heavily in an attempt to appear Asiatic. She was probably blonde under that wig, thought Penny.
“Yes, an Englishman named Eames,” said Penny. “He just came in five minutes ago. He’s wanted by the police.”
“Not by me he isn’t!” hissed the policeman on the other side of the curtain. He didn’t seem inclined to follow Penny any further.
The woman’s face hardened. “No one has come in the last five minutes, duck. You must be mistaken.” She turned to go.
“Please!” said Penny. Someone began to cough in one of the alcoves, and it made it hard for her to think.
“Look, I’m not a complete fool, I can see what this place is, but you should know this man is really dangerous.
He’s wanted for assault and theft in a high-profile case.
If you want to keep your—well, your establishment quiet, you won’t shelter him. ”
“Thank you for the advice,” she said, showing her teeth, which were gappy and discoloured. “Now get out of my establishment.”
Penny was almost crying with frustration. To have got so close! She was sure the man was still here!
“You ‘eard the woman, miss,” the bobby said, off-stage, as it were, as if he were whispering a cue to her. “Time to give up this lark. You’ll have a nice story for your friends, now, won’t you?”
The coughing intensified. Penny stopped listening to the policeman.
She knew that cough!
Penny dashed to the alcove and wrenched the curtain aside, revealing a familiar and most unexpected sight by oil lamp: a pale, slight young man with curly fawn-coloured hair and spectacles, who currently wore the expression of a stuffed carp on a mantelpiece.
“Crispin?” she shrieked.
It was not at all ideal, thought Crispin Fairweather, to be surprised on one’s very first trip to a shady drug den by one’s own sister.
“Fancy meeting you here?” he offered. What else was there to say?
Penny plucked the cheap reed pipe from his hand and flung it away, making the proprietress swear.
“I’m taking you home,” Penny hissed, seizing his cuff. “What would Mother say!”
Crispin wasn’t too worried about what his mother would say. She was always urging him to try new things, though probably she hadn’t meant opium. His father, on the other hand…
Penny dragged him through the curtain and down the stairs, past an open-mouthed policeman, and out the hotel into the dank evening.
“What’s happened to you?” Crispin asked, taking in her dishevelled appearance. “And where’s your umbrella?”
“Never mind that!” she shouted at him. “You’re the one who was in an opium den with a—with a floozy!”
“Well, actually, you were also—“ Crispin began.
“Don’t you even dare! I was working! I was on a story!”
“I saw him, you know,” said Crispin.
“What!”
“I saw a man with a false beard. He came in a bit before you and slipped out the window, onto the roof, when you started shouting.”
Penny made a wild circular movement, then leaned against the wall in defeat.
“Couldn’t you at least have jumped on him until I got there?” she wailed.
“I’ll be sure to do that next time I see a man wearing a false beard,” Crispin retorted. “You’ll have a whole collection of them to show your friends. Can we go home now?”
“Just what I’ve been telling her all evening, sir!” interjected the bobby as he walked past to take up his beat again.
Penny’s eyes focused on Crispin, narrowing with determination. “At least I have his name now.”
“It looks to me like you have a story, too,” guessed Crispin shrewdly.
Her face brightened. “And I have a story! What a story!“ She punched his arm in glee, then recoiled. “You smell like that vile stuff. What on earth were you doing in that awful place? Oh!” She looked him over, her nose scrunching in distaste. “Are you doing that thing that men do?”
By unspoken agreement, they were walking slowly back to a main road in search of a cab.
“What thing that men do?” Crispin asked.
“Sowing wild rice.”
“It’s wild oats, Penny.”
“I don’t care which cereal it is, it’s disgusting and hypocritical, and I thought better of you than that. When I think of the way we are expected to behave! How would you feel if you found me in a place like that, I ask you?”
Crispin decided not to point out the obvious and focus on the underlying issue, which was Penny’s understandable dismay at finding her brother in a seedy situation.
“It’s a treatment,” Crispin said, as casually as he could.
“A treatment? Immorality in general, or opium in particular?”
Crispin rolled his eyes.
“Oh,” faltered Penny, embarrassed.
Penny was often embarrassed by the accoutrements and limitations of his asthma. She always had been, so he tried to avoid the subject in her presence, which wasn’t hard, since he disliked speaking of it anyway.
She let out a nervous laugh. “Is there anything you haven’t tried to get rid of that wretched thing?”
“Death?” offered Crispin.
“Oh!” Penny said, clutching her pink cheeks in dismay.
“What is it now?” asked Crispin. “Have you remembered your umbrella? Did you leave it in a gambling hell, because the night is still young…”
“No, I left it at the bottom of the Thames, with Joki’s motor, and now I’m really going to have to kiss him—if I can find him again.”
Penny got a funny look on her face at this, as if she hadn’t quite made up her mind how she felt about the prospect.
Crispin carefully put his glasses in his pocket before he spoke. “Am I supposed to act the protective brother and demand to know who this Joki is and why you are expected to kiss him? Or is he one of the people I need to locate and sit on until you arrive?”
Penny looked at him thoughtfully. “You know, most of the time you are absolutely infuriating. But sometimes, you are almost nice.”
“My one ambition,” confessed Crispin.
“Do you really like sitting in a government office all day, just like Father? You used to say you’d rather die than do it. You wanted adventure.”
“Perhaps I’ve found it,” Crispin said with a gesture at their surroundings.
“Then we both have,” said Penny, with a small nod of satisfaction.
If she only knew. For the first time, he longed to tell her. The impulse surprised him. As far back as he could remember, there had been an unspoken competition between them. He had no idea which of them had started it, or how it might end.
“Better go in the back door at home and get cleaned up,” Crispin warned. “There’s one of Mother’s things on tonight.”
Penny groaned.
“I thought you liked these shindigs,” Crispin said. “There are sure to be some feminists there for you.”
Penny gave a knowing laugh. “My dear fellow, I don’t think the young ladies are invited for my benefit!”
Now it was Crispin’s turn to groan. “I was afraid of that. What’s the rush? I’m bound to get around to it eventually—it seems pretty much inescapable.”
“If the scientists are right, it is,” Penny said sagely. “Even down to all the fuss men make about us wanting the vote. You’re afraid we’ll stop perpetuating.”
Crispin considered this. “Seems a little reductive, don’t you think?”
“Don’t ask me. Girls aren’t supposed to sow wild barley. A generation ago, we weren’t even supposed to know it existed.”
“Apparently you still don’t, since it’s wild—“
“Oats, I know! What sort of girl do you think you’d go for, Crispin, when you get round to it, as you put it so very prettily?”
Crispin was saved from answering this probing question by the appearance of a vacant cab.
But if he’d been honest, there was a rather specific picture in his mind already.
Far too specific, in fact, for him to be quite comfortable talking about it with such levity.