Death and the Cyprian Society (10 page)

“Well, I hope you will never be so stupid again,” said Arabella. “I mean, I know that you
will
be stupid again, but hopefully not stupid enough to risk an affair behind his back. Mr. Pollard is perfect for you, Costanze. Promise me you will do nothing further to jeopardize your standing with him.”

“All right,” said Costanze. “But now you have made me forget what I came over here to tell you.”

“Well, it probably wasn’t important.”

“Oh, but it
was!
I am certain it was something to do with the blackmailer!”

“You may put your worries to rest on that score,” said Arabella. “The blackmailer was murdered last night. Just in the nick of time, too; I don’t want to dip into my capital if I can avoid it.”

“That is odd,” said Costanze. “Because I just received another demand this morning. The butler says it was handed in around nine o’clock. . . . Oh! That must be what I was going to tell you! Yes, it was! I have had another demand this morning and I want to know when you are going to catch this person and make him stop because I am getting jolly sick of these letters as it is a great nuisance to have to keep hiding them all from Pigeon!”

“You are mistaken,” said Arabella, “the man is dead.”

“Mistaken or not,” said Costanze, extracting a crumpled note from her reticule, “here it is. And in the very same hand as the other one, too!”

She passed it to Arabella, who took it with wonder.

“But, this makes no sense,” she said.

“Yes, it does!” Costanze replied. “He is ever so clear! He wants one thousand pounds, wrapped in brown paper and marked ‘to be called for,’ left with the postmaster! What is nonsensical about that?”

“No, I meant it does not make sense that you should have received a note from a dead man.”

“Well, perhaps his ghost wrote it for him. Or maybe this Mr. Tyke of yours wasn’t really the blackmailer after all.”

Arabella groaned.

“Whatever is the matter, Bell? Don’t you feel well?”

“No,” replied Arabella faintly. “Not very.”

 

Cuthbert Savory-Pratt was possessed of a monocle that he did not need, a libido he made no attempt to govern, and a nose so pointy that some people called him “Cuth
bird
.” Everyone else called him “Arsy-Varsey,” and sometimes even “Good Old Arsy-Varsey.” The nickname had originated, according to Charles, following the forfeit in a game of Reverence. Charles had recounted the story to Arabella on the night of the snail dinner, sometime before he’d discovered what he was eating.

“ ‘Reverence’?” his sister had asked. “I have not heard of this game.”

“Well, it’s not a game so much as a tradition. And I’m not surprised at your unfamiliarity with it, you being a woman.”

“Oh!” cried Arabella, who delighted in finding out such things. “Do you mean it is a secret male ritual of some kind, that women aren’t to know about?”

“If you like to put it that way.”

“Tell me, Charles! Tell me at once!” she commanded, seizing his little finger and bending it backward.

“Ow! You needn’t go to such extremes! I’ll gladly share it with you, but you won’t like it.”

And she hadn’t.

 

CIN Entry:

“Do you mean to say,” said Arabella, “that this Savory-Pratt has actually . . .”

“Taken a pratfall, yes,” Charles had replied. “On several occasions.”

“He sounds like quite an
un
-savory prat, if you ask me!”

 

She decided to conduct this interview in the Cyprian Society’s grand saloon, whose space was so vast as to suggest the opposite of intimacy. Given Arsy’s salacious nature, Arabella intended that their tête-à-tête should more closely resemble a chance meeting at Lord’s Cricket Ground. The
former
Lord’s, we should have said. For that place being currently under demolition to make way for the Regent’s Canal, Scrope Davies had jokingly suggested that matches might be held at the CS grand saloon until the new field should be ready. The meeting was set for Sunday, when there would be no interruptions from construction noise.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Mr. Savory-Pratt,” said Arabella conversationally. “Everybody thought you were dead.”

“Did they really? How awfully funny! I wasn’t, you know—merely hiding out from Tyke. Now that
he’s
the one who’s officially dead, I shall at last be able to sleep soundly o’nights.”

“Yes, well, good for you. I wonder whether you can tell me anything about the afternoon when you and the boys went to Bond Street. You know, where you watched the, er, rumpy pumpy through peepholes?”

“Right you are! That’s when all the trouble started, you know. With this Tyke fellow, I mean. I say, would you mind moving in a bit closer? I prefer not to have to shout my answers.”

“Actually, I prefer it this way,” said Arabella. “We can always move to a smaller room if anyone else should come in and find us too loud. Do you think the two incidents were related?”

“ ’Course they were related! I paid for half that night’s entertainment with a rubber checque. Of course, I didn’t know it would bounce at the time; I never keep track of those things. But the mort sent Tyke round to see me, and I don’t mind telling you I was scared half out of me wits!”

“Just a minute, if you please, Mr. Pratt;
who
sent Tyke round to see you?”

“Well,
she
did. The mort. It was all my idea, you know,” he added. “I fixed the date—or rather, she told me the date and what time to come round. Bumpy paid her half down for the tickets, and I paid the other half—this bad checque I was telling you about—to Jerry Tyke. But that was afterwards.”

Arabella could not believe what she was hearing. And yet, this was the second person who had identified Constance as the mastermind behind her own public humiliation. Now Savory-Pratt was claiming that she had sent Tyke to his house to collect on a bad checque! But she
couldn’t
have! Constance simply did not possess the commercial acumen that such a setup would require.

“I see,” said Arabella, who didn’t at all, “but weren’t you planning to go to Drury Lane, originally?”

“No. That was an idea that came to Charley after we started out. But I knew where we were headed, all right.”

“Of course,” she said, trying to sound casual. “And so, you saw the opportunity for blackmail, and simply seized it.”

Arabella had hoped to catch him off guard. He was, after all, her last hope. But this disturbing news about Costanze had thrown off her timing.

“Ha!” said Savory-Pratt without turning a hair. “Blackmail’s not my style, don’ chew know. Even if it were, I shouldn’t be such a fool as to tangle with
that
spider!”

“Now you’re being absurd!” cried Arabella. “The woman’s an utter simpleton!”

“You obviously don’t know her, then.”

“Know her? I should think I
do
know her! We grew up together!”

“Hum! Well, I don’t mean to challenge your veracity, madam, but I rather doubt that, you know. I mean, she may have been your nanny or something—though I can’t say as I could picture her working with sprats—but she’s nearly twice your age, surely!”

“Constance? Twice my age? Whatever can you mean?”

“Is that her Christian name? It certainly doesn’t match the surname.”

“Of course it does! ‘Constance,’ as in steadfast, and ‘Worthington, ’ as in worthy. The names fit perfectly
together.
As to whether they fit the
subject . . .”

“I think we may be talking about different people,” said Arsy-Varsey. “Who is Constance Worthington?”

“The woman you were
spying
upon,” said Arabella, rather rudely. “The woman you
paid.”

“Which one?”

“What?”

“Which one is Constance? The woman we spied upon, or the woman I paid?”

Arabella looked confused.

“There!” he cried. “You see? I knew it! Knew it all along! You’ve got the whole thing muddled up! Constance may be the name of the entertainer, I’m sure I don’t know, but the woman I
paid
was . . . well, actually, I
don’t
know her Christian name, if she has such a thing, but the old bawd styles herself ‘Madame Zhenay.’ ”

“Madame Zhenay!”

“That’s the one. She runs a swank shop for the gentry, and struts about like a jackdaw in peacock’s feathers, but she’s nothing more than an ordinary crack salesman, with a dash of the devil thrown in. Anyhow, that’s the crone that took the money—the one who staged the show at her place—whatchamacallit’s—Palais de Beautay.”

“
That’s
where you went?”

“Naturally. That’s where she lives and works and everything. Well, in the end, you know, I persuaded my old man to buy her off. Otherwise, she would have had my balls on a plate. I’m certainly not going back there in a hurry! I say, are you nearly done with the questions? I’m coming over all peckish.”

“Nearly, Mr. Savory-Pratt,” said Arabella, writing furiously, “and then I shall give you a slap-up dinner. You say this back room you were peeping into was at La Palais de Beautay?”

“That’s right.”

“Can you remember anything else?”

“What sort of thing?”

“Anything at all?”

“I saw Zhenay hand an envelope to that henchman of hers, the one who later came round and threatened to . . . well, anyway he’s dead now, so you say—she gave him this envelope, and told him to deliver it to Miss Worthington.”

“Yes,” said Arabella, half to herself. “I suppose that must have been Constance’s share of the takings.”

“No. No, it wasn’t. Because then she said, ‘Don’t bother opening it, Tyke; it ain’t money.’ I say, do you think we could eat now? I’m near famished!”

“By all means,” said Arabella, summoning a waiter and rising from her chair. “Order whatever you wish. The restaurant is just behind you.”

“Oh! But . . . dear lady!” he cried, grabbing her hand and trying to pull her down onto his lap. “Surely . . . you are dining
with
me?”

The “dear lady” pulled her hand away before he could cover it with kisses.

“Surely . . . you jest,” Arabella replied. And she left him there, in order to seek more agreeable company.

 

Of all the wonderful rooms-to-be at the Cyprian Society, the library was Arabella’s favorite. Two full stories high, with an upper-level loggia, it featured two marble fireplaces, romantic mullioned windows, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases of red elm burl, which stood empty at the moment. The books they were destined to contain lay packed away in numerous wooden crates, which were stacked in orderly towers here, collected together in careless heaps there, or simply scattered at random about the room.

As she entered, Arabella saw, to her satisfaction, half a dozen courtesans distributed about the library like so many brilliant ornaments, for it had been decided, as a cost-cutting measure, that CS members might volunteer to do as much of the
amusing
labor as they liked. This was a cataloguing party.

Marguerite Le Marchand had enjoyed a brilliant stage career before discovering that she could earn more money on her back. This tall, bold Amazon was now pulling books from a crate and calling out their titles and authors in those ringing tones that had formerly been famous for reaching not only the back row, but all the way to the street.

In breeches, neckcloth, and handsome, cutaway coat, Amy Golder-Green sat drawing up a list from Marguerite’s announcements, whilst the very lovely Victorine Cobb wrote out catalogue cards, placing them in piles according to subject.

Idina Almond was diligently transferring excelsior and empty crates to an out-of-the-way corner for later disposal by somebody else. With her little, pointed chin and enormous blue eyes, she resembled nothing so much as a kitten with a plan.

Over in a corner, Dido Laithwaite, a woman of classic proportions who liked to conserve energy for activities that paid her, reclined upon a crate, reading one of the books she’d lately unpacked. And motherly May Tilden wove her way continuously through the crates and courtesans with a teapot, keeping everyone’s cup filled.

“Hullo, Miss Beaumont!” shouted Amy, abandoning her list and coming over to join Arabella. “These new bookcases are absolutely top hole! Marguerite thinks they should have carved designs, but I say you were right to keep them plain—carving would detract from the patterns in the burl.”

Arabella smiled with satisfaction. She was open to members’ suggestions on how best to decorate the club, but all of the major decisions were to be hers. This was only right, as it was her money that was paying for everything. Or would be, once she got the blackmailer squared away. The decision to allow Samuel Johnson’s “witticisms” a place in the CS library had not been her choice (Arabella could not bear him. Or Boswell, either), but the resolution to give in graciously to popular demand had.