Chapter One
Mr Lucifer Box Entertains
I have always been an appalling judge of character. It is my most
beguiling virtue.
What, then, did I make of the Honourable Everard Supple whose likeness I
was conjuring on to canvas in my studio that sultry July evening?
He was an imposing cove of sixty-odd, built like a pugilist, who had made
a fortune in the diamond mines of the Cape. His declining years, he’d told
me during the second sitting – when a client begins to thaw a mite – were
to be devoted entirely to pleasure, principally in the gaming houses of
the warmer and naughtier parts of Europe. A portrait, in his opinion (and
his absence), would be just the thing to hang over the vast baronial
fireplace in the vast baronial hall he had recently lavished a hundred
thou’ upon.
The Supples, it has to be said, were not amongst the oldest and most
distinguished families in the realm. Only one generation back from the
Honourable Everard had been the less than honourable Gerald who had
prospered only tolerably in a manufactory of leather thumb-braces. Son and
heir had done rather better for himself and now to add to the title (of
sorts) and the fake coat of arms being busily prepared across town he had
his new portrait. This, he told me with a wheezy chuckle, would convey the
required air of old-world veracity. And if my painting were any good (that
hurt), perhaps I might even be interested in knocking up a few carefully
aged canvases of his ancestors?
Supple blinked repeatedly, as was his habit, one lid lingering over his
jade-irised glass eye (the left one) as I let myself imagine him tramping
into the studio in doublet and hose, all in the name of family honour.
He cleared his throat with a grisly expectoration and I realized he’d been
addressing me. I snapped out of my reverie and peeped around the side of
the canvas. I’ve been told I peep rather well.
‘I do beg your pardon, I was absorbed in the curve of your ear-lobes.’
‘I was suggesting dinner, sir,’ said Supple, flipping a half-hunter watch
from his waistcoat. ‘To celebrate the successful conclusion of me
picture.’
‘I should be delighted,’ I lied. ‘But I feel it only right to warn you
that I have a peculiar horror of artichokes.’
The Honourable Everard Supple rose from the doubtful Louis Quinze into
which I’d plonked him, sending a whisper of paint-flakes to the
dust-sheeted floor.
‘We might try me club, then,’ he suggested, brushing the sleeve of his
frock-coat. ‘Or do you have somewhere you artistic-types favour?’
I rose and ran one of my long, bony hands through my hair. They are long,
white and bony, I cannot deny it, but very fine. Waistcoat and face
flecked with paint, I shrugged.
‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ I said. ‘Charming little spot in Rosebery
Avenue. Come back at eight and we’ll drive over.’ So saying, I suddenly
turned the easel on its squeaking castors, revealing the portrait to the
golden light washing through the skylight. ‘Behold! Your immortality!’
Supple creaked forward on his expensive boots and fixed a monocle, rather
unnecessarily, into the orbit of his false eye. He frowned, cocked his
head to left and right and grimaced.
‘Well, I suppose you get what you pay for, eh, Mr Box?’
My name is Lucifer Box, but I imagine you know that. Whether these
scribblings eventually form the core of my memoirs or are found secreted
in oilskin wrappers at the bottom of a lavatory cistern years after my
demise, I have no doubt that, by the time you read this, I will be most
terribly famous.
I handed Supple his soft kid-gloves with as much brusqueness as I could
muster. ‘You don’t like it?’
The old fool shrugged. ‘Just not sure it’s terribly like me.’
I helped him into his overcoat. ‘On the contrary, sir, I believe I have
caught you.’
I smiled what my friends call, naturally enough, the smile of Lucifer.
Ah! London in the summertime! Hellish, as any resident will tell you.
Even in those first few innocent years of the new century it smelled of
roasting excrement. So it was with ‘kerchiefs pressed to mouths that
Supple and I entered the dining rooms I had selected. They were alarmingly
unfashionable but, in the long light of dusk, the white-panelled plainness
could have been called Vermeeresque. Not by me, you understand. A flypaper
above the hearth twisted lazily, amber and black like a screw of ear-wax.
This place, I told Supple, was owned and run by a woman called Delilah
whose crippled daughter I had once painted as a favour.
‘She was not, perhaps, the bonniest thing,’ I confided as we settled down
to eat. ‘Lost both hands to a wasting disease and had them replaced with
wooden ones. And – oh! – her little legs were in horrid iron rings.’ I
shook my head despairingly. ‘Ought to have been exposed at birth, her
father said.’
‘Nay!’ cried Supple.
‘Aye! But her dear mother loved the little mite. When I came to paint the
portrait I did my best to make little Ida look like an angel.
Prophetically enough. Though it turned out she had some pluck.’
Supple wiped soup from his pinkish lips. Sentimental old Victorian that he
was, a tear sprang to his one good eye. Most probably the Death of Little
Nell had been like mother’s milk to him.
‘Poor Ida,’ I sighed, picking idly at a chicken leg. ‘Grabbed from her
bath-chair by a gang of dacoits and sold into bondage.’
Supple shook his head mournfully. No doubt an image of the doe-eyed
cripple had flashed into his silly old brain. His fingers tightened on the
fish-knife. ‘Go on. What happened?’
‘She made a bolt for it, God bless her,’ I continued. ‘Took off across the
rooftops with the fiends in hot pursuit.’
Blink-blink. The jade glass eye regarded me steadily. ‘And then?’
I closed my eyes and steepled my fingers. ‘She got as far as Wapping
before her brittle little legs gave out. She fell through the roof of a
sugar merchant’s and into a vat of treacle. Of course, with those wooden
hands she could get no purchase on the rim and she drowned. Very, very
slowly.’
Drinking the last of an indifferent burgundy with an air of finality, I
clapped my hands and turned the conversation towards more cheerful
matters. Now I had Supple’s trust, it was time to betray that of others. I
wanted the practice.
I regaled Supple with what I know to be an inexhaustible supply of
anecdotes (not many of them true, certainly not the best ones) concerning
the greatish and goodish who have paid yours truly not nearly enough to be
immortalized in oils.
‘You are very indiscreet, sir,’ laughed the old man, cheering up. ‘I am
glad not to have confided any of my secrets in you!’
I smiled my wide smile.
Supple, for his part, talked at length about his time in South Africa and
the great adventure a young man like me might have there. He told me about
his own daughter – a great joy to the old man by his account – and I
nodded and smiled with the air of sagacity I like to assume for such
occasions. I put on a good show of being fascinated by his colourful
account of dawn over the Transvaal as I took out my watch and stared at
the second hand racing over the porcelain dial. I could hear the soft
action of the tiny spring.
It was midway between the fish course and the pudding, as Supple opened
his mouth to begin another interminable tale, that I did the decent thing
and shot him.
A stain spread across the breast of his stiff white waistcoat like poppy
petals emerging through the snow. How I wish I’d had my sketch-book with
me! The scene was a riot of crimson possibilities.
There, now. I’ve shocked you, haven’t I? What the deuce can Mr Box be up
to? Are customers in such abundant supply? Well, you’ll just have to be
patient. All good things et cetera.
Supple’s face, never particularly smashing as you may have gathered, froze
in an expression of pained surprise and a little bubble of red spit
frolicked over his lips. He slid forward on to the table where his teeth
met the rim of his pudding bowl with a shocking crack, like the knees of
an out-of-practice supplicant.
I watched smoke curl from the end of the snub-barrelled pistol I’d used,
then replaced the weapon under a jelly mould – silver and shaped like a
sleeping hare – where it had been until recently ensconced.
Lighting a cigarette, I re-pocketed my watch and, rising, dabbed a napkin
at the corners of my full-lipped mouth (it’s a very pretty mouth – more of
it later). Taking up a dessert spoon, I dug it into Supple’s left socket
and carefully removed the old fellow’s glass eye. It popped out with just
a little poking and lay nestled in my palm like a gull’s egg. I looked at
the iris and smiled. It was just the shade of green I had in mind for a
new tie and now I had a match for my tailor. What a happy accident! I
slipped the eye into my waistcoat and draped the napkin carelessly over
the dead man’s head.
A large and ugly mirror hung over the fireplace of the dark little room. I
checked my appearance in it (very acceptable), adjusting my stance to
avoid the mottled edges of the glass, which tended to obscure the
wonderful cut of my best tail-coat and pulled the tatty bell-rope that
hung close by.
The doors were opened almost at once by a huge woman in a
daffodil-coloured frock. Her gin-flushed cheeks, abutting a long, blotchy
nose gave her face the appearance of bruised knackers in a harness.
‘Good evening, Delilah,’ I said, with just the slightest turn from the
mirror.
‘Hevening, sir,’ said the drudge. She shuffled a little awkwardly, glanced
at the table and cleared her throat.
‘Heverything in horder, sir?’
I turned, cigarette between teeth, adjusting my white tie with both hands.
‘Hmm? Oh yes. The burgundy was deadly and the partridge a trifle high.
Other than that a most satisfactory evening.’
Delilah nodded her massive head. ‘And the hother gentleman, sir?’
‘Will be leaving us now, thank you.’
Delilah thrust both mitt-like hands under the armpits of the Honourable
Everard Supple and dragged the one-eyed corpse with apparent
effortlessness towards the doors. I hopped athletically over the dead
man’s legs, sweeping up my cloak and topper from a chair.
‘How’s little Ida?’ I asked, clapping the hat to my head.
‘Very good, thankyou for hasking, sir. No doubt be seeing you soon, sir,’
grunted Delilah.
‘No doubt,’ I replied. ‘Ta, ta.’
I stepped over the threshold of the mean little dwelling and out into the
sultry evening. Thinking I deserved a little treat, I hailed a hansom.
‘The Pomegranate Rooms,’ I said to the driver. Work was over for the
moment. Time to play.
Twenty minutes later, I was dropped a short distance from said night-spot
and made my way towards its mouldering wedding-cake facade. The slattern
on the door opened it a crack and treated me to a quick view of her form.
Poured carelessly into a garish oriental gown she had the look of a
pox-ravaged sultana – both the potentess and the dried fruit.
I slipped through the grimy doorway.
‘Any riff-raff in tonight, my sweet?’ I enquired.
‘Plenty,’ she gurgled, taking my hat and cloak as persons on doors are
wont to do.
‘Splendid!’
The Pomegranate Rooms were small, sweltering and poorly lit by gas sconces
stained tobacco-yellow, lending the whole a colour not unlike the bitter
pith of the titular fruit. Rickety wooden tables littered the crimson
carpets; spilled champagne formed great fizzing puddles in every shadowed
corner. Each table was occupied by rather more patrons than was good for
it; the majority of the sweating men in evening dress, or the remains of
it, with a quantity of backless white waistcoats slung over the chairs;
the women, and there were many of them, less respectably dressed, some
scarcely dressed at all. It was all quite ghastly and I was very fond of
it.
Such establishments erupt on to the bloated body of the capital with the
unerring regularity of a clap-rash but the Pomegranate Rooms were
something of a special case. A hangover from the fever-dream that had been
the Naughty Nineties, I had once, within its stuffy, cigar-fume-drenched
walls, espied our present monarch being ‘attended to’ by a French
noblewoman of uncertain virtue.
I dropped into a chair at the only free table and ordered up some plonk. A
fat bawd close by, rouged like an ingenue undertaker’s first case, began
at once to make eyes at me. I examined my nails until she lost interest. I
cannot abide the obese and in a whore it is surely tantamount to
unprofessionalism. Her chums were not much better.
I ate something to take away the taste of the champagne and then smoked a
cigarette to take away the taste of the food. I tried not to make it too
obvious that I was on my lonesome. It is a terrible thing to dine alone.
One stinks of desperation.
With as much nonchalance as I could affect, I examined the play of the
light on my champagne glass whilst surreptitiously sneaking looks at the
patrons in the hope of spotting something pretty.
And then, without any ado whatsoever, a young woman glided into the seat
opposite me. In a white satin dress with pearls at her throat and rather
gorgeous blonde hair piled high she looked like one of Sargent’s slightly
elongated females. I felt a stir down below that could have been the
beginnings of indigestion but probably had more to do with the way her
dewy eyes were fixed on me.
I lifted the plonk bottle and my eyebrows enquiringly.
‘You’re rather out of place here, my dear,’ I said, as I poured her a
glass. ‘I should say the Pomegranate Rooms rarely see the likes of you.’
She inclined her head slightly. ‘Got any fags?’
A little taken aback, I nodded and took out my cigarette case. It is flat
and well-polished with my initials in Gothic script upon it, yet it has
never been called upon to save my life by absorbing the impact of a
bullet. That’s what servants are for.
‘Armenian or Georgian?’ I enquired.
She took out one of the long black specimens that cram the case’s
right-hand side and struck a match off the heel of her elegant shoe,
lighting the cigarette in one rapid movement.
Her brazen behaviour delighted me.
‘Lor, I was dying for that,’ said the vision, taking in great gulps of
smoke. ‘Mind if I take one for later?’
I waved a hand. ‘Be my guest.’
She scooped up a dozen or so cigarettes and stuffed them inside her
corset.
‘You’re full of surprises,’ I managed.
‘Ain’t I, though?’ She laughed and gave a hoarse cough. ‘You on your own?’
My performance had been penetrated. I poured myself another drink. ‘Alas.’
She looked me up and down with what I can only describe as sauciness.
‘That’s a shame. You’re a looker.’
I could not deny it.
‘I like a tall gent,’ she continued. ‘You a foreigner?’
I ran a hand through my long black hair. ‘My complexion owes much to my
Franco-Slavic mama and little to my British papa. My waist is all my own
work.’
‘Hm. They must’ve been proud of having such a bonny babe.’
‘A baroness once told me that she could cut her wrists on my cheek-bones.’
‘Lot of girls died for you have they?’
‘Only those who cannot live for me.’
She rested her chin on a gloved hand. ‘You got cold eyes, though. Blue as
poison-bottles.’
‘Really, you must desist or I shall consider running away with myself.’ I
placed my hand on hers. ‘What’s your name?’
She shook her head, blowing out a cloud of smoke and smiling. ‘I don’t
like mine. I’d much rather hear yours.’
I fiddled lightly with my cuff-link. ‘Gabriel,’ I said, adopting one of my
noms de guerre. ‘Gabriel Ratchitt.’
The nameless lovely took this in. ‘That’s an angel’s name.’
‘I know, my dear,’ came my murmur. ‘And I fear I may be falling.’
(Continues…)
Scribner
Copyright © 2004
Mark Gatiss
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-7432-8394-5
Excerpted from The Vesuvius Club
by Mark Gatiss
Copyright & copy 2004 by Mark Gatiss.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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