Teena: A House of Ill Repute (22 page)

'I think you must be raving mad!' Anne-Marie exclaimed. We were finally on the way back home early on the Sunday evening, and she had unscrewed and removed our gags as Carmen finally removed hers. The hours we spent with our poor jaws distended had taken their toll, and she knew we would be feeling it, as she was herself.

However, the three of us remained inside the doll skins, for Carmen's final twist of devilment had been to insist we dress over them and drive off in the car, waved off by a gaggle of our earlier admirers. There was nothing we could do to extricate ourselves until we reached the sanctuary of Anne-Marie's house, for we would either have to find somewhere discreet enough for us to strip off and remove the latex suits completely, or else we would have to just take off the heads, which would then hang under our chins, complete with hair, and that would be even more likely to draw attention to us than a fleeting glimpse through the car windscreen of three females with big eyes and O-shaped mouths. I just hoped we wouldn't be stopped by a police patrol car.

'If anything happens,' Anne-Marie growled, 'we'll just say we've been to a fancy dress party and we're driving back like this to win a bet, okay?'

Andrea and I nodded; there wasn't much else we could do anyway. Besides, we weren't breaking any laws, so it would only be an embarrassment thing.

None of us really wanted to talk about our respective ordeals at the hands of our devious hostess and so, in an effort to distract us all, I began bringing Anne-Marie and Andrea up to date on my latest time jaunts. However, I had only got as far as outlining my plan for trying to turn the tables on Hacklebury when Andrea almost drove us into a ditch in astonishment.

'You're mad,' she repeated. 'The man's a monster and Megan is lethal. You should just concentrate on getting as far away from the pair of them as possible. Arundel is not much more than one hundred and twenty miles from Hacklebury's place. Try Yorkshire, Scotland, France even!'

I shook my head. 'If they're looking for us, they'll find us,' I replied. 'They'll start with London, if only because Angelina's family had some contacts and even some distant relatives there, which I know because Indira told me.'

'A young woman travelling with a bloody great Viking and an Indian girl are hardly anonymous.'

'Plenty of people had Indian servants then, you'd be surprised,' I said. 'Besides, you're forgetting, they don't know where to start looking and a hundred odd miles might not sound much to us nowadays, but back then there wasn't that much of a rail network, no telephones and almost no photographs to show around. The best Hacklebury might have would be some sort of portrait of me, but I don't think there was one. And we already know he's not exactly flush with money, so he's hardly in a position to hire an army of private detectives to search for us. It'll take them months, maybe even years.'

'That's exactly my point,' Anne-Marie persisted. 'If it's that hard, just keep getting further and further away and eventually he'll have to give up.'

'He won't give up,' I replied grimly, 'and even if he wanted to, Megan Crowthorne wouldn't let him. She'd keep searching if it took fifty years and she'd find us in the end, I know it.'

'But you're talking about actually bringing that bastard to you!' Anne-Marie exclaimed. 'That's as good as committing suicide.'

'Not if I do this right,' I reassured her. 'Hacklebury won't have any idea that it's me and neither would he expect it to be. Like you, he'll think we'll be trying to keep as far away from him as possible, so when he gets his invite to Lady Sadie's establishment - and it'll come from someone who shares his tastes and whom he trusts - he'll come a-running like a puppy dog chasing a kitten. Except when he gets there, he'll find the kitten is a cat and that she has nasty claws.'

'Lady Sadie?' Anne-Marie burst out laughing and the car swerved alarmingly yet again. 'You've gotta be kidding! Talk about a rotten pun.'

'Yeah, well,' I grinned, 'it'll be lost on him. The Marquis de Sade's writings didn't get that much exposure until a lot later, and Sacher-Masoch couldn't have been much more than a toddler in eighteen thirty-nine. It's just my little joke.'

'Well, let's hope Hacklebury doesn't have the last laugh,' Anne-Marie muttered. 'You're playing with fire here, my girl.'

'I'm being very careful, but I need to run a few ideas and thoughts past you and as quickly as possible. I reckon I've been a fast learner, and so are my three girls, but I want to make sure I've thought of everything so our trap ends up with just the right bait in it. On the other hand, now that I've got everything more or less set up, maybe I won't be needed back there, especially as Angelina seems to have some idea of what I'm doing, and Indira is well in on the act now.'

'Yeah?' Andrea cut in. 'And like you really believe that?'

I sighed, closed my eyes and settled back in my seat. 'No,' I said. 'No, I don't. I'll be going back there all right, and unless something's suddenly changing in all this, I shan't have to wait very long, either.'

Our first client did not come to Arundel. A letter arrived at the shoemaker's asking if we could supply the services discussed earlier, but at an address in Chichester. The note went on to explain the gentleman in question, a Mister Archibald Henderbrick, who had rented a house from friends of friends in order to escape the unpleasant winter atmosphere in the capital. Together with a companion, he would be happy to receive us for the fourth weekend in October. I showed the letter to Erik and read it out loud to him, in case his grasp of written English left any gaps for misunderstanding.

'What do you think?' I asked.

He shrugged his massive shoulders. 'Careful we should be,' he replied slowly. 'Better it might be if I went with two of the girls first and around the place looked.'

'You don't think it might be some sort of set-up, a trap, I mean?' We had to be wary of anything that might be a cover for Hacklebury and Megan, even though I remained convinced I would somehow receive warning if they were getting near to finding us, and the dream flashes had ceased since my last glimpse of the poor girl who was now being held in my stead.

'Dealing with strange people we are,' Erik said. 'Possible could almost anything be.'

I hesitated, considering the possibilities. I had found little in Archibald Henderbrick that was threatening when I first interviewed him; in fact, he was a quite unremarkable individual, in his late thirties, I guessed, somewhat overweight and with thinning, sandy-coloured hair and a ridiculously straggling moustache that was unevenly trimmed. He had money, and he would need it at the prices I had quoted, but it came from a doting, aging mother whose family had made their fortunes trading with the New World and, reading between the lines, probably shipping slaves from Africa to the Southern States. He had spent some time in Georgia himself, he told me, and I guessed he probably developed a taste for playing master and slave by experiencing it for real there.

'See if you can find out anything about this address,' I instructed Erik.

He took the single sheet, folded it away and headed off to find one of the two saddle horses we had bought only two days earlier and which we were now stabling temporarily in the old barn. He rode off immediately and did not return until after nightfall.

'The house is belonging to a Mr and Mrs Henry Strode,' he informed me. 'Mrs Strode is American and to New York they have gone for most of the winter. Doing this they have been for three years now,' he added. 'Henderbrick is known to a grocer and a wine merchant. Every winter he is at the house while his friends away are and also visiting them during the summer is. Then I calling on him was.'

I raised an eyebrow. 'Was he surprised?'

Erik shook his head. 'No.' He grinned. 'Expecting a reply he said he was. He also was saying that the partner is a new friend and not wanting to bring him yet to Madame's establishment was he, not sure of how to trust him as he is.'

'Oh no!' I exclaimed. 'Did you meet this friend?' Thoughts that this unknown friend might be Hacklebury immediately crossed my mind.

Erik shook his head. 'No, but describing him the gentleman was and it is not who thinking it might be you are. Only young, this one is, about twenty-two years and so high.' He illustrated with his hand at a height of about five feet six, which was definitely not friend Gregory. 'Also, his friends of the house have tastes most similar.' He grinned. 'Showing me he was, a large cellar.'

'A dungeon?'

'Yes, with barred walls and places for chaining and punishing. Many straps, chains, whips, most impressive. You would approve, I am thinking.'

'So he seems genuine enough,' I mused. 'Fair enough. Let him know that we accept.'

Erik nodded and his grin widened. 'Already I have done so,' he replied, and then reached beneath his jacket and drew out a small leather bag. 'Part payment this is,' he said, opening the end of the bag and tipping the contents into the palm of his hand before showing it to me.

I saw the unmistakeable glint of gold. 'There must be twenty guineas there!' I gasped.

He chuckled. 'Five and twenty, and five and twenty more afterwards.'

'But that's a lot more than we discussed originally,' I said incredulously. Fifty guineas was a small fortune by the standards of the day.

Erik made a sound in the back of his throat. 'To travel to Chichester is inconvenient,' he replied. 'Six people in the coach...' He shook his head. 'Most inconvenient.'

'So you've negotiated expenses as well?' I laughed.

He tipped the gold coins carefully back into the bag and drew the string tight again. 'Yes,' he said, and patted his left pocket. I heard a muffled jingling sound. 'Five pounds I have here.'

'On top of the other?' I was flabbergasted. 'I thought—'

'So did he,' Erik said, 'but firm I was. The ladies, I said, would not want to be travelling and entertaining on the same day.' This time, I noticed, Erik's English phrasing was immaculate and I realised he must have practiced it carefully for Henderbrick's benefit. 'Therefore, rooms I have reserved in a hotel nearby there and we shall travel on the Friday. Overnight we rest and back to the hotel on Sunday morning. A friend I now have at this hotel, and if returning we are not, he will raise the alarm.'

Ah, a friend by means of a healthy bribe, I realised. Clever Erik. Slow of speech, lumbering in action, but I made a further note not to underestimate whatever brain lay inside that broad skull.

'You assured me that your man would find them and yet we still have no clue as to their whereabouts, do we?' Hacklebury glared across his desk, but Megan Crowthorne was unconcerned by his obvious anger.

'Gordon Marjoribanks has three men in addition to himself working on this,' she replied calmly, 'but there are a lot of places for them to look. So far they have concentrated on London and Birmingham, but they could have gone further than that, possibly even across the Channel into France.'

'Four men to search an entire country and maybe even half a continent?' Hacklebury snorted. 'How in the name of hell does the fool expect to find them like that? Finding a needle in a haystack would be easier, I venture. He needs twenty or thirty men out there looking, or he'll never find them.'

'And for twenty or thirty men, he would also need six or seven times as much money,' Megan said. 'I'm sure I don't need to remind you of the perilous state of your finances?'

'Damn it! Of course not!' Hacklebury slammed the palm of his hand down onto the inlaid leather surface of the desk. 'And d'you think it doesn't grind on me that there is so much money just a fingertip away and I cannot touch it yet?'

'Of course I do understand.' Megan nodded, her tone almost sympathetic suddenly. 'But patience, my dearest one, patience. There is not long to go now. Her birthday is just before Christmas, and then the balance of the inheritance passes to her, and through her to you. Then we can afford to hire an entire army to find the other little bitch and that treacherous bastard Erik.'

'Yes, Erik.' Hacklebury's features formed themselves into a thoughtful arrangement, his eyebrows beetling together. 'Yes, when we get our hands on him, I think we shall have to find a special way of punishing him.' He looked up and smiled, but there was no true mirth in the expression. 'To begin with,' he hissed, 'I shall take the greatest pleasure in castrating the great ox and feeding his genitalia to the girl without telling her what she's eating. We'll save that information until she's cleared her plate, I think.'

'Revenge is generally regarded as a dish best served cold,' Megan chuckled, 'but in this case, perhaps the dish should be served piping hot!'

Despite having apparently dozed off in the car, I was feeling completely exhausted by the time we got to Anne-Marie's, but if I was expecting to strip, shower and sleep, I was quickly disillusioned. Before I could even think of trying to remove my doll exterior, Anne-Marie had grabbed me and cuffed my wrists behind my back.

'What—?' I started, but she held a hand up to my open mouth to silence me.

'I like the pair of you like this,' she said, 'though I don't think the image really suits
me
, so while I have myself a bath and find something more suitable, you two can just wait down here for me. Andrea! Get yourself back in here, you little slut!'