The Glass House (9 page)

The few candles in tarnished sconces threw
off a only a feeble light, and the gloomy evening made the
dark-paneled front hall darker still. The doorman led us up a
staircase that twisted round on itself to a wide hall containing
one double door.

Laughter and voices poured from behind the
door--talking, querying, pontificating--nothing I would not hear in
any club or tavern. Our guide pushed open the doors and ushered us
inside, and at last I understood why the ordinary looking building
was called The Glass House.

We stood in a well-furnished, softly carpeted
room as dark as the hall below, its walls lined with drapes, brown
velvet and heavy. One curtain stood open to reveal a window, but it
looked into another room, not outside. The room beyond was dark,
the glass reflecting the light of the front room, much as Lady
Breckenridge's carriage window had reflected only her own face. I
assumed that the other curtains hid windows, the room surrounded on
three sides by them.

Men lounged on Turkish couches and armchairs,
talking, smoking, drinking brandy or claret, passing snuff boxes
back and forth. Card tables occupied one half of the room, where a
dozen gentlemen played whist and piquet, no doubt for high
stakes.

A smattering of women roamed the crowd. They
were, to a body, beautiful of figure, and wore their expensive silk
gowns with grace. Their jewels had been chosen with taste, their
hair carefully dressed. They were nothing like the painted girls of
Covent Garden or even actresses like Marianne. These were
courtesans of the highest order--experienced, well-bred,
beautiful.

I'd met a few of the gentlemen here before,
including an infantry officer, but I did not really know them. All
recognized Grenville. He glided languidly into the room, embracing
his man-of-fashion persona.

I did not see Lord Barbury among them.
Perhaps he truly was beside himself with grief, as both Grenville
and Lady Breckenridge had indicated, and home.

I wondered why this house had such an
unsavory reputation. I saw nothing that I would not find in any
gaming hell in St. James's, although perhaps the ladies enticing
gentlemen to play cards here were a bit cleaner. Gentlemen
regularly brought their mistresses to the hells, and the mistresses
gambled as avidly as the gentlemen.

"It seems rather ordinary to me," I said to
Grenville in a low voice. "Why would Peaches want to come
here?"

"If she did like to come here, it does not
say much for her character," Grenville said darkly. "Come, I will
show you."

I followed him to the first heavy curtain,
which lay beyond the card players, who took no notice of us.
Grenville raised the velvet drape. The window looked into a small
lighted room, cluttered with chairs and sofas and tables arranged
in no pattern I could discern. Other than the furniture, the room
was empty.

"Nothing there," Grenville said, and moved to
the next window.

Behind that curtain we found gentlemen
gathered around a hazard table while a lady dressed in a corset,
knee-length skirt, and riding boots retrieved the thrown dice and
handed it back to the caster. Her face dripped perspiration, and
the muscles of her shoulders played as she reached for the
dice.

Grenville dropped that curtain. "There is
also a room for faro," he remarked, "and other more chancy
games."

"So, it is a gaming hell."

"Somewhat." Grenville raised the next
curtain. "They also have opium, if you like, and of course,
this."

He gestured to the window. The room beyond
was small, and only a chaise longue and a chair reposed in it. A
lady lounged in a bored manner on the chaise, an open book on her
lap. She wore a wig of bright red curls, and had a pointed, but
pretty face. "You choose your vice behind the glass," Grenville
said, "then give the house master your bid. You may buy only one
vice per night, so choose well."

I didn't yet see the attraction. "Why not
simply go to the usual gaming rooms? You can find hazard and
willing ladies there."

"Not ladies such as these," Grenville said,
nodding at the reclining woman. "They are courtesans who once
enticed Napoleon and the king of Prussia and the Austrian emperor.
They are the highest of the high."

"And Peaches was a second-rate actress. Why
should she want to come here with such ladies present? Why should
she want Lord Barbury here?"

"I have no idea. Barbury told me that the
proprietor provided them a private room. He and Peaches never came
down to the windowed rooms. It is certainly a house her husband
could never enter."

"Hmm," I answered, not satisfied.

Surely Lord Barbury could have found a better
place in which to meet his ladybird. I knew that if I'd had a
pretty young lady with whom I kept company, I'd want a cozy,
private place to be with her, not a room in this rather seedy hell.
But then, Peaches had craved excitement. Perhaps she'd not been
satisfied with an ordinary nest.

"The Glass House is a novelty," Grenville
said, dropping the curtain. "It will wane, as all novelties do. For
now, it is a place to see and be seen. Because I have come tonight,
it will experience a new surge of popularity."

He spoke in a matter-of-fact voice, without a
trace of pomposity. But he was correct. Any place Grenville visited
instantly became the height of fashion.

Grenville lifted the drape of the next window
to find the blank back of another drape behind it. He released it
at once. When I looked a question, he said, "When a room has been
taken by a patron, the curtains inside may be closed, or left open,
as the buyer dictates. Some like to be watched."

I frowned my distaste. We moved down the
walls and looked into other rooms.

Grenville hadn't exaggerated. Every vice was
available. Some of the things I saw fueled my growing rage. I would
be certain to mention this house to a reformer I knew; that is, if
I did not begin breaking the windows myself.

"Have you found something to your liking,
gentlemen?"

A small, plump man with a sharp nose and
round brown eyes looked up at us, a salesman's smile on his face.
His nose bore a scar from a long-gone boil, but his suit was fine
and well tailored.

Grenville regarded him with a look I’d come
to recognize as true disdain. Grenville sometimes feigned the look
for the benefit of his audience, but he genuinely disliked this
man, whoever he was.

The man's dark eyes glittered with a cold
light even as he fawned at us. "My name is Kensington. Emile
Kensington." He held out a hand.

His palm was warm and dry, though his
handshake was a bit limp. "Room number five is quite intriguing,"
he said.

I expected Grenville to say something, to go
along with our pretense. Instead, Grenville stared at the man with
cold annoyance. He was angry, as angry as I was, but I needed to
keep to my purpose.

"I am interested in a woman called Peaches,"
I said.

The man jumped. I swore I saw his feet leave
the ground. He pondered his answer then fixed on a simple truth.
"She is not here."

"I know that," I said. "She died two days
ago."

Kensington's mouth dropped open. For a
moment, pure astonishment crossed his face, then his glittering
stare returned. "Died?"

"Found in the river," I said. "She came here
often, I am told. Was she here on Monday?"

Kensington's eyes narrowed as he looked me
over again. "Who are you, a Runner?"

"An acquaintance of Lord Barbury. He is, as
you can imagine, deeply distressed."

I watched the thoughts dance behind his eyes.
A woman who came here regularly, dead. Her lover, a powerful man.
Trouble for The Glass House?

"I am sad to hear of his loss," Kensington
said.

"Indeed," I said, unable to keep the chill
from my voice. "Had she come here Monday?"

"I don't think so. I don't remember."

"But she did used to come here?" Grenville
asked. "I believe you provided her with a private room."

Kensington looked back and forth between us
and wet his lips. "There was no harm in it. She wanted somewhere to
meet Lord Barbury, safe from her husband."

"And they paid you well for it, I'd wager," I
said.

Kensington looked offended. "Not at all.
Amelia--Peaches--and I are old acquaintances. I knew her when she
was a girl, just come to London to make her fortune. She wanted to
bring Lord Barbury here, and I was willing to oblige. They enjoyed
it."

I wondered about that very much. If the house
had been Peaches' choice, because she knew this Kensington, why on
earth had Barbury gone along with it?

Kensington's gaze shifted again as though
he'd argued with himself and at last reached a conclusion. "Ah, I
remember now, gentleman. She did come here Monday. In the
afternoon."

His memory was very convenient, I thought.
"Are you certain?"

"Yes. I had forgotten, what with one thing
and another. She must have been at the laughing gas again, because
she was in high spirits."

"What time was that?"

"Around four or so, I believe."

He was a little off; Lady Breckenridge put
Peaches leaving Inglethorpe's shortly after four, and she could not
have reached here for another half hour.

"When did she leave?" I asked.

"As to that, I have no idea. I did not see
her go. Never saw her again after she went up to the room."

"Which I would like to see," I said.

Kensington looked distressed. "No one goes
above this floor, sir."

"Except Lord Barbury, and Peaches, and you,"
I answered, my voice hard. "And now I will."

Kensington opened his mouth to further
protest, then closed it. I must have looked quite angry, and
although Grenville's walking stick had no sword in it, it was made
of ebony, hard and strong. Kensington could always call for the
ruffians that every hell employed to keep order, but not before I
could swing the stick.

Finally, he shrugged, produced a key, and led
us to a door behind one of the curtains.

That door led to a dimly lit hall and a
narrow flight of stairs. At the next landing, Kensington unlocked a
door, lifted a taper from one of the sconces in the stairwell, and
ushered us into a cold chamber.

The neat plainness of this room contrasted
sharply with the tawdry finery on the floor below. The chamber held
a bed hung with yellow brocade draperies, a dressing table, and two
comfortable-looking chairs. The room was dark now and fireless, but
I imagined it could be cheerful. Here, if Kensington spoke the
truth, Peaches and Lord Barbury had carried on their liaison.

I moved to the dressing table and began
opening the drawers. Kensington looked distressed, but he made no
move to stop me.

As I expected, I found nothing. Kensington
would have had ample time to remove anything from this room he
wanted no one to see. Grenville looked over my shoulder as I pulled
from the dressing table a silver hairbrush, a handful of silk
ribbons, and a reticule.

I opened the reticule, but found little of
interest. A viniagrette, which a lady would open and apply to her
nose when she felt faint, a bit of lace, a comb, and a tiny bottle
of perfume.

Grenville lifted the perfume bottle and
worked open the stopper. The odor of sweet musk bathed my nostrils.
"Expensive," he pronounced, then returned the stopper to the
bottle. "A gift from Barbury?"

"Probably." I returned everything to the
reticule.

We found nothing more in the drawers.
Kensington stood inside the doorway, watching us, looking more
curious than alarmed.

"Why did she come here Monday?" I asked him
as Grenville closed the dressing table.

Kensington shrugged. "Why shouldn't she? She
was probably meeting her lordship."

"She'd made an appointment to meet him much
later that night," I said. "Yet you say she was here after four in
the afternoon. Why should she have come?"

Kensington hesitated, and I watched him
choose his words carefully. "Gentlemen, as I told you, I'd known
Amelia Chapman a very long time. She was a young woman who found
life tedious, and it was no joy for her being married to a plodding
gent like Chapman. She did not like to go home, and I sympathized.
She'd retreat here when her husband grew too dull for her, and I
was happy to let her. I believe she had told her husband some
rigmarole about visiting a friend in the country, in any case, so
she would not be expected home. She had done such a thing
before."

"Did she meet anyone else here that
afternoon?" I asked. "Someone not Lord Barbury?"

"Now, as to that, I do not know. I told you,
I saw her, but I did not see her after she came up to her room, and
she was quite alone then. And I have no idea when she departed. You
may, of course, ask the footman who opens the door."

I certainly would ask him.

"Now, gentlemen." Kensington rubbed his
hands. "I have been very good natured, letting you rummage through
my rooms and ask about my friends. But this is a house of
business."

Grenville gave him a look of undisguised
disgust. He opened his mouth to denounce him, to tell him we would
not stay another moment, but I forestalled him with a look. Another
woman of the house might have seen Peaches that day, might know who
she had met. Peaches had died here, or very soon after leaving
here, and I wanted to speak to anyone who had seen her.

"Please," I said to Kensington. "Choose a
room for us."

Kensington smiled. It was not a nice smile.
"I have just the thing, Captain. Allow me to prepare." He gave me a
little bow and glided away, leaving the door open behind him.

Once we heard him close the door at the
bottom of the stairs Grenville turned to me. "Why on earth did you
tell him that? I'd have thought you'd want nothing more to do with
this place."