And now, as he stepped into the room, he had the sense that the darkness here had been waiting for him. There seemed to be an eagerness contained in it.
Of course, he was enough of a psychologist to know that these were his own feelings he was projecting on to it. But that was the thing about the darkness, the beauty of it. It was a fantastic receptacle of projections.
He shivered. The room was cold, icily cold. But it was more than that. It was as if something had come out of the darkness and gripped him.
For a moment, it seemed that he might lose his nerve.
But then he remembered why he was doing this. And how far he had come, all he had been through, to get to this point. He reminded himself, too, of what would be the consequences of this act. Of everything that he stood to gain.
He felt his hidden smile return.
A fine layer of moonlight lay over everything, like a midnight frost. He could just about make out the grid of drawer-fronts that filled one wall of the room.
The first one he chose was empty. Wisps of refrigerated vapour teased him. The next several he tried were the same. He had not reckoned on this; that he might make his raid on a night when the darkness had nothing to offer him.
He opened and shut drawers with mounting panic, like a mad organist working the stops of a giant organ. The silence was shattered by the metallic squeaking and slamming.
Finally he came to a drawer that resisted his first effort to open it. It took both hands and the weight of his shoulders to ease it open. It gave a screech of protest as it shifted on its mechanism. The released vapour rushed upwards as if desperate to make its escape.
In the moonlight, the sheet that concealed the drawer’s contents appeared like a flow of mercury. He studied the mounds inside the drawer, the contours of the body beneath.
His hand shook as he lifted the sheet.
TWO
Peregrine Alexander Launcelot Dunwich, Baron Dunwich of Medmenham, held open a copy of that morning’s Times. He lifted the pages of the broadsheet to block out the sunlight from the window, then settled back in the winged armchair to study the markets.
Momentarily blinded by the direct glare of the sun, he perceived the shadowed paper as a charcoal negative of itself. It took his eye a moment to adapt, a moment of blankness.
His mind, as it often did, resorted to a lascivious magic lantern show of remembered pleasures: a breast, a nipple, thighs parting, the exquisite curvature of the mons pubis topped with those plush scented curls, beneath which … the entrance to paradise! The phantom images provoked the physical responses associated with them. His lungs seemed to expand, as if filled with a volatile, intoxicating gas. His heart quickened. His mouth flooded with saliva at the thought of licking that questing nipple. His fingertips tingled as he imagined them delving into the gleaming moist cleft. He felt the pressure of a rigid erection tent his trousers and shook down the newspaper to hide his embarrassment.
He did what any man in his position would do. He cleared his throat. And slyly glanced about to check that there was no servant there to witness his priapism.
But why should he be ashamed of himself? He delighted in his virility. It amazed him to think that after all the cavortings of the previous night, he still had it in him to deliver a vigorous cockstand. It was a pity that Emily, or Amanda, or whatever the whore’s name had been, was not there to relieve him of it.
He tried to focus on the market prices, to no avail. The rounded numerals brought to mind luscious female rotundity, while those consisting of straight lines reminded him of his own stiffened rod. Even if he said it himself, he had to be the most satyric man he knew. A veritable pagan. A goat of a man.
But it was a devil of a job to concentrate. If he carried on at this rate, it was going to be hard going at the ministry this morning. Unless he resorted to the practice of his youth and took himself in hand in the lavatory of his club. It was simply a question of hygiene, nothing shameful about it at all. A man couldn’t be expected to keep his mind on his work if he had a heavy load of spunk to discharge. And with all the rumblings from Germany, not to mention the troubles in Ireland, he was going to need a clear head today and in the days ahead.
That was why he had taken to associating with ladies of the night in the first place. He had sought out prostitutes because he believed that his inability to concentrate was putting his country at risk. Damn it all, it was his patriotic duty to frequent brothels. Of course, there were risks involved. The thought of contracting a vile disease horrified him. He knew too that he was laying himself open to the threat of blackmail. It wasn’t just money-grabbing whores that he had to worry about. A man in his position was especially vulnerable. If the enemies of the Empire had an inkling of his nocturnal activities, there was no doubt they would attempt to use it for their own nefarious purposes.
And of course, it would hurt Virginia awfully if she ever found out.
He could hear her now.
Oh, Perry, how could you!
This was the damned awkward thing about having to be in London while one’s wife remained in the country. One was driven to such measures. Having said that, he had to admit that even when they were living in the same house, they seldom slept in the same room, let alone the same bed. Virginia had made clear almost from the outset her distaste for all things animal, as she termed it. Certainly there was no question of it after the boy had come along. He was curiously grateful to her. He felt it relieved him of the obligation of trying.
But she was no fool. A damned sensible woman, in fact. He wouldn’t have married her if she hadn’t been. And so, she had to know that he looked elsewhere for his gratification.
At first he had meant it to be a single, solitary indulgence. Something that he could explain in retrospect, if it ever came out, as a lapse. One visit to one prostitute to get him through a particularly difficult patch. At the time, it was not simply the satisfaction of his physical urges that he had craved. Even more shaming was the terrible loneliness that came upon him in the middle of the night. The feeling that everything that made him what he was had been scraped out of him, leaving him empty, bereft, a weeping wreck in the darkest hours. Inexplicable, in the cold light of day. That he had been so weak as to hunger for the warmth of another human being. Humiliating.
Once it had occurred to him as a possible solution, he had been unable to get the idea of it out of his mind.
He had been confident that one discreet visit was all it would take to get the whole sordid fascination out of his system. His self-loathing and disgust would be such that he would never want to repeat the experience.
Strangely – if he was honest with himself – it was the self-loathing and the disgust that drew him back. The knowledge that he was sinking as low as a man could, debasing himself, as well as betraying everything he held dear. Putting himself, his good name, his family, his reputation, his honour – not to mention his country’s security – in jeopardy. It was part of the attraction, part of the excitement.
And so he indulged again. He was careful to spread himself thinly, to frequent different brothels and ask for different prostitutes, so as not to give any one woman power over him. But his appetites were such that before long he found himself going back to the same women. He became well known in that world. Naturally, he used an assumed name. But sooner or later there was bound to be someone who recognized him, if not as an individual, then at least as a type. The type that could be blackmailed.
The simple truth was the more he used prostitutes the more he needed them.
He began to wonder if this was the only true thing that could be said about him. Everything else – his family, his lineage, his position, his upbringing, his club, his role within the government – none of that meant anything. None of that was real. Or true. None of that was him.