A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [12]
I chewed my lip thoughtfully for a moment, and the image of those slick faces in the nightclub came back to me. Lost was a good word for a large part of our whole generation.
“Drugs?” I asked, not quite the shot in the dark it seemed, and she looked at me then, her eyes brimming, and nodded.
“What kind?” I asked.
“Any kind. He had morphine when he was in hospital, and he got used to that. Cocaine, of course. They all use cocaine. He goes to these parties—they last all night, a weekend, even longer. Once he took me to a fancy-dress party where the whole house was made over to look like an opium den, including the pipes. I couldn’t bear the smell and so had to leave. He took me home and then went back. Lately, I think it’s been heroin.” I was mildly surprised. Heroin had been developed only a couple of years before I was born, and in 1920 it was nowhere near as commonplace as cocaine or opium or even its parent drug, morphine. I had some personal experience of the drug, following a bad automobile accident in 1914, when it was given me by the hospital in San Francisco—it being then thought that heroin was less addictive than morphine, a conclusion since questioned—but an habitual use of the drug would be very expensive.
“Did you go with him very often? To the same house?”
“The few times I went, they were all different houses, though mostly the same people. I finally couldn’t take seeing him like than anymore, and I told him so. He said… he said some horrid, cruel things and slammed out of here, and I haven’t heard from him since then. That was nearly two months ago. I did see him, about ten days ago, coming out of a club with a… a girl hanging on his arm and laughing in that way they do when they’ve been taking something and the whole world is so hysterically funny. He looked awful, like a skeleton, and his cough was back. He sounded like he had when he was home after being gassed; it made my chest hurt to hear it. I do get news of him—I see his sister all the time, but she says he never visits his parents unless he runs out of money before his next allowance is due.”
“And they give it to him.”
“Yes.” She blew her nose and took a deep breath, then looked straight at me, and I braced myself.
“Mary, is there anything that you can do?”
“What could I do?” I did not even try to sound surprised.
“Well, you… investigate things. You know people, you and Mr Holmes. Surely there must be something we might do.”
“Any number of things,” I said flatly. “You could have him arrested, and they might be able to keep him until the drugs have left his system, though it would probably mean hospitalisation, considering the shape he’s in. However, unless he’s actually selling the drugs himself, which sounds unlikely if his parents support him, he’d be let free in a few days and would go right back to the source. You’d have put him through considerable discomfort with little benefit. Or, you could have him kidnapped, if you don’t mind great expense and the threat of a prison sentence. That would ensure his physical well-being, for a time. You’d want to let him go eventually, though, and then it would almost surely begin again.” It was cruel, but not so cruel as raising her hopes would have been. “Ronnie, you know what the problem is, and you know full well that there’s not a thing that you or I or the king himself can do about it. If Miles wants to use drugs, he will. If not heroin, then morphine, or alcohol. As you said, he’s just not there, and until he decides to find his way back, the only thing on God’s green earth you can do is make sure he knows your hand is there if he wants it, and leave him to it.” I offered her a pain-filled smile. “And pray.”
She collapsed, and I stroked her hair and waited for the storm to abate. It did, and when she raised her face, I felt a moment’s pity for the man Miles, confronted by this red-eyed, dull-haired, earnest young woman with her Good Works and her small eyes set into an unfashionably round face of pasty skin, now blotched from her tears.