Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [45]
Holmes had taken off his top hat and flung it to the pavement.
'Damn and blast!' he shouted as I approached. 'Damn and blast! I could not make out his face. Too late, by a few seconds.'
He walked along to where the carriage stood and looked up at the closed door. I joined him, mindful of the hulking figure of the driver atop the carriage.
'I know that address,' Holmes said. His lips moved as he tried to recollect the memory, then a slow smile spread across his face.
'We may be in luck after all, Watson. Follow me.'
With that he bounded up the stairs to the front door of the house.
'But Holmes . . . Good Lord, you can't just barge in there, man!'
'Why not?' he shouted down as he rang the bell. The door swung open just as I joined him, revealing a rather seedy-looking footman whose hair was slicked down and who grinned at us in a most familiar way. I had been about to apologize for Holmes's behaviour but, after a short exchange of words, he walked in as if he owned the place. I followed, confused.
The walls of the hall were papered in a red flock design that showed patches of wear. The carpet had once been opulent, but now looked threadbare and out of fashion. There was no sign of Maupertuis and his companion, if, indeed, this was the house they had entered. A stairway led upstairs. Through a connecting door I could see a large drawing room whose walls were thankfully half-hidden by drapes. I say 'thankfully' as there were children lounging on sofas, and the murals which had been painted on the walls were of fauns and satyrs in positions of amorous entanglements with partially clad nymphs of a shockingly young age. I am no prude - my experience of women covers many nations and three separate continents - but I was appalled by the almost medical explicitness with which those paintings were rendered.
And then I looked at the children.
Most were girls, although three or four angelic boys fluttered long lashes at me. They were lolling around in postures of provocative abandon, dressed in short frocks. Very short frocks and nothing else.
I began to feel sick.
'Does anything take your fancy?' said a voice behind me. I turned. Behind me stood a woman of uncertain years wearing a dress that looked as if it had been made out of the same threadbare fabric as the flock wallpaper in the hall. She was short and wide, and her mouth was a rouged slash across her face.
'We've got some loverly little ones here, gentlemen, and clean too, if you take my meaning. Whatever your tastes, we can satisfy them. Blondes or redheads, bold or shy. If you want them fresh, well, that comes a little extra, gents, but fresh you can have.'
She gazed up at us with bulging, frog-like eyes. I wanted to lash out at her with my stick, but remnants of gentility and Holmes's presence by my side made me stay my hand.
'Thank you,' he said. He had roughened his voice and, looking at him from the corner of my eye, I could see that he was holding himself differently, disguising his height and suggesting some congenital deformity of the spine. 'Perhaps we could take some time in choosing.'
She winked at him.
'Certainly, sir. I can see that you're a connersewer, a proper connersewer.
Take your time. Talk to 'em, if you like. Give us a call when you're ready, and I'll have a room put at your disposal.'
She retreated back to whatever rock she had crawled out from under. I thought I heard her say, 'Take two or three, if you want, it's all the same to them, and you looks like you can afford it,' but the buzzing in my ears made it difficult to tell.
'Bear up, man,' Holmes's voice whispered beside me. 'Smile, and when I say the word, make for the stairs.'
I glanced again into the room.