Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [106]
Pitt felt a sickness churn in his stomach. The moment he looked he wished he had not seen them. How did one erase from the mind such images? He would not want it to, but the next time he saw a nun this would return to him, and he would be unable to meet her eyes in case she saw what was in his mind. Something was already soiled for him.
And there were others equally ugly, some involving men also, and children. Satanic rituals were suggested with emblems of death, sacrifice. In two or three the shadow of a goat’s head, goblets of blood and wine, light shining on the blade of a knife.
Tellman gave a little grunt. It was a short sound, barely audible, but Pitt heard the distress in it as if it had been a scream. He wished there was a way he could excuse them both, but there was not.
Among the pictures he recognized one beautiful face, not a young one, not lovely with the untouched flower of youth, but older, the beauty that of the clean sweep of throat and cheek, the perfect balance of bone delicate yet strong, the halo of fair hair. It was Cecily Antrim, dressed as a nun, her head back, her arms tied by the wrists to a wheel, her body bent over it. A man knelt in front of her, his face reflecting ecstasy. It was a curious picture, half pornographic, half blasphemous, as if the two, in the figure of the priest, came together. It was a powerful and profoundly disturbing image, far less easy to forget than those which were simply erotic. This raised questions in the mind as to the nature of religious practice and the honesty or dishonesty of what purported to be service of God.
Pitt looked at a few more, another dozen or so. He was almost at the bottom of the pile when he saw it. He knew from the stifled gasp beside him that Tellman had seen it at the same instant.
It was Cecily Antrim again, in a green velvet gown, lying on her back in a punt, surrounded by drifting flowers. Her knees were half drawn up. Her wrists and ankles were very obviously manacled to the boat. It was the parody of Ophelia again, making it seem as if the imprisonment of the chains was what excited her, and the beginning of ecstasy was sharp and real in her face.
“That’s disgusting!” Tellman said with a half sob. “How could any woman like that sort of thing?” He was glaring at Pitt. “What kind of idea does that give a man, eh?” He jabbed his thin finger at the shiny card. “A man looking for that is going to . . . to think . . . God knows! What’s he going to do, tell me that?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt said quietly. “Maybe he’s going to think that’s the sort of thing women like. . . .”
“Exactly!” Tellman’s voice cracked. “It’s revolting. It’s got to be stopped! What would happen if some young lad came in here?”
“I don’t sell to young lads,” Unsworth cut in. “That sort of thing’s only for special customers, ones I know.”
Pitt swung around on him, his eyes blazing, his voice raw. “And of course you know exactly what they do with them, don’t you! You know that every one of them is safely locked up by some sane and responsible person who treats his own wife like a precious friend, a lady, the mother of his children?” His voice was getting louder and he could not help it. “No one ever feeds his own dreams with them and then acts them out? No one ever sells them on to curious and ignorant boys who don’t even know what a naked woman’s body looks like and is aching to find out?”
He remembered his own first awakenings of curiosity with surprising sharpness, and his ideas, his realizations of boundless, terrifying and wonderful possibilities.
“Well . . .” Unsworth spluttered. “Well, you can’t hold me responsible for . . . I’m not my brother’s keeper!”
“Just as well for him! The way you’re going about it he’s on that high road to that misery where he destroys everything he sees because he no longer believes in the possibility of worth. No, Mr. Unsworth, perhaps it is people like Sergeant Tellman and me who are his keeper, and we are now going to set about doing exactly that. You have a choice. You can either give us a list of your clients who