It turns out that “perfect” is not quite the word I should have used. The place where we can find the younger Simpson brother? His club, which I may not enter because I am a woman.
I don’t think I realized exactly how many Victorian venues were off-limits to middle- and upper-class ladies. There are men’s clubs, which I would have guessed. Also, brothels and gambling halls and fight clubs. Gymnasiums, too, so that men might exercise in peace. And pubs, so they might drink in peace. That mostly applies to upper-class pubs, but in that sphere, the restriction carries over to all dining establishments where liquor might be served. Men must be free to drink and conduct business without women around.
I can be shocked by the number of places a woman like Isla can’t go, but within my own lifetime, there have been countless modern venues where women were barred, either outright or by practice. Places where men went to relax and drink and socialize and talk business.
Gray will need to conduct this interview alone. I’m fine with that. Okay, “fine” might be an exaggeration, but I accept it . . . as long as he grants me permission to try sneaking in and eavesdropping. I really do need to ask permission for that. Gray might not require the women in his household to seek it, but patriarchies work both ways. If I’m caught, he’ll be the one punished for not properly “controlling” me.
He agrees to me sneaking in and provides some tips for where I might be able to enter. In return, I promise that if it seems risky, I’ll back out.
I get inside the club easily enough. It’s not as if they guard the entrance against women. It is guarded, but with an elderly man whose real job is making sure no male riffraff sneak through. Members and their guests only.
I slip in through a side door, where I only catch the curious glance of someone’s coach driver resting in a tiny room that seems to be for that purpose. With men staying in the club for hours—and no easy way to resummon their driver—that little room is a necessity. Or, I guess, not a necessity so much as a perk. Otherwise, they’d be expected to hang out in the stable.
The driver only tips his hat to me, presuming I’m staff coming in for a shift. Women are allowed in places like this. Just not as members or guests.
From there, it gets trickier because if I meet an actual staff member, they’ll know I don’t belong. It takes me twenty minutes to get near the main rooms—I have to keep backtracking and ducking to avoid notice. Eventually, I find what I’m looking for, and can I just say that for an upscale gentlemen’s club, it’s sorely disappointing. It looks like a fancy airport lounge. A few big rooms with chairs and fireplaces . . . and that’s about it. The chairs are arranged in pods for conversation, and there’s a low murmur of that, but at least half the men are alone, reading newspapers or books with a cup of tea at their elbow.
I’ve approached through a back hall, where I can sneak peeks through discreet viewing ports, and I’m not sure whether that makes me feel like a voyeur or a visitor to the zoo.
Here you see the upper-crust Victorian male in his natural habitat, smoking a pipe and reading the newspaper, doing things he could also do at home, but then he might need to . . . I don’t know, talk to his wife? Acknowledge his children?
I presume the viewing ports are so the staff can be ready to refill those teacups or empty those ashtrays as efficiently as possible.
When I hear Gray’s voice, I follow it down another corridor. I peek out and see him sitting with a man who, again, surprises me. He’s clearly Simpson’s brother, given the resemblance, but Arthur looks more like the lover I pictured for Lady Inglis, handsome and polished. As I said, looks aren’t everything, and it doesn’t take long to understand why Lady Inglis would prefer the elder Simpson.
“Don’t beat about the bush, Gray,” Arthur snaps. “I am not a fool. I know what happens in my own home. Charles keeps a secret as well as a boy in short pants. Someone has stolen private letters from his room. Letters that ought to have been burned the moment he realized what they were. Ladies these days are not what they used to be. They are not ladies at all.”
“Yes, your brother is missing letters of an intimate nature—”
“Intimate? Pornographic, that is what they are.”
Gray pauses, and I try to see him, but the angle is wrong, and I doubt I’d see anything but a studiously blank expression.
“You have read them?” Gray says mildly.
That gets a satisfying spate of apoplectic sputtering from Arthur Simpson.
Gray says, “You seem to know what the letters contain—”
“Because he accidentally left one lying about and I picked it up, innocently thinking it a simple bit of correspondence, only to read . . .” He sputters some more. “Filth one should never find outside a brothel. And the most deviant of brothels at that.”
Read the whole thing, didn’t you, Arthur?
“Do they have such letters in brothels?” Gray says, his tone still so delightfully mild. “Are they intended for reading while you wait for one of the ladies to be available?”
More sputtering as Arthur insists he has no idea what is in brothels, and he was merely making a point.
Gray lets him go on a bit before interrupting. “So you are aware of the missing letters.”
“Yes, I am aware. I could hardly miss Charles rushing about the house, whispering to all the servants, asking whether they had seen any ‘letters’ from a box he keeps locked on his dresser. I waited for him to come to me. He did not, because he knows I would never knowingly soil my mind with such things.”
“Do you have any idea who might have taken them?”
“No, but if it finally forces my brother to make an honest woman of that tart, then I shall owe them my gratitude.”
“That tart being . . .”
Disgust oozes from Arthur’s voice. “You know who wrote the letters as well as I do, Gray. Lady Inglis. My brother’s mistress. One of them, at least.”
“You do not seem fond of Lady Inglis, though you wish her for a sister-in-law?”
“I am not fond of any of his tarts, but at least she is respectable. Outwardly respectable, that is. A widow from a fine family. Still attractive. Clever enough. Well-liked and—” He seems to need to force himself to say the words. “—well-mannered. Charles would do well to marry her and stop this . . . behavior. I do not know why she puts up with him, but she obviously does and has for years. He is not a young man anymore, and he should not act like one. It is an embarrassment.”
“You think the letters will lead to a marriage proposal?”
“Of course. Whoever has stolen them obviously intends to blackmail Charles. He cannot afford to pay a ransom, so he will be forced to marry her. Finally.”
I peek out to see Arthur sipping his tea while Gray steeples his fingers, as if in quiet thought.
After a moment, Arthur says, “I would not be surprised if she stole the letters herself.”
“Lady Inglis?”
“Certainly.” Arthur leans forward, his tone almost excited, as if he has just solved the mystery. “Now that this new girl has entered the picture, Lady Inglis realizes she is never going to have him to herself without a wedding ring. She steals the letters—easily done, as she has access to my brother’s bedchamber. Then she threatens him with a ransom he cannot pay, and he has no choice but to marry her before this thief takes their affair public.”
Arthur lowers his voice and says, “Cleverly done, ma’am. Cleverly done indeed.” He rubs his hands together. “There. This is settled. He shall need to marry the woman and be done with it.”
“I am surprised you are so eager to see Charles wed,” Gray murmurs. “After all, as his first marriage was childless, his title would pass to you and your sons, should you have any. If he marries Lady Inglis, he might still have a son.”
Arthur laughs. “She is nearly forty, and she did not bear her first husband any heirs. I am hardly worried . . .” He trails off and then says, “I wish to see my brother wed. That is all. If he is fond of Lady Inglis, I see no reason for this mistress nonsense.”
“You mentioned a new girl—”
Someone clears their throat right beside me, making me stagger back and miss the rest of what Gray says. A severe-looking woman in a dour brown dress stands there with her arms crossed.
“May I help you, miss?” she says.
“Oh!” I clap my hands to my mouth. “Oh!”
“Do not tell me you are one of the serving girls,” she says. “As I am in charge of the serving girls, I know you are not.”
“N-no,” I fake-stammer. “I am not. I am . . . I am so sorry, ma’am.” I give an awkward half curtsy. “I . . . I know I should not be here, but I followed that gentleman in.” I wave toward the viewing port. “The older one, with the light-brown hair,” I say, describing Arthur Simpson.
Her face darkens. “You followed one of our members into his private club?”
“I am so sorry, ma’am. I am ashamed of myself and truly appalled by my boldness, but it comes from desperation. I hoped I might hear someone address him by his name.”
“His name?” The woman looks through the hole and then glowers at me. “If you are looking for a wealthy gentleman to keep you in comfort—”
“No!” I round my eyes in shock. “No, ma’am. I am a respectable young woman. I am a shop clerk, over on Princes Street. I would never be a kept woman. It is only that . . . that I made that gentleman’s acquaintance, from my shop, and I . . .” I bite my lip. “I found him handsome and let him take me rowing, and now I most desperately need to speak to him about . . .” I let my hands slide to my stomach before pulling them away. “A private matter.”
“You do not even know his name?”
I drop my gaze. “He gave me one, ma’am, but I have learned it is false.”
She glowers again, but this time, it’s aimed at the viewing port. “His name is Arthur Simpson.” She turns that hard look my way. “But you did not hear it from me.”
I bow and scrape and stammer my thanks, and then I let her lead me to the nearest door.
I meet Gray outside the club about twenty minutes later. I don’t tell him I got caught, and I certainly don’t tell him how I got out of it. He might not like Arthur Simpson, but he’d still feel guilty knowing that one of the club’s staff mistakenly believes Arthur knocked up a shop girl. He’d be wrong, of course. By the end of the day, all the club’s staff will think that, and I personally don’t feel the least bit guilty.
“You managed to get inside, then?” Gray says.
“I did, and I was sorely disappointed by the lack of dancing girls.”
He stops midstride. “Dancing girls?”
“Dancing girls, maybe a few dancing boys . . . What kind of gentlemen’s club is that?”
He gives me a sidelong look as he resumes walking. “So in your world, a gentlemen’s club has . . . dancing girls?”
“Strippers.”
“And strippers are dancers who . . . ?”
“Pretty sure it’s right there in the name, Gray.”
He turns the most adorable shade of mahogany.
I continue, “To be honest, though, while they call themselves gentlemen’s clubs, it’s not quite the same thing. In my world, that’s just a fancy name for a place where you can watch naked women sliding on poles.”
He chokes so violently that his eyes water.
“Not sliding on them like that,” I say. “Get your mind out of the gutter. If you want that, you need to go to Amsterdam.”
“Amster . . .”
“It’s a city in—”
“I have visited Amsterdam.”
“And you missed the sex shows? What kind of tourist are you?” I continue walking. “As for your club, it was boring. I didn’t honestly expect dancing girls, but there wasn’t even a heated game of chess. Now I know why you don’t let women in. So they don’t see how dull you all are. Ah, yes, let us go to our secret club and drink tea and smoke cigars. How scandalous!”
He only shakes his head. “As for the case . . .”
“Fine,” I say with a deep sigh. “Drag me back on point.”
“Yes, I am as dull as my gentlemen’s club.”
I could go along with it and tease him. But I find myself leaning to tap my winter bonnet against his shoulder and murmuring, “You are never dull, Duncan.”
“I know.”
I have to laugh. “Do you?”
“Of course. If I were dull, you would not stand my company for one moment longer than necessary. Did you hear my questioning of the younger Simpson?”
“Enough to think him a very fine suspect. I love it when my suspects are assholes. Makes my job a true delight.” I glance over, catching his expression. “You disagree?”
“About preferring heinous suspects? Not at all. But while I think Arthur is eager to see his brother wed to Lady Inglis—especially as she is unlikely to provide an heir—stealing the letters will not do that. Lord Simpson likes his current lifestyle. Note that he was quick to offer to pay the ransom but not to marry her. He won’t.”
“But does Arthur know that?”
“Fair point.”
We cross the road, and I pick up my pace to keep up with Gray’s long strides. “Tell me about this new mistress. I missed that part.”
“She is an actress.”
“Ah.”
That’s all that really needs to be said. Female actors inhabit an odd place in Victorian society. They’re independent women pursuing a career that was once entirely the province of men.
Actresses have more freedom than the average Victorian woman. Yet when women move out of their prescribed roles, they risk no longer being seen as “proper women.” They become dangerous, and the easiest way to dismiss them is to question their morals.
To many, “actress” means “harlot.” They are considered women of easy virtue who make most of their living off the stage. Do some of them engage in sex work? Sure. So do some shop girls and factory workers. Mostly, actresses just enjoy a greater freedom overall, which also extends to their sex lives.
“Did Arthur give you a name for this actress?” I ask.
“He did. I do not recognize it, and he says she’s an ingenue.”
“Young, then.”
“Catriona’s age or slightly older.”
While a nonmonogamous arrangement wouldn’t be my choice, it is a valid choice. With Lady Inglis and Lord Simpson, not only are both parties consenting, but both parties apparently pursue other relationships. So maybe it shouldn’t bother me that Simpson is hooking up with an actress half Lady Inglis’s age. But it does because I can’t help but wonder whether it would also bother Lady Inglis.
Sharing him with other mature widows would be one thing. This feels . . . It feels like the stereotypical form of adultery, the guy screwing around with a girl from a lower social strata, one young enough to be his daughter.
If Lady Inglis is bothered, might she decide she’d finally had enough of this open relationship and lock him in with marriage? She did visit just before the letters went missing.
I’m not sure how I feel about Lady Inglis—and I know any judgment could be marred by her past with Gray—but I’d like her to be what she seems to be: a merry widow, independent, free thinking and free loving, not an aging woman who fears losing her lover to a younger woman and tricks him into marrying her.
I don’t say any of that to Gray. Arthur Simpson raised the possibility, and I will let Gray bring it up. If he doesn’t, then I trust his judgment.
“Could the actress be a suspect?” I say. “She might be the hot young new fling, but Lady Inglis is the longtime lover who’d stand in the way of the actress winning Lord Simpson.” I pause. “Is that even a possibility? Can an actress marry a lord?”
“It has happened,” he says. “More likely, though, there would be an arrangement.”
Like what the woman earlier thought I’d been seeking with Arthur Simpson. A sugar daddy.
“However,” Gray says, “you are forgetting that the actress could not have stolen the letters. She spent the night before they disappeared.”
“Which only means she could have found them while she was there and then snuck back to steal them.”
He sighs. “I did not think of that.”
“This is why you’re the junior detective. But don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it someday.”