Spectred Isle (Green Men #1)(8)
He’d been told things were changing. The new generation of gilded youth, nauseatingly referred to as Bright Young People, made a great parade of unconventional natures. “Darling, you can’t move for homosexuals!” he’d been assured of some Piccadilly club by one of his fashionable acquaintance. Good for them, he supposed. It sounded like the sort of milieu in which a handsome, jaded, upper-class predator could have made absolute hay with fresh-faced innocents to the benefit of all concerned, if only his war had ended when everyone else’s had. If he’d been like other men of his class, with nothing better to do than amuse himself; if he hadn’t been so sodding busy with ghosts.
If he wasn’t getting old. Randolph, who was thirty-five, chose not to pursue that thought.
He wasn’t entirely sure why he was thinking of this at all, except, perhaps, for those encounters the previous week with the man Lazenby. He let his mind roam over that as he headed up Farringdon Street, since idle thoughts were a useful way to free his less usual senses.
Saul Lazenby, who had looked like an ordinary bystander when that bloody tree had gone up and Randolph had been too damned late to see what happened. The diviner they used, an irritable pet-shop owner in Brixton, had sent a series of frantic but incoherent telegrams, and by the time Randolph had worked out there was some threat to the Southcott Oak, he’d had very little time to get there.
Randolph had immediately telephoned Mrs. Denton, whose family guarded the Southcott box, to be assured of its safety and ask for watchfulness. Two days later she’d telephoned back to say that a Major Peabody had requested permission to visit, and would Randolph please take a look. So he’d looked, and he’d seen: Saul Lazenby, the innocent bystander at the Southcott tree burning, innocently by-sitting in a railway carriage on his way to visit the Southcott box.
It could be innocent, was the damned thing of it. The Dentons had kept a very close eye on the visitors and reported no effort to open, steal, or damage the box. Peabody had been an obvious idiot, his head full of half-baked mystical notions and theories. If Lazenby had been in Oak Hill Park by chance, it was perfectly reasonable that his unicorn-chasing employer would follow up the Southcott connection.
If. Because Randolph still didn’t know what had made the tree burn, and he had not quite liked the feeling he’d had from Lazenby. There was something out of true there, something off. It might be purely personal, of course: Lazenby was of the solid respectable middle classes and without doubt interested in men, and Randolph knew, if only by observation, the fear and shame that might have been heaped on him. If you told a fellow he was wrong long and convincingly enough, he often grew wrong. Perhaps Lazenby was simply a self-loathing queer working for an idiot and no more need be said. Perhaps Randolph should track him down and cheer him up. That sensitive, sun-browned face, that lean and hungry look, the banked fires in his dark, unhappy eyes—oh, he’d bet Mr. Lazenby would repay a man’s efforts, given half a chance.
Randolph walked round the curve of Snow Hill in a pleasant reverie, imagining what it might have taken to persuade the intriguing Lazenby off the train and round the back of the station; came toward the right turn to Cock Lane; and felt the presence hit him like a hot, sodden towel in a bathhouse, so hard that he recoiled.
He set his teeth and his mind against it, instantly defensive. The presence wasn’t attacking him, yet, but it squatted over the street like a toad and he wasn’t the only one to sense it. People were crossing the road for no apparent reason, moving away. He could feel it scratching, a tiny irritant that would turn to torture sooner than one might think.
This wasn’t a spirit of place. This was a malignant thing that felt spiteful and ancient, as though it had brooded over the street forever, and it hadn’t been here at all six months ago. This was bad.
Cock Lane was almost deserted, with most of the few people on it hurrying to leave, just a couple of men standing and arguing. That was only to be expected; all the milk would doubtless have spoiled too. It was that sort of influence, a kind of mad-eyed mountainous pettiness that made everyone’s soul a little shabbier.
He headed up Cock Lane, the air tainting his lips and nostrils, and as he approached the arguing pair, a tallish thin man and a short, fat, older man, he said aloud, “Oh God, really?”
Saul Lazenby turned with a look of unguarded dismay that would have been entertaining if Randolph hadn’t been absolutely fucking furious. “What the— Are you following us?”
“I’m following trouble,” Randolph said. “And here you are. What a coincidence. Did you do this?”
“Do what?” Lazenby demanded.
“Oh, it’s the gentleman from the railway,” Major Peabody said, with an air of revelation. “The traveller in port. I had meant to ask you—”
“Enough playing the buffoon,” Randolph said. “What are you doing here?”
“That is none of your damned business, and I suggest you mind your manners,” Lazenby said, as Major Peabody spluttered. “This is a public street and we didn’t invite your company.”
“But I’m inviting your absence.” Randolph could feel the scratching on the inside of his skin now. Nasty remarks were rising to his tongue and he felt even less compunction than usual in voicing them.
Hell’s bells. “Get away,” he snapped. “Sling your hooks, now.”