“The enemy of my enemy is my friend?” Stoker said lightly.
“Something like that,” Archibond agreed.
“You are both speaking nonsense,” I told them, rather more harshly than the conversation merited. “Mornaday is no enemy to either of you, and he has, upon occasion, been an extremely good friend.” I gave Stoker a lowering look and he rolled his eyes heavenwards.
“How many times has he proposed marriage to you?” he asked.
I primmed my mouth. “I have forgot, and that is beside the point. He is never serious and his affections lie elsewhere, I assure you. Let us return to the topic at hand, Inspector. You were, I suspect, attempting to bait us into some course of action, perhaps by means of guilt after accusing me of acting in self-interest, a tactic doomed to failure,” I warned.
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “You mistake me, Miss Speedwell! I do not charge you with any crime of which I myself am innocent. I find myself here because . . .” He hesitated, coloring deeply. “Because my own guilt is almost more than I can bear and I hoped to find a kindred spirit.”
“Why should you feel guilt where Lady Wellie is concerned?” I asked.
“Because I did not listen,” he said heavily. He ran his hands through his hair, disordering it slightly. “A few days ago, the day she wired you in Cornwall, I was here. I had called upon her to speak with her about the latest developments in the Whitechapel investigation—unofficially, of course. There are still plenty of people at Scotland Yard who do not know of her influence.” He paused, seemingly searching for the right words. “Her mood was distracted, distressed. She said she had sent for you both, and I was glad of it. I thought having you here might soothe her mind, but she would not settle. She wandered a little in her mind and it alarmed me. It is the first true sign of age I have seen upon her,” he said with a rueful look.
“She does seem to go on like England itself,” I agreed.
“In the very best way. She is what England used to be, I think. What it might be again. Every virtue to which I have ever aspired, she has mastered.” He broke off, coloring a little, clearly embarrassed at his burst of sentimentality. He cleared his throat and resumed his narrative. “I pressed her for why she was so upset, but she kept muttering about Prince Eddy.”
“Well, discovering that the future King of England has been handing out diamonds like boiled sweets to his light-o’-loves is a trifle unsettling,” Stoker put in.
“Indeed,” was Archibond’s dry reply. “But it was more than that. Whilst we were talking, she asked me to fetch a magnifying glass from her desk. Her eyes have been giving her trouble of late. While I looked for it, I saw a number of papers lying loose, clearly something she had been working at before my arrival. When she noticed they were still on the desk, she swept them into a drawer with her diary and locked it, clearly distressed that I might have noticed the nature of the papers.” He shifted again, clearly uncomfortable. “I would not compromise her privacy, but had I known she would so soon be incapacitated, I would have pressed her. I think whatever she was working at was connected with this thing that has been troubling her, but I have no notion of what it is.”
“Occam’s razor would suggest that the simplest and therefore likeliest explanation is that she was concerned about the prince’s peccadillo,” I offered.
“Of course,” Archibond agreed. “It may indeed be nothing we do not already know, and that affair is certainly worth some concern.”
“What do you know of the lady involved?” I asked suddenly.
Archibond shrugged. “At the edge of Bloomsbury, there is a private house known as the Club de l’Étoile.”
“The Club of the Star,” I observed. “How fitting for an establishment of nocturnal entertainment.”
“Indeed. It is a very discreet club for ladies and gentlemen of means and certain habits,” he said with delicacy.
“A brothel,” I said brutally.
“A club,” he corrected firmly. “There are no regular employees save the domestic staff, and it is located in a private home. Everyone is of the appropriate age and there are no permanent professionals on the premises in the strictest sense of the word. The club caters to many tastes and there are entertainments given, themed parties, that sort of thing. It is beautifully furnished, luxurious in every detail, with exquisite food and drink, a veritable palace for debauchery.”
“And His Royal Highness is an habitué of this place,” Stoker finished. To his credit, there was not the slightest hint of judgment in his tone. But as Stoker had spent years living in a much less grand establishment in Brazil, he had precious few stones to throw.
“He is,” Archibond supplied. “It is run by a Frenchwoman of some notoriety. She has gone by many names in the past. Now she calls herself Madame Aurore after the goddess of the dawn. She was a courtesan in Paris for some years, I am told. She is terribly discreet. Her guests are never troubled by the police or journalists, and she has arranged for several entrances and exits from the property so that her callers will not be noticed either arriving or leaving. She does nothing illegal and therefore we can do nothing about her activities. She maintains perfect silence about her callers.”
“You seem to know a great deal about her,” Stoker remarked with studied blandness.
Archibond shrugged. “It is our duty to keep a weather eye upon all such places frequented by the great and good. One must be ever vigilant where the possibility of blackmail exists.”
“I suppose if His Royal Highness must exercise his libido, he could hardly find a more suitable spot,” I mused.
“You have a Continental mind, Miss Speedwell,” Archibond said in a tone that was somewhere between aspersion and admiration. “As you say, if the prince were going to indulge himself—and what young man does not?—he could hardly do better than a quiet establishment where everyone knows the rules and no one dare break them. Unfortunately, this particular club is quite expensive.”
“How expensive?” Stoker inquired.
“Ten thousand guineas to join,” Archibond replied.
I sucked in my breath. “Ten thousand guineas. Do you know what I earn for one specimen of a Papilio amynthor? Three guineas. Three guineas for a perfect specimen of one of the most beautiful creatures in the world. And you are telling us that this place charges its members the worth of thousands of such creatures just so people can debauch themselves in private?”
“The world, my dear Miss Speedwell, is an unjust place,” he said with a shrug. “But I suspect you knew that already.” He went on. “In addition to her nom d’amour, the proprietress, Madame Aurore, always appears robed as the dawn goddess. She wears a sort of tiara given her by Napoléon III, a galaxy of diamonds. It is a custom of the club that when someone has enjoyed her personal favors, they present her with a diamond star, the more lavish, the better.”