Black Butterfly by Mark Gatiss Read Free Book Online Page A

dress hooted at each other, their wolfish features shattered, split and reflected in the mirrored walls. Incongruously, a teenage Boy Scout (I couldn’t seem to get away from them at present) was wandering from table to table with a collecting tin. A gross, red-eared fellow, like an ogre in a fairy tale, slipped a coin into the tin and then waved the lad away.
    There was a loud bellowing laugh and the man at the bar slumped to the floor, one shoe off, his threadbare sock wet through.
    I knew them all. Loved and loathed the pack of them. Such was the Blood Orange .
    However, at one of the two dozen tables, sat a stranger; an insignificant-looking bald man with little puffs of white hair sprouting from behind each ear. His white silk scarf had twisted up the points of his collar to give him a Pickwickian air.
    Although I didn’t recognise him as an habitué of the club, his face was nevertheless oddly familiar.
    Leaning like a question mark against the wall right by him was a young man of Negroid appearance, though pale for one of his race. Toreador-slim in skinny suit and tie, his glossy black hair was cut in a straight fringe, and acid-green socks showed above pointy shoes.
    He watched the Pickwickian from under sleepy eyelids.
    Dismissing them both from my mind, I made my way to the bar where stood, presiding over this whole carnival of damnation, a colossal female in canary yellow. At that very moment, she was knocking back a pint of Dog’s Nose and pulling a flap of skirt out of the cheeks of her buttocks.
    My dear servant Delilah was now as old as the hills and as white-haired as I. But age had not withered her, nor custom made stale anything but the irrepressible reek from her armpits. We’d been through a hell of a lot together, and when fortune had finally come my way, in a mood of sudden philanthropy, I had granted her freedom from domestic service. With her savings, she had bought the leasehold on the crumbling Blood Orange , and the rest, as they say, is hysteria.
    ‘A brandy and soda, my good woman,’ I demanded, sneaking up behind her and giving her a playful punch on the arm.
    The old bruiser span round, fist raised, a mad-dog gleam in her eyes. Her mouth was smeared with lipstick and had the appearance of an open sore. ‘Mr Box! Mr Box, sir!’ she cackled, enfolding me in her immensity. ‘What a sight for sore ’uns! Cor, I nearly felled ya there. Get sat down and I’ll fetch you some plonk.’ She propelled me towards a splintering stool.
    ‘How’s business?’ I enquired as she sloshed cognac into a none-too-clean tumbler and slid it over the tarnished veneer towards me.
    ‘Same as ever,’ she growled. ‘I gotta read the riot act three times a week just to keep the buggers in order but they’re not a bad lot. And they know not to fight too ’ard or they’ll get a taste of this .’ She bared her meaty fist from which sprouted wiry grey hairs. ‘Mind you,’ she continued, ‘some might say as we’ve gawn up in the world.’
    ‘How so?’
    She nodded towards the fluffy-haired Pickwick-like fellow I’d noticed earlier. The coloured youth was now sitting with him and they seemed to be having a fairly lively conversation. The older man was looking nervously about and nibbling at his fingernails. The boy was shaking his head, ever so slightly, and the dead straight hair shifted like a curtain over his smooth forehead. ‘Know who that is?’ asked Delilah, with a wink.
    I frowned. ‘The boy?’
    ‘Nah, nah, nah. Dunno about him. The old geezer.’
    ‘I feel I should,’ I admitted. ‘He’s certainly familiar. But I’m not as good with faces as once I was.’
    ‘Sir Vyvyan Hooplah,’ breathed Delilah, rubbing a soiled tea-towel around a gin glass. ‘Remember him?’
    ‘I do!’ I whispered. ‘Yes, of course. Used to be…Secretary of State for–no–he was Head of the Board of Health, wasn’t he? Under Asquith!’
    Delilah shrugged hugely. ‘I just remember him from the picture