The Gilded Scarab by Anna Butler Read Free Book Online

place for a man conscious of the need to practice strict economy. Shabby usually meant affordable, if not downright cheap. I crossed the road to peer in through a window. The inside cried out for a coat of paint as loudly as did the outside. Whoever the owner was, he didn’t appear to hold with redecoration. The seating area was full of big soft-looking armchairs and mismatched tables. There were a couple of threadbare sofas, whose springs were sagging, but which looked like they would mold themselves very comfortingly, not to say clingingly, around the human form. An elderly man stood at the counter reading a newspaper, wreathed in steam from the big coffee machine behind him.
    Well, if it were good enough for some House eccentric who was something big to do with the museum, it was good enough for Rafe Lancaster. So I pushed open the door and went inside.

Chapter 5

    T HE HOUSEMAID at the hostel was a pretty girl from the country, somewhere Essex way. According to Agnes, she wouldn’t last six months before being inveigled into a life of vice and shame. As Agnes made this prophetic announcement, looking like a demented Sibyl in a dingy lace cap and paisley shawl, she gave me the sort of hard, suspicious stare I’d only ever seen before on the bony faces of the Wiltshire Horn sheep that had been my father’s passion. Or on the bony face of Commander Abercrombie. Come to think on it, there was a remarkable resemblance between all three of them, although I’d give the sheep the palm for beauty.
    I treated Agnes to my most charming smile in reply. It wasn’t as though I were interested anyway, and even if I were, I had never been one to seduce innocents. To counter my cousin’s unmerited suspicion, I treated the maid with great politeness and did not once flirt. Not once. Consequently, young Phryne appeared to develop a tendre for me by the end of my first morning in the hostel, thereby proving the essential contrary nature of all women. Phryne reddened whenever I looked at her and refused to meet my eyes. She pressed the heels of her palms into her cheeks to try and chase the red away, stammered when she spoke to me, and sometimes squirmed. The squirming was particularly uncomfortable. It made me feel unaccountably guilty, and I don’t like feeling guilty when I haven’t done anything to deserve it. Or even when I have.
    When, a couple of days after my arrival, I asked her to steam press my evening clothes, the girl was incoherent while trying to tell me how honored she was that I trusted her with them.
    Good grief. It was my evening clothes, not my hand and heart. And what’s more, rather worn and old-fashioned evening clothes. I really couldn’t fathom her enthusiasm for garments at least a decade old. “They aren’t up to much, Phryne, but then, I didn’t have much need of them in the service. I suppose I should get some new ones.”
    “You leave it to me, sir. I’ll rub them up something bright with benzoin, I promise.” Phryne paused, her arms full of jacket and evening trousers and my old opera cloak. “Are you going out somewhere nice, sir?”
    I smiled at her. “Oh yes,” I said. “Thank you, Phryne. Yes, I am.”

    I NDEED , I felt my return to civilization merited a celebration. A night at my club beckoned.
    Not White’s, of course. I’d been a member once, but I had allowed my membership to lapse while I was away on active service. Not that it mattered. White’s was the stuffiest club in the stuffiest part of the metropolis, and frequented by the stuffiest sort of old fogey. My father had been a member, for heaven’s sake, and my brother still was. That spoke volumes. No, I wanted something not nearly so venerable or traditional. One of my other clubs. One of the stimulating and exciting kind.
    Sadly, many of the establishments catering to the most unstuffy of gentlemen were no longer in existence. Ever since the Cleveland Street scandal a decade earlier, and doubtless following the Wilde