The Gilded Scarab by Anna Butler Read Free Book Online Page A

trial since, they’d been transient places, careful to avoid police notice and cautious about their members and activities. They would set up somewhere for six months and then quietly and discreetly move on. My memberships of those clubs had lapsed too, mostly because I had no idea where to send the annual fees.
    The one exception, and one I was certain was still operating, was Margrethe’s Hotel in Covent Garden. It had been a fixture there for the last century. From the outside it was a typical small hotel catering to the visitor come to sample the delights of the capital. But if the visitor were of a certain type—there with his wife and six children, perhaps, or a visiting bishop or a jolly country squire, or a spinster up to shop in town—then they would be met in the beautifully appointed reception hall by the most profound regrets that the hotel was full and given directions to the nearest establishment able to accommodate them.
    Of course, if the visitor were there sans family and if he, along with the bishop and the squire, sported a small, unobtrusive badge enameled with a daisy on the underside of his lapel, then the hotel delighted in welcoming him. The spinster qualifying for the daisy would still be gently redirected, but to a sister establishment set up on the Sapphic principle. Margrethe’s catered solely to gentlemen.
    To the cognoscenti, Margrethe’s offered comfortable smoking lounges, a fine restaurant with a French chef and handsome young waiters, and a dozen bedrooms available at short notice for an appropriately large fee. Margrethe’s was all privacy and discretion, hushed voices and exquisite service. And if the worst came to the worst and the police did come—which had never happened in living memory—the hotel had links with the import-export offices next door. On every floor a discreet cupboard with a false back led to the offices, and from there the gentlemen could make their way to the Covent Garden piazza and mingle safely and inconspicuously with the opera and theater crowds.
    I loved Margrethe’s.
    I loved the company of witty and handsome men. I loved dining like a prince on dishes such as le tourin d’ail doux followed by poulet basquaise with carottes Vichy , created by the hands of a master. But most of all I loved dessert. That would keep me going to Margrethe’s if the best the hotel could manage in the way of haute cuisine was a dried up pork chop the local public house would spurn as beneath its notice.
    Dessert made Margrethe’s the place it was.

    T HAT EVENING , Phryne, still blushing and squirming, brought back clothes looking as good as new. I wrapped up in my opera cloak, found an umbrella, and walked across town from Bloomsbury to the market at Covent Garden. I could have taken the Underground, but that meant arriving all soot and smuts and ruining Phryne’s careful refurbishment of my clothes. As for an autohansom, well, the walk wouldn’t kill me, and Margrethe’s was expensive. I needed all my spare cash.
    It was a chilly evening, and an invigorating walk. It was a little early to dine at the hotel, so I cut through to the Lowther Arcade to reach my tobacconist. In my father’s day, the Arcade had been a place for the wealthy to fritter away their money on luxuries. Now, like the rest of Covent Garden, it was down at heel and the haunt of actresses and ladies of dubious reputation. The shops were still there, selling leather goods or fine tobacco or jewelry, but less bright and clean. Windows were murky with dirt, and the merchandise looked, in some cases, as though it had been there for a long time. A very long time.
    More than one girl in beautifully fitted street clothes and an elegant hat stood in the alcoves between the shops, shivering despite close-fitting coats and high-heeled red leather boots. They were fashionably dressed. In Bond Street or Piccadilly, they might have passed as ladies up in town to do some shopping. But not loitering here in the