I entered the card room. It was a mess too—bottles left on the tables or strewn across the carpeted floor, used wineglasses and whiskey tumblers, the ends of cigarillos, playing cards left in disarray, and the remains of a roasted haunch on a sideboard. So food was served after all, most likely brought in from one of the Covent Garden inns. I screwed up my nose: the air stank of cheap perfume, cooked beef, piss, and vomit. A stomach-churning mix. I spotted two chamber pots in the corner, filled to the brim. That explained the piss and vomit. The perfume had no doubt belonged to one of the women. I weaved around the eight tables, not sure what I was looking for—evidence of malfeasance, perhaps—but saw only the remains of a night of hard gambling. I had experienced it often enough myself at routs and assemblies, although not so robustly foul.

I turned my attention to the bookshelves. Annual bindings of the Gentleman’s Magazine, a well-used collection of the de Sade novels, and a great number of illustrated books and folios. I pulled one of the books from the shelf and opened it, only to be confronted by a drawing of a man behind a donkey, mid-congress. A little too meticulously drawn. Good God. I snapped it shut and pushed it back into its place on the shelf.

“Gus.” I turned around at the hiss of my name. Evan stood at the doorway, gesturing urgently for me to follow.

Had he found something?

14

I followed Evan into the room opposite.

It was a salon, if you could call it that, for its red velvet upholstered armchairs and sofas had been arranged to view two chaise longues rather than in the usual conversation groups. For a moment I could not conceive why the chairs and sofas would be arranged in such a way. And then I could. I clamped down upon the lurid imagining.

Like the card room, it had been left in a foul state—bottles and glasses and a woman’s stocking wet upon the floor—but at least it did not stink as much as the card room.

Evan had picked up one of the candles and waved me over to a carved lectern that stood facing a wall tapestry that depicted Bacchus and his acolytes in grape-laden revelry. A large leather-bound ledger sat open upon the wooden stand.

“It is the wager book,” he whispered. He held up the candle for me to read.

The entries were in different hands, each page divided into five columns: Date. Names. Wager & Stake. Result. Winner.

I ran my finger down the names, but they were all in code: the names of Greek gods. Rather grandiloquent. The wagers and the results, however, were in plain English.

I read the last entry.