“Nicola Maiden,” Lynley said.
“Discretion was—is—critical,” Sir Adrian said. “For a man in my position.” Obviously, he couldn't select a dominatrix blindly by choosing someone from a phone box card or a magazine advert. He could hardly ask friends and colleagues for recommendations. And going to an's & M club—or even to one of the lesser flesh pits in Soho in the hope of meeting a likely candidate—wasn't a wise option, since there was always the chance of being seen, being recognised, and consequently being subjected to the sort of tabloid treatment guaranteed to cause excruciating agonies to his children, the spouses of his children, and their offspring. “And to Chloe, of course,” Sir Adrian added with a nod. “For while she knew—has always known, in fact—about the hunger, her friends and relations don't know. And I expect she'd like to keep it that way.”
“Thank you, darling,” Chloe said.
So Sir Adrian had contacted an escort service—Global Escorts, to be precise—and through that institution had ultimately met Nicola Maiden. Their first interview—consisting of tea, scones, and satisfactory conversation—had been followed by a second, in which the initial deal had been struck.
“Deal?” Lynley asked.
“When her services would be required,” Chloe explained. “What they would entail and what she would be paid for them.”
“Chloe and I talked to her together for both interviews to make the arrangements,” Sir Adrian said. “It was crucial that she understand there would be nothing gained by holding over my head a liaison potentially painful to my wife.”
“Because it wasn't painful,” Chloe said. “At least not to me.”
“Will you show them the chamber, darling?” Sir Adrian asked his wife. “I'll pop down to the children and let them know we'll be with them before too much longer.”
“Of course,” she replied. “Come with me, Inspector, Constable.” And as gracefully as she'd sat, she rose, leading them to the door and up two flights of stairs as Sir Adrian went off to have a few words with his partying offspring. They were, ironically, crooning “I Get No Kick from Champagne.”
Lady Beattie showed them up to the top floor of the house. From deep within an old clothes press that stood in the narrow corridor there, she took a key, which she used on one of the doors. She swung it open, preceded the police into the room, and switched on a low-wattage light.
“He actually wanted only discipline at first,” she explained, “which, while I found it a bit odd, frankly, I was able to give him. Rulers on the palm, paddles on the bottom, the strap against the back of his legs. But after a few years he wanted more, and when it got to the point that I wasn't strong enough … Well, he's already explained that, hasn't he? At any rate, here's where they had their sessions—where he and I had them as well when I was able.”
The chamber, as they'd called it, had been fashioned out of several of the erstwhile servants' bedrooms. By knocking out walls, padding them, installing a ventilation system that obviated the use of windows—which were themselves shuttered against potential outside curiosity—the Beatties had created a fantasy world that was in part headmaster's office, operating theatre, dungeon, and mediaeval torture chamber. A line of cupboards had been fitted under the eaves, and Lady Beattie opened these to display the various costumes and devices of discipline, as she called them, that had been used on Sir Adrian.
It was clear why the Maiden girl had brought nothing with her to the house save her desire to be useful to Sir Adrian and to be paid well for her usefulness: The costumes in the cupboards ranged from a heavy wool nuns habit to a prison guards uniform complete with truncheon. There was, of course, the more traditional garb associated with the's & M game: PVC get-ups of red or black, leather teddies and masks, high-heeled boots. And the instruments of Sir Adrian's discipline, tidily arranged like the antique surgical instruments in the study, also explained why she'd been able to make her calls so lightly burdened. Everything necessary for discipline, pain, and humiliation had been collected and housed together.