Henry Chide-Mulhearne, a member of the aristocracy and a follower of Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, had been anticipating this moment for a while. He had come across one of the Marquis de Sade’s novels, Les 120 Journées de Sodome in his youth, and the works of sexual fantasy and perversion had gripped him like nothing else in his pampered and profligate life. Wealth and power he took as his right, and the privileges they accorded him a divine prerogative. He considered himself above the law and the narrow views of men, and although he usually took his women from the brothels where they would not be missed should his ‘games’ go too far, occasionally, as in the case of Cat, a woman who was not a prostitute caught his eye.
His servants, such as Seamus, he chose very carefully and paid extremely well. He had a country estate, this large townhouse, a grand chalet in France and a villa in the Italian Alps, and divided his time between them, never staying too long in one place. Each of his homes had what he called his ‘special’ room, like the one Cat was in now. Actresses interested him, they always had. In an age where the paragon of womanhood was the humble, obedient wife, mother or sister of some man, a woman who flagrantly displayed herself on the stage of the theatre was anathema and therefore exciting to his jaded palate – whatever the puritan morality of the play. And lately, the ‘new drama’ where conventional attitudes were challenged excited him still more.
He saw that the drug Seamus had given her had done its work. Even as she backed away from him, she stumbled and almost fell. He was wearing nothing beneath the long velvet dressing gown he had on, and as he reached her, he said softly, ‘Will you take off your clothes, my dear, or shall I?’
Chapter 16
The lunch with Patience and William went well, but Sophy was glad when it was over. Patience did most of the talking. By the time they parted, Sophy was well-acquainted with most aspects of her cousins’ lives. She knew John and Matthew had houses in the same street in Bishopwearmouth and were blissfully happy with their respective wives, and that John’s boys were darlings but a handful. David had done splendidly at university and was now an archaeologist working somewhere in Egypt. Patience and her husband lived close to the children’s hospital on the southern outskirts of Bishopwearmouth where William had recently taken up the post of Head Consultant, after eighteen years at the Sunderland Infirmary. Patience had told Sophy that she and her brothers saw their father on a regular basis, but their mother rarely.
Sophy gave Patience her address before they said goodbye. It would have been churlish not to. But seeing her cousin had brought up the wounds of the past, especially the feeling of loss she’d felt when Bridget, Kitty and Patrick had been dismissed. Consequently she left the hotel sad and disturbed.
Two days later, however, when she waited in vain for Cat at Dolly’s, and then went to the theatre where Cat was appearing only to find her friend hadn’t shown for the last few performances, she felt more than disturbed. It was the same story at Cat’s lodgings. No one had seen her since the morning Cat had attended the suffrage meeting.
Sophy left Cat’s lodgings and went straight to the local police station. From there she tried several hospitals. Everyone she spoke to tried to be helpful but Cat had apparently disappeared into thin air. During her performance that night, all Sophy could think about was her friend. She sensed that something was terribly wrong. Single actresses were vulnerable. Everyone knew that, which was why many married for protection as much as for respectability. True, the theatre was more reputable than the music halls, and the social status regarding male actors had changed for the better in the last decade or two, but a segment of society persisted in viewing actresses as scarlet women. Henry Irving, the actor-manager of the Lyceum, had done much for male actors when he was knighted thirteen years before, but actresses were still suspect. Ambition and independence were unfeminine attributes, male logic argued, and when women expressed passion and a lack of restraint on stage, it stood to reason they were females of a certain sort.
Sophy had heard these views in various forms over the years. Most of the time actresses could laugh at the bigotry they rep resented, but occasionally, like now, they were more worrying.