Page 1 of A Case of Possession
Chapter One
On a hot summer’s night, in a small, bare clerk’s room in Limehouse, a few streets from the stench of the river and three doors down from an opium den, Lucien Vaudrey, the Earl Crane, was checking lading bills.
This was not his preferred way to spend an evening, but since his preferences hadn’t been consulted, and the work needed to be done, he was doing it.
He went through the bills with the jaundiced eye of a China trader, asking himself not whether he had been stolen from, but where the theft had occurred. If he couldn’t find it, that would suggest his factor back home in Shanghai was either cleverer or more honest than he had thought, and Crane didn’t think he was particularly honest.
His iron nib scratched down the paper. It was a functional, cheap pen, like the basic deal desk and the plain, sparse office. There was no evidence of wealth in the room at all, in fact, except for Crane’s suit, which had cost more than the house he was sitting in.
As Lucien Vaudrey, trader and occasional smuggler, he had made himself satisfactorily rich, and his unexpected elevation to the peerage had brought him a huge fortune along with the title. He was now one of England’s most eligible bachelors, to anyone who didn’t know or chose to disregard his reputation in China, and he was this very evening failing to attend three separate soirees at which he could have met perhaps thirty women who would be enthusiastically available for the position of the Countess Crane. On his bureau at home were several dozen more visiting cards, invitations, requests for money, requests for meetings: a thick sheaf oflaissez-passerto the highest society.
He could have his pick of London’s beauties, socialise with the best people, assert his place in the top few hundred of the Upper Ten Thousand, claim the social status of which many people dreamed and for which some would sacrifice everything. He could have all that if he lifted a finger, and if someone held a gun to his head to make him do it.
Crane had spent his entire adult life in Shanghai, cheek by jowl with smugglers, prostitutes, gamblers, killers, traders, drinkers, shamans, painters, corrupt officials, slumming mandarins, poets, opium eaters and other such scum, and he loved that sweaty, vivid, intoxicated world. Polite soirees and elegant dinners with people whose achievement in life began and ended with birth held no appeal at all.
So he declined, or ignored, the invitations, because in comparison to high society, identifying where someone had shaved his shipment of Szechuan peppercorns was a much more rewarding pursuit.
Not as rewarding as the pursuit of a certain amber-eyed individual whose small, lithe, delightfully yielding body kept him awake at night, but that wasn’t an option right now because the little devil had once again vanished off to work.
Stephen’s elusiveness was a novelty for Crane, who had always found getting rid of lovers more of a challenge than picking them up, and who had never had a partner who worked harder than himself. His new level of idleness was the problem, really, since if his days were fuller he would spend less of them wondering what Stephen was up to, but to amend that by setting up a serious business would require a commitment to England that he couldn’t quite bring himself to make. Not when he had a perfectly good trading house in Shanghai, where life was easier, more comfortable, and so much more fun.
There would be no Stephen in Shanghai, of course, but then for all Crane knew to the contrary, he wasn’t in London either. He had disappeared two nights ago without a word, and would return as it suited him.
And that was quite reasonable. Stephen was a free man, and one with responsibilities that made Crane’s international business look like a casual pastime. They both had work to do, and since Crane had never tolerated lovers who expected him to put aside his business for their entertainment, he was hardly going to make those demands on Stephen’s time. It was merely irritating that the boot was so firmly on the other foot, for once; that it was Crane waiting for Stephen to turn up on his own unpredictable schedule, knowing that he would offer no more than a lopsided, provocative smile as explanation for his absence.
Thinking of his lover’s irresistible foxy grin led Crane to a moment’s consideration of more interesting uses his desk could be put to. He concluded that the damn thing would doubtless fall apart under the stresses he intended to apply as soon as he got his hands on the little so-and-so, and on that thought, at last spotted where the factor’s well-massaged figures didn’t quite work.
Not a bad effort, he reflected, and a nicely judged theft, enough to be worthwhile for the factor, and quite tolerable for Crane as part of a very competently handled bit of business. He nodded, pleased. The man would work out well.
He reached for the next bill, and there was a loud rapping at the door.
That was tiresome, since he was the only person in the building at eight in the evening, so he ignored it. There was another, more persistent knocking. Then a call, through the iron-barred but open casement.
“Vaudrey! Vaudrey! Crane, I mean.” The visitor peered through the window. “There you are.Nong hao.”
“Nong hao, Rackham,” said Crane, and went to let him in.
Theo Rackham had been something of a friend in China, as another Englishman who preferred local society to expatriates. Rackham was himself a practitioner of magic, though not a powerful one, and it was he who had introduced Crane to Stephen Day a few months ago.
“This is an unexpected pleasure. How are you?”
Rackham didn’t answer immediately. He was wandering about the room, peering at the maps tacked on the plastered walls. “This is your office? I must say, I’d have thought you’d have somewhere rather better than this.” He sounded almost affronted.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s in Limehouse.”
“I like Limehouse,” Crane said. “So do you.”
“I don’t like it. Nobody could. Filthy place.”
Crane raised an eyebrow but didn’t bother to ask.
“Grubby den of thieves and bullies and madmen,” Rackham went on. “If I were rich I wouldn’t set foot in this cursed part of town.”
Then where would you get your opium?Crane enquired mentally. He had noted Rackham’s slightly dilated pupils, but since that was a sign of a practitioner using his powers, as well as an opium fiend, and since, in truth, he didn’t care, he hadn’t passed judgement.
Rackham seemed to be nursing a grudge. “You’re rich. Why don’t you act like it? Why aren’t you at grand parties in the West End instead of slaving away in the Limehouse docks?”
