18 May 1959

The Lock and Key did not appear, at first blush, to be a den of iniquity. Lucien had found it easily enough, thanks to some rather sketchy directions he'd managed to pull out of a begrudging Matthew, and he parked his car two streets away for good measure, approaching on foot the better to disguise his arrival. The pub was an old colonial brick building; it boasted two floors, and a wide veranda that wrapped around the first level. There was no one loitering on that veranda, however, no muddy cars or plumes of cigarette smoke to indicate that the pub catered to men of certain appetites. It was swept clean, and its windows, though covered by heavy drapes on the inside, were immaculate. The front door was heavy and wooden, and as Lucien swung it open a little bell tinkled merrily above it.

The interior of the pub was as unassuming as the exterior had been; there was no pall of smoke, no raucous laughter, no half naked girls sitting on the laps of prominent businessmen. The walls were whitewashed, the bar running the length of the back wall polished and shining. There were warm wooden booths lining the periphery, and stout tables and chairs scattered about, each boasting its own little lamp. Lucien supposed he had been correct, in thinking it was early yet; there were only three gentlemen in the pub, all of them sitting at the bar, nursing pints of beer and refusing to meet one another's eyes. A jukebox in the corner was playing that Bobby Lee song Lucien seemed to hear every time he stepped out his front door, and the bottles on the wall behind the bar were pristine and gleaming in the glow of the lamps. There were a few young ladies, most of whom seemed to be in their early twenties, scattered around the room; they sat at tables or leaned against the walls, talking quietly to one another. Their dresses were clean and well-fitted, their makeup soft and pretty, not garish as Lucien had expected. They all looked...perfectly normal, he thought, their faces fresh and unlined, their smiles easy and untroubled. It was not at all what he expected, and for a moment he found himself utterly at a loss as to what to do next. Speak to one of them, he supposed, ask for the lady of the house and see where his inquiries might lead him, but before he had the chance he was quite shocked to find another friendly face in the pub.

"Doc," Danny hissed as he came rushing over, his eyes a little wild. "What the bloody hell are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Lucien answered, grinning. "I wouldn't think a constable's salary would stretch to accommodate an evening in this place." Danny was in plain clothes, a nice navy shirt and dark trousers, and somehow that made him look even younger than he did when he wore his policeman's uniform. Though Lucien had no idea how much money Danny made - or what these girls might charge - Matthew had told him that the madam charged a hefty price for her girls' services, and everything Lucien had seen so far seemed to indicate that such services would be costly indeed. There was no bitter tang of desperation in the air, no dark corners for doing ill deeds. The Lock and Key was warm and cheery and neat, and in the world of brothels, such luxury came dearly.

"I'm not a customer," Danny told him in a fierce whisper. "I'm working."

"What, undercover? Matthew didn't say -"

"No," Danny sighed, exasperated now. "I work security a few nights a week. Now get out of here before someone sees you."

Now that was interesting. Curiosity had always been Lucien's greatest flaw, and it burned within him now. What sort of woman could keep a house like this, he wondered, could tend it so lovingly and yet condone the antics that went on beneath her roof? What sort of woman, engaged in such a business, would willingly give information to the police, and hire one of them to keep her girls safe? A very intriguing woman indeed, he thought, and one he was eager to meet.

"Actually, Danny, I'm here to speak with the landlady. The superintendent thinks she may know something about our victim."

At those words Danny visibly paled, and all the fight seemed to leave him.

"All right," he said. "But be quick about it. I don't want to explain to anyone what you were doing here. She's in the back corner," he pointed to a booth tucked almost completely out of sight. "And be nice."

"I'm always nice, Danny," Lucien told him, clapping the lad on the shoulder before making his way towards that booth.

She had chosen her seat well; tucked away in that corner she'd have a clear view of anyone who walked in the door, and the wall at her back meant no one could sneak up on her. Lucien had known bookies who favored the same position in their various places of work. Did she sit here every evening, he wondered, keeping watch over her girls, her pub, her livelihood? Did the customers have to come to her first, before they could slip upstairs with the girl of their choice? It reminded him of the stories he'd read at school, about the ancient Greek oracles and the men who would make pilgrimage to them, approach them respectfully and with gold dripping from their hands, begging blessings from those priestesses before beginning any new venture. Powerful, unknowable, sacred and terrifying; would she be like that? He wondered.

All too soon his feet led him to that booth, and the sight that waited for him there was as strange and unexpectedly lovely as everything else about this place had been.

The first thing he noticed was that she was not, as he had feared, some wrinkled old biddy, skin like shoe leather and eyes like daggers after a lifetime spent in the trade. She looked to be in her early forties, and though there were little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and lips her face was wholly, completely lovely. High sharp cheekbones, soft full lips, the slope of her neck elegant and slender. She wore a pale pink blouse, demurely buttoned, and her soft brown hair was carefully curled, caught at the nape of her neck in a charming sort of way. Thin but not hard, she was somehow, shockingly beautiful; there was nothing about her, he thought, that seemed to suggest she was the sort of woman who could be found in a place like this. A cup of tea sat on a china saucer in front of her, a single biscuit placed next to it. But stranger still, her hands were busy with a pair of knitting needles, darting and flashing too fast for his eyes to keep up with them, the pattern they wove through heavy white yarn utterly incomprehensible to him, and strangest of all a gold band sparkled on her left hand. She was married then, or had been once, and that thought shocked him, for it had never even occurred to him before now that such a thing might be possible. Her eyes were on her work and she did not raise them as he approached, but a soft smile tugged up the corner of her mouth, as if she had been expecting him.

"Good evening, Doctor Blake," she said, a bit primly. Her back was ramrod-straight, her bearing proud, not slumped over her work.

"I'm afraid you have the advantage over me, Jean," he said then, trying to wade carefully into the quagmire that had been laid before him. How was he supposed to talk to her? Courteously, surely, but women in this line of work tended to be a bit earthier, a bit more crass; would she disdain him if he spoke to her too carefully? Or would she throw him out if he was too familiar?

"That's Mrs. Beazley, if you please, Doctor Blake," she answered. "We do like to observe the niceties here." And where is Mr. Beazley, Lucien wondered as he looked at her, while you hold court here? Do you go home to him, and sleep safe beside him without any thought for what these girls are doing?

"My apologies, Mrs. Beazley," he said at once. "I didn't expect you to know my name."

The smile was back, lending her features a delicate sort of softness in the dim light from the lamp overhead, but still she did not look at him.

"I saw you at the funeral."

"My father's funeral?" Lucien asked incredulously. "I'm sorry to say I don't recall seeing you there."

Mrs. Beazley sighed, and placed her knitting to the side, looking up at him at last. Her eyes were clear and bright, the grey-blue color of the sea in a storm, and the brilliance of those eyes held him fast; her curls bounced disapprovingly as she lifted her head, and he had the strange, uncomfortable thought then that this was what it must have felt like to cross paths with a gorgon.

"You wouldn't have," she told him simply. "I kept a certain distance, I didn't want to make a scene. But I wanted to pay my respects. I am sorry for your loss, Doctor Blake. I was always very fond of your father."

Something clenched unpleasantly deep in the pit of Lucien's stomach; the thought of his cantankerous old father in a place like this, in the arms of a woman who looked to be younger than Lucien himself, who looked too pretty and too maternal to be occupied in such a business, was an appalling one. And if there was a certain sense of jealous, a certain bitterness at the idea of his father enjoying her gentle smiles while Lucien loomed over her from a distance, it was buried too deep beneath his disgust for him to give it a name. Perhaps some of his distress showed on his face for she laughed then, once, a gentle, tinkling sort of sound, and put his fears to rest.

"He was never a customer, Doctor Blake," she assured him, and relief washed over him in waves. "Your father saw to the girls' medical care. Immunizations, and prescriptions when they fell ill, that sort of thing. I even had him in a few times to talk to them about the sort of...precautions they ought to take." She spoke that word precautions with all the delicate distaste of a schoolmarm, despite her occupation. Lucien wasn't sure which thought was stranger, his father paying for the services of a prostitute, or his father lecturing a group of prostitutes on safe sex practices. Neither was the sort of thing he would expect from Thomas Blake, a man he remembered as hard, cold, and distant.

"Would you like to have a seat, Doctor Blake?" she asked him then, gesturing towards the expanse of the vacant seat to her left. Lucien did not hesitate; he had come here to speak with her, and she had not thrown him out yet, and that was all for the good. His mind was buzzing with questions, and he meant to have answers for each of them.

"Thank you, Mrs. Beazley," he said as he settled himself beside her, dropping his hat to rest on the table. She looked at that hat, and she frowned, and so he lifted it up and set it on the seat between them.

"I don't suppose you came here to ask me about your father," she said then, reaching for her tea.

"No, I didn't. But now that you've mentioned him, I find I'm terribly curious. How did your little...arrangement come to be?"

Mrs. Beazley cradled her teacup in both hands, watching him thoughtfully over the rim of it all the while. Matthew had been right, Lucien could see that at once; Mrs. Beazley was a clever one, and careful, too.

"You won't find anything for free here, Doctor Blake," she told him then. "Even conversation has its price."

Lucien grinned; that was more in keeping with what he'd expected from the sort of woman who ran a brothel.

"What's the going rate for conversation, these days?"

"Penny for your thoughts, isn't that what they say?" There was nothing confrontational or hard about her, and the price she'd set was arbitrary; perhaps, he thought, she was testing him in some way, but he had no idea whether he'd meet with her approval. A price had been named, and it must be paid, and so he rummaged in his pocket until at last he produced the desired coin. He handed it to her silently, and she accepted it with grace, and as she did he looked at her hands, and noticed how lovely they were, not worn hard from labor, delicate but capable, the nails painted a deep, perfect shade of red, unchipped and well tended.

"I've known your father all my life," she told him as her hand and the coin disappeared beneath the table. "He was our family doctor, and we went to the same church." A whore in church, he thought dimly, who would have thought. "He was always very kind to me. Oh, he disapproved of all this," she gave a negligent wave of her hand, indicating the pub and its patrons, "but he wanted to help, in his own way."

"How about that," Lucien mused, still trying to digest her words, hardly believing it. From the moment he'd seen this place he had been on the back foot, desperately trying to find some sense of balance, but everywhere he turned he found more questions. How much must his father have changed, he wondered, that he could have taken such a task for himself? The man Lucien remembered had been much concerned with status, and appearances, living up to the Blake name and preserving their iron-clad reputation, and he had not appreciated his son's deviations from those expectations. The thought of him willingly walking into such a place as this, associating with this woman, looking after these girls, knowing the risk he was taking, was utterly baffling.

"But you didn't come here to talk about him," she said after a moment's pause. "So what can I do for you, Doctor Blake?"