But Edward was in no state to help smuggle him out of the country. Anyway, Micky was not going to take a terminal syphilis case back to Cordova with him. Still he needed an accomplice. And there was only one candidate left: Augusta.
He was not as sure of her as he was of Edward. Edward had always been willing to do anything Micky asked. Augusta was independent. But she was his last chance.
He turned to go.
"Don't leave me," Edward pleaded.
There was no time for sentiment. "I can't take a dying man with me," he snapped.
Edward looked up, and his face took on a malicious expression. "If you don't ..."
"Well?"
"I'll tell the police that you killed Peter Middleton, and Uncle Seth, and Solly Greenbourne."
Augusta must have told him about old Seth. Micky stared at Edward. He made a pathetic figure. How have I put up with him for so long, Micky wondered? He suddenly realized how happy he would be to leave him behind. "Tell the police," he said. "They're already after me for killing Tonio Silva, and I might as well be hanged for four murders as for one." He went out without looking back.
He let himself out of the house and got a hansom in Park Lane. "Kensington Gore," he told the cabbie. "Whitehaven House." On the way he worried about his health. He had none of the symptoms: no skin problems, no unexplained lumps on his genitals. But he would have to wait to be sure. Damn Edward to hell.
He also worried about Augusta. He had not seen her since the crash. Would she help him? He knew she had always struggled to control her sexual hunger for him; and on that one bizarre occasion she had actually yielded to her passion. In those days Micky had burned for her too. Since then Micky's fire had abated, but he felt that hers had grown hotter. He hoped so: he was going to ask her to run away with him.
Augusta's door was opened not by her butler but by a slovenly woman in an apron. Passing through the hall, Micky noticed that the place was not very clean. Augusta was in difficulties. So much the better: it would make her more inclined to go along with his plan.
However, she appeared her usual imperious self as she came into the drawing room in a purple silk blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a black flared skirt With a tiny pinched waist. She had been a breathtakingly beautiful young woman and now, at fifty-eight, she could still turn heads. He recalled the lust he had felt for her as a boy of sixteen, but there was none left. He would have to fake it.
