India Black by Carol K. Carr Page B

confederate) were to woo Yusopov upstairs with our maidenly charms, lull him to sleep with some vigorous sexual activity, and then I was to pop downstairs to Yusopov’s office, open the safe (the combination of which French provided me, courtesy of some mole in the Russian embassy), secure Latham’s case, and hotfoot it out the door and down the street, where I would find French waiting. The first part of the plan didn’t present any problems: I was confident in my abilities to first charm, and then exhaust Yusopov. The latter section of the plan (hot-footing it out of the embassy) seemed rather vague, omitting as it did certain details such as the existence and location of armed guards.
    “Not to worry, India,” French said blithely (he wasn’t going to be in the embassy, performing for Count Perverterov, was he?). “The guards will be exhausted after pulling duty at the ball. They’ll be snoring in their beds by the time you have the case in hand.”
    The barouche dropped us at my front door, with instructions for me to be ready at nine o’clock the following evening and for Vincent not to be anywhere near the Russian embassy then. Vincent nodded obligingly, but I knew I’d likely see his face peeking out from behind the aspidistra.
     
     
     
    As I’ve said, I didn’t find it the least bit odd that the PM would enlist a whore to engage in some skullduggery on behalf of the government, and I made my plans accordingly.
    If Yusopov wanted to enjoy the Sapphic arts, I had just the person in mind, and the following morning, I walked briskly around the corner to the Silver Thistle and inquired for the Jamaican Queen. Moments later, I was engulfed in a haze of perfume, my face buried in the ample bosom of Rowena Adderly.
    “India,” she squealed. “How delightful to see you.” She held me at arm’s length and assessed me with an expert eye. “You’re looking particularly luscious, my dear.”
    I extracted myself from her grasp, no small feat as Rowena had the grip of an octopus in heat. “Hello, Rowena. You’re looking well yourself.” And she was a damnably fine-looking woman: statuesque and coffee-coloured, with a billowing cloud of dark curls, a lilting Caribbean accent, and plump lips that made men salivate. She plied her trade out of the Silver Thistle and did a rushing business in men newly returned from the colonies, where they’d acquired an affinity for Negresses, Indian nautch girls and Arab maidens, obtaining a small fortune along the way. Rowena’s talents were legendary on the London docks, but her personal taste ran to her own sex. Hence my visit this morning: if you’re going to do something, you may as well do it with style, and who better to give this affair some class (not to mention verisimilitude) than a real live tom? I didn’t have any doubt that Rowena would be willing to join me in my escapade. She’d been trying to get into my petticoats for years.
    Of course I couldn’t tell her the truth. I’d concocted a tale on the drive home, and now I spun it for Rowena, after we’d exchanged the usual pleasantries and complaints about customers, peelers and the Contagious Diseases Act. I’d given considerable thought to how I might explain the case and what was in it and why I wanted it, bearing in mind that while Rowena might jump at the chance to strip off my knickers (not that I was planning on things getting to that point), she’d be even more likely to offer her assistance if I could enlist her sympathy, having, as I said, a soft spot for yours truly.
    So I laid out a yarn that would have made Dickens’s readers weep, how I’d promised my mother to take care of her dearest friend in her old age, how the friend had suffered grievously from a rare disease that could only be cured by taking the waters at Baden-Baden, how I’d borrowed the money from one of my customers, a Russian nobleman (Count Yusopov, by name, the rascal) and delivered to him as security the deed to Lotus