"A Maze for the Minotaur" is the best Victorian brothel horror story I have read.
The Minotaur of the title is jute magnate Frederick Cooper, known to London's streetwalking prostitutes as The Beast.
The story takes place in 1897, at Mrs. Belling's house at Number 2 Boscobel Place St John's Wood. It is here that the Minotaur makes a weekly visit.
Mabel, a former artist's model, has recently joined Mrs. Bellings' establishment.
....familiarity had not yet worn away the charm of pleasant surroundings and an absence of money worries for the first time in her life. She was only just beginning to chafe at her employer's restrictions. As for the nature of her work, it had been a part of her life for a long while, long before Mrs Belling, and not always in the safest of environments. Mabel had learned to bury its ugliness deep inside her, and yet a man like the Minotaur could arouse the latent horror. Why exactly?
The Minotaur evokes horror in Mabel more than in Mrs. Belling's other workers: Effie, Rose and Charlotte.
....Mabel had learned to disguise her passions well, but once they had been aroused she would doggedly pursue them until they were satisfied. She was not sure why her curiosity about the Minotaur had been so stimulated, nor why she hated him so vehemently, but somehow the hatred and the curiosity were connected. The other girls just thought it was a lark, 'money for jam', as one of them had rather wittily put it, but Mabel did not.
Oliver gives us a tour de force scene of the Minotaur rampant and anonymously masked on a visit to 2 Boscobel Place:
....the Minotaur entered the room.
His huge white body was naked save for a mask which covered the upper part of his face. The mask was black and fringed with woolly black hair, and two black horns shaped like those of a bull emerged from the temples. Above the mask a shiny bald cranium streaked with a few reddish grey hairs emerged. Beneath was a large sensual mouth with loose engorged lips whose ruby redness contrasted hideously with the almost dead white pallor of his skin. The aggressive chin was partly obscured by pendulous jowls which hung like dewlaps from his veined cheeks. The whole effect might have suggested the Minotaur to a classicist; to anyone seeing it for the first time it would have appeared merely monstrous.
The man lowered his head and peered round the room. There was something bull-like about this gesture, as if he were preparing to charge. He sauntered over to the plate of jam tarts and examined them minutely, then, having selected one of them, he retreated into the centre of the room. His long member, hitherto flaccid, began to show signs of arousal. With an impatient, imperious move movement of his left hand he gestured to the girls who slipped off their silken robes and stood naked for his inspection. The Minotaur strutted before them, the jam tart poised on the flat of his right hand. Mrs Belling turned round from the piano and looked enquiringly at him. He nodded and she immediately launched into Ta-ra-ra Boomdeay.
This was the signal for the girls to begin to dance about the room. Mabel was a better dancer than the others, and she deliberately showed off her skills while knowing that this was not what the Minotaur was looking for. The others followed her lead, and it did not please him. He stamped and growled, executing a few clumsy steps himself by way of example. He was looking for less refinement, more Bacchanalian abandon. Then, with one swift and surprisingly adroit movement the Minotaur hurled the jam tart at one of the dancing girls. It struck Rose on the left buttock with such force that she gave a little cry of pain which she rapidly converted into a whoop of abandon. That cry of pain seemed to jerk the Minotaur into full arousal. He gestured to Mrs Belling to play faster which she did, stumbling over the notes, this time of Daisy Bell while the girls began to cavort around the room uttering shouts of mock ecstasy.
Meanwhile the Minotaur had picked up the plate of jam tarts and was hurling them in a frenzy at the passing girls.
Then, quite suddenly, he gave a great roar, which was a signal for the music and the dancing to stop. For a space of half a minute nothing could be heard in the room except the exhausted gasps of the dancers and the Minotaur's stertorous breathing. Effie, involuntarily, let out a little giggle, and went pink with embarrassment and fear. She knew that any indication that their activities had been somehow a source of amusement displeased the Minotaur greatly.
There were three jam tarts remaining. Taking them from the plate, which he unceremoniously dropped on the carpet, the Minotaur advanced towards Effie while she stood naked and now trembling in front of Mrs Belling's upright piano. Cupping one of the jam tarts in his right hand, the Minotaur came very close to Effie until she could feel his hot malodorous breath on her forehead. Then he pressed the jam tart hard into her left breast. Effie let out a scream of pain and stumbled back, almost falling over Mrs Belling as she did so. Mrs Belling rose and held Effie steadily from behind by the shoulders while the Minotaur, with even greater force, slapped a jam tart onto Effie's right breast . Effie cried out even louder at the pain and burst into a torrent of sobs.
Mabel, who had been standing next to her, made an involuntary move forward to defend Effie from any further attack. The Minotaur turned upon her. He was almost a foot taller than she was and she could see his eyes staring down at her through the mask. She had never before seen his eyes so close to. The irises were a strange pale green colour, the whites bloodshot, the overall effect feral and malignant. Keeping his eyes on her, he slowly and deliberately ground the last jam tart into the space between her thighs. Mabel stared back defiantly, determined to show no sign of weakness, suffering, or even loathing. The satisfaction of a mirrored hatred would be denied him. All the same, some satisfaction must have been achieved, and the resulting emission spilt itself on the carpet.
Mabel later meets up with her sister Lily, a streetwalker too coarse for the heights of Mrs. Belling's house. Eventually Lily will fall victim to Beast Cooper, and Mabel will draw Effie, Rose and Charlotte into a plot to eliminate the Minotaur.
"A Maze for the Minotaur" is non-supernatural horror, but cloaked in mystery and a sense of social apprehension which is deeply disturbing.
Jay
9 July 2020
Source:
Soot and Steel: Dark Tales of London edited by Ian Whates (2019)
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