Petty Treason (26 page)

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Authors: Madeleine E. Robins

BOOK: Petty Treason
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The door opened an inch. An eye, blackened and swollen, appeared in the space. Miss Tolerance was not certain that the owner of the eye could, in fact, see enough to discern who it was.
“Mrs. Strokum?”
The eye blinked and a ribbon of mucus filmed it. “Christ, an’t you done enough damage?” Miss Tolerance could not see enough of the person behind the door to be certain it was Betty Strokum, but the tone—and the words—persuaded her that it was.
“What has happened to you?” she asked.
“What d‘you think?” Mrs. Strokum stepped away from the
door, shoving it open as she turned her back. “You might as well come in and see your ’andiwork.”
Miss Tolerance’s heart sank. She did not pretend incomprehension. “Boyse?”
“In course, Boyse.
You bin a-talkin’ of me, Bet
? he asks. And before I can say yea or nay, I’m beat to the bone. I shan’t be able to work today or tomorra.”
The whore turned to face Miss Tolerance. Both her eyes were blacked, and the right side of her face was purple with bruising; her nose was flattened. She wheezed and lowered herself gingerly into her chair. Miss Tolerance suspected that Mrs. Strokum had broken a rib or two as well. Miss Tolerance raised her hand to her own fading bruises as if the sight of Mrs. Strokum’s had worsened her own pain.
“I am so sorry.” It was quite inadequate.
“I tried to tell ‘im I ’ardly said a word but to give ‘im a alibi. ’E wasn’t listening.
Bin a-talkin’ of me, Bet
? he asks. Then this. What did you do, go off and tell half a’ Lunnon what I told you?”
Miss Tolerance shook her head. “I never used your name. In fact—” she thought back to the conversation she had had the night before. “I don’t know what I could have said to anyone that would have set Boyse upon your trail. I went to several fences of my acquaintance, looking for Tom Millward.”
Mrs. Strokum glared. “And that ’splains it. You stupid bitch, there ain’t no Millward.”
“No Millward.”
The whore nodded; a moan and a wince suggested what the gesture had cost her. “I played along, made ’im up to get rid of you. If Boyse learns I been talking to you again—well, I been beat before, I know the difference between a man means to kill and a man that don’t. Next time you’ll find me dead.”
Miss Tolerance nodded. If Millward was a fiction she could readily believe that Boyse would kill the doxy to protect his secret. Looking at Betty Strokum’s bruises, so like her own, she felt a twinge of guilty sickness which she covered with a decisive manner.
“We shall have to keep you safe, then,” she said briskly.
“
What
?”
“Get your coat and hat. I shall take you somewhere you can stay for a few days until I have dealt with Mr. Boyse.”
“What, simple as that?” Mrs. Strokum stared at Miss Tolerance. It was difficult to parse her expression; the bruises made it unreadable. “How’m I to earn my keep, hidin’ away? And you—how do you know I’m not lying now?”
“Why would you lie? For fear of Boyse? Did he tell you to do it? I cannot see his purpose. He wants it to be believed that he got information from a man named Millward on Wednesday night—but the barman at the Duke of Kent said Boyse spent the best part of the evening in your company. You tell me Boyse was in your company but did not see this Millward—but obligingly tell me Millward is a fence. Yet not one person in the receiving line I spoke to recognized the name Millward. The barman at the Duke of Kent didn’t know the name, and he’s a fellow recognizes his custom. So even before I found you yesterday, I was upon my way to doubting Boyse’s story.”
“Well, I’m not going to help you peach ’im,” Mrs. Strokum said. “I’ve no ambition to be dead.”
“I’ve no ambition to see you dead. If you can dress yourself”—the woman wore several flannel shawls over her shift—“I will take you somewhere where you will be safe. It might even prove to be a profitable stay for you.”
“What’s the use?” Mrs. Strokum whined. “‘E’ll find me out. I’m dead.”
“If you stay here you certainly are,” Miss Tolerance agreed. Her patience was wearing thin. The red dress Mrs. Strokum had worn the day before hung from a nail in the wall. Miss Tolerance plucked it down and held it out. “I will avert my eyes,” she said.
The other woman gave a snort that might have been amusement, followed by a gasp of pain. “Ain’t that genteel of you,” she said. “But I’ll need my corsets.”
Within an hour Miss Tolerance was at the door of Mrs. Lasher’s establishment. Mrs. Strokum, heavily veiled, stood a pace or two behind, caught somewhere between awe at the brothel’s elegance and disbelief that she would be admitted thereto. Miss Tolerance gave her name to the footman and the two women were shown to
the parlor. Within a quarter hour Miss Tolerance had arranged at an extortionate rate to have Mrs. Lasher provide room and board for “Mrs. Smith” for a few days.
“I didn’t think to see you again,” Mrs. Lasher said. “This is on the same business?” She had assessed Mrs. Strokum with a glance and adopted her plummiest genteel accent.
Miss Tolerance smiled. “I cannot say what the business is. My purse will have to do my talking for me. And I require absolute secrecy.”
Mrs. Lasher eyed Mrs. Strokum without favor. “You don’t think I want it got about that that’s the sort of woman I keep here?” she asked. From her disapproval one would have thought her the wife of an archbishop, at least. “I’m more afraid your Mrs. Smith will announce herself to my clients.”
“I don’t think you need worry about that,” Miss Tolerance told her. “She is as fearful of being found as you are of having her associated with the house. Give her a room and a bath and I’m sure she’ll stay out of your way.”
Just to be certain, however, Miss Tolerance took Mrs. Strokum, now called Mrs. Smith, aside and reminded her of the peril in which she stood should the constable Boyse find her out.
“No bloody fear,” the woman said. “I’ll keep to me cot and say my prayers until you say it’s safe to come out again.” She smiled her peculiar toothless smile, began to curtsy but winced and thought better of it, and followed Mrs. Lasher’s dour assistant out of the room.
 
 
M
iss Tolerance went then to make a report of her progress to Anne d’Aubigny, and, as importantly, to see how that lady had fared in her new accommodation at Cold Bath Fields. She paid the visitor’s fee, stepped from the clamor of a crowded street into the enforced quiet of the prison halls, and was led along a dim, low-ceilinged corridor halfway around the prison. “She’s to be taken back for more questions after a while,” the guard warned her, and unlocked the door.
Anne d’Aubigny sat by the room’s small, square window, obscured
by the glare of light behind her. Miss Tolerance curtsied, stepped into the room, and heard the door close and lock behind her.
“Good morning, ma’am. I hope you passed a tolerable night.”
The widow nodded listlessly.
Miss Tolerance looked about the room. It was only half a dozen paces deep and wide, with a cot set in one corner, a trunk in the other, and the table and two chairs set in the middle. The trunk, Miss Tolerance assumed, stood in stead of a wardrobe. For the rest, there were three sticks holding half-burnt candles, a few books including the Bible on the floor by the bed, and a workbag with a ’broidery frame and silks spilling out of it on the table. It was hardly a pleasant room, but it was clean.
Miss Tolerance took the empty chair across the table from her client.
“I have, I hope, good news. I believe I shall be able to refute the information which was the cause of your arrest.”
Anne d’Aubigny nodded. “Thank you.”
Miss Tolerance misliked the hopelessness of her tone. “I beg you will not lose heart, ma’am. I know this is a hard time for you, but it will soon be over, and you safe at home again.”
“Safe.” The widow sounded the word vaguely, as if it made no sense to her. Miss Tolerance felt that prick of impatience which touched so many of her conversations with Anne d’Aubigny.
“You are frightened and uncomfortable, nor can I blame you. But your situation could be much worse. I am working to have you released as soon as possible. They cannot proceed against you unless you give your consent to be tried.”
“They will press me if I do not cooperate.” While it was true that one could not be tried without consent, and while English law forbade the sorts of torture said to be practiced wholesale on the Continent, it was not uncommon to wring a confession or consent to be tried from a recalcitrant prisoner by pressing.
“Nonsense,” Miss Tolerance said briskly. “You’re a beautiful young woman with money and good family, imprisoned on poor evidence. Mr. Heddison would not countenance—”
“It was he who said it. They will press me—”
“They say so only to frighten you.”
“Then they succeed. Mr. Boyse very helpfully described what pressing is, when Mr. Heddison was called from the room.” The widow’s detached voice all of an instant quavered. “They strip you naked. They put you on a granite table and pile stones on you until your—your organs are flattened, or burst from your body. He said the effect was rather like that of a carriage wheel crushing a squirrel.”
Miss Tolerance silently damned Boyse to a Hell of her own devising. “They have not enough evidence to make them sure of a confession. They will not press you—”
The widow grimaced. “They told me over and over that my birth and money and family will not protect me. That within a day or so, if I do not consent to trial or tell them how I killed Etienne they will press me until I beg to tell them.” She laughed bitterly. “I thought with Etienne dead my troubles were over.”
“I beg you will not say such a thing to the magistrate!” Miss Tolerance could only imagine Heddison’s opinion of such a statement.
“My husband beat me and said it was his right. The law will kill me and say it is its right.”
Miss Tolerance rose from her chair and knelt at the widow’s feet, taking her hands in her own. She spoke slowly, as she might have done to a child. “I promise you, I shall not let that happen. I am very near to exploding the evidence against you. Once you are free again I will find who killed your husband, and the whole matter will be behind you. Remember that and be brave.”
Anne d’Aubigny nodded. Unshed tears made her eyes bright, but her expression was childishly courageous, as if she placed her entire faith in Miss Tolerance’s ability to rescue her. Certainly Miss Tolerance was the only rescuer to hand, but she found that regard both touching and unnerving. She rose briskly, meaning the action to inspire courage in both herself and her client.
“I must be about your business. I want to consult with a friend—if I can secure his assistance it will doubtless speed your removal from this place. I know that cannot come too soon for you. Are you well? Have you everything you need?”
The widow nodded again. “William came early today, and said he would return tonight to dine with me. Having a little privacy,
and the freedom to walk about a little in this room, has been restorative.”
“I am sure the food is not what you are used to—”
Mrs. d’Aubigny shrugged. “It hardly matters.” Then, as if fearing she had been ungrateful, she smiled. “Thank you, Miss Tolerance. It is a comfort to know you are working for my good.”
Miss Tolerance curtsied. “Good morning, then, ma’am. I hope the next time I come I shall have better news.”
 
 
M
iss Tolerance took a chair to Henry Street, established herself in Tarsio’s Ladies’ Parlor, and wrote a note to Sir Walter Mandif, begging to know when she might call upon him for advice. She ordered a pot of tea, her universal restorative, and sat with paper and pen, seeking to make sense of what she knew. At the outset it was difficult to put the image of Anne d’Aubigny out of her mind. It was not surprising that the widow seemed even more fragile in her new surroundings; with all the advantages of accommodation, board and treatment that money could secure for her, she was still a prisoner. It was a sort of treatment no gently reared young woman could imagine.
Of course, her marriage had given Anne d’Aubigny some experience in dealing with situations unimaginable to most gently reared young ladies.
Miss Tolerance mused, drank her tea, and scratched notes to herself.
The matter of “Millward‘s” testimony she thought she could dispose of fairly quickly. Without that against her, Heddison must release Anne d’Aubigny from Cold Bath Fields Prison. Then the real matter before her—the finding of d’Aubigny’s killer—could proceed. And what did she know of that?
Etienne d‘Aubigny had come into a sum of money shortly before his death, with which he had satisfied his debts. He had suggested to his wife that there would be more money to come—but whence it was to come she did not know. Miss Tolerance did not place any credence in Anne d’Aubigny’s suggestion that an angry creditor had killed the chevalier. She had suggested to Camille Touvois that d’Aubigny’s money might have come from blackmail,
which certainly provided a motive for murder. But who might his victim-killer have been?

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