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Authors: Madeleine E. Robins

BOOK: Petty Treason
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“Did not the officer of the watch wish to speak to her?”
“I explained that Madam was
en dishabille
and not available yet. He was most agreeable about waiting.”
That was a most peculiar way to manage an investigation, Miss Tolerance thought. Well, watch officers were not usually in the way of encountering full-blown murder in such a parish as this, and likely inclined to defer to persons of consequence. It might have been stupid of the officer, but it was not, Miss Tolerance regretted, unlikely.
“When you did wake your mistress and give her the news, what, exactly, did she say?”
Sophia shrugged again. “I don’t recall exactly.
Oh no
! or
My God,
something like that. And then she wept. And then she bid me help her get dressed, for she knew there would be a great deal of business to attend to that day.”
Miss Tolerance blinked. “Were those her words? A great deal of business?”
The maid shook her head. “That was the meaning of it, but I don’t recall the words exactly.” She glared at Miss Tolerance.
“Have you any idea at what time the chevalier retired that night?”
Sophia shook her head. “No, ma’am. I did my best to—to not to
be close to the master, particularly in the evening. Not to speak ill of the dead, but—”
“I understand,” Miss Tolerance said.
“You might ask Jacks. Sometimes he did for the master after Mr. Norris left.”
Miss Tolerance dismissed Pitt and called for Peter Jacks. The footman could add little, however. On the evening of the chevalier’s death he had let the master into the house at a little past ten. The chevalier had said he would see to himself, and sent Jacks off to his bed.
“What did you make of that?” Miss Tolerance asked.
“Miss?”
“Was there any reason why the master might have sent you to bed and seen to himself? He has not—you will forgive me—but he has not impressed me as the soul of consideration.”
Jacks grinned for a moment, then recalled himself. “Master didn’t make no secret that I wasn’t up to his standards as a valet. Half the time he did for hisself at night, said he didn’t want me racketing over him.”
“And that night was one of those nights?”
“I suppose so, miss. He just said ‘That’s all, Jacks.’ So I went to bed.”
Miss Tolerance asked the footman to go over what had happened the next morning, but it varied little from what she had already learned. Jacks had been called from the kitchen by Mr. Beak to fetch the watch. “Glad to leave I was, too, with Mary Pitt bawling as loud as a trumpet. I ran out and fetched the old man back—”
“The door was locked until you left?”
“Oh, yes, miss. Tight as a drum every night. Mr. Beak locked it after master got in.”
Miss Tolerance sent for Beak.
Adolphus Beak came into his parlor and made a little ceremony of seating himself opposite to Miss Tolerance, clearing his throat, and composing himself. He agreed that the testimony he had given at the Coroner’s Court, reported in the
Times,
was correct. The house had been securely locked the night before, bolts
thrown on both the front and kitchen doors. The windows in the chevalier’s room had been undisturbed. The staff that slept in the house had been abed—he had personally locked the door to the servants’ stairwell before he retired, to guard against kitchen pilfering.
“When you discovered the chevalier’s body, your first act was what, Mr. Beak?”
Beak looked down his nose—a large, well-made feature, somewhat marred by a brown stain which indicated he was addicted to the use of snuff, but not so habituated in the use of his handkerchief. “I know what’s proper, miss. I sent Jacks off to bring the watch.”
Miss Tolerance was unmoved by the man’s condescension. “Very proper. And he had to unbolt the door to do so, I believe? Which door was that?”
“The front one, miss. Didn’t want to delay a second in Jacks finding the officer.”
“Very right, Mr. Beak. But could not Mr. Jacks have used the kitchen door?”
“The kitchen door, miss?” Beak looked blank.
“Surely it had been unlocked when Mrs. Sadgett arrived that morning, to permit her entry to the house. Would that not have been quicker?”
The old man’s face sagged at the import of the question was borne upon him. “I never did, miss.”
“Never unlocked the door?”
He shook his head. “No, miss. I threw the bolt myself the night before, when Mrs. Sadgett left, but I never heard her knock that morning. Next thing I knew, she was in kitchen doing her breads.”
He called for Mrs. Sadgett, who came in with an air of superlative annoyance. “The door locked? In course it were not, Mr. Beak. When I come that morning I just thought you’d brought in the milk—no, the milk seller come round a little while later. But that door was not locked when I got here, Mr. Beak.”
Beak dismissed the cook back to her oven before he turned to Miss Tolerance. “Who unlocked it, miss?”
“Perhaps you should ask the others in the house, Mr. Beak. The answer may be quite simple.”
But when Beak magisterially summoned each of the servants save Mrs. Sadgett back into his presence and put the question to them, the answer came back unexceptionally: none of them knew who had unlocked the kitchen door for Mrs. Sadgett. Miss Tolerance herself inspected the lock: an old-fashioned iron bolt that required considerable force to throw it; one would remember having bolted it. It was possible, Miss Tolerance reflected, that Beak scared the culprit from confession with his scowl of disapproval. But it was also possible that the door had been unlocked by some other party, including the chevalier himself. With a sigh at this conundrum she rose, gave her thanks to Beak, and suggested that she might come back again to talk. Beak conducted her up the stairs and back through the green baize door which separated the servants’ hall from the rest of the house. In the hallway Miss Tolerance noted that a door which had been closed earlier now stood open, revealing a pleasant formal salon. She stopped, staring into the room.
“Is that a painting of your late master, Beak?”
The old man followed Miss Tolerance’s glance. Upon the far wall, over a desk, was a portrait of a man, perhaps thirty years of age, with dark hair worn a little long, and dark winged brows. His features were handsome, and he was smiling, the smile perhaps intended to be pleasant; but the effect of those brows was to make him appear sinister. Upon second thought, Miss Tolerance decided that it was not a trick of the brows: the smile, and the expression in the eyes,
was
sinister.
“That is. A good likeness, too. He was a well-looking man, but the artist caught something about his eyes.”
“Indeed he did,” Miss Tolerance agreed, happy to turn away and follow Beak to the door.
She stepped out of the house and into the street, moving through the crowd, thinking. With all the doors to the house locked and no windows broken, the likely suspects would have been only those who slept in the house. With the kitchen door unlocked sometime between midnight and seven in the morning, the murderer might have been anyone in London. Anyone in the world.
M
iss Tolerance’s interviews, which had occupied the greater part of the day, left her with generous avenues for inquiry. She returned to her cottage in Manchester Square with much to consider, and decided to pay a call upon her aunt. Mrs. Brereton, despite fixed rules against gossip between her employees with regard to her patrons, was quite variable in the application of this principle to herself. She had been in the past one of Miss Tolerance’s best sources of information.
Darkness had fallen, and the brothel was discreetly bustling with activity. Miss Tolerance climbed the stairs to her aunt’s apartment, nodding to the servants and employees as she passed, looking blankly past the faces of clients in the hall. She was considerably surprised to find Mrs. Brereton in her bed, being ministered to by her elderly abigail. Frost was fussing around her mistress, plumping pillows and laying hot bricks wrapped in flannel by her feet. The maid wore that expression, part disapproval and part delight, which is common to persons who believe themselves to be indispensable.
“A feverish cold she has, from not taking proper care. It’s a scandal!” Miss Tolerance was not entirely clear what scandalized Frost: that a cold had had the temerity to strike her charge, or that
Mrs. Brereton was still ignoring her advice after all these years. “Look at her, at Death’s door!”
Mrs. Brereton did not look very ill to Miss Tolerance’s eye. She lay propped upon half a dozen laced pillows, and as her cap and nightdress were equally laced, it was difficult to tell where the pillows left off and the madam began. The only sign of illness Mrs. Brereton exhibited was a flush to her cheeks and a reddening around her nose from too-frequent recourse to her handkerchief.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Frost, and stop fussing at me,” Mrs. Brereton snapped. “For God’s sake, get me a cup of tea and stop fluttering.”
Frost glared at Miss Tolerance as if her mistress’s behavior proved her point, and stalked out.
“A certain class of servant comes to believe that she is the secret mistress of the house,” Mrs. Brereton said irritably. “I do not know why I suffer these pretensions.”
“She does keep you looking remarkably fine,” Miss Tolerance pointed out. She took a chair near her aunt’s bedside. A silence fell between them.
“What brings you to me tonight, Sarah?” Mrs. Brereton asked at last.
“I’m in need of gossip, Aunt.”
“Not about my clientele, I hope.”
Miss Tolerance shook her head. “I know better than to ask such a thing. Someone nearer in line to a competitor, I think.”
“Nearer in line? When is a competitor not a competitor? Very intriguing.” Mrs. Brereton’s eyes brightened. She sat up a little against her pillows and tilted her head encouragingly. “Who?”
“Camille Touvois.”
“Good lord, she’s no competitor of mine,” Mrs. Brereton said. Her scorn was complete. “She gives
parties.
Chat-chat-chatter and bad wine and poets, heaven help us, holding forth on politics! That people meet there and go elsewhere for their liaisons does not make her
salon
into a house of assignation.”
“I’m sure that distresses her nearly as much as it does you, Aunt. People meet there and go elsewhere?”
“Why else would they go? I understand that La Touvois has a knack for introducing people of like interests.”
“Aunt, at the risk of exposing my naivete, I wish you will plainly state what you are hinting at.”
Mrs. Brereton rolled her eyes. “Molly to molly, Sarah. Bircher to birched. The old man who wants a young woman and the young woman who seeks a man just like her dear father—or granddad. From what I understand, she has a talent for discerning whose taste match; she introduces them and lets nature take its course.”
“She is paid to do so?”
“Not in coin. But this one brings that one, and her gatherings are enlarged. I believe,” Mrs. Brereton said offhandedly, “that her trade is in information and favors.”
“But how difficult it must be to eat favors,” Miss Tolerance observed.
Frost returned with the tea tray and bustled noisily for several minutes, pouring out tea and fussing over her mistress until Mrs. Brereton shooed her away impatiently. Then the abigail retired to the dressing room, glaring at Miss Tolerance. Miss Tolerance drank her tea.
“What about Camille Touvois herself? Can you tell me anything?”
Mrs. Brereton bristled as if her professional competence had been questioned. “Only a little,” she said blandly. “Her family came here from France about the time she would have escaped the schoolroom, I think. She married another emigré—all of them as poor as rats, of course—and was widowed very quickly. The poor fellow was at Valenciennes with the Duke of York. Then she was someone’s mistress—Lord, who was it? Whoever it was, he put her in society’s way and she became acquainted with a vast number of the Opposition.
“So her sympathies—and her parties—partake of the liberal establishment?”
“Oh, I believe so, my dear,” Mrs. Brereton said. While her own sympathies were as firmly in the Whig camp as Madame Touvois’ were said to be, Mrs. Brereton’s establishment took no notice of the political affiliations of its clientele. “But does this mean that Camille Touvois is tangled up in some inquiry of yours?”
Miss Tolerance shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.” Mrs. Brereton blew her nose. “You may ask me all you like, but you will tell me nothing.”
“I was of the impression that you enjoyed being the one who knew everything about everyone. I do not ask you about your clients, and God knows you might always say to me, No, I cannot tell you anything. Would you prefer that I not come to you at all?”
“I would prefer that you stop punishing me!” Mrs. Brereton said angrily. “Every time you call on me you are everything polite and disapproving. You don’t trust me.”
Miss Tolerance was startled by the hurt in her aunt’s voice. “I thought we had agreed—”
“You agreed you would talk of nothing substantial, whatever help I gave you.” Mrs. Brereton blew her nose again. “Sarah, I made a mistake. Are you, of all people, going to hold that mistake against me forever?”
Miss Tolerance drew a sharp breath. “Aunt, you must understand—”
“I do understand. I was careless, and told something which put you at risk—”
“Careless?” Miss Tolerance struggled to master her anger. “In order to keep a client happy, you told him when I had gone on an errand. Only it was not me, but Matt Etan who went, and was followed and beaten to death. Perhaps you do not recall his body laid out in your parlor, but I do. I remember that it might easily have been me who was killed and not Matt.”
“I could not have known—”
“Nor could I! Would I have let Matt take my place had I had any idea what waited him? Do you think I don’t imagine what might have happened had it been me instead? At least
I
can use a sword …”
“So you blame me, that you need not blame yourself! I put the maintenance of my relationship with a client above the claims of kinship. I was not to know what would come of it. Matt’s death—he should not have been out on your errand—” Mrs. Brereton went into a fit of coughing.
Miss Tolerance, who suspected her aunt of theatricality, was unmoved.
“I have learned my lesson, Sarah, and I am frankly tired of feeling every time we meet that you are scolding me!”
“It certainly is not scolding to watch what I say in your company. And I beg you to believe it is as difficult for me to do so as it is for you to accept that your mistake cost Matt his life. I must live with my guilt in the matter, Aunt, but so must you.”
The two women glared at each other.
In the silence Frost’s voice came from the dressing room. “Are you all right, madam? Miss Sarah, you’ll remember that she is ill—don’t you worry her!”
Miss Tolerance and Mrs. Brereton, with one look, came together to assure the maid that all was very well.
“
Don’t
let her fuss at me,” Mrs. Brereton murmured. She leaned back into her pillows as if exhausted. Miss Tolerance nodded.
“She is right, though. You’re not well, and I have upset you. I’m sorry, Aunt Thea.” She rose and kissed her aunt’s cheek. Mrs. Brereton turned away slightly, but permitted the gesture. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Pour a little more tea, please.” Mrs. Brereton watched as the tea was poured, and thanked her niece. Then she turned her face to the heavily draped window, as if trying to divine what weather lurked behind the curtains.
Miss Tolerance left her aunt to her conscience and her tisane.
 
 
I
n the morning Miss Tolerance dressed for riding in masculine garb and sent round to the stables to hire a horse. She set out for the Strand, noting as she rode that the citizens of London were taking on their winter conformations. Those with money maintained a slender silhouette, sealing the chill out with rich materials and furs, moving from houses where fires warmed every grate to carriages fitted out with warmed rugs and hot bricks. Those who could not afford such luxuries took on the appearance of bustling balls of wool, dressed in as many layers as they could contrive and barreling through the streets in scarves, shawls, and thrice-sold coats. Miss Tolerance sank her chin into the scarf wrapped loosely around her neck; the tip of her nose was likely
red, but in that she was no different from every other Londoner out of doors on this day.
The neighborhood known as the Liberty of Savoy was, by ancient custom, a safe haven for debtors of all classes; a stink of desperation and compromise hung about its streets no less than the quotidian stench of sewage. Miss Tolerance guided her horse among the carriages, carts, street-sellers and pedestrians until she reached the Wheat Sheaf, a public house where the gleanings, she hoped, would include information.
Miss Tolerance was known here. The tapster greeted her with a look, a second look, and a nod of recognition. She ordered coffee and bread and suggested that Mr. Boddick draw something stronger for himself. He nodded acknowledgment, brought Miss Tolerance’s refreshment, then liberally doctored a tankard of coffee with rum and nursed at it until he felt more communicative. It was then established between the two of them that it was indeed a raw day, that winter looked to be settling in for good and earnest, and that the poor soldiers off in foreign parts would be brutally cold that winter—if they didn’t drown first in the torrential rains that were reported to have struck Portugal this fall. These preliminaries over, Miss Tolerance was able to inquire after Mr. Joshua Glebb
The position Mr. Glebb occupied in the Liberty, and within the larger canvas of London generally, is difficult to describe. Gossip is too simple a word; informer both harsh and inaccurate; broker was perhaps the most apt term. It was Mr. Glebb’s vocation to acquaint those who required financial assistance with all those ready to offer such assistance. That many of these lenders operated outside the bounds of the usury statutes did not trouble Mr. Glebb, a fervent believer in the virtue of an unfettered marketplace. Glebb had the ear of bankers licit and otherwise. There was very little he did not know about who borrowed from whom, and unlike Miss Tolerance, he did not scruple to share this information for a price.
Boddick drank the last of his coffee-and-rum, looked wistfully into the tankard, and allowed that Mr. Glebb was likely to take up his usual place in the back of the room within the hour. As the fire was warm and the coffee drinkable, Miss Tolerance greeted this
news without dismay, ordered more coffee for herself, and directed the tapster to refresh his own. Mr. Boddick carried on a one-sided conversation regarding politics; Miss Tolerance drank her coffee.
Mr. Glebb appeared some five and forty minutes later, trailing three petitioners of varying class and desperation. He recognized Miss Tolerance and conveyed with a nod that he would be happy to speak with her after his immediate business had been dispatched. He then spread his coattails and settled himself with a sigh at the table nearest the fire. He was a short, elderly man built upon pyramidal lines: a long, narrow head and negligible chin, a pair of shoulders only a little broader, and a spreading paunch ill concealed by a neat dark coat. The fashion for high shirt-points and elaborately tied neckcloths did not reduce this triangular illusion. Age made Glebb’s movements stiff and painful, and no amount of attention with his handkerchief could expunge the bit of milky white spittle in the corner of his mouth, or the clear drop that seemed always poised to fall from his nose. Miss Tolerance watched as Glebb dealt with one, then another, then the last of the waiting supplicants. He then waved Miss Tolerance over; she thanked Mr. Boddick for his company and went to join Glebb.
“Haven’t seen you here in a while, miss. Not come to borrow, I take it?” Glebb’s voice was dry and hoarse.
“No, sir. I find myself quite beforehand with the world,” Miss Tolerance said pleasantly. “I should like the favor of a few minutes’ conversation, however.”
“Oh, aye, talk is cheap—in course, information comes dearer. But
you
know that.” Glebb raised a hand to beckon to the tapster. “Hi, you, Boddick! Coffee and a pie here, if you please.”

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