by Joan Smith
“But she works as well.”
“Oh, yes, but she once let out to me that she puts every penny of that aside for Jamie’s education, if you please. And it’s true, too, for I got a look at her bankbook.”
I was strongly inclined to ask how she had achieved this, but thought it better not to know.
With her coffee cup in her hand, Renie became even more expansive. “Mr. Butler don’t like it,” she said, eyeing the sherry decanter.
I disliked to encourage her drinking and ignored the look.
“I’ve heard him jawing at Mrs. Clarke when she goes out with Alger,” she continued. “ ‘YOU don’t understand, Mr. Butler,’ she says. ‘Mr. Alger is just a friend.’ Hah, with friends like that she don’t need a banker. Comes home pink with pleasure when she goes out with Alger, and usually sporting some little extra the next day, I’ve noticed. That little chest in her parlor that she calls a chiffonier—whatever that may be—she got that after her first night with Alger. And the watch came after their second outing. Mind you, I’m not complaining. More power to her. Old Jack has been promising me a watch forever. I’ll get it out of him one of these days.”
Renie eventually finished her coffee and took her plunder upstairs. I sat on alone, thinking. Mrs. Clarke was certainly pretty. I already suspected Lord Algernon had an eye for the ladies. He was having Sharkey follow one, and he had been making up to me in a very practiced way. What surprised me considerably more was that the widow was open to his advances. I had not thought she cared for anything but Jamie. Was she doing it for her child, to make it possible to put money away for his future? That might help excuse her, but it was no excuse for Algernon. And for this, he was indulging in a life of crime, breaking the law and his father’s heart, to say nothing of making me feel guilty for not helping the needy.
Miss Thackery came in from the backyard, where she had been battling with the garden, and told me Mullard was preparing to paint the door and did I want to check the color of the paint before he applied it.
It was a deep green, just as I had requested. Mullard had also bought a handsome brass lion’s head door knocker that would lend us a touch of elegance—and no doubt make the one decent feature of the house emphasize the dilapidation of the rest. But at least my hands would not feel soiled every time I came in or went out.
Mrs. Clarke’s parcel arrived while we were still admiring the knocker. I signed for it and took it upstairs. Miss Lemon came to the door, holding Jamie in her arms.
“He’s teething, poor thing,” she said. “Would you mind just putting the parcel on the sofa, Miss Irving?”
I was happy for another excuse into the apartment. My vulgar curiosity wanted a look at the chiffonier, Algie’s first gift to the widow. It was an elegant piece with china ornaments on top and drawers beneath. Its newness was at odds with the rest of the room. Sitting on the end of the sofa was a familiar-looking man’s waistcoat of yellow-and-maroon stripes. Miss Lemon noticed where I was looking and blushed.
“That looks bad, does it not?” she said, and laughed. “Mrs. Clarke is just tightening the buttons on it for Mr. Alger. She does a bit of sewing at home to help make ends meet.”
“It is difficult for a young widow with a child,” I said, quelling down my annoyance.
“Ah, but Jamie makes it all worthwhile for her. She fairly dotes on him.”
Jamie began whining in discomfort. His little cheeks were bright red. “Does he have a fever?” I asked.
“He is a little warm, but it is the teeth coming in that causes it. I should give him his coral. Now where did I put it?” She looked around helplessly.
“Can I help?”
“Thank you. It must be in the bedroom, I believe. Would you mind seeing if it is in his crib, Miss Irving?” She pointed to an open door.
I went into the bedroom. It was Mrs. Clarke’s room, with the child’s spool crib in the corner. The modest decor was all arranged to suit the child. No fancy chiffoniers here, nor any toilet table with lavish accessories. The chest I had given her had been painted blue. There were toys on the matching set of shelves, and some pictures of animals hanging on the wall. Over her own bed, not a canopied bed but a simple lit, was a painting of an officer, presumably the late Lieutenant Clarke. He was handsome, with dark hair and dark eyes.
It did not look like the room of a kept woman, but of a poorish widow who put her child’s welfare above everything. On the bedside table there was a book, facedown. I glanced to see what she was reading, thinking it would be the Bible, or a sentimental novel. It was a racy French novel entitled Les Amours de Lise. I snatched up the coral from the crib and took it to Miss Lemon.
She offered me tea, but I was on thorns to get away. What was Mrs. Clarke, who claimed not to understand French, doing with a French novel? It was open, facedown, to mark the place when she had stopped reading. Suddenly it did not seem so incredible that she was Lord Algernon’s lover. I wished I had not gone upstairs and seen that bedroom. I knew Algernon was helping Sharkey to sell stolen goods, but to think he had seduced a poor widow was much worse.
Perhaps it was even Algernon who was reading the racy French novel. Mrs. Clarke had definitely told me she did not understand French. There was no conceivable reason for her to hide this accomplishment. No, it had to be Algernon who was reading it, probably to her. He was sneaking into her apartment at night, when the house was quiet. That was why he had hired Miss Lemon. He needed a woman who would not object to the liaison. It was despicable—and it was going on beneath my own roof. I could not impose my morals on the world, but I could at least disassociate myself from the corruption.
It was becoming more obvious every moment that I must sell this house. London had lost all its allure; I might go to Bath, but I would not stay in London, where no one was what he or she seemed. London was too wicked for me.
Chapter Twelve
In the afternoon, Mullard drove Miss Thackery and myself to the estate agent’s office. The man, a Mr. Simcoe, had ginger hair, cinnamon eyes, mustard teeth, and garlic breath. This spicy man was so eager for the commission that he returned to Wild Street with us in the carriage. For the next hour we heard the house denigrated in oblique terms. The location was “difficult,” the condition of the premises “not optimum,” the decor “far from ideal,” and the income “hardly sufficient to excite interest.”
He spoke so ill of it, I finally said, “Why, Mr. Simcoe, you sound as if you were the purchaser, pointing out all its flaws. I expect my estate agent to concentrate on the building’s good points when he is showing it to potential buyers.”
He soon allowed that the brickwork did not appear to be perishing, and the chimney was intact. “You could subdivide the flats and make the income more interesting to a potential buyer,” he suggested doubtfully. “Mind you there would be some expense entailed for carpentering, throwing up a few walls and doors, and so on.”
“But what price do you suggest for the house as it now stands?” I asked. This was the great secret we had been trying to pry out of him for an hour, and he guarded it with his life.
“I can tell you what the house on the corner went for three years ago,” he prevaricated. “Three thousand five hundred. Mind you it had been subdivided into more profitable flats.”
“It is not as big or as nice as my house,” I pointed out.
“Aye, but your buyer would not be purchasing to live in it himself. Such folks as live here don’t have the blunt to buy, or they would be living elsewhere. What you get in this neighborhood is petty thieves and lightskirts, by and large, with a few honest modistes and clerks.”
Sharkey, Renie, Mrs. Clarke and Mr. Butler. The description was so accurate that I could not argue. He had enumerated my tenants, only omitting Professor Vivaldi and Algernon. I remembered then, inconsequentially, that Renie had suggested even Vivaldi was interested in the modiste. Surely she was mistaken there.
“A price of five thousand was suggested to me,” I said, thinking of Algernon�
��s evaluation of the premises.
“We might approach that estimation,” Mr. Simcoe said doubtfully. “ ‘Twas three years ago the corner house sold, and as you said, yours is not quite so dilapidated. Shall we try her at five thousand and see if anyone nibbles? You can always come down to a more realistic price if you get any offer at all.”
This did not sound very promising, but I said, “Very well.”
The contract was under my nose so quickly I did not even see him extract it from his pocket. Before he left Wild Street, a sign was hammered with great difficulty into the rock-hard earth in front of the house. Before dinner, it had been yanked out and thrown away by the local ruffians. Mullard found it and hammered it into the ground again, and again it was rooted up within the hour. We finally put it in the saloon window, inside, where the local fellows would have to break the window to get at it, which was by no means out of the question.
Mr. Simcoe suggested I post a sign on the bulletin board notifying my tenants of my intention to sell as soon as possible, so that they might begin looking about for another flat. He seemed to take it for granted anyone foolish enough to purchase the place would immediately either raise the rates or make smaller flats.
The sign excited a deal of interest from the tenants, of course. Butler, whose dereliction in not escorting Mrs. Clarke past the leerers that morning was soon explained, was the first to come in. We learned he had been sent up to Camden Town by his employer on some official business. He came in at four. His first words were, “Does Mrs. Clarke know? I don’t know what she will do, poor girl.”
“The estate agent feels the buyer will continue to hire out flats, Mr. Butler,” I told him.
“Yes, at some exorbitant price she cannot afford. I must run down to Mam’selle Lalonde’s and tell Mrs. Clarke.”
When Mrs. Clarke returned from work, she and Butler came to see me, both of them asking a hundred questions that I could not answer. I could not promise them the same rent when I did not yet have any offers.
“By Jove,” Butler said, looking shyly at Mrs. Clarke, “if worst comes to worst, we may have to pitch in and share a flat, Mrs. Clarke. Heh-heh. Get married, I mean,” he added, when she displayed a little interest in this notion.
“I don’t know what Jamie would think of that,” she said.
“Lad needs a papa, if you want my opinion,” Butler said, though he said it in a joking way.
Still I found it curious that she did not squash the idea outright. She obviously knew there was no hope of an offer of marriage from Algernon. They ran upstairs together, talking animatedly.
“There is a match brewing there,” Miss Thackery said.
I had not told her Renie’s gossip about Algernon and Mrs. Clarke, but I had dropped a few snide comments about Algernon. She suspected no more than a lovers’ quarrel and paid me little heed.
Sharkey returned a few moments after Mrs. Clarke. He must have seen the notice, but he did not come to speak to us.
The next arrival was Professor Vivaldi. He stopped at the saloon and said sadly, “I see you are selling the house, Miss Irving. I am very sorry to hear it. I daresay an old Benedict like myself can find a room somewhere, but I am worried about Mrs. Clarke. Has she mentioned where she will go?”
“Nothing is settled, Professor,” I said. “We only put the sign up today.”
“Poor girl,” he replied, shaking his grizzled head. He was carrying a little brown bag. He opened it and showed us a set of tin soldiers in a wooden box. “I got these for Jamie’s birthday,” he said.
“Why Jamie’s birthday is not for another three months, Professor,” Miss Thackery told him.
“Is that so? I thought I heard her mention it was his birthday the other evening, when we were helping ourselves to your furnishings. That is my unfamiliarity with children speaking. I never had a son,” he said. “I shall give her the toy soldiers all the same. I happened to find a set wearing the uniform of her husband’s regiment. They will be a nice keepsake for Jamie, when he is a little older.”
It is strange how you can be drawn into the lives of people with whom you share a roof. I found myself thinking the professor must have been eavesdropping when Mrs. Clarke told me that it was Jamie’s nine-month birthday. She had not been speaking to him. This sharp interest tended to confirm Renie’s farfetched notion that he was romantically interested in Mrs. Clarke. I felt, though, that it was the child who really interested him. He had looked rather pathetic when he’d said he’d never had a son.
“You will let me know if Mrs. Clarke finds another flat,” he said. “I shall ask about among my friends and see if I can find her anything. Poor girl.” He stuffed the box of soldiers back in the bag and went upstairs.
“He is lonesome,” Miss Thackery said in a pensive way.
“He needs a wife, Miss Thackery. Perhaps you would care to apply for the position?” Miss Thackery always rises to the bait of this sort of teasing.
“Why not apply for a room in Bridewell while I am about it!” she retorted. “To be married to a poor man is a sort of prison. I know when I am well off, thank you. Now if he were a lord, that might be a different matter.”
I pretended not to recognize this as a reference to Algernon. He was the last one to return that evening. He did not come to speak to us, either, but just hesitated a moment before running upstairs.
Mary Freeman roasted us a tasty chicken for dinner, and her mama was supplying us with bread and other baked goods. She had sent an apple tart that day. It was the best meal we had had since leaving Radstock.
After dinner, Miss Thackery went to the kitchen to help Mary, and I retired to the saloon to answer Papa’s letter. He had not told me what should be done with Mullard and the carriage while we stayed in London. I feared he might be missing the carriage and asked if I should send Mullard home. While I was at this task, there was a great commotion on the stairs; going into the hall, I saw my tenants had descended en masse. I knew why they were there. They did not want me to sell the house.
Lord Algernon appeared to have been appointed spokesman for the group. He said, “We are very sorry to see you are selling the house, Miss Irving. We have all gotten together and discussed it. We wondered if you might reconsider if we voluntarily raised our own rent by ten percent. That would make your investment more profitable, and—”
“This was no trick to gouge my tenants, Mr. Alger,” I said, using the name the tenants knew him by. “I only came to London to look the place over and put it up for sale. I am sorry it is an inconvenience to you all, but surely there must be plenty of flats to let in London.”
There was a general murmur of disagreement. Someone mentioned that this location just suited them; another praised the cleanliness of the house, which made me wonder what conditions prevailed in other flats. Mrs. Clarke mentioned the generous size of the rooms, and Mr. Butler said something about the congeniality of the group. Neither thieves, prostitutes, nor lecherous lords were congenial to me, however, and I held my ground.
“In that case,” Mr. Butler said to Mrs. Clarke, “let us hit the streets at once and begin scouting out other flats.”
Most of the group had come down wearing their street clothes. Mrs. Clarke wore her bonnet; the gentlemen carried their curled beavers.
Mrs. Clarke said uncertainly, “I should have a word with Miss Lemon first.”
“Dash it, Mrs. Clarke, you already told her our plans,” Butler said. “Jamie is sound asleep. He will never know you are gone.”
She allowed herself to be led off. Renie asked if Colonel Jack had sent her a note. I told her he had not.
“Wouldn’t you know! Now that I have some new gowns, I must sit at home.” She continued in this vein for a moment, talking about the gowns and how she was modifying them.
While she was chatting, Professor Vivaldi bowed, put on his hat, and left. Renie’s monologue did not require much in the way of attention. It left me free to see how Algernon reacted to my intransigence regarding the hou
se. I expected lowering frowns and black looks, but he paid me no heed.
He just cast one speaking glance at Sharkey. Sharkey nodded his head almost imperceptibly and left. They did not exchange a single word, yet it was clear to me that Algernon had given a tacit command; Sharkey had acknowledged it—and gone off to do as he was bid. This pair was a well-oiled team, with Algernon the leader. I had a good idea what was going on. Sharkey was out to buy more stolen goods.
When we were alone, Algernon turned an accusing expression on me. “So, you have done it,” he said. “Kicked the lot of us out on our ear.”
I replied, “I have served notice that I mean to sell my house as soon as I find a buyer. In the meanwhile, if you and Sharkey bring any more stolen property into this house, I shall ask you to leave at once, before the house is sold.”
“Me! Are you suggesting that I ... ?”
“Yes, Lord Algernon, I am suggesting that you just gave Sharkey the nod to be about his business. You and he are in partnership, and I know which of you is in charge. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
His jaws clenched, then he said through thin lips, “You misunderstood the matter, madam.”
“I see. No doubt he is off buying another hunter for you. Or is his job this evening to follow a woman?”
It is difficult to describe his response to that charge. His face appeared to solidify into stone, yet his eyes were ablaze. “What the hell are you talking about?” he barked.
“I am talking about you using my house as a bawdy house and a den for stolen goods, sir. I will not have it, so don’t bother trying to make me feel guilty for throwing the tenants out on their ears. It is bad apples like yourself who spoil it for others.”
Strangely, he completely ignored the more serious charges. After swallowing his Adam’s apple a couple of times he said, “What do you mean, following a woman?”