Petty Treason

by Madeleine E. Robins

  “Yes. I suppose you are right. It is neatly reasoned.” Mr. Colcannon cocked his head and regarded Miss Tolerance anew. “I had wondered—that is, when I realized what this place was, I thought perhaps Mr. Wheelock had jested when he sent me here. Even before that, when he suggested I consult you. How could a woman do—provide—that is, the delicacy of your sex must surely constrain you in—”

  Miss Tolerance, fearful that Colcannon would knit himself into such a frenzy of circumlocution that he would never reach the end of his sentence, spoke bluntly. “First, sir: this place is my house. I do not live in the brothel yonder, and while I am Fallen, I am not a prostitute. As for the rest, I have some skills which are uncommon for my sex, and a good deal of natural female curiosity. And I have a powerful need to earn my bread, preferably without becoming a whore myself.” Colcannon was blushing again. She took a little pity on the man. “I could reassure you more fully if I understood the nature of the work you wish me to undertake.”

  “I want my sister safe, ma’am.”

  “I understand, sir. But safe from whom? If you think your sister is threatened, surely you’d do better to hire guards for her house.”

  “But for how long? Until Bow Street find the killer or decide they have looked long enough? What then? I want someone to find the killer, ma’am. Surely that is the only way to ensure my sister’s safety and give her some peace.”

  Miss Tolerance sat back, turning her wineglass between her fingers. This was not her usual sort of commission.

  “Did Mr. Wheelock give you to believe that such a task is within my abilities, sir?” she asked at last.

  “Indeed he did. He said you’d had a notable success in the business of the Earl of Versellion—”

  Miss Tolerance pursed her lips. “I set out to find a trinket in that case, sir, not a killer.”

  “But you found him, did you not?”

  “I did.” At some cost to myself. “But surely, sir, this matter is better left to the authorities?”

  “I have already said, ma’am, that I place little reliance upon them. The constables—a pair of sordid brutes, looking to terrify my sister’s servants! And the magistrate in charge seemed little better, bullying my sister as if she were a chambermaid. I tell you, Miss Tolerance, the man may be well-enough meaning, but he has no notion of how to proceed, other than scaring poor Anne.”

  “And you believe I would have better luck?”

  “Mr. Wheelock said you performed quite thoroughly the task he gave you,” Mr. Colcannon said. “Miss Tolerance, someone killed the Chevalier d‘Aubigny. He moved in a number of circles, not confined to his own class. He was an émigré. He had a weakness for a certain class of female.” He glanced toward the window through which Mrs. Brereton’s house could be seen. “I need someone who can talk to Anne without scaring her to distraction, and to the sorts of people her husband was often among, and that Mr. Wheelock says you can do. I beg you, ma’am. Help my sister.” He leaned forward again, extending his hand as if to take Miss Tolerance’s own. She folded her hands in her lap, misliking the gesture.

  “Mr. Colcannon, has it occurred to you that in seeking the killer I may unearth information that you and your sister would prefer to keep hidden? I do not bandy my clients’ secrets about, sir, but it can happen that in the course of so serious an investigation secrets may come out. Will it suit you to have it so, if the killer is caught?”

  “Whatever secrets you unearth could only be d’Aubigny’s—I believe my sister is beyond being hurt by anything her husband did.”

  “You have not answered my question, sir.”

  Colcannon said, with a little stiffness, “You will follow your conscience. I would not expect you to do else.”

  Miss Tolerance nodded, but thought he still did not fully appreciate what he was promising. She came to a decision: she needed occupation, and this was certain to keep her busy.

  “I will need, first of all, to see your sister’s house, and to speak with her.”

  “I will go straightaway and tell her to expect you. When?”

  “Tomorrow in the morning, if that is convenient. But we have not discussed my fee, sir.”

  Colcannon looked surprised.

  “Would you not rather know beforehand? I charge three guineas a day, plus reasonable expenses, which I will detail for you.”

  The man shrugged off the figures as if they were unimportant. “Do you require earnest money or an advance?”

  Miss Tolerance was tempted, but had found in the past that advance payment seemed to license her clients to plague her for details, impeding investigation with their inquiries into what she had done and what she was still to do.

  “We will agree to trust each other, sir. If I find my expenses are high and I need replenishment, I will inform you.” She stood and offered her hand. “You will tell your sister I will call upon her tomorrow at about eleven in the morning?”

  Colcannon rose to his feet. He was only a little taller than Miss Tolerance, and looked directly into her eyes. “I cannot thank you enough, Miss Tolerance. I feel better in my mind already.”

  Miss Tolerance said something polite about hoping to justify his trust in her, and walked the gentleman through the garden to the gate which let onto Spanish Place. Colcannon repeated his thanks and bowed over her hand. Miss Tolerance curtseyed, said her farewells, then locked the gate behind him.

  He had not told her the whole, she thought. Indeed, he had told her very little other than that his sister’s marriage was unhappy and that he did not like the Bow Street officials set to investigate the case. Miss Tolerance had found that in general it was useless to implore her clients to tell her everything material to an assignment. They would withhold information, either from fear of embarrassment, a poor understanding of what the facts were, or because habits of secrecy (to call it nothing worse) impelled them to do so until it had been demonstrated to them that without truth she could accomplish little material good. She was not alarmed but intrigued by her sense that there were evasions and holes in Mr. Colcannon’s narrative; the pattern of what he did not tell might prove more revealing than the information itself. And while holding back the truth now was likely to cost Colcannon more in terms of time and money, that, to Miss Tolerance’s way of thinking, was simple justice.

  Three

  It was Miss Tolerance’s experience that the virtuous women with whom she dealt treated her most often with stiff politeness. They were willing to avail themselves of Miss Tolerance’s services but reluctant to expose themselves either to the contagion of her Fall or to the possibility that a husband or son would fall prey to her supposed enticements. Such women generally offered her commonplace tasks: follow an erring husband, redeem a bauble lost at play, catch a servant suspected of pilfering. These were all relatively minor chores which required little contact between employer and agent.

  Never before had Miss Tolerance had to face a woman with the advantages of birth, breeding, and money in a role so like to become adversarial. But to parse murder, and so sudden and awful a murder, she would surely need to know the closest secrets of Anne d’Aubigny’s marriage. Miss Tolerance woke in the morning wondering how best to persuade the Widow d’Aubigny to take one of the Fallen into her confidence. In the end she left matters to the silent persuasion of a well-made dress and impeccable boots.

  The day was gray and drizzling, with a seeping chill. It was fortunate that Miss Tolerance’s most respectable costume was warm: a walking dress of severely cut gray-blue twill, fur-collared coat, and neat half boots. Her long, dark hair she pinned up under a hat of moderate size and severe propriety. She looked like that which her upbringing had fitted her to be: Anne d’Aubigny’s equal, a young matron of means, on the middle rungs of society, making a morning call. Shortly before her appointed hour she took up her reticule and asked Keefe to hail a hackney carriage for her.

  The house of the late Chevalier d’Aubigny was located in Half Moon Street. The street around the house was th
ick with people of all conditions, despite the November cold; most of them appeared to have no business save to stand and gawk at the d’Aubigny house. If, as Miss Tolerance suspected, they hoped to find the lurid characters of crime writ upon the face of the house, they were disappointed. It was a small, pleasant old building of pink brick; the knocker had been taken down, and the crepe hung around the door bespoke everything respectable grief demanded. Miss Tolerance detected shabbiness in the matter of paint, but the brass was well polished.

  She made her way through the crowd, knocked at the door, and presented her card, upon the back of which she had written a brief note to explain the purpose of her call. When the elderly manservant who took the card stood back to let her in there was a groan of protest from the crowd in the street why did she gain entry to the murder house when they could not? The servant closed the door behind Miss Tolerance, sealing out the noise, and led her to the rear of the house and a small, neat sitting room. As she waited, Miss Tolerance noted further signs she ascribed to financial hardship: open spaces among the china figures on the mantel, and unfaded squares of the striped paper on the wall which had only lately been exposed to the sun. Ornaments and paintings had been removed and sold.

  She became aware of voices from the hallway upstairs. Miss Tolerance heard first the rumble of a masculine voice, likely that of the manservant who had taken her card. A woman’s voice, soft and high, answered; then another woman’s voice, lower in pitch, broke in. They spoke for a few minutes more: there was no possibility of overhearing their words, but Miss Tolerance noted the tone and pondered the state of the d’Aubigny household.

  “Miss Tolerance?” A woman stood in the doorway. She wore a plain dress of dark gray stuff, and her hair was pulled back in an unadorned knot. There was so little pretense to fashion that Miss Tolerance wondered whether she had aimed to produce such a drab impression. She had a pleasant heart-shaped face with large gray eyes, a good figure, and a bearing which Miss Tolerance characterized as businesslike. Her age was perhaps a few years short of Miss Tolerance’s own.

  “I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” the woman said. Hers was the lower of the two voices Miss Tolerance had overheard. It was difficult to tell where she had been raised: she appeared to have trained regional peculiarity from her speech, but did not affect the singular accent of a well-bred London dweller. “I am Mrs. Vose. I am lending Mrs. d’Aubigny company in this hard time.”

  Miss Tolerance returned Mrs. Vose’s curtsy. “I hope Mrs. d’Aubigny will be able to spare me a few minutes. Her brother asked me to call—”

  “It is very thoughtful of madame’s brother, but I regret that she is unable to see anyone at this present moment. The shock and grief, you understand, have quite undone her.”

  “Indeed,” Miss Tolerance said. “I wonder, then, if I might speak with the servants who were here on the night of—of the death.”

  Mrs. Vose appeared surprised. “Speak to the servants? Whatever for?” Her expression, which had been open and courteous a moment before, sharpened.

  “Was Mrs. d’Aubigny not informed that I have been engaged to investigate the circumstances of the chevalier’s death?”

  Had Miss Tolerance announced that she had been hired to fly three times widdershins around the moon in a sewing basket, Mrs. Vose could not have appeared more thunderstruck.

  “Investigate?” She looked Miss Tolerance up and down with deliberate rudeness. “What sort of fairy tale is this?”

  “I assure you, Mrs. Vose, it is no fairy tale. I take it that Mr. Colcannon—”

  Mrs. Vose interrupted. “You present a creditable imitation of a lady, but I apprehend now that you are some sort of adventuress. I cannot imagine what sort of advantage you think to gain from the unfortunate circumstance of the chevalier’s death, nor how you persuaded Beak to let you enter. But I will ask you to leave now—”

  Short of an incivility which might damage her ability to press further under Mr. Colcannon’s authority, Miss Tolerance could not force Mrs. Vose to produce Anne d‘Aubigny. She rose to her feet and took up her reticule. “I understand your reluctance, ma’am. When Mr. Colcannon has spoken with his sister I will return. He fears for her safety, and wishes the murderer caught as soon—”

  Mrs. Vose sniffed. “Caught by a woman? Are you what they call a thief-taker?”

  “I do not call myself a thief-taker,” Miss Tolerance said coolly. “Say rather that I am accustomed to investigate privately such matters as my clients prefer are handled with discretion. I will return tomorrow and hope that Mr. Colcannon has convinced his sister of my earnest intent to assist her.”

  “You will find the answer no different tomorrow.” Mrs. Vose pressed against the wall as Miss Tolerance passed, as if unwilling that so much as the hem of her gray dress should brush against the wool stuff of Miss Tolerance’s own. The same man who had admitted Miss Tolerance appeared before her in the hallway and escorted her to the door with arctic authority, rather as if, she reflected, he suspected her of carrying off a silver spoon in her pocket.

  Miss Tolerance took her leave thoughtfully.

  The crowd outside the house was no smaller, and she suspected that many of them were examining her to see if the horrid glamour of murder had rubbed off upon her clothing or her person. She made her way through the crowd and walked for several streets, until she found herself in front of Tarsio’s club, on Henry Street. Tea was what she needed, both to cut through the pervasive chill of the sunless afternoon and as an aid to organizing her thoughts.

  Miss Tolerance was greeted at the door and admitted to the club by Steen, the hall porter. She and Steen were old friends, his amity ensured by her willingness to tip well for business steered her way. They exchanged the usual commonplaces about the November chill, and Steen offered the intelligence that there were several messages waiting for her at the desk. Miss Tolerance collected her messages and made her way to the Ladies’ Parlor, on the first floor, where she ordered refreshment and found an empty writing desk. She wrote a note to Mr. Colcannon, explaining the result of her visit to Half Moon Street, and urging him, if he wished her to continue with her investigation, to convince his sister to cooperate. She also inquired about Mrs. Vose; that lady had inspired considerable curiosity in Miss Tolerance. Who was she, in what capacity did she occupy the household, and why was she so determined that Miss Tolerance must be chased away? For it seemed to Miss Tolerance that Mrs. Vose’s outrage at her visit was not true ware but had been manufactured in order to make the visitor leave.

  It was difficult to explain precisely why Miss Tolerance was certain of this. It was, of course, possible that Mr. Colcannon had neglected to prepare his sister for Miss Tolerance’s visit; that would explain Mrs. Vose’s manner to her. But as Colcannon had seemed so insistent upon the urgency of the matter this seemed to Miss Tolerance in the highest degree unlikely. Imagine, then, that a note communicating Miss Tolerance’s investigation had, in fact, arrived and been read. Mrs. Vose might have been protecting the widow from an interview she believed would distress her, or from contact with a woman of damaged virtue. Why did Miss Tolerance doubt this was so?

  She could not derive information from the conversation she had not quite overheard. Was it possible that Mrs. d’Aubigny had wished to speak to Miss Tolerance and Mrs. Vose had prevented it? Or that Mrs. d’Aubigny had dispatched Mrs. Vose a-purpose to send her visitor away?

  The arrival of tea and a plate of biscuits put a temporary stop to these musings.

  Miss Tolerance sent off her note to Mr. Colcannon’s address and put her feet up, enjoying the warmth and smoky taste of her tea. She had been sitting so for perhaps half an hour when, hearing her name spoken, she looked up and saw Sir Walter Mandif in the doorway of the Ladies’ Parlor, awaiting her invitation to join him. She rose and greeted her friend.

  “But this is delightful! I had thought you away in the North. Will you take tea or a glass of wine?”

  Sir Walter disdained tea in favor of som
ething stronger, and Miss Tolerance gave orders for a bottle of claret, glasses, and another plate of biscuits to be brought at once.

  “The shooting was poor, and there was too much business here for me to be absent long,” he told her. “Would you believe me if I said I was homesick for London and my work?” His long, narrow face lit with a lopsided smile, as if quizzing himself as much as his auditor. He was a slight man, of no more than middle height, light-haired and fair, with a shrewd expression which emphasized his resemblance to a neatly turned-out fox. His dress, like his manner, was everything gentlemanly without ostentatious flourish.

  “I would believe you have no gift for idleness,” Miss Tolerance said. “But is there really so much business at this season?”

  Sir Walter nodded. “The pickpockets and cracksmen of London do not take a holiday because I do.”

  “And yet I was told by my aunt’s footman that her business was slower at this season.”

  “Two different classes of business, I think. Two very different classes of business, Miss Tolerance. The men who frequent Mrs. Brereton’s are hardly like to be the same ones who are picking pockets on the Strand or staving in heads behind St. Paul’s.”

  “Of course they are not, but they are the natural prey of those who pick pockets and stave heads, are they not?” Miss Tolerance took a sip of her wine. “On whom do they prey when the well-lined gentleman’s wallet goes north for the grouse shooting?”

  “Each other, of course. I beg your pardon; my profession makes a cynic of me. How have things been with you?” Sir Walter extended his boots toward the warmth of the fire. “Even at this season I imagine you are hard at work.”

  “I am, sir, but why did you think so?”

  Sir Walter smiled. “Not much has changed in my absence: England is still warring with Bonaparte, the Queen is no nearer or farther from Death’s door than she had been last summer, and man continues to mistreat his fellow man. That last should provide both of us with occupation.”