Petty Treason

by Madeleine E. Robins

  “I couldn’t say, Miss. Mr. Heddison sent us to bring Madam Dobinny in for questioning.”

  “But I have answered every question that has been put to me,” Anne d’Aubigny said. She looked around her a little wildly, as if seeking the person or thing which would contain this new threat.

  “That may be so, ma‘am. But Mr. Heddison sent for you and you’re bound to come. You may wish to tell your maid to pack you some necessaries to send ’round.”

  Mrs. d’Aubigny got unsteadily to her feet and looked to Miss Tolerance.

  “Can they do this? Must I go?”

  The constables turned their attention to Miss Tolerance as if her opinion would shape their actions as well as the widow’s.

  “I am afraid they can and you must, ma’am,” Miss Tolerance said. “If you go now, I will follow with Sophia and we will try to see that you are made comfortable. Then we will set about refuting this information.” She let her tone speak her opinion of the evidence. “Where will you take her?”

  Boyse grinned. “Don’t know as it’s much business of yours.”

  “If we are to fetch Mrs. d’Aubigny some necessities, surely we must know where to bring them to her.”

  The slighter constable spoke up. “The Public Office, Great Marlborough Street. You know it? I imagine you’ll find her still there.”

  “Thank you, Mr.—Greenwillow?” The constable nodded. “And after?”

  “If she’s held over in custody—”

  “Held—?” Anne d’Aubigny had been watching Miss Tolerance. Now she turned back to the constables with the look of someone who has woken from nightmare into horror.

  “—she’ll be sent to Cold Bath Fields, most like,” Greenwillow finished.

  “Held over? Imprisoned? Miss Tolerance, can you not help me? How can they think—” Anne d’Aubigny put her hands out before her as if wondering if they, independent of their owner, could have done murder.

  Miss Tolerance did her best to appear authoritatively reassuring. “They do not know you, and if someone has given information which is wrong, they are still bound to make inquiries. Whatever the evidence is, ma‘am, I will find it out. Gentlemen, it appears”—she cast a pardonably hostile eye upon the constables—“it appears that you have been taken in. ’Tis but a matter of learning how, and refuting this evidence. Do you wish me to contact any of your friends, ma’am?”

  Mrs. d’Aubigny shook her head. “Only my brother. I couldn’t bear to have anyone else know—”

  “They’ll know soon enough,” Boyse said flatly. He seemed pleased. “Newspapers is been howling their heads off at Mr. Heddison to find the culprit. They’ll be celebrating that the streets of Lunnon are safe again.” He looked down at Anne d’Aubigny’s slight form and even he appeared to find the idea ludicrous.

  “Ma’am, do you have a cloak or a coat? A bonnet?” Mr. Greenwillow seemed to wish to offset his partner’s ill manners.

  As if he had waited only this cue, Beak appeared.

  “I am going out, Beak.” Mrs. d’Aubigny said the words as if she was asking a question. “If you will desire Sophie to bring my brown wool cloak with the sable—oh, no. Not that one. The black cloak, please, Beak.”

  Beak reappeared in a moment with Anne d’Aubigny’s cloak, and a bonnet and gloves as well. Miss Tolerance helped the widow tie the ribbons of her bonnet, and lowered the heavy mourning veil to shield Anne d’Aubigny from the worst of the prying eyes.

  “Can you not take her out the kitchen door?” Miss Tolerance suggested. “So she needn’t be ogled by the crowd?”

  Mr. Greenwillow by himself might have said yes, but Mr. Boyse shook his head, and Anne d’Aubigny turned to Miss Tolerance. She drew herself up and squared her shoulders to face the ordeal ahead of her.

  “Never mind, Miss Tolerance. If you will bring Sophia to me, and let my brother know what has happened?”

  “Of course.”

  Greenwillow led the way from the room and out the door to the street, where a noise issued from the crowd—Miss Tolerance could not tell if it was a roar of approval or a groan of dismay. Anne d’Aubigny stopped in the door for a moment as if the noise frightened her, then was prodded forward by Boyse, whose bulk blocked off hope of retreat to the house. Beak held the door, watching as his mistress was taken away. His face was blank, but it was not the studied lack of reaction common to well-trained servants. Mr. Beak clearly did not know what to feel or think in the face of such overwhelming calamity. He had “come with” the lease of the house, Miss Tolerance recalled. It was likely he had never encountered so grave a loss of countenance to his establishment before. Murder, arrest, perversion, all in his house. Poor Mr. Beak.

  Miss Tolerance waited as Sophia Thissen packed a valise for her mistress, advising her to include nothing of great value, since it was likely that most of what she sent would be stolen. She then wrote a terse note to William Colcannon explaining what had happened. She did not anticipate with pleasure her next meeting with her employer, particularly if his sister were in fact remanded to custody for prolonged questioning. The notion of Anne d’Aubigny given over to the hospitality of the Cold Bath Fields prison—which, while newer than the other prisons in the Fleet, was quite as harsh as any of them—was not at all a happy one.

  In Great Marlborough Street, Miss Tolerance applied at once to speak with Mr. Heddison, while Sophia asked for her mistress, to convey the valise she had brought for her. Miss Tolerance was directed to a bench against one wall to wait. From there she watched as the abigail attempted to gain access to her mistress from a clerk who was determined that she should not prevail.

  “But the constables said I was to bring Madam her case—” Sophie’s vowels partook more richly of the Yorkshire moors as her dismay increased.

  “No orders was given to me, Miss, and wivout orders I can’t allow Madam to ’ave noffing off you.” The clerk was young and snub-nosed, his hair just a little too long, his cuffs and high shirt-points slightly soiled. He wore a good coat of a slightly foppish cut; used, Miss Tolerance thought, but stylish enough to march with the fellow’s good opinion of himself. He looked not very much older than the street-sweeps who had crowded around her in Boston Place, and just as capable of bullying someone he perceived as weak.

  “You come ’round later if you like, or you can sit over there. P’raps in a while someone will come take that vallis off you.”

  Sophia, Miss Tolerance was amused to see, was not to be bullied. As short and plump as she was, she looked down at the seated clerk with the hauteur of which only an upper servant is capable. “No one is going to take this valise from me, young man. It will go into Madam’s hands, if I have to sit here all night.”

  The young man looked down for a moment, then regained himself. “Suit yourself, then, miss. Your Madam can do wivout her smellin’ salts and lace kerchiefs for all of me.” He leaned forward and grinned unpleasantly. “Wos it like, then, to work for a murderess?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Sophia snapped. “My lady’s no murderess. What is it like to work for persecutors of—”

  Miss Tolerance judged it time to intervene.

  “It is interesting, sir, that you should call the lady a murderess when she was only called in to answer questions.”

  The clerk looked irritably over at Miss Tolerance. “She’ll be arrested too, I don’t doubt,” he said firmly. His eye had taken in the quality of Miss Tolerance’s garments; he adjusted his tone to something more like civility.

  Miss Tolerance rose, put a hand on Sophia’s shoulder, and motioned the abigail toward the settle. “Indeed. You sound very certain. What could have convinced so astute a fellow as yourself?”

  “Mr. ’eddison says—” in those three words Miss Tolerance heard the certainty of hero worship—“she’s the best suspect he ’as.”

  “Indeed,” she said thoughtfully. “What evidence has he against the woman?”

  “She was there, wa’nt she?” he asked reasonably. “And wimmen is always
murdering their ’usbands, an’t they?”

  From the settle Sophia spoke up, outraged. “It’s more like Madam would ha’ been murthered by him!”

  Miss Tolerance shook her head at Sophia, who sat back against the settle, still seething. “There were a number of people in the house that night,” she said reasonably. “And if women often kill their husbands, there’s nothing to say that this particular woman killed that particular man.”

  The clerk tossed off this reasoning. “Don’t matter. Mr. Boyse talked to someone’s got the goods.”

  “Did he?” Miss Tolerance smiled politely. “Well, Mr.—”

  “Cotler,” the clerk supplied.

  “Well, Mr. Cotler, this is all very interesting. Now.” She took her pocketbook from her reticule. “We must agree to disagree about Mrs. d’Aubigny’s guilt until the evidence against her becomes public. In the meantime, Mr. Greenwillow specifically asked that Miss Thissen”—she inclined her head toward Sophia—“bring Mrs. d’Aubigny some belongings, in case the questioning goes on for some time. Surely it cannot hurt to tell him that we are here.”

  She placed a half-crown on the table. Mr. Cotler looked at the coin for a moment, then shrugged.

  “I can ask, miss. When spoken to civil-like,” he added for Sophia’s benefit. He rose, pocketed the coin, and disappeared down the hall.

  Sophia was specific in her comments upon Mr. Cotler’s character, and upon Miss Tolerance’s bribe.

  “‘Twas expedient,” Miss Tolerance said without shame.

  Five minutes later, Mr. Greenwillow appeared with Cotler just behind him.

  “No one can see Mrs. Dobinny just now, miss,” he told Miss Tolerance. “I can take the case in, if you like. Or you could wait,” he said more generally to Sophia and Miss Tolerance, “to see if she’s remanded into custody. If she is—”

  “Is it likely?”

  Greenwillow nodded. “There’s considerable evidence against her, miss.”

  “May I ask what that evidence is, Mr. Greenwillow?”

  The constable shook his head. “You know that’s not the way, miss.”

  “I cannot even ask what information your partner was supplied?”

  Greenwillow looked a little shocked, and glanced once at Mr. Cotler, who blushed and looked away.

  “Should I tell you that so you can find a way to say it ain’t so?”

  “If the information is wrong, ought not Mr. Heddison to be apprised of it?” she asked reasonably.

  Greenwillow might have been impressed by this reasoning, but stood firm upon the common practice of the office. “That may be so, ma’am. But it’s not the law’s way to give sensitive information to outsiders—even were you a man and a lawyer, miss, I wouldn’t tell you. I can say that it don’t look very good for her.”

  “Let me speak with Mr. Boyse, then,” Miss Tolerance suggested.

  Greenwillow shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that, miss. He’s a bit of a rough diamond, John Boyse is. I doubt you’ll learn anything of him.”

  “At least ask him if he will speak to me,” Miss Tolerance pressed. “I am a citizen of this parish, more or less, asking a question of a constable. What could be more reasonable?”

  The constable thought, shrugged, and went down the hall with an air which said that Miss Tolerance had made her bed, and must now be prepared for whatever she found in it. He returned after a few minutes with Boyse just behind him. The big man approached until he was so close that the swell of his belly was but inches from her own frame; so close that Miss Tolerance had to cramp her neck not to look up at him.

  “What do you want?”

  Miss Tolerance inclined her head politely. “A few minutes of your time, sir. Is there somewhere where we may speak with privacy?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I dislike broadcasting my business to the four winds,” she said, still politely. She looked around to take in Greenwillow, Sophia Thissen and the clerk, Mr. Cotler. “I have some questions to ask; are you certain you wish to answer them before an audience?”

  Something passed briefly over Boyse’s face: a look of concern. He recovered himself and sneered. “How do you know I’ll answer your questions?”

  “I don’t. But if you do not, it suggests that there is something you fear in the answers, and I shall have to investigate that.”

  Boyse crossed his arms on his chest and looked down at Miss Tolerance. She was a tall woman, but he was at least a head taller than she. Speaking to him was rather like addressing a bad-tempered mountain. “Ask your questions. Here and nowhere else.”

  “Very well. I understand that you have evidence against Mrs. d’Aubigny?”

  The constable smiled. “I do.”

  “May I ask what that evidence is?”

  “You can ask if you like.” The big man smiled. Miss Tolerance understood at once that she would get nothing from him except by trickery or payment. She was not ready to try the latter in the hallways of the magistrate’s court.

  “Physical evidence?” she essayed.

  “Might could be,” Boyse said easily. His eyes were steady; Miss Tolerance was certain that he lied.

  “Or perhaps some poisonous nonsense that was whispered to you in a tavern somewhere. Yes, I suppose that is more likely. There are many men who would say anything for a part of the forty-pound murderer’s bounty.”

  Boyse’s eyes flickered. Had she hit upon it? “Whatever it is, I ain’t telling you.”

  Miss Tolerance trod carefully. “If someone had told a Canterbury tale in hopes of getting his part of the bounty—well, I’m sure Mrs. d’Aubigny’s brother would pay just as well for the truth. You might let your informant know it.”

  Boyse considered for a moment and then, apparently by decision, glowered at her. “You suggesting a bribe? Right here, in front of witnesses?” Boyse’s face was red. He swept his arm out to include Cotler and Greenwillow.

  “Not in the least, sir. I’m sorry you should imagine it. Like you, my object is only that the truth be known.” Miss Tolerance smiled politely and did not back away, although the constable’s looming, wrathful presence was oppressive. “You can tell me nothing? I shall have to see what I can do for my client elsewhere.”

  “I ought to have—” the constable began. He broke off, running his hand through his hair again, and looked crestfallen. Then he turned, growled something to Greenwillow, and stomped back down the hall. Miss Tolerance did not stay him; she was now reasonably sure that the information upon which Heddison intended to base his case came from a paid informant. If she could discover the source she could discredit the informer or his information. Physical evidence in hand would have been harder to discover and disprove.

  She turned to Mr. Greenwillow, who had watched the interview blank-faced.

  “You believe that matters do not look well for my client?”

  Greenwillow appeared surprised to be appealed to. “Aye, miss. And you should know that if she’s held over she’ll need—”

  “Money.” Miss Tolerance called Sophia over. “Take my purse, Sophia. If, as Mr. Greenwillow fears, they do not finish their questions tonight, Mrs. d’Aubigny will need to pay garnish at the prison.”

  “Garnish?”

  “Fees. For food and a bed and a little privacy,” Miss Tolerance explained. “Anything that this doesn’t cover, you may promise that Mr. Colcannon will pay for.”

  “But where will you be, miss?” Sophia asked a little wildly. Greenwillow looked uncommonly interested in the answer.

  “There are some people I need to speak with,” Miss Tolerance said coolly. “As it appears we are to meet with very little cooperation here, my time is better used elsewhere, learning what I can of this spurious evidence. When you see your mistress, Sophia, tell her I hope to have her home again very shortly. With all the goodwill in the world, sir, I must say that this has been very badly done.”

  Greenwillow’s natural sympathy for the widow had put him off his guard. Now his posture straight
ened and his expression was glacial. “You may think so, miss,” he said. “We are only doing our duty.”

  Miss Tolerance left the Public Office to find that night had fallen. She was in a restless mood and longed to walk some of that energy off, but she was not dressed to walk through darkened London streets, or to defend herself should someone make another attempt upon her. She stood for a few minutes on the steps of the building, thinking what next to do. At last she hailed a hansom and directed it toward Covent Garden and Bow Street. Her first case must be to find out the nature of the information which had convinced Heddison to bring Anne d’Aubigny to Great Marlborough Street. The quickest way to do that was to enlist help. She was not certain, however, that help would be easily secured.

  At the offices of the Bow Street Magistracy, she was led away from the public hall and taken down a long, low-ceilinged hallway to a small square chamber. The room was gloomy, lit by two lamps whose light reflected off the dull white of the walls. In the center of the room was a large table; a straight back chair was set before it and there were two more chairs against one wall. A large chest stood against the wall, its top open, disclosing stacks of paper and ledgers. On the table papers and books were strewn, and amid this chaos Sir Walter Mandif was at work covering a page with his neat, square script. He looked up as she entered.

  “Miss Tolerance! I am delighted to see you.” Sir Walter’s smile lit his narrow, foxy face. “What brings you here? I do not recall that you have ever called in Bow Street before.” He put down his pen, covered the inkpot, and rose to his feet.

  “I have never had a need to before.” Face to face with Sir Walter, Miss Tolerance was surprised by a welling up of anger. She knew it was unlikely in the highest degree that Mandif had even known of Anne d’Aubigny’s detention: the little communication there was among the magistrates and public offices of London was reputed to be more suspicious than collegial. No effort was made to work together or share information and, given the rewards mandated by Parliament for the conviction of murderers, Great Marlborough Street was unlikely to inform Bow Street or Whitechapel or Hatton Gardens of how its investigations fared. Miss Tolerance knew it was irrational to feel that Sir Walter should have known and should have told her, and yet she did feel that way.