The Sleeping Partner

by Madeleine E. Robins

  “She has not seemed an invalid—”

  “I don’t mean sick; she hasn’t had so much as a sniffle since. But you know her manner’s changed. I’d put it down to—I don’t know what to call it. Knowing that she’s none so young as she used to be, nor her looks won’t hold out forever.”

  “But how could vanity account for such a sea-change?” Miss Tolerance considered. “I suppose it would explain Mr. Tickenor, if love does not. But the rest—” Gingerly she put her fingers to her jaw again.

  “I don’t know, Sarah. But I’ll tell you what it reminds me of. There was a woman at my—at my first house—”

  Miss Tolerance had never before heard so much as a hint that Marianne had not joined Mrs. Brereton’s establishment straight from her ruin. “Last house? Where? When was that?”

  “In Westminster. I left there a year before you came to us. T’was not so congenial a place as this one.” A wealth of sobering information was contained in one word. “The abbess’s mam lived in the house. She was an old whore, retired, and we all thought her fit as a horse. She kept household, a merry old thing. Saw to the table, ordered the candles and the laundry done. Then, as winter started to come on she—first she wanted to start whoring again. Kept nosing about the gentlemen who came for us girls, talking coarse and shoving her bubbies at them. Flirting with them! You might imagine how it took the men aback! Then she took the notion that someone was trying to poison her. She flew into tempers over nothing, went for the cook with a knife! Finally Mrs. Deeper—that was the abbess—had to lock her in her room.”

  “What happened to her?” Miss Tolerance could not forbear to ask, horrified.

  Marianne shook her head. “I don’t know. I left. It wasn’t a pleasant sort of place, even before the old woman went odd. But I remember someone there saying she believed the pox had gone to the old woman’s brain.”

  “Pox? But you said she was retired.”

  “She was, but you know that sometimes the treatments don’t take. I don’t know, Sarah. I mention it because it’s the only other time I’ve seen anyone so changed from her nature.”

  “Last winter, didn’t the doctor suggest my aunt be treated for—”

  “Pox? Yes. But she never was. She thought—we thought, Frost and I—that all the change in her was due to the apoplexy she suffered when she was feverish. But this—madness….”

  “Do you think that is what this is? What are we to do?” Miss Tolerance regarded her friend with horror.

  “I don’t know. Wait to see if this brainstorm passes and speak to her if it does. I know she don’t like doctors, but there must be someone who could see to her. Like that man that tried to help the King when he went off his head.”

  “Doctor Willis?” Miss Tolerance pursed her lips. “He died some years ago, I believe. And I don’t believe we will easily persuade my aunt to see a physician.”

  The two women stopped at the door to the garden. “Then we must wait and hope,” Marianne said. “To be honest, Sarah, I do not know what to counsel else. And I should go back.” She looked over her shoulder toward the salon.

  Miss Tolerance nodded. After a moment of uneasy silence, Marianne embraced Miss Tolerance. “We shall look after her and see she comes to no harm. Now, I’ll have Jess bring some supper over, shall I?”

  Miss Tolerance spent a bad night and felt thick-headed and useless the next morning. She dressed, and was lacing her boots when Keefe knocked at the door.

  “You never ate your supper, Miss Sarah.” He looked at the untouched tray on the table with disapproval.

  “I beg your pardon, Keefe. I forgot about it completely.”

  The porter nodded, frowning. “These is worrisome times.” He was not, she knew, speaking of the war or the Regency. He withdrew a fold of paper from his pocket, an object whose dignity did not merit being presented on a tray. “Them boys come this morning with your report, miss.”

  It took Miss Tolerance a moment to recall who “them boys” were and what they might be reporting on. Then, with more eagerness, she took the paper. “Thank you, Keefe. What did you disburse on my behalf?”

  He named a sum; Miss Tolerance paid him. “Thank you, miss. I beg your pardon for asking, but…what’s to become of the household?”

  Oh dear. “I do not know, Keefe. I have very little power to do anything,” she told him frankly. “But what I have, I shall use to make sure that my aunt does not forget her responsibilities to all of you.”

  Keefe nodded. “I knew you would, Miss Sarah, but it’s relieving to hear it said. I’ll tell the others.”

  The porter left. Miss Tolerance hoped she had not promised more than she could accomplish. She opened the paper Keefe had brought her.

  As before, it took a little time to decipher Ted’s scribbles. A sharper pencil and less inventive spelling would have helped, as would punctuation. Lady Brereton had visited in a house in Cork Street and returned after an hour. Mr. Henry Thorpe had visited, then gone on to his club in St. James’s Street and stayed there late—too late for that spy to stay out, lest he get a whipping from his mother. Lord Lyne had been the busiest. He had gone to his club, to a haberdashery, then back to his home. He had then gone out again an hour later, to a shop in Fox Street in Shadwell. The business located there was (if she could trust Ted’s scrawl) called Amisley and Pound Drayage, and Lord Lyne had spent half an hour there before returning home for the evening. The man to whom he had spoken, Ted wrote, was the same red-haired man in the green coat who had visited in Duke of York Street the day before. What business would bring a man from Shadwell to Lyne’s house, or take the baron to Fox Street? If it were a simple matter of shipping, might it not as easily be handled by Lyne’s agent or secretary? Somehow she had assumed the man in the green coat was an acquaintance of Henry Thorpe’s, not Lord Lyne’s. Decidedly this red-haired man was a person of interest. Miss Tolerance decided that a call at Amisley and Pound Drayage was in order.

  An hour later she alit from a hackney coach on a lively thoroughfare lined with offices, most to do with shipping, and a few businesses there to provide sustenance and drink to the workers of the neighborhood. The street was no dirtier than most, and significantly less sordid than many, but it was close to the Thames. By full summer the river would emit the stench of a cess-pit; already there was a sweaty, oily ripeness to the air. The sign which identified Amisley and Pound was old enough that the gilt had faded and chipped; the business was some years established. There was a large window of many fly-specked panes, through which she saw three clerks bent over desks. Her curiosity increased. She entered.

  Not one of the clerks looked up. Aside from the scratch of pens upon paper and tapping of points on the lip of inkwells, there was some noise from the street but no other sound. When Miss Tolerance cleared her throat all three clerks turned to look at her impassively.

  “May I speak to Mr. Amisley, please?”

  “In’t one,” the rightmost clerk said. “Can I be of some ‘elp, miss?”

  “Mr. Pound, then?”

  “Died Trafalgar year.” The clerk wrote something in his ledger, crossed it out, then looked back at her. He was a big man with broad shoulders, and looked as though he was crammed behind his desk when he ought to have been loading boxes onto a ship. His face was unfortunate: long, full-lipped and sneering, with a peppering of dark stubble on his cheeks; his eyes were almost hidden by the pouches below them. “Miss,” he said as an afterthought, and with no indication of respect or courtesy.

  Miss Tolerance held on to her temper and smiled. “Are you gentlemen the proprietors of this establishment, then?”

  “Proprietor would be Mr. Huwe. Miss”. The clerk dipped his pen again, wrote another line, then looked at her insolently. “D’you want to speak with him?”

  Miss Tolerance was polite. “I should like that very much. Thank you.”

  The clerk got up from his stool, exchanged unreadable glances with his fellows, and vanished through a door at the back of the room. The
employees of Amisley and Pound were not in the habit of dealing with the public, Miss Tolerance thought. The two clerks still sitting returned to their work, and Miss Tolerance waited without comment, feeling that her best choice was to match their impassivity with her own. After several minutes the first clerk returned, still sneering, and invited Miss Tolerance to follow him.

  The room into which she was ushered looked as if a bomb might have exploded in a paper manufactory. Shelves lined all the walls except for a door on the far side, and these shelves were filled with ledgers, papers piled on top of the ledgers and, as often as not, papers fallen in drifts upon the floor. In the middle of this flurry of paper a desk was nearly hidden by more ledgers, and papers skewered every which way on an array of spindles.

  A man rose from behind the tower of foolscap to greet her.

  “That will do, Worke. Back to your ‘counts go you.”

  Mr. Worke shrugged his heavy shoulders as if to say that nothing that followed was to be considered his fault, and shambled out.

  The other man bowed. “Now, madam, I am Abner Huwe, at your service.” He did not invite her to sit, but stepped a few paces from behind his desk. “How may I be of assistance, Miss—”

  Miss Tolerance had determined that she would not give her name unless necessary. She adopted the brisk tone of a woman accustomed to managing household and family members. “It is kind of you to see me, Mr. Huwe. I am trying to find a gentleman, and was told he might have called in here.”

  “Here, miss? Not likely, that. No.” Mr. Huwe’s accent was distantly Welsh, but with thick veneer of the eastern end of London. He was a stocky man and muscular, with a square head and blunt, pleasant features. His hair was that rusty color which had likely been true red when he was younger; it stood up from his head in tufts, as if he were in the habit of running his hands through it. His coat was of neat, fine broadcloth, bottle green. “We get few callers here in the usual way of business, you see.”

  “How very strange. I was told the gentleman called here yesterday in the afternoon. A man about fifty, sparse hair combed forward, blue eyes behind spectacles, heavy eyebrows and a square chin. He is a very commanding man; I don’t doubt you would remember him.”

  Mr. Huwe ran a square, thick-fingered hand along the side of his jaw as if in aid to memory. “And if this gentleman had called upon us, miss, why would you be wanting to know of it?”

  Miss Tolerance had provided herself with an answer for this question. “I am trying to find the gentleman, Mr. Huwe. He and my father had discussed some business, but my father is stricken in years and has forgot some of the details of the matter. My father had recalled that the gentleman said that he would call here yesterday afternoon, but cannot remember the man’s name.”

  “Does your father business with men whose names he cannot recall?” Howe asked with polite doubt.

  “They were at Watiers, sir, and happened to fall into a conversation. If my father ever knew the gentleman’s name he had forgot it by the time he returned home. He does not like to ask at the club, sir, for fear it will get ‘round that he is not as astute as he used to be.” Her tone mingled sympathy with impatience.

  “But he remembered my name?”

  “The name of the firm, yes. It is the way with old men, sir. One name will stick with them, while another goes—” Miss Tolerance made a gesture with one gloved hand, meant to suggest a thought winging its way from her brow. “I would be very grateful if you could help me, sir.”

  “What sort of business is it?” Mr. Huwe asked. His expression was no less cordial, but Miss Tolerance was aware of a sudden acuteness in his gaze.

  “My father has some interests in India, sir. His clerk is out of the city upon business with the family properties, and as my father was adamant that the matter could not wait, I have undertaken to find out the gentleman’s name and direction.”

  “You are a very active young lady, it is certain.” Huwe looked at his visitor for another moment, then shrugged. “From the sound of it, the gentleman you’re describing is Lord Lyne. He came to inquire about shipping some goods from a plantation in the West Indies, but we were not able to agree upon a fee. As for his direction, your father may reach him in Duke of York Street.”

  “Lord Lyne, sir? Gracious, my father means to fly high. Thank you very much, Mr. Huwe. I shall be able to relieve my father’s mind upon the matter.”

  “‘Tis a pleasure to so easily be of help, Miss—” again the suggestion that she would supply her name. Miss Tolerance curtsied instead.

  “I bid you good day, sir, and again, my thanks.”

  Huwe bowed and started around the desk to show his visitor to the door, but Miss Tolerance, still in the character of managing female, waved him back to his seat. “I shall show myself out, sir. I have already taken enough of your time. Thank you.”

  Miss Tolerance went out past the three clerks. Mr. Worke had his nose back in his ‘counts book, but the other two—an elderly man and a younger, less robust version of Worke with a large strawberry mark on his left cheek and a grey and red scarf wound twice around his throat despite the April warmth, watched her go with no pretense of working.

  She gained the street and looked about her for a hackney carriage. The mystery of Lyne’s visit seemed resolved, but it occurred to her to wonder why Mr. Huwe had been so helpful as to tell her, not only who Lyne was and where he might be reached, but the business upon which he had come to Amisley and Pound. If one were of a suspicious mind, one might almost believe that Lord Lyne’s visit there had nothing at all to do with shipping or estates in the West Indies. She strove to recall: Lyne had an estate in India, and one in the Americas, but was it the West Indies or somewhere else?

  Once again Miss Tolerance took her questions to Joshua Glebb.

  The taproom of the Wheat Sheaf was crowded today. Mr. Glebb was not at his accustomed table, but the evidence of a tankard and trencher with the remains of a meal suggested that he had only just left.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Boddick. Am I too late to find Mr. Glebb?”

  Boddick shook his head. “‘E’s still got business waiting, Miss.” He gestured to a cluster of people—three male, one female—waiting together at a table near the fireplace. “May hap ‘e gone out to the necessary. Will you take something?”

  It was only polite to order coffee she did not truly want, and to ask Boddick to pour something for himself. Normally such an exchange would lead to conversation—she was quite certain Boddick would have an opinion upon the Prince of Wales’s elevation to the Regency. But the barman was in a curiously withdrawn humor; he merely said, “Thank you, miss,” and rubbed away at the tankard he was polishing.

  “How does your brother, Boddick?”

  The tapster shook his head. “Not so well, miss. ‘Ome in bed, weak as a kit and breaking ‘is bones with the shakin’. Ain’t no bark to be ‘ad for him, and o’ course the fever come back straight away.”

  Miss Tolerance was very sorry to hear it. “I had thought he looked improved yesterday.”

  Boddick was sour. “That was yesterday.”

  “And there is no cure for it?”

  “Best cure would ha’ been not to land at Walcheren. Or to ‘ave sent them with enough Peruvian bark to keep ‘em from getting sick in the first place. Not like them in the War Office is breaking theys bones with fever. Rich ‘uns get the bark when no one else can. And there’s Mr. Glebb, miss.”

  The old gentleman stood in the doorway, wiping his hands on a pocket kerchief. Miss Tolerance thanked Boddick and went to intercept Glebb before he returned to his table and the queue of anxious people waiting for him. It was perhaps unfair of her to break into the line, but she meant to ask only one or two questions.

  “Miss T., back again? You like the taste of Boddick’s coffee, I suppose?” Glebb smirked at his own wit.

  “I came for a quick word, sir."

  Glebb cast an eye at his table and the people waiting for him. “A short word’s all I have ti
me for, Miss T.”

  “Well, then: what do you make of the name Abner Huwe?”

  Glebb considered. “Shipper, down near Shadwell Dock. Hard man, jewed one partner out the business so’s he killed himself. Runs it tight. Had his reverses like everyone—year or two ago his business was looking done up, but he come through and appears very snugly fit these days. Not borrowin’, that’s certain.”

  Miss Tolerance nodded. “So he might have business with Lord Lyne in the West Indies?”

  “Might. What, is Lyne planning on buying property in the Indies? I’d say his money was still safer in Venezuala than up near them American States.”

  “Lyne has no plantation in the West Indies?”

  Glebb looked at her with impatience. “You know I told you yesterday. South America and India. Wasn’t you listenin’, Miss T? Now, if you’re quite done—”

  Miss Tolerance pulled herself away from the suddenly interesting subject of Lord Lyne’s property and made her final inquiry.

  “Gerard Tickenor?” Mr. Glebb cocked an eyebrow. “What are you messing about with him, miss? A bad lot, I’d say.”

  “How so?”

  “All in with ‘im, and the bailiffs sniffing at his door. Used to be a very warm man indeed, but lost it all, ran through the fortune he married. Bought himself a tin mine that was near worked-out, and kilt half a dozen men trying to get the last bits of ore out. Wife’s dead, so maybe he’s on the look for a new fortune. You ain’t thinking of marriage, are you, Miss T?” Glebb regarded her as if this was a very good joke. “I’d not trust that Tickenor to hold my watch, if you take my meaning.”

  “I do, Mr. Glebb. You confirm my own feelings.” Damn. “You have been very helpful, and I have kept you from your other customers.” Miss Tolerance pressed a half-crown piece into the old man’s hand, curtsied, and took her leave as Glebb continued back to his table.