Miss Treadwell's Talent

by Barbara Metzger

  Maylene wished there were a nearby body of water she could shove him into, and to the devil with polite manners. “How dare you come to my house, eat my food—very well, your food—and insult me and my mother at every turn. First we are mercenary, now we are social climbers! Climbing to what, I’d like to know. Your rarefied atmosphere where you can insult and offend everyone below? No, thank you.”

  Hyatt accepted a glass of wine from Campbell, who was clearing his throat to remind them that the rest of the company was not all that far away, and the room was not all that large, for angry words.

  The earl pasted a false smile on his face, took a sip, and lowered his voice. “No, first you are charlatans, then you are card sharps. Vulgar mushrooms come next. Money-grubbing is at the root of it all, of course.”

  “You…you toad! My mother and I feel sorry for the duke and want to help him. Can you not understand that? Must everything be done for ulterior motives?”

  “What, like wringing an invitation to the social event of the Season? Not that I blame you, if this”—he waved his hand at the gentlemen gathered near Miss Tolliver-Jones and the pianoforte—“is the best you can do for suitors. I’d recommend you take Canfield, of the three. His prospects are not as good as Shimpton’s, and there’s no title like Tremont’s, and of course there’s the missing leg, but he seems a steady chap with a modicum of intelligence.”

  “I’d take a man with no legs, no prospects, and no name if I loved him. But that is beyond your understanding, isn’t it, my lord? At first I was willing to excuse your behavior because I concluded you must be overwrought with worry about Lady Belinda. Now I do not believe you have ever spared a single thought for her; you are simply mean. I daresay when you decided it was time to set up your nursery, you looked about for a likely breeder and settled on your neighbor’s daughter because she was close to hand and you wouldn’t have to exert yourself to win her.”

  Since that was approximately what had happened, Socrates took another drink of his wine and went back on the attack. “Oh, I must have been mistaken then. You are going to Lady Belvedere’s merely to speak with Belinda’s friends. Of course you wouldn’t dance and flirt and mingle with the young men at all.”

  Of course she would. Since that was approximately what she’d planned, Maylene took a large bite of the biscuit a frowning Campbell offered. So angry was she that she swallowed wrong and choked.

  “Should I slap your back?” Hyatt asked.

  “I’d be afraid you’d stick a knife in it,” she gasped, catching her breath.

  He slid another glass of wine off Campbell’s tray and offered it to her. “You might as well have a good time, for the young girls will never talk to you, and the duke will see that you are only using him.”

  “What, do you think they will speak to a great brooding troll like you who is always shouting and sneering? Come try, and we’ll see who gets better results.”

  “Very well, I will.” Socrates had decided to go the instant Mondale had issued the invitation, to make sure that the Treadwell trio did not batten on his friends. Though how he was to keep a watch on the susceptible young sprigs, the genteel gamesters, and the gullible guests, all at the same time, he did not know. “The infants will speak to me because I am a friend of Belinda’s family.”

  “Ah, but the young ladies will speak to me if they think I am interested in finding out if you are free or not.”

  “Why the deuce would you care?”

  “Oh, I don’t, but I’ll tell Belinda’s friends I am interested in you for myself. If they are as foolish as you say, they’ll believe me.”

  Now he choked and the wine spilled. “Miss Treadwell, you are the most devious, dishonest, deceitful female it has ever been my misfortune to meet.”

  “And you, sir, are an insufferable cur.”

  “Cur?” Lord Shimpton demanded, coming between them. “What kind would that be?”

  Maylene was brought back to her duties as hostess, and back to her senses. She knew better than to argue with this man who had the power to ruin them. And she knew better than to argue with any man, creating a scene in public. She also realized that the room had grown quiet enough that everyone could hear their brangling. “Where is Miss Tolliver-Jones?” she asked. “She’s not at the pianoforte.”

  Shimpton flipped through the pages of his dog book some more. “Oh, I think she toddled off to the library for a book of her own. Tremont went to help her find one.”

  “Grover? Oh, no.” Maylene rushed off to the library, followed by Hyatt out of curiosity and Shimpton out of habit. Things were as bad as she’d feared. First they heard giggles before they reached the book room, then a squeal. As the three pushed open the closed door—a closed door, by heavens! How could that cad?—Grover jumped back, dislodging his hair, both of them, and Miss Tolliver-Jones staggered, as though she’d just lost her support. Maylene pointed her finger at her cousin, then at the door. “Get out, you dastard.”

  “I say, Cuz, there’s no need to be jealous.”

  “Jealous? You think I am jealous, you conceited coxcomb? I am outraged, yes, outraged, that you thought to seduce a gently born female under your own cousin’s roof. What, did you think to compromise Miss Tolliver-Jones into a hasty marriage? It won’t wash, you fool, for she is underage and her father will never release her dowry to a dastard like you.”

  Grover sniffed, then pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his nose. “Harsh words, Cuz. I only wanted to chat with the gal. And she was willing, weren’t you, miss?”

  “She is seventeen!” Maylene yelled. “What does she know?”

  “Oh, stubble it, Cousin May. No harm’s done.”

  Now Hyatt stepped into the room from behind Maylene. “No harm except to a lady’s reputation. I’ve half a mind to call you out over this.”

  Maylene turned her angry glare on him. “You don’t have half a mind to spare if you think a duel will do anything but bandy Miss Tolliver-Jones’s name about in all the men’s clubs. There will be no challenge here, do you understand?”

  She was right, so Hyatt nodded, vowing to thrash the licentious lord, even if he had to drag him into Gentleman Jackson’s.

  Maylene went on, “Nothing happened, and no one needs know. Do you understand?”

  She addressed all of them, but it was Lord Shimpton who answered. “What did happen?”

  “Nothing,” three voices told him.

  “And you, miss,” Maylene told the younger girl, “have learned an important lesson. Now wait to find out about kisses and such until you find the right man, and never go alone off with one of them until you do.” She glowered at Hyatt. “For none of them can be trusted.” The girl ran out of the room.

  At the mention of a duel, Grover had started edging for the door and escape. Hyatt called after him, “If you cannot act civilized, stay away from decent people, or answer to me for it, you dirty dog.”

  “I say,” Shimpton asked, “do dogs need baths then?”

  In accord for the first time that evening, Maylene and Socrates answered simultaneously. “Not as badly as you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  People prayed on Curzon Street. They said their nightly blessings, they said grace over their meals, they went to church on Sundays. Rarely, however, did they pray in Curzon Street. At least not before the Treadwell ladies had taken up their research in psychical phenomena.

  As if Maylene did not have enough in her dish the day after the dinner party, Nora had awakened her before seven in the morning with the news that a Reverend Bernard Fingerhut had taken up a vigil on the roadway.

  Maylene fumbled with her robe, then fumbled with the catch on her window. She leaned out and, sure enough, a man in a clerical collar, Bible raised on high, was right outside the fence that surrounded the grounds of Treadwell House. Quite a crowd of milkmaids and butchers’ boys were garnered around him, listening as the reverend harangued the populace against evil, against Satan, against raising the dead.

  Maylene
lowered the window. “I deal with fanatics only after breakfast.”

  Her mother, however, also awoke to the report of a man of the cloth holding forth outside her door, shouting about hellfire and damnation, godless necromancers and witches. So she invited Reverend Fingerhut inside for kippers and eggs.

  “For speaking with the Lord is hungry work,” she told her astonished daughter in the breakfast room.

  “Mama, don’t be absurd. That raving lunatic wants to see us burned at the stake. He is not speaking with the Almighty.”

  “He must be, dear. How else could Reverend Fingerhut presume to know what our dear Lord wishes? I personally think He must have given me the talent to use as best I can to help the rest of His flock. But God Himself never told me so, of course. Only Max.”

  She sounded disappointed that God was too busy to attend her séances, like Lady Crowley’s husband. Maylene realized fanaticism before breakfast was nothing new, not in Curzon Street. But, Lud, she hoped her neighbors slept late, and soundly.

  Reverend Fingerhut would not have entered such a house of wickedness, but for his calling. And for Cook’s steak and kidney pie, which was also calling out to him. By the time every dish on the table was empty, he was quite taken with Lady Tremont, or her cook, and promised to pray for Lady Tremont’s soul, instead of for her trial as a heretic.

  “And pray for those others we are trying to help, also, my dear reverend,” she asked him, making sure Cook packed up enough bread and cheese to see him through a day of kneeling on the cobblestones. “Who knows who might be listening to such a righteous, religious man as you.”

  Half of London, that was who, Maylene calculated. She could not force the cleric to leave, for he did not appear to be doing anything illegal. Besides, Campbell had already tried. The man could not be bribed or threatened, it seemed. He could only be fed. If his mouth was full, she reasoned, he could not continue his diatribe against devil worship. Maylene added a jug of cider and some buns to the sack. Then she took out the cider and replaced it with a bottle of the new brandy.

  Reverend Fingerhut was not as loud after that—whether from the food and drink or the fact that his congregants had to be about their errands, Maylene was not sure. He was not discouraged enough to leave, though.

  *

  “I say, Miss Treadwell, do you know that there is a drunken man on his knees outside your gate?” The young solicitor had returned, hoping for results from Maylene’s search for Mr. Joshua Collins, the missing heir to a dukedom. Ryan’s red hair was once again neatly parted down the middle, then pasted there with pomatum, as if daring a breeze to ruffle one iota of his dignity.

  “Yes, I do, Mr. Ryan. It is all the fashion, don’t you know, for every neighborhood to have its own religiousist. That way everyone gets a chance at salvation.”

  Mr. Ryan tugged at his neckcloth. There were no missionary ministers in his block. “But this one is shouting about blasphemy and sacrilege.”

  “Yes, well, the best of the lot gets assigned to Grosvenor Square, I suppose.”

  “But, Miss Treadwell, the man is claiming that you call up the dead.”

  “Oh, then it must be time for luncheon. I’ll just tell Campbell to invite him in. You are invited also, of course.”

  To take lunch with a Bible-pounder and a Bedlamite? “No thank you, Miss Treadwell. I was just wondering if you had any notions as to the missing heir we spoke about.”

  Maylene wished she had more to tell him. She wished for that reward more than ever. “Well, we do not think he is dead.”

  “Now that is good news, ma’am. Have you any proof?”

  “Proof?” Good grief, didn’t the man realize he had come to a spiritualist, not a scientist? “Of course not. I thought you understood that my mother works more with, ah, intuition than hard facts.” She did not feel like discussing Max with the stiff-necked solicitor, not with the evangelical outside.

  “Oh, then you have no idea where Mr. Collins is?”

  He sounded so disappointed that Maylene mentioned they thought there was music, which had Ryan eager again. “What kind? For if it’s violin music that he was playing, we can concentrate our search on string quartets, orchestras, that type of thing.”

  “I’m sorry, I just cannot say.”

  Ryan seemed to deflate again, so Maylene added, “I wish we had been able to be of more help.” She would love to go to Bath and try to trace Mr. Collins’s route for Ryan—and for the reward. She knew she could think of lines of inquiry his paid agents might have missed, but such a trip was impossible now, especially since accepting the duke’s offer of escort to Lady Belvedere’s ball.

  “It was a gamble.” Gloom weighed as heavily as hair oil on the solicitor’s shoulders. “I suppose I’ll have to report still another failure to my superiors.”

  “Well, they cannot be angry at you if their own investigators did no better.”

  “But if they lose the trusteeship of the duke’s estate, they mightn’t be able to pay my salary, so blame does not matter.”

  “Why should they lose their client if they have managed the estate all these years?” Maylene asked.

  “Because the entail is dissolved at the end of the year, the title is extinguished, and the properties go to charity. Some church the late duke supported.”

  “But you had mentioned Mr. Collins might be in danger.” She saw no reason to mention Max’s report of others calling out to him. “Surely the church would not do him harm, to guarantee the inheritance?”

  “It is a great deal of money, Miss Treadwell.”

  She thought of the maniac minister on her doorstep, and meant to ask Mr. Ryan the name of the church that was the beneficiary of the Duke of Winslowe’s estate. Before she could do so, however, her cousin burst into the room. Ignoring Ryan as if the man were a servant or a piece of furniture, Baron Tremont started shouting. “That is the outside of enough, when I am laughed out of my clubs because of some perishing preacher at my cousins’ doorstep!”

  “Good morning to you, too, Cousin Grover. This is Mr. Ryan, of Hand, Hadley and Choate. And I thought you’d been barred from every gentlemen’s club in London for not paying your gambling debts.”

  Grover inclined his head the tiniest fraction, enough to dislodge the perpetual drip at the end of his nose. “Rumors! Vicious rumors, Cousin May.”

  “Just like the one about Reverend Fingerhut.” Even with the solicitor present, Maylene made sure to stand near the door, where she could call for Campbell if need be. At least Grover was too angry to take her hand as he usually did, leaving it damp and dirty.

  “He’s no rumor. I saw him myself just before I arrived, spouting about sin and witches’ sabbaths, in the street. And I won’t have it, do you hear? As head of the family, I insist you and your mother cease your ridiculous fits and starts, so that windbag outside will go on about his own business.”

  “Oh, he won’t go away, Cousin Grover, for sin is his business—preaching against it, at any rate. He’ll merely begin on greed and lechery next, after he scours the neighborhood of blasphemers. Shall I call him in now so you might have a private sermon?”

  Grover reached up to make sure his hair was in place in its one thin strip across his pate. “This levity is thoroughly unbecoming, Cousin Maylene. Your mother’s ill-conceived escapades have cost you your place in Polite Society, and your own intransigence is liable to cost you a respectable future.”

  If that meant Grover would not be importuning her about marriage any longer, Maylene could only be thankful. On the other hand, she did not like to see her mother disparaged. “To the contrary, Cousin, we lost our standing in the ton when my father lost his fortune at the gaming tables. As for the future, our prospects have never looked brighter. Why, we’ve been promised invitations to the social event of the Season, Lady Belvedere’s ball. Who knows what might come of that?” If she was taking advantage of the duke’s offer, who could blame her? Only Hyatt, and he was close to blaming the fog, the price of wheat, and t
he King’s ill-health on her, so he did not count.

  Grover could count his chances of wedding his cousin and gaining Treadwell House good-bye if she took to socializing with the likes of the Ideal, he knew. And the likelihood of his receiving an invitation to the ball was about as good as his odds of growing a new head of hair. He would not even be invited to tea this afternoon, for Cousin Thisbe’s cook was too busy feeding the maggoty missionary to do any baking. Furious, Grover marched back to the street, managing to kick some dirt on the kneeling, black-clad figure as he passed. Then, while Fingerhut was rubbing his eyes, Grover lifted two shillings from the donation plate at the priest’s feet.

  Maylene apologized to Ryan for her cousin’s behavior, then saw the solicitor to the door after promising to try once more for inspiration and insight into Mr. Joshua Collins’s disappearance. “Yes, I believe we will be having a session tonight,” she said from the open door, waving to Reverend Fingerhut.

  With the minister in the roadway, traffic to Treadwell House thinned considerably. Some would-be clients were frightened off by the threats of hell or heresy; others were afraid of having their own sins enumerated. There would be no new patrons making appointments with Lady Tremont for inquiries, fiend seize Fingerhut. On the other hand, perhaps Hyatt was also discouraged from calling. Lud knew the man had sins enough, pride being foremost in Maylene’s mind. Or the reverend’s accusations might have given him a final disgust of them, on top of his distrust and dislike. He might have decided to stay away finally anyway, after last evening. Good, she told herself, sending another bottle of brandy out to the brimstone-bellower on her doorstep. Very good. Excellent. She’d be thrilled never to see his overbearing lordship again.