by S K Rizzolo
“Of course, Miss Minton.” She went on to relay Ambrose Tyrone’s message. The directress listened, her shoulders easing a fraction.
“I shall sleep the better tonight,” she said when Penelope finished. “Good evening then, Mrs. Wolfe.”
“May my little girl accompany me tomorrow? I am afraid I have no one to mind her.”
Miss Minton’s lips curved up in the barest of smiles. “She will be most welcome.” Dropping a brief curtsy, she withdrew.
Penelope relaxed gratefully. At last she was alone. Making her way to the desk, she saw that the packet with the blue ribbon was definitely gone while the other papers seemed undisturbed.
Well, she thought, it must be now or never. She had had to will herself to stop thinking of that pamphlet while talking to John Chase, else have her guilt writ large across her face. Loosening her reticule with fingers a trifle clumsy in her excitement, she at last brought out the tract into the open. Quickly she unfolded it, reading the title in bold print: An Examination of the Present Day Condition of the Working Poor by Daniel Partridge, M.P. Underneath a subtitle read, “A Treatise on the Appalling State of Health and Well-being among the Most Vulnerable Inhabitants of the Metropolis.” The pamphlet itself consisted of several pages of densely printed text.
Penelope skimmed through it, noting that the rhetoric was impassioned and eloquent in the manner of the reformers of the time. There was also much marginalia, some written in a decisive scrawl, the rest in a fine copperplate. She thought the latter must be Miss Tyrone’s hand; points of exclamation and references to “my friend” punctuated the glossing. She was about to put the pamphlet away when her fingers came across a slip of paper folded at the back. It was penned in the first distinctive, bold hand:
To Constance: I doubt there has ever been a woman named so aptly as you, my Dear. May you always be Constant to the ideals we share and to our Friendship which, I must confess, gives me the greatest Pleasure I have ever known. I shall strive to remain Worthy of it—and to temper my regard with all due Honour.
Yours, Daniel
If this were any indication of the rest of the stolen papers, no wonder Mr. Daniel Partridge had found it expedient to retrieve them, if indeed Penelope’s suspicions were correct. She read his note to Constance again, struck by the power of the emotion expressed in so few lines. One could not doubt the sincerity or the magnitude of the writer’s feelings, yet the language was moderated, crafted, each word carefully chosen. Restrained. Did Mr. Partridge have himself as firmly in check?
He wouldn’t risk coming to repossess the papers himself, but a man in his position could easily employ someone to do a dirty task. One conclusion was certain. Should his involvement with Constance Tyrone become known, Mr. Partridge would have much to explain to the public, to his fellow reformers, and to his wife, if he had one. No lady would think to question a husband’s dealings with his chères amies; a gentleman, after all, was expected to indulge in such affairs. But Constance Tyrone was a young woman of good family, a conspicuously virtuous woman, moreover. Knowledge of her relationship with Partridge would provide an unscrupulous individual with the perfect weapon…
“Jeremy?” she whispered, suddenly horrified. But then an even more frightening thought occurred to her. Daniel Partridge had a strong motivation for wishing Constance dead. What if their friendship had soured, and he had feared betrayal? No, Penelope could not imagine Constance turning on a friend. But what if Jeremy’s meddling had precipitated some sort of crisis? Dread made her feel almost ill for a moment.
Penelope was roused from contemplation by Mr. Chase’s return. He walked straight to the French window and opened it. A blast of cold air hit her face.
“What are you doing?” Unobtrusively, she slid the pamphlet and note back into her reticule.
“We’ll be off in a minute. I wanted another look at this lock first.” He glanced up. “Mr. Wood was no help whatever. It seems people may come and go around here more or less unnoticed.”
“Is there something amiss? With the lock, I mean. I thought the window had been left open, fortuitously for the culprit.”
“It looks as if somebody attempted to force the lock, but if that is the case, we’ve got a sadly inept cracksman.”
Kneeling on the flagstones, he motioned for her to come and see. Penelope bent down and peered. The scratch marks on the metal had not been there when she fled this way earlier, and the window had been unlocked in any case. It didn’t make sense, though at least she now knew what the thief had been after.
She came to a decision. “Mr. Chase, will you please step back into the office? I have important intelligence for you.” He looked surprised, but obeyed.
When they faced each other once more, she said, “I must tell you that my husband visited me near midnight on the night of the murder. He was in high alt about good fortune he imagined might come his way.” With the officer’s sharp eyes never leaving her face, she had to force herself to continue.
“He…he mentioned Miss Tyrone by name, in fact, and said he thought she might be useful in furthering his career. He seemed to know something to her discredit. Moreover, he had an engagement later that evening, but did not tell me with whom.”
“Your husband pays you visits in the middle of the night, Mrs. Wolfe?”
“We live apart, as I told you,” she replied through stiff lips. “But he does on occasion turn up.” Like the proverbial bad penny, she thought.
“Then he couldn’t have been with Bennington all night,” said Chase with satisfaction. “I knew that knave was protecting someone. He admitted as much.”
“You knew Jeremy’s alibi was fabricated? But you must believe me, sir. He couldn’t have murdered Constance Tyrone. He hasn’t the stomach for such horror.”
“Perhaps so, though you’ll forgive me for reserving judgment. But I do think there’s someone in the shadows behind your husband and Bennington. I’ll wager this person wants desperately to keep his entanglement quiet.”
She met his gaze squarely. “You’d win that wager, sir.” She told him of Merkle’s visit to her lodgings after she returned from consulting the barrister Edward Buckler. Next, she pulled Partridge’s pamphlet from her reticule and handed it to him wordlessly. Donning his spectacles, Mr. Chase glanced through the pamphlet, found the note, and read it.
“Where did you get this, Mrs. Wolfe?”
There was nothing for it; she would have to confess. Relating the events of the afternoon, she felt the heat in her face again and wanted to swear with vexation. She wished she could read his thoughts, but he remained impassive.
Finally, with a glint in his eyes, he said, “It seems my warning about the dangers of curiosity hit the mark. Have you stopped to think that the thief must have been in the room with you?”
“I thought it a possibility,” she admitted. “But perhaps he came after I departed?”
“No. You said the desk was already in disarray. Elizabeth Minton was quite clear that she had tidied it this morning. No, you must have interrupted him, and you inadvertently led him to what he sought.”
“Perhaps so. Yet if I had not found this pamphlet we should not know of Daniel Partridge.”
The officer moved to the door. “We must see if Miss Minton can shed some light on this new development. Wait here.”
He was back a few minutes later with Elizabeth Minton.
“I’ve told Miss Minton of your ‘discovery’,” said Mr. Chase. He handed Partridge’s pamphlet to the Society’s directress and waited while she read the note it contained.
A frown settled on the woman’s brow. “I am afraid I don’t know what to make of this.”
“Are you acquainted with Mr. Daniel Partridge, ma’am?” asked Chase.
“Yes, he visited here February last with a parliamentary inquiry committee. I have not set eyes on him since.”
“Apparently your friend Miss Tyrone has.”
Miss Minton turned on him fiercely. “What do you mean to imply,
sir?”
Penelope put in, “It’s just that Mr. Chase needs to know more of this man, Miss Minton, especially if he is behind today’s break-in.”
The directress hesitated, then said, low voiced, “I knew Miss Tyrone well, or thought I did, and she would never be involved in anything dishonorable. Yet it’s true she had been absent a great deal of late—and preoccupied. On the day she died, in fact, I taxed her with it.”
“What did she say?” asked Chase.
Her fingers curled around the edge of the desk. “Oh, she smiled in that way she had. Never cruel, but determined on her own path regardless of other people’s opinions. Then she suggested I attend to my own affairs.” She laughed shortly.
“Perhaps she merely sought to enlist Mr. Partridge’s support for the Society,” said Penelope. “Except the note he’s written makes it seem much more…”
Miss Minton walked to the door and paused, turning. “It appears he was a trusted friend, and it may be he abused that trust; I would not know. I do know that Miss Tyrone believed she could see inside people, finding always the good at bottom. But only a fool refuses to acknowledge the darkness that is also there.”
Without another word, she stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind her.
Chase took Penelope’s arm. “I think we should be going too. That is, unless you have any further disclosures?”
She had thought he would be angry with her, but if anything he seemed pleased. Certainly he now had a vital trail to follow, one that might lead him to Constance Tyrone’s murderer.
Could it be Daniel Partridge? Though she had never met him, she admired his devotion to the downtrodden. So few people ever saw beyond their own narrow complacency. Yet she realized that just because a man professed noble aims did not mean he could elude the same human frailty that besets others. Like everyone else, he might experience ungovernable passion. Or hatred.
After Mr. Chase secured the window, they proceeded down the path and entered the churchyard. Without sunlight, the yew trees had turned black, pressing closer. These grounds were terribly neglected, as if the rector didn’t care to spend the funds on upkeep. Chase kicked a fallen branch out of Penelope’s path and took firmer hold of her arm.
Shivering a little, she asked, “Will you seek out Mr. Partridge?”
“Yes, but cautiously. The papers were full of his doings during the last session of Parliament. He is quite the hero of the moment, for the common folk at any rate. He’s made enemies among his own kind with him and Burdett playing the House gadflies. Though God knows those asses could do with a few stings, especially after that turn-up last year with Burdett being clapped up in the Tower. Let us hope Partridge does not inconveniently recall to his memory the fact that Bow Street assisted in his friend’s arrest.”
“My…my father always spoke highly of Mr. Partridge.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, you see, he is Eustace Sandford. I don’t know if you will have heard of him?”
“Who has not?” He gave her a considering look. “Rather full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“I suppose so,” she said, smiling. “But you needn’t worry that I have any notion of interfering. I shall be occupied enough here.”
“Be careful. Danger may hide behind a seemingly innocent face.”
Penelope halted, her eye caught by a single rose blossoming on a bush at the side of the path. Its color was washed out by the lengthening shadows.
“Bit late in the year for a bloom, don’t you think?” Idly, she cupped the flower.
“The autumn has been warmer than usual. Careful of the thorns.”
The church bells began to ring out the hour, the clamor drowning the bird song and the rattle of carriages passing in the nearby street. The din was echoed throughout the city as a hundred other churches took up the call.
“Quite a peal,” said Chase. “Five o’clock.”
“The darkness comes early at this season.”
“Soon time for the curate to lock the gate.”
“’Twould be about this time that the coachman came for Miss Tyrone,” Penelope said.
She could imagine the man stepping cautiously in the gloom. He would be tired, thinking of his dinner and a warm fire; probably he would keep his eyes fixed on the path. But, of course, Constance had not been there, and the coachman had gone home alone.
Their eyes met, but neither spoke until the bells faded.
Chapter Nine
The next day the fog was back, and Penelope and Sarah got a late start. After a breakfast of toast and tea, they settled to their various pursuits, Sarah playing happily in her nightgear, and Penelope braving the latest assignment from Mr. Cotton: the first installment in the tale of a singularly foolish heroine and her efforts to choose between two suitors, one a steadfast if rather dull country gentleman, the other a dissolute London spark. Penelope had merely to fill in the plot already outlined for her, but it was tedious, trying work.
The heroine had just received a letter from her childhood friend, offering sage advice on the topic of the worthy gentleman’s foul breath which had heretofore proved an effective deterrent to romance. Frowning, Penelope picked up her pen and wrote: A discreet and gentle prompting may serve to make a loved one aware of a shortcoming, which once remedied, is soon forgot. Should the problem prove intractable, however, it is well to remember that a physical imperfection pales to nothing beside the more solid virtues, and that which appeals to the senses may provide ill nourishment for the spirit…
A sudden image of Jeremy, handsome in his new coat, popped into her mind. Smiling ruefully, she banished him and glanced over to check on Sarah. This morning her daughter had found an absorbing task: lining up Penelope’s hair pins and perfume flasks across the floor and interspersing them with buttons which she continually shifted from one pile to another. Then she had taken all the pillows from the beds, chairs, and sofa and crafted a burrow.
“Oh, Sarey. Must you wreak such havoc, my darling?”
Sarah was indignant. “The dollies are sick, Mama. They have to go to hospital!” She picked up a red button. “See, here’s the medicine.” Bending down, she ground the button against her doll’s painted mouth. She looked up hopefully. “You sick too, Mama?”
“I’ve a terrible pain right here.” Clutching her stomach, Penelope got up from the writing table and draped herself across the pillows. She gave a theatrical moan.
Small face intent, Sarah ran to the bureau, grabbed a handkerchief, and bestowed it across her mother’s nose. “A cloth for your forehead. That helps you, doesn’t it?”
“Much better,” came Penelope’s muffled voice.
“And here’s your medicine.” One of the buttons was pressed against the cloth.
“Just pretend, sweet,” she protested. “Mama can’t breathe.” She pulled off the handkerchief and swept up the little girl for a kiss. “Do you realize what time it is, miss, and you still in your nightgown? Come now. We have an appointment this afternoon.”
But it took a full hour to get them both properly washed and dressed. Penelope had never known anyone who could dillydally like this child, and telling her to hurry only made her worse. Sarah wanted to do everything for herself, so something as simple as putting on a shoe took on monumental proportions. Then, of course, she announced she was hungry just as they were finally ready to go.
Thus it was later than planned that they caught a hackney to the St. Catherine Society. Street noises filtered through only faintly to where they sat in the smelly, drafty coach, marooned cocoon-like in the mist. Penelope kept her arms around the child, who simply couldn’t understand why the sun disappeared, and everything familiar was blanketed with this wet, unpleasant stuff.
When they arrived, Penelope introduced Sarah, who promptly lowered her head. She had always spent her days with her mother and didn’t take to strangers well. Having seen little of her own parents as a young child, Penelope had been determined to do things differently. She wa
s finding out, though, that there was a price to pay for this kind of closeness: black terror at the thought of something happening to her daughter and the worry that she was smothering her, making it difficult for the little girl to grow strong and fearless.
Miss Minton looked as if she wanted to be friendly. “You’ll enjoy meeting the others, Sarah,” she said heartily. She held out her hand, but the child backed up into her mother’s skirt. Taking Sarah into her arms, Penelope followed the other woman up the tiny staircase to a low-ceilinged room under the eaves.
The furnishings consisted of an ill-assorted collection of chairs, a scratched dining table, and a few cradles and straw pallets. A group of about ten children stood regarding Sarah. In her simple calico dress and thick stockings she must have appeared strange indeed to these little ones, clad as they were in a mixture of rags and adult clothing cut to fit. Looking closely, Penelope could see that an effort had been made to turn them out well: hands looked clean, hair combed. Her heart ached to see it.
“We intend to have new garments made up for them as soon as the funds are available,” said the directress, watching Penelope’s face.
“That will be lovely.” She smiled all around. Still, she felt uneasy about leaving Sarah here. The nursemaid, who had approached bobbing a curtsy, seemed respectable enough, and the children were just that…children. It was an instinctive reaction, this urge to protect her child from the taint of poverty, yet it sickened her to feel it.
She nudged her daughter forward, saying, “This is Sarah who’s come to play with you today.”
The child gripped her mother’s knees, refusing to look at anybody, and Penelope felt embarrassed. She was sure Miss Minton would find Sarah abominably spoiled. But then Maggie came in, set her baby in a cradle, and led over a little boy who was about the same age.
“Good morning, Miss Sarah,” she said cheerfully, bending down to address her eye to eye. “This here’s my son Frank. He is a special sort of person, and if you’re lucky he’ll show you what he’s got in his pockets.”