Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House

by Stephanie Barron

  “But Phoebe Carruthers—”

  “Ah, Phoebe. She is possessed of considerable resources. Or perhaps—perhaps it is only a coldness of heart. Young Simon was gone from her for nearly two years, you know, before his death. She had not seen the boy but for a fortnight here or there; and she must certainly have known, as we all do when our men put to sea, that this parting could well be the last.”

  “He was not a man,” I observed, “but a litde child. Mrs. Seagrave says—”

  “Louisa Seagrave is mad,” declared Mary Foote. “I know what you are going to say—that she refuses to risk her boys to the Navy’s care—but some part of her resolve must spring from jealousy.”

  “Jealousy? Of Simon Carruthers?”

  “Or his mother. It is everywhere known that Mrs. Seagrave believes poor Tom to be in love with Phoebe Carruthers.”

  “I see!” I sat a little straighter on my bench. A good deal was suggested to my understanding, most of it conjecture, but none of it implausible. “And is it known whether Mrs. Carruthers returns the Captain’s affection?”

  “Who can say? Phoebe preserves as perfect a silence as Delphi. One might read anything, or nothing, in her sublime features. But I have seen her several times of late in the company of Sir Francis; and as Sir Francis has lately lost his wife, and is possessed of a considerable fortune—more than ten thousand a year, I am told!—one must regard him as a better prize than a post captain.” She gazed at me reflectively. “Is it true that Lucky Tom was seized and taken to Southampton Gaol?”

  “Indeed,” I assured her. “My brother visited him there today. Captain Seagrave is very low, as should not be extraordinary.”

  “And his wife has put up at the Dolphin, I understand. Edward fell in with her in the High Street at the very moment she was descending from her carriage. He says the little boys are fine fellows!” This last was said with a wistful air; for all her pregnancies, Mary had produced nothing but girls.

  “Very fine,” I returned with some amusement, “and despite their present trials, undiminished in both spirits and appetite.”

  “You’ve paid a call, then?” Mrs. Foote enquired sharply.

  “I left my card at the Dolphin this morning,” I said, “but did not like to disturb Mrs. Seagrave. She must be involved in all the chaos of unpacking, for herself and three children; there are the servants to think of, and the ordering of dinner. But I shall certainly call tomorrow. She will require the support of many at such an hour.”

  Mary Foote sighed. “Then I must go as well, I suppose—though I am sure Louisa Seagrave has never warranted much attention from the naval set! We must consider it a kindness on behalf of Tom. For my part, I never believed him a murderer. I made the poor fellow quite a cause among my acquaintance! I shall look a fool, now—for of course the magistrate should never be wrong.”

  “I am afraid that magistrates are quite often wrong, Mary. Do not abandon your hero yet.”

  “Very well. But I depend upon you, Jane, for all the latest intelligence. If I am to look a fool, it were as well I should be prepared.” She rose, and held out her hand. “The lion has gone, and taken his prize with him; so let us venture your acquaintance once more. I would not see those plumes wasted cm my back passage, Jane. Martha would never forgive me.”

  Chapter 16

  Nell Rivers

  Saturday,

  28 February 1807,

  ~

  OUR HACK CHAISE WAS THE FIRST TO ARRIVE AT THE Footes’ door, once the carriages were summoned—a testament to its driver’s impatience, one must assume, or the penetrating cold. Frank handed in his wife, then Martha, and then myself. When we were all settled, and Mary had begun an animated discussion of baby Elizabeth’s manifold charms, to which Martha kindly attended, I asked Frank softly, “What do you know of Phoebe Carruthers?”

  He started; perhaps he had hoped to doze on the journey home. “No more than anyone may know. She was orphaned early, and worked as a governess, I believe—in a very wealthy household somewhere to the north. There was threat of a scandal—an attachment on the part of the eldest son—that led to her dismissal. She married Hugh Carruthers not long thereafter. He was her cousin, you see.”

  “She is very beautiful.”

  Frank glanced at his wife sidelong, but Mary remained insensible. “If you like that proud, untouchable look—yes, I suppose that she is.”

  “Louisa Seagrave observed that all of Southampton was at Mrs. Carruthers’s feet. ‘Even Thomas/ she said, and then broke off.”

  “Did she?” enquired Frank with quickness. “They have been acquainted some years. Hugh Carruthers was a great friend of Seagrave’s, I believe, and when he was killed by a ball aboard the Témérairt, nearly two years since, Tom undertook to give young Simon a step.”

  “Perhaps his esteem for Captain Carruthers now extends to his widow. Certainly Louisa Seagrave believes as much.”

  “You imagine her to harbour envy of Phoebe Carruthers? But she seemed to grieve so deeply for the boy!”

  “Louisa Seagrave grieves for herself,” I returned tardy, “and for the loss of an amiable marriage. She spoke of Mrs. Carruthers with pity, for the death of her son; that death must justify Mrs. Seagrave’s refusal to send her boys to sea. She was unstinting, however, in her abuse of her husband for having showered young Carruthers with affection—at the expense of his own children.”

  Frank whistled sharply between his teeth. “She regards the woman in the nature of a rival.”

  “Mrs. Foote declares that it is so.”

  “What Mary Foote professes to know, all the world must see is truth,” muttered my brother. “You suspect Mrs. Carruthers as the lady Tom Seagrave would shield? The lady in the case, as you put it?”

  “He did say, with some bitterness, that he might better have remained at home for all the good he achieved Wednesday evening. What if he rode out to Southampton—not with the intent of murdering Chessyre, but of calling upon Phoebe Carruthers?”

  “—Whom we know to have been occupied with Sir Francis Farnham in French Street,” Frank cried.

  “For at least the first of three acts.”

  “And so Tom, in finding her from home, suffered a disappointment!”

  “Or arrived at her door in time to make the acquaintance of her latest escort.”

  “Then it is a wonder it was not Sir Francis found with a garotte about his neck,” Frank supplied.

  “I DECLARE, MISS! YOUR COLD IS MUCH IMPROVED.” JENNY had torn herself from the embrace of sleep quite early this morning, and her comfortable face was quietly cheering. She is nearly forty, our Jenny—as yet unmarried, and likely to remain so; plain of feature, ample in girth as she is in kindness. No one may equal her at frying a chop or dressing a salad; but the chocolate and rolls she carried this morning were all that I could desire.

  “It will be the mustard plaster, I’m thinking,” she continued. “It’s just as well you employed it—what with that dreadful fever as the Frenchmen are spreading, and you so insistent upon ministering to them yourself, miss. I don’t wonder Captain Austen was put out to find you’d gone to Wool House. But there, a lady must do her duty.”

  “Indeed,” I replied. I sat up in bed and prepared to have my breakfast on a tray, like an indolent marchioness. I had never employed Jenny’s mustard plaster, and had no intention of informing her of the fact. “Has any messenger come from Mr. Hill this morning?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  I was sure that Jenny knew everything to do with our smallest concerns. From her piercing search of my countenance this morning, I guessed that she was disturbed in her mind—undoubtedly because of my correspondence with Wool House. Did she think me likely to lose my heart to a foreigner? Or was she nettled at the vagaries of Frank’s temper? “I am afraid we are all a sad trial, with our adventures and our disputes. It is a wonder you put up with us, Jenny.”

  “I’d never call it a quiet household, what with your taste for murder and the Captain’s f
or drabs.”1

  I nearly choked on my chocolate.

  “He did ought to be ashamed of himself! There’s that poor young wife of his so far gone with the first, and her still a bride. I never thought I’d live to see the day when we should have women of the street lurking in the back doorway—but there, he is a man of the Navy, and we all know what they are. Mrs. Davies will never be done talking of it. If it weren’t for the spoke I planted in her wheel, she’d have told all of Southampton.”

  “Did you see the young woman who enquired Thursday for the Captain?”

  Jenny shrugged. “She weren’t much to see. Long in the tooth and short on washing, if you ask me. But I knew it was her straightaway, when she come round again

  this morning. I told her to be off in three ticks, and no mistake!”

  This morning!” I thrust aside the covers and made to get out of bed. Jenny hastened to fetch my dressing gown. “Why did you not call my brother?”

  “Captain Austen quitted the house at half-past six,” Jenny returned with asperity, “no doubt upon business of his own. The Captain made sure to tell me I was not to disturb Mrs. Frank, and that I was to tell you he was gone to Gaoler’s Alley.” These last words were uttered with extreme contempt.

  Gaoler’s Alley. We had agreed last night, before retiring to our respective bedchambers, that Tom Seagrave should be interrogated on the subject of Mrs. Carruthers. Frank was doubtful that a direct assault might persuade him to yield a confidence he seemed so determined to keep. The lady, however, might save Seagrave’s neck if she could swear before the magistrate that it was she he had sought on Wednesday night—and not Eustace Chessyre.

  “Even so,” Frank had told me doubtfully as we stood in the passage, “it cannot account for the entire period before the body’s discovery. I do not know what we gain, Jane, by exposing Seagrave so dreadfully.”

  “He may stand the test of a trifling exposure,” I retorted. “If you intimate that we shall appeal to Phoebe Carruthers if Seagrave preserves his silence, he may well unbend to spare her the mortification.”

  And so my brother was not at home to answer the plea of a Southampton jade. The woman had come in search of him twice. I knew Frank well enough to believe it was not on business of a personal nature. This woman sought him as a certain authority. It was imperative that we learn what intelligence she guarded.

  “Would you know the woman again?” I asked Jenny directly. “The one who wished to speak to my brother?”

  She started, a slight frown between her eyes. “Happen I might. But I’d’a thought you’d be glad to see the back of her, miss.”

  “So we probably shall,” I murmured, “once we apprehend what we have undertaken. Nonetheless, she must be found.”

  Jenny’s gaze slid guiltily away. “The poor wretch begged me to take a message to the Captain. I told her I wanted none of it. But she stood her ground. All manner of nonsense she uttered.”

  “You must try to remember what she said. It is of vital importance, Jenny.”

  The maid hesitated. “Has it to do with the murder? Of that sailor as all the town is talking of? He weren’t a friend of the Captain’s, surely.”

  “The man accused of Mr. Chessyre’s death may hang for a crime he did not commit. And he is Captain Austen’s dear friend. My brother cannot bear to see an injustice done.”

  “You think the light-skirt as is skulking about the back door knows summat she oughtn’t?”

  “Please try to remember what she said.”

  ” ‘My soul must be quit of it’—that was one part, like she had a sin she needed shriving of. Of course, at the time, I reckoned she meant the Captain. That her conscience was devilling her on account of Mrs. Frank.”

  “She gave you nothing? No note for Captain Austen’s perusal?”

  “I doubt as she can write, miss; and that sort don’t go carrying of cards.”

  “No,” I admitted. Even with Jenny’s sharp eyes as aid, the search for a single young woman in all of Southampton must be fruitless.

  “I suppose we could ask at the Bosun’s Mate,” she said thoughtfully.

  My head came up. “What is that? A tavern, of some sort?”

  Jenny shrugged. “I haven’t the slightest idea, miss. But that’s what she said. ‘Tell the Captain he must ask for Nell Rivers. The Bosun’s Mate will find me.’ ”

  “It does sound like a tavern. I shall just have to find it”

  “You’re never going into that part of town, miss! Not alone! I won’t allow it!”

  I handed Jenny my cup. “Then you’ll come? Thank Heaven! I do not know how I should manage without you, Jenny.”

  The maid rolled her eyes. But she did not decline the office; and as she thrust her large frame into the passage, I saw that she was smiling.

  WE SET OUT TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER. I HAD TAKEN just time enough to dress and pen a swift note to Mr. Hill, begging the earliest news of the manner in which Monsieur LaForge had passed his night; I might hope for an answer upon my return to East Street. The bells of St. Michael’s were tolling a quarter-past nine as we descended to the pavement. Jenny wore the hood of her cape well over her head, as though to ward off the impertinence of the common sailor; and though my bonnet presented a wide brim, and was secured with ribbon over my ears, I found that I could wish for a disguise as thorough as my maid’s. It seemed unlikely that I could ever be taken for a slattern; but my appearance in such a part of town must occasion comment.

  “Have you any notion, Jenny, which streets might be considered … of ill-repute? My brother spoke of the quayside—and of the district beyond the Walls.”

  “The quayside you know,” Jenny replied. “It’s a pother of houses for the common seamen, and a few taverns where food as well as drink is served. The Bosun’s Mate might well be there, but I cannot say as I recollect the name. If that bit o’ muslin hails from one of the nunneries, I’m thinking we should search out past the Ditches.2 There’s a snarl of lanes new-laid just there, and poor ramshackle places as no one should be proud of biding in.”

  From the High, we turned into Winkle Street and proceeded to the limits of the town walls. Just beyond where we stood was a platform for viewing the sea and the ships at anchor; to the north ran the Ditches. Beyond the drained moat lay Porter’s Mead, an open greensward. Above the mead was a web of small alleys that sprang from Orchard Lane, a narrow thoroughfare running north in parallel to the High. It had received its name long since, and apple trees had given way to buildings of every description.

  Our road was of recent construction, and in fairly good repair; but the jumble of houses that lined it on either side was cheap and poorly maintained. It is natural, I must suppose, that the situation of an ancient

  port such as Southampton—drawing every describable breed and rank to its shores—must encourage such a miscellany of habitation and circumstance. There is poverty in the country, of course; the clergyman of a parish must be intimately acquainted with the humbler forms of suffering, and I had witnessed a good deal of humanity’s bleaker side in my youth. But the decay of a city’s lower districts is something worse. Here it is not simply a question of want of bread, or of illness brought on the wings of bad weather; here it is a rotting from within: through drink, and violence, and every form of vice.

  A woman emerged from a doorway opposite to toss her chamber pot into the gutter. She eyed us malevolently as we passed, and her gaze followed us down the street Three chickens scurried before us, clucking anxiously; a cat trotted by with a fishhead in its mouth. I counted at least three men stretched drunkenly upon the pavement, and was sorry to note that one of them still wore the remnants of a midshipman’s dress. From the distance came a high-pitched cackle of laughter, swiftly choked off, and then the wail of a child.

  “Poor mite,” murmured Jenny.

  Almost every habitation along Orchard Lane was shuttered as yet against the morning. A man’s face— dreadful in its haggardness—peered out through one undraped windo
w, and a milk cart drawn by a donkey made its rumbling way along the ruts at the paving’s verge. “It is an unsuitable hour for approaching a tavern,” I observed doubtfully, “even did we find the Bosun’s Mate. We ought to have waited until sunset, and brought my brother with us.”

  “Good mornin’, ladies,” said a rough voice behind us. “Lost yer way?”

  Jenny started, and clutched at the market basket she carried; I turned with a rustle of skirts. It would not do to show alarm. We should occasion even greater notice than we already had.

  “That depends, sirrah,” I replied, “upon the quality of your aid. We are in search of a tavern called the Bosun’s Mate.”

  He was a man of advancing years, yet still powerful in his frame; his face had been ravaged by pox in his youth, and his right arm was gone below the elbow. His grizzled hair was drawn back in a queue, and tied with a length of black ribbon. He stank of strong spirits, and his eyes were very red.

  “We are searching for … my maid’s young son,” I added with sudden inspiration. Jenny stiffened beside me. She had never married, and the imputation against her virtue was deeply felt. A lad of fifteen years, whom we believe is lying insensible in a place called the Bosun’s Mate. Do you know it?”

  “What happened to the young feller then?” our interlocutor enquired, his bleary gaze falling heavily on Jenny. “Run away from home?”

  “He were avoiding the Press Gang,” she answered stoutly. “And who wouldn’t, I’d like to know?”

  “The Press done fer me, in my time,” said the drunkard darkly. “Crying disgrace, it is, the King sending ruffians to cart every able-bodied man and boy off to slave and die at sea. Not that it ain’t a good life, mind. I’d be there still, if it weren’t fer Boney taking the better part of my arm. But if the lad don’t have a taste fer it—”

  “He holed up in this here tavern,” Jenny interposed, “but the pore lad were beaten silly by a lout with a grievance. We ‘ad a note of the publican, sent to my lady’s house bold as brass, and my lady were so good as to lend me her protection. Me being a woman with a reputation to keep.”