Authors: Madeleine E. Robins

Petty Treason (13 page)

BOOK: Petty Treason

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“Now, here’s a thing,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ve asked around among all my acquaintance. Your chevalier, he owed money right enough, to a dozen tradesmen and, near as I can tell, all the sharpers in the clubs. Liked to live well, Moosoor Dobinny did; coat from Weston and breeches from White and Thomas, wine from James and Son and snuff from Freiborg and Trayer. Whoever kept ’is household practiced tuppenny economies—second-best bit of beef and mutton stew for the servants’ hall—but that can’t have helped much. And since you asked, he did sell off paintings and gew-gaws about town. But then that stopped.”

Glebb took a long and grateful draught of coffee and poked a stubby finger into the pie Boddick had brought him. A rich scent
of beef and onion rose up with the steam thus released. Glebb sniffed appreciatively and took up his fork.

“What stopped?” Miss Tolerance asked.

“The selling off,” Glebb mumbled through his pie. “Same time as some of the tradesman’s duns was paid off. I suppose the gaming debts was covered as well—I can’t know about them. But here’s a thing,” he said again. The soft folds of skin under Glebb’s chin shook as he chewed and considered. “No one loaned ’im the money. Not bank, not cents-per-cent, and not gullgroper. That money didn’t come from no one I know—which is to say, it didn’t come from no one.”

“What about gaming? Could his luck have changed long enough for him to have discharged his debts?”

“I didn’t hear of it. The question occurred to me, so I asked it, too. It ain’ natural, money just appearing and I can’t trace it. It ain’t what I like.”

Miss Tolerance gave this outburst of professional pride a moment of respectful silence. Then, “Could he have borrowed money from a friend, or someone not in London?”

Glebb nodded. “That’s my suspicion, miss. Maybe he has an old auntie was an easy touch? All I know is, your Moosoor Dobinny owed money to all and sundry, and then he didn’t, and no one in the moneylending line in London helped him to do it. Now,” he added. “A man’s time is worth something, miss.”

Miss Tolerance nodded. “It is, Mr. Glebb. Thank you.” She felt for her pocketbook and handed him a bank note. “I hope that will be sufficient.”

Mr. Glebb regarded the note affectionately. “Handsome, miss. Very handsome. Well, I think that concludes our business.” He looked over her shoulder. Miss Tolerance understood by this that her time was at an end, and deferred to a squat, swarthy man who was awaiting Mr. Glebb’s attention.

M
r. Adolphus Beak, who opened the door to the d’Aubigny house, recognized Miss Tolerance at once despite her unorthodox dress. The crowd outside was only a little reduced from what it had been a few days before.

“Do they never go home?” Miss Tolerance asked.

“When they do, others come in their places, miss,” he said. “All of them crazed to see the place where murder was done. Shameful.” Beak eyed Miss Tolerance’s attire as if to include it in his pronouncement.

“Quite. But I have come to see your mistress.” Miss Tolerance said. “Will you tell her I am here?”

Beak started as if regretting his moment of familiarity. “Madame is upstairs in her little parlor. Will you follow me, please?”

Miss Tolerance followed.

Anne d’Aubigny’s parlor was indeed little: a small, square chamber at the front of the house. Unlike the salon downstairs, the parlor did not appear to be missing anything by way of mantel clock or painting, but that might be because there was so little one might reasonably have sold. Miss Tolerance had the impression that the room had been furnished with odds and ends of furniture not wanted elsewhere in the house. It was certainly a dreary room: the drapes were half-drawn, occluding the winter light, and no candles had been lit. The widow herself was seated by the fire with a book of sermons in her hand, open but face down.

“Miss Tolerance, ma’am,” Beak said, and bowed himself out of the room. Miss Tolerance waited for a moment; Anne d’Aubigny appeared lost in her thoughts.

“I hope I see you well, ma’am?” Miss Tolerance advanced and bowed.

“Oh.” Mrs. d’Aubigny appeared to return from a place very far away. “Oh, yes, thank you,” she began, and made a halfhearted attempt to rise. As she dropped into her chair again the widow focused at last upon her visitor. Her surprise and dismay at Miss Tolerance’s costume was no less evident than Beak’s had been.

“I apologize for coming to you in this peculiar dress, but it is convenient for those days when I must call in some of London’s less genteel neighborhoods.”

“Oh,” Mrs. d’Aubigny said again. “But surely you must meet more ill use in that—in those—”

Miss Tolerance smiled. “On occasion. But not so much that I
would give up the option to dress this way. It gives me greater freedom in moving about the city.”

“Freedom,” Anne d’Aubigny repeated, as if the word were an exotic one. She recalled herself and asked how Miss Tolerance’s inquiries were faring.

“Well enough so that I have new questions for you, ma’am. I spoke to a source who tells me that while it was well known that your husband had recently come into funds, the money was not loaned to him by any banker or usurer in London.”

A line appeared between Mrs. d’Aubigny’s brows. “How could this person know such a thing? Not loaned by anyone in the whole of London?”

“It is this gentleman’s livelihood to be acquainted with all the people in London who are in the business of lending money. I am confident that when he says this, it is true. He did wonder if perhaps your husband had borrowed money from a relative or friend privately, or from someone outside of London, where he has fewer contacts.”

“My husband has no relatives living, not in England—and if any are alive in France, I am sure they are in no case to loan him money.”

“That does leave us with a puzzle,” Miss Tolerance said. The widow had not yet invited her to sit, and it was difficult for her to maintain a confidential tone when she stood over her client in a pose which must emphasize, not their common femininity, but the distance between them. “I confirmed with his superior at the Home Office that the chevalier was unlikely to have borrowed money from anyone there. Had he any friends not in London—”

“I don’t know where it came from, nor where it went—except the little that he gave me to pay the household expenses.” The widow lowered her head sulkily. “Why is this money of such importance?”

“It is a mystery, and such must always command attention. And it was you who suggested that money might be the motive for your husband’s murder.”

As Miss Tolerance watched, Anne d’Aubigny shook off her sulks. “I have forgot my manners, Miss Tolerance. Please sit down. You are quite right, of course. I did say that. But I cannot
tell you what I do not know—and that is whence Etienne received that money.”

“I understand. And frankly, ma’am, I do not think that money alone could inspire so violent a crime. There was rage in the act which killed your husband, ma’am. Rage or madness.”

The widow shuddered. “You may imagine how I have thought about this, Miss Tolerance. Indeed, I have racked my brain for some idea, and still I have none. No one in my household told you anything of use, I take it?”

“Nothing immediately useful, no. It is quite a large household for only two people, isn’t it?”

Mrs. d’Aubigny smiled wanly. “We keep too many servants. That will have to change. For our circumstances a maid, a man, and the cook should have been sufficient. But Beak came with the hire of the house, and Mrs. Sadgett as well. Etienne thought the desirable situation was worth the expense; I think he believed that a large household gave him more consequence as well. But Beak is too old to do half of what we would ask of a footman, and so we have Jacks as well. And Mary Pitt. And my Sophie has been with me since—”

“Please, I did not mean that you must account for your household to me, ma’am. Only, it is a great many people, even with your husband’s valet gone. And what of Mrs. Vose, ma’am, whom I met on my first visit here?”

Anne d’Aubigny’s countenance grew bleak. “She is my husband’s cousin.”

Miss Tolerance’s attention was caught by a perceptible pause between the last two words. “Did you not tell me your husband had no relatives now living?”

“I meant he had none living who would be able to lend him money,” Mrs. d’Aubigny said. “I have no—”

What the widow did not have, Miss Tolerance was not to learn. In that moment Beak announced the arrival of Mr. William Heddison and Mr. Boyse, of the Greater Marlborough Street Public Office. Beak waited for instruction.

Mrs. d’Aubigny turned to Miss Tolerance. “The magistrate! Must I see him? He plagues me every day.”

“I think you had better see him,” Miss Tolerance said gently. “If you do not, he will certainly take it amiss.”

Mrs. d’Aubigny nodded, and Beak turned to invite the law into the widow’s parlor.

Having heard her friend Sir Walter’s opinion of Mr. Heddison, Miss Tolerance was curious to meet him. However, the widow had a right to meet with the man privately, and so she told her.

Anne d’Aubigny shook her head with the first evidence of strong emotion she had given all day. “Please don’t leave me! He glares at me so, it frightens me!”

Miss Tolerance nodded. She did not voice the thought that what the widow regarded as harsh treatment, someone less fortunately situated by way of birth and fortune might regard as extraordinary politeness.

Beak returned with Messrs. Heddison and Boyse following. Heddison was a short, plain-dressed man with close-cut gray hair and a wide, thin mouth pressed into an expression of impatience. He had the air of a man who will do his duty but expects no joy from it. His companion was at least twelve inches taller than the magistrate, and so broad that his waistcoat, which was a reddish-brown suggesting the customary red of the Bow Street Runners, strained across his gut. Silvery-white hair fell over his collar, and his round face was smallpox-scarred and red; the color, Miss Tolerance suspected, was only partly from the November wind. As the men entered the room, Heddison looked directly for Mrs. d’Aubigny; Boyse, on the other hand, squinted about him as if appraising the worth of the furnishings. He walked on the balls of his feet, which served to make him loom menacingly. Miss Tolerance was reminded that Sir Walter had said Heddison’s constables were men he would not want in his employ.

She and Mrs. d’Aubigny rose to their feet. Heddison bowed to Madame d’Aubigny and Boyse bobbed his shaggy head in a way to suggest the courtesy. At the same moment both men became aware of Miss Tolerance’s presence, and of her dress. Boyse appeared to shrug off the company of another person of whatever appearance; Heddison started a bow in her direction and stopped, as if uncertain what he beheld.

“Miss Tolerance,” Anne d’Aubigny said. “May I make Mr. Heddison and Mr. Boyse known to you?” Miss Tolerance realized with amusement that the widow was enjoying the magistrate’s
confusion. She bowed to the men and took her seat. “Miss Tolerance has been engaged by my brother to look after my interests.”

“Your interests, madam?” Heddison thought about this for a moment. Then, “I know your name. You’re the woman that testified in the matter of the Earl—”

“I am, sir,” she said.

“And you are acquainted with a colleague of mine, Sir Walter Mandif?”

Miss Tolerance nodded.

“We have met. He spoke of you,” Heddison said thoughtfully. “I hope you do not plan to obstruct my investigation.”

What had Sir Walter said of her, Miss Tolerance wondered. “It is the farthest thing from my mind, sir. Mr. Colcannon feared that Mrs. d’Aubigny might be in danger, and asked for my help.”

“Danger?” Heddison scoffed.

“A violent murder took place in this house, sir. Until we know why and who did it, we must consider Mrs. d’Aubigny at risk as well.”

Heddison stared at Miss Tolerance blankly for a moment, then turned abruptly to Madame d‘Aubigny. “I have some questions to put to you, ma’am. Do you wish this person to stay?”

Anne d’Aubigny nodded. “I have no secrets from Miss Tolerance, Mr. Heddison.”

The magistrate took a seat, unasked, leaving Mr. Boyse to stand behind him, looming like an unshaven tower. The constable sniffed deeply, rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, then wiped that hand on his breeches. When he looked upon the widow he scowled.

“Well, then.” Heddison began with a series of unexceptionable questions: when did Mrs. d’Aubigny retire on the night of the murder, who had bolted the doors, at what hour were the doors customarily unlocked again, did her husband ever lock the door to his own chamber—all questions Miss Tolerance herself had asked. From Mrs. d’Aubigny’s rote response, this was not the first time Heddison had asked them either. The widow sat with her hands in her lap like a child before a harsh preceptor, clearly fearful that at any moment a mistake might bring her a scolding or worse. Miss Tolerance judged it time to add a word.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Heddison, but may I add something you will like to know?”

The magistrate turned to face her with the same expression he might have worn if the pantry cat had spoken to him.

BOOK: Petty Treason

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