Petty Treason (24 page)

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Authors: Madeleine E. Robins

BOOK: Petty Treason
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“Mrs. Strokum?”
The whore’s head turned so quickly she nearly lost her balance. “I can do you better than she, sir,” she said.
Miss Tolerance sighed. “No doubt. But I have a specific need to talk to Mrs. Strokum. Do you know where I may find her?”
The woman cackled and glanced around her; as she did so she kicked at something—a square blue gin bottle near her foot. “Why should I send you to Bets when I got you here, young gentleman?”
“Because I will pay you to do so—and given that your lips are as blue as that bottle, I’d suggest you buy yourself something warm to eat.” And see a surgeon and get yourself cleaned of the pox that’s eating your face, she did not say. Seen close to, the woman was likely Miss Tolerance’s age, but she looked far older. Miss Tolerance was aware of a sudden unlikely desire to take this poxy sister in tow, get her cleaned and fed and doctored. As well try to drink the ocean dry as save all the whores in London from their fate.
“Let’s see the color of your money, then,” the woman said. She stepped closer to Miss Tolerance, weaving on her feet, and belched so foully it was all Miss Tolerance could do not to reel away.
“All I need to know is where to find Betty Strokum,” Miss Tolerance said. She took a handful of coins from her pocket and selected a half-crown, which she held firmly between her thumb and forefinger. “If you please?” she prodded.
The whore shrugged petulantly. “Down there—” She pointed along Eastcastle Street. “Two streets down. I saw her half an hour ago, draggin’ a gent into the mews. She’s likely done with ’im now. Or ’e with ’er.” She snatched at the coin and would have missed it but that Miss Tolerance pressed it into her hand.
“Thank you. Eat something hot,” Miss Tolerance advised again. The woman had already turned away in the direction of
the Duke of Kent. At least, Miss Tolerance thought, while the money lasted she would be drunk inside, near a fire.
She picked her way along Eastcastle Street. Clouds were beginning to thicken overhead, giving the streets and pedestrians a gray cast. Underfoot the sludge in the gutters was beginning to ice over, and the crossing-sweeps looked more interested in picking pockets than clearing a path through the muck. The mews the hedge-whore had indicated opened onto the street through an arched gateway, but the gate itself had long ago rusted out of use, and the alley leading to the stables was lined with crates and barrels and rotting bales of straw. Miss Tolerance suspected it had been some time since any horse had been stabled there.
She misliked walking blindly into any alley, particularly one which seemed providentially designed to hide attackers. She pushed back the skirt of the Gunnard coat, put her hand to the hilt of her sword, and advanced slowly. Thin gray sunshine lit the left side of the alley and left the right in shadow; once off the street the rattle of carriages and horses and handcarts abated a little; the quiet increased a sense of dreadful anticipation. She heard something, rustling and a mutter of voices, ahead and to the right around the corner. Cautiously she stepped forward, peering into the shadows. Against the dirty brick wall she saw a man’s shirted back; his pants were dropped to reveal pale buttocks, pumping furiously. Miss Tolerance blinked and realized that the splash of color that framed the man was a red dress, rucked up waist-high.
She retired to the street.
Some few minutes later the man left the alley, calling some rude pleasantry over his shoulder. He saw Miss Tolerance waiting at the gate and called out cheerily, “I primed ’er for you, mate!” as he continued on his way. Miss Tolerance did her best to banish all the unfortunate images this called to her mind, and stepped back to meet Betty Strokum.
As the barman at the Duke of Kent had said, she was missing her front teeth, top and bottom, which gave her smile a quality of idiocy at odds with the shrewdness of her eyes.
“My, ain’t I the popular one today?” Mrs. Strokum said pleasantly. The red dress which had lately been hitched up and splayed
around her patron was now back in place, the bonnet which covered her blonde curls only slightly askew. “What’s
your
pleasure, dear?”
“I was wondering if you would like a bowl of stew,” Miss Tolerance suggested.
The whore looked as if she had not understood. “Stew? To do what with?”
Miss Tolerance’s imagination failed her. “To eat, ma’am. I am hungry. Are you?”
“You offerin’ to buy me dinner?” Mrs. Strokum looked her up and down and apprehended what her sister down the street had not. “You’re female.”
“I am. I’ve a few questions to ask, and am happy to pay for answers—but I’m also cold and hungry. Would you like to dine, Mrs. Strokum?”
The woman made a face, half amusement, half disbelief. “Why, certainly, Your Highness. So kind of you to ask.” She caught up the skirt of her red dress, righted her bonnet with a tap, and swept past Miss Tolerance out of the mews. Once on Eastcastle Street Miss Tolerance took the lead and turned left, away from Oxford Street and the Duke of Kent.
Mrs. Strokum tried to stay her. “There’s a place I know—” she began.
“Where you are well known, I collect? For our purposes, m’am, I think you will prefer a more anonymous spot.” Miss Tolerance firmly led them several streets to the east before she began to look out for a public house. Several times Mrs. Strokum suggested gin houses they passed, but Miss Tolerance wanted the whore sober and of a reflective mind for their talk.
At last she found a neat chophouse of rather better character than the neighborhood that surrounded it, and steered Mrs. Strokum through the door. She chose a table well away from the door and the one grimy window onto the street, and settled Mrs. Strokum at it. The girl who came to serve them looked rather sniffily at the whore, but evidently had decided that custom was custom, and did nothing worse than explain that there was no stew, only mutton soup with barley, or joints of beef or mutton. Mrs. Strokum’s eyes lit greedily; she ordered a beef bone and
bread to soak up the juice. Miss Tolerance made do with a bowl of soup.
Mrs. Strokum went about making herself comfortable, removing the several wool shawls with which the upper part of her body had been wrapped. The shawls she draped over the back of her chair, trailing on the greasy floor; her red gown, which must once have been a handsome morning gown, had been cut down in front to display highly compressed breasts which looked as if they might burst across the table like weapons. Mrs. Strokum patted at her hair, straightened her bonnet again, quite uselessly, then leaned across the table toward Miss Tolerance, further compressing her breasts.
“Now, darling, what’s to do? What’s so dire we can’t talk about it at the ol’ Duke a’ Kent?”
“Shall we wait until the food comes?” Miss Tolerance suggested.
“Suit yourself.” Mrs. Strokum shrugged. “Nasty weather, ain’t it?”
They discussed the savagery of November for several minutes more, until the serving girl brought the food. Mrs. Strokum wasted no time in applying herself to the beef. Miss Tolerance stirred her soup and considered.
“I understand you’re a friend of Mr. Boyse’s,” she said at last As she had feared, the greedy light in Mrs. Strokum’s eyes dimmed, replaced by apprehension. “I don’t make no secret of it,” she said. “What’s it to you?”
“I only need to know if you were with Mr. Boyse two nights ago, and if you are acquainted with a gentleman named Millward.”
Mrs. Strokum’s face hardened. She leaned back, picked up the beef bone in her fist as if it were a club, and raised it to her lips. The missing front teeth meant that she had to gnaw the bone using her side teeth, which gave her a savagely wolfish look.
“Happen I was with ‘im. What then? I don’t keep count a’ who I’m with here and there.”
Miss Tolerance pushed her bowl away and leaned forward herself. “Mrs. Strokum, I have a witness who puts you some time in Mr. Boyse’s company on that evening. I merely need to know for
how long, if he spoke with Mr. Millward, and where I might find this Millward.”
“You know Mr. Boyse?” Mrs. Strokum asked. Miss Tolerance nodded. “Then you know he ain’t the sort of man you want to peach on. ‘E finds out I been a talkin’ of ‘im behind ’is back—”
“I shan’t tell him. Only help me find this Millward—” Miss Tolerance took out a purse and let the gentle clink of coins on the table speak for her.
The greedy light returned to Mrs. Strokum’s eyes. She thought for a moment or two, then seemed to come to a decision.
“That Millward, would it be, um, Tom Millward? Skinny fellow? Prig?” At Miss Tolerance’s blank look: “Gent in the receiving line?”
Miss Tolerance shrugged noncommittally. “A fence? It might be.”
“I didn’t see ‘im that night,” Mrs. Strokum said flatly. “And Boyse was with me most of the night—left at dawn’s turning.” She regarded Miss Tolerance as if this would be unwelcome intelligence. “There. So there’s naught you can pin on ’im.”
“I see,” Miss Tolerance said gravely. “You’re certain?”
“As the grave,” Mrs. Strokum said, and gnawed sideways at the bone.
“And this Millward? Where might I find him?”
Mrs. Strokum shrugged. “Dunno. Here and there, I ’spect.”
“He is a receiver of stolen goods; does he work with any particular dips or footpads?”
Mrs. Strokum shrugged again. Clearly she was not going to volunteer more.
Miss Tolerance took up her pocketbook and slid a half-crown toward the whore. If Mrs. Strokum had hoped for more, she appeared philosophical. Miss Tolerance rose and paid the shot, then came back to the table.
“If you remember anything further, you may leave a message at Mrs. Brereton’s house in Manchester Square. You know of it?”
She might have been talking of St. James’s. Mrs. Strokum’s eyes lit. “Know it? You from there? D’you think you might put a word in for me there? I’d like fine to get off the streets, and I’m a good worker. I can do a dozen men a night, maybe more if needful.”
Miss Tolerance contended briefly with the image of her aunt confronted with the overripe and underbred Mrs. Strokum. “I do not recruit for Mrs. Brereton,” she said. “But you can get a note to me there, if you wish.”
Mrs. Strokum did not seem to take the rejection amiss. “I could do that, could I write a word,” she agreed. “I ‘spect you and I are quits, darlin’. Thank ye for the dinner.”
Miss Tolerance did not smile until she had gained the street. Betty Strokum had mistaken Miss Tolerance’s purpose in asking about Boyse’s whereabouts; thinking to provide an alibi for his actions, she had instead raised a question as to whether Boyse had talked to the informant at all.
 
 
I
t was Miss Tolerance’s custom, when searching for a person of illegal profession, to inquire first of all with that person’s colleagues who, in the highly competitive venue of London, were likely to track the progress of their rivals closely. There were, however, so many receivers of stolen goods in London that one could not have a single resource—a Joshua Glebb—of whom to inquire. Should she look in the area of Oxford Street, near to the Duke of Kent? No; the barman at the Duke of Kent, who had a broad acquaintance with local characters, professed not to know Millward, which suggested that he fenced his goods in another district. But which district?
At last she decided to call on a professional woman whom she had found had rather more acquaintance than the general run of receivers in the central part of the city. She hailed a hackney coach and gave a direction in Shoreditch. The afternoon was now growing late; she was sure to find Mrs. Nab at work.
The hackney deposited her in a narrow street lined on both sides with ramshackle wooden houses. The varying heights of these buildings, and the fact that they had apparently been built without recourse to the carpenter’s plumb, gave the street the look of having been knocked askew. Here and there a lantern burned by a door, the light abetted by the cold glow of the moon above the rooftops, visible for the first time in several nights. The street was busy; people were fetching home food from cookshops
or tucking brown bottles of ale inside their coats with more tenderness than they showed the children who followed after. Miss Tolerance threaded her way through the crowd, counting houses on the left side of the street. She entered the fifth one, stepping over a drunk snoring in the doorway, and proceeded straight back to a door in the shadow of the stair. The occupant of the rooms behind the door evidently expected visitors: a chair and a tiny table stood on one side of the door, and a rush light glowed sullenly in a jug. Miss Tolerance ignored these amenities and knocked on the door.
A child, a girl of eight or nine, quaintly dressed in a shabby dress and clean apron, her cap tied under her chin and her hair spilling down her back, opened the door halfway.
“Is Mrs. Nab in?” Miss Tolerance inquired.
“I’ll see, ma’am. May I tell her who’s inquiring and what you’ve brung?” The girl’s accent was so deeply Cockney as to defy orthography.
Miss Tolerance gave her name and the assurance that she would take only a few moments of Mrs. Nab’s time. The girl dipped a tiny curtsy, closed the door, and returned a moment later to inform the visitor that Mrs. Nab would be pleased if Miss Tolerance would walk in.

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