Sup with the Devil (28 page)

“She’s gone,” said the girl. “She’s been gone two days. I hoped you had word of her, for God’s honest truth, there’s not one of us that knows what to do.”

H
ave you spoken to the constable?”

Abigail’s tone of genuine concern seemed to have its effect, for the girl’s guardedness faded, and wry resentment took its place. “Oh, aye,
that
did us a world of good! ‘Run off with some other man,’ was all
he’d
say—and so he wrote to Mr . . . to Mrs. Morgan’s friend, who was good enough to buy her this house.”

“I daresay,” remarked Abigail, “if Mrs.—Morgan, is it? It would be. If Mrs. Morgan’s friend had ever instructed some one of the Town Council to quash objections by Mr. Munn”—she named the Charles Town constable, a member in good standing of the Sons of Liberty—“concerning Mrs. Morgan’s way of life, he might well turn spiteful—”

“Him?”
The girl sniffed. “Spite’s old Munn’s middle name, right after Hypocrisy, carrying on the way he does with his wife’s own sister. And what’s it to him anyway if Mr. Chamberville wants a little comfort from time to time and a woman who’ll let him know he’s welcome in her bed? When I was a little girl,” the servant added, shaking her curly head, “and I’d cry ’cause we weren’t rich, my auntie would always say, ‘If we were Quality, you’d have to marry some old merchant whether you wanted to or not, old enough to be your da.’ I didn’t understand then, but Lord, hearing about when people marry for ships and lands and warehouses, I understand now. There,” she added. “I’ve spoke too free, m’am, but it just makes me mad as fire—”

“You probably ought not to have,” said Abigail encouragingly, “since you’ve your position to think of. But, though I’ve always counted myself a Christian woman, I’m afraid I agree with you—” She let the end of the sentence hang with an unspoken question.

The servant said, “Dassie. Dassie Mitchell. Please do come in, m’am; it won’t do you any good if you’re seen standing outside this house, the way folk around here talk as if they hadn’t anything better to do with their days. Belinda!” she called out, as she closed the door behind Abigail and her party. “Nancy! No word,” she said, to the two young ladies who appeared in an inner doorway, a blonde and a brunette clothed, like Dassie, as maidservants, but in dresses far newer and more stylish.

Abigail guessed it was Dassie who did the actual work in the house.

“This is Mrs. Percy. She came—Who was it who told you to come, m’am?”

As they crossed through the beautifully furnished parlor and proceeded to the kitchen, Abigail spun her story—freely lifted from events that had befallen one of her father’s parishioners some fourteen years ago—of the daughter of a fictitious elder brother who had been lured into a pretend marriage with a Frenchman, who had (she said) abandoned poor Pamela in Boston. A friend of the family had recommended Abigail inquire of the proprietress of the Avalon in Charles Town, Pamela being young and very pretty—“That frightful mother of hers seems to feel that sin is sin and that the Avalon is no better than some of those . . . those
kennels
down along the Boston wharves—”

“Your sister-in-law must be related to half the women in Charles Town, then,” remarked the dark-haired Nancy drily, as she poured out her mistress’s tea. “And to my stepmother and aunts as well. It’s not like this is a sailors’ knocking-shop, begging your pardon m’am for speaking so free—”

It was in fact, Abigail gathered, what John (and several English novelists) referred to as a House of Accommodation: a venue where those who could afford it could bring their mistresses for a few hours’ congress. Mrs. Morgan provided for the rental of clean, youthful temporary mistresses along with the rooms more as a sideline than a principal business—

“Though mind you, m’am,” said Dassie earnestly, “you’d think those sniffy mamas in this town would be glad the girls are here, when you think that if those boys over at the college didn’t have a place to come visit—as boys will—”

Blonde Belinda winked at Weyountah, who inclined his head to her politely and passed her the plate of slightly stale cakes.

“Why, think what trouble they’d get into with the respectable girls in the town! Like your poor niece!”

Abigail’s mind—always ill-regulated concerning points of doctrine and morality—momentarily scouted the question of whether this was more or less sinful than an out-and-out house of prostitution: it actively encouraged double adultery rather than simple fornication. Then she glanced sidelong at Katy, who was looking around the kitchen with great curiosity and obviously didn’t connect any of this tale of falsified marriage-vows and wheedling seducers with herself. Did she really believe that the young heir to five thousand acres of Virginia tobacco would genuinely marry the daughter of the head hostler at the Yellow Cow?

And if she did, what then? That he’d take her home to the master and mistress of a plantation and present her to them as their daughter-in-law?

And a dyed-in-the-wool patriot to boot?

Gradually—by dint of interest, sympathy, and letting the three confused and worried servant-girls simply talk—the story emerged. Wednesday afternoon—May fourth—Mrs. Morgan had gone for a walk, as she generally did before dinner . . . dinner being served at the fashionable hour of five, rather than at three or four as working-folk did. The girls didn’t think much of it when she didn’t return for dinner. It happened—not frequently—that Mrs. Morgan’s particular friend would cross over from Boston where he lived, and they would meet to go driving. Only when night fell—the moon being on the wane—did they begin to worry, but there was a gentleman scheduled to come calling Wednesday night with a lady friend, and with one thing and another, none of the three of them—Nancy, Dassie, nor Belinda—quite knew what steps to take.

“And did not Mr. Grimes or Mr. Hicks have anything to suggest?” inquired Weyountah, which caused the girls to look at one another worriedly. “It is Mr. Grimes who has charge of Mrs. Morgan’s stables, is it not?” he asked, as if the matter were common knowledge, and Nancy nodded.

“They said not to worry, that she’d most likely met Mr.—met her friend—and would be back late.” With her long face and wide, rather mannish shoulders, Nancy was nowhere near as pretty as Katy or Pattie, Abigail judged, but she had a smooth briskness to her and a lovely velvet voice.
She probably has half the boys in the college in love with her. And is certainly more obtainable than Sally Woodleigh.

“Might she have gone to Mr. Chamberville’s house near Concord with him?” asked Abigail smoothly. “I believe you said she had a key—”

Again the girls traded frowns, not remembering whether one or the other of them had mentioned Mr. Chamberville’s name and, if they had, whether they’d also mentioned the Concord house or whether or not Mrs. Morgan had the key to it. It was Dassie who said, “I don’t think she’d have gone there, m’am. Not with rebels all over those parts, as they are, and every sort of rumor flying about. Mr. Chamberville hasn’t been next or nigh Concord in months.”

“And did
you
write to Mr. Chamberville about this? Or is Mr. Munn the only one he’s heard from?”

“M’am, to tell you the truth we haven’t the least idea what it’s best we do,” replied Nancy. “’Twould be different if any of the three of us had family, or a friend who’d so much as acknowledge us in the street—not that a one of’em would recognize our
faces
! Begging your pardon, m’am,” she added. “The household money’s gone—that’s the first thing we checked, unless she moved where it’s hid again—and ’tis only a matter of time before Mr. C takes his house back. And Mr. Grimes—”

“Here he comes!” Belinda, who’d been sitting near the window, sprang to her feet.

“Grimes—?”

“Cornishman.”

“Hide us,” commanded Abigail sharply, and Nancy flung open the door of the backstairs, then caught Weyountah’s arm as Abigail and Katy darted up the narrow, boxed-in flight.

“You stay. He knows someone’s here—”

The door shut. Much as she wanted to get a look at one of the men whom she strongly suspected of breaking into her house, Abigail knew how these narrow, concealed kitchen flights carried the sound of ascending footfalls. If she stayed for a look through the door-crack, she couldn’t later flee upward if the Cornishman had enough imagination to disbelieve the girls and checked the backstairs. Pushing Katy ahead of her, she ascended in almost complete darkness, thrust open the door at the top, and emerged into a hall furnished—as the parlor was downstairs—with the newest style of straightlegged chairs, a small marble-topped table, and a painting by an inferior artist of Venus putting on her makeup.

Abigail signed Katy sharply to stay where she was, then moved with all the silent care of which she was capable—and having grown up with William for a younger brother, there was little she hadn’t learned about sneaking in silence—from one door to the other of the four rooms that opened from the hall.

Two bore the eappearance of guest-rooms—beds with French hangings of brocaded silk—one was a parlor with a large mirror on the ceiling, and one, Abigail guessed, belonged to Mrs. Morgan—the Lady of the Lake—herself. She signed to Katy again—
Wait—
and slipped inside, stepping carefully on the worn oak planks. The dressing table bore silver combs and brushes—putting paid, reflected Abigail wryly, to Mr. Munn’s theory that Mrs. Morgan had run off with another man—and investigation of the highboy showed that she hadn’t taken any chemises or petticoats, either . . . or at least that she hadn’t taken so many that it showed.

Abigail checked all the drawers of the highboy and between the mattresses of the bed—no book, no notes, no mysterious manuscripts in Arabic, and no household money. She crossed, stepping carefully, to the dressing table, examined its drawers, and found only an astonishing quantity of white lead, carmine, pomade, rice-powder, and kohl.
Drat the woman
. . .

And in a corner of the dressing table, an ink-bottle.

Half empty.

And a used quill. Much used, in fact, its tip was whittled down nearly to the feather.

Abigail gathered her skirts about her, knelt carefully, and reexamined the marble surface of the dressing table itself.

Ink-stains. Granny Quincy had owned a marble-topped table, and Abigail knew exactly what happened if you didn’t wait until the ink was absolutely dry before you turned the sheet over to write on the back—you ended up having to rub and polish with solutions of oxgall and wood-sorrel and chalk, listening to Granny Quincy’s lectures on cleaning all the while.

So what had Mrs. Morgan been writing up here that she wouldn’t write at her very pretty gilt secretaire in the parlor downstairs?

Gently, Abigail removed every drawer from the dressing table in turn and found the papers tacked to the back side of the lower left-hand one. Four pages torn out of what looked like a housekeeping book; two bearing a laborious, crooked-lettered copy of Arabic writing; and two written over with the nowfamiliar dialog (and descriptive prose) between Lt. Governor Morgan and Mistress Pitts in a woman’s strong hand.

Footsteps in the backstairs—Abigail knew she’d been correct, they vibrated all over the house—and a voice calling softly, “Mrs. Percy—!”

Abigail shoved the papers into her pocket, wiggled the drawer back onto its runners, and darted to the window in time to see a huge, hulking man in a corduroy coat crossing back to the stables: the Cornishman. His head was cropped so closely it might almost have been shaved, and he carried it thrust forward, rather like an animal that has only recently learned the trick of walking on its hind legs . . .

“He’s gone,” said Nancy, as she and Katy entered the bedroom together.

Abigail heaved a convincing sigh—not entirely feigned—and put a hand to her chest: “What did he want? I vow, I was ready to go under the bed—”

“And you’d have done well to,” replied the dark-haired girl. “He’s a foul one to cross, and the more so when Dubber’s not around, for he hasn’t the brains on his own to know when it would pay him to hold on to his temper. Your redskin friend’s got a ready tongue in his head,” she added, with her sidelong, triangular grin. “I was afraid he’d get himself into trouble when the Cornishman demanded what he was doing there—he’d seen there was someone at the house—but Lord! The excuses and the whining, and letting the Cornishman bully two shillings out of him before he slunk out of the house with his tail between his legs—our boy never even thought there might have been someone else here. But,” she added, “it’s best you go. He’s a nasty piece of work, and you were right to hide. He wouldn’t think twice of telling your husband you were here, and getting money to keep quiet about it . . . and maybe worse, for your girl here.”

She put a brief arm around Katy’s shoulders.

“Is the coast clear?” asked Abigail. “Dassie said there were three of them . . .”

Nancy smiled—very briefly—at her use of the smuggler’s slang, but only said, “Grimes and Hicks went off to town this morning. Hicks and the Cornishman are straight off the boat this year, but Grimes has friends in town. And to tell the truth,” she added, as she led Abigail down the main stair to the front parlor downstairs, “that has me worried, for I wouldn’t put it past Grimes to sell us—Belinda and me—to one of those waterfront kens your sister-in-law spoke of . . .”