The Sleeping Partner (3 page)

“That seems a peculiarly public place to read so delicate a letter.”

“My father was beside himself, Miss Tolerance. I am sure he had no thought for where he was or—”

“Perhaps so,” Miss Tolerance said. “Well, then. Is there any man for whom your sister might have fancied affection? A dancing master or art teacher? A childhood beau or the brother of a friend?” To each of these Mrs. Brown shook her head. “The governess knows of none?”

Again Mrs. Brown looked stricken. “My father turned Miss Nottingale off—”

“—in a rage,” Miss Tolerance finished. “He was very thorough, your father. Mrs. Brown, I mean no criticism, but are you certain that your father wants your sister returned to you?”

“I am certain he does not,” Mrs. Brown said sadly. “He has refused to have her returned. When he heard of what happened my brother John wished to go after her and bring her back—”

“Your brother John is not the brother who was there to hear the reading of the letter?”

Mrs. Brown was momentarily confused by the question. “No, that was—I am sorry, Miss Tolerance. I am not used to thinking out a story to tell it straight. It was my older brother Henry who was there; my brother John does not live in my father’s house. As I say, John wanted to go after Evie, but my father forbade it in the strongest possible terms. He threatened to cut my brother off if he did so! Miss Tolerance, this does not paint my father in an amiable light, I know, but—”

“It is an attitude more common than flattering,” Miss Tolerance said. “And one quite familiar to me.
You
take a risk, then, in seeking your sister.”

Mrs. Brown looked at Miss Tolerance without confusion or fluttering. “I am married. My father no longer controls what I do. What sort of sister would I be if I allowed Evie to go into the world unprotected, liable to insult and danger?”

Miss Tolerance smiled. “You are clearly of a better sort than that, ma’am. I honor you for your concern, and will do my best to help you.”

“You can find her?”

“I can try. Now, Mrs. Brown, I understand that you do not wish to give your real name—” Miss Tolerance waved away the other woman’s protest. “‘Tis quite a common thing. For now, I will not require you to divulge it, but you should know that secrecy hampers my ability to interview persons who might be of use to us—the servants in your father’s house, for example. This will likely result in a higher cost to you.”

“The cost is not important,” Mrs. Brown said at once. “But I have risked as much as I dare in coming to you.”

“I understand, ma’am. Can you at least tell me the neighborhood in which your father’s house is located? There are dozens of coaching inns in London, and I must have some way to narrow their number. And I shall need a description of your sister. I do wish you knew the name of her lover—” Mrs. Brown flinched at the word—”but we will do what we may with what we have.”

“My father’s house is in Duke of York Street. As for a description—” Mrs. Brown reached into her reticule and brought out a small package wrapped in linen which she offered to Miss Tolerance. “Will this help? It was done a year ago, as a present from my father; the likeness is thought to be rather good.”

The package contained a small painting in a porcelain frame, the sort suited for display on a table or shelf. Miss Tolerance examined the portrait. It showed two young women, both fair-haired and rosy, one blue-eyed, the other brown. They were dressed alike in white muslin gowns, and each wore a gold locket on a chain. Mrs. Brown was the shorter and more delicate of feature; she looked directly at the artist with a demure smile. Her sister was considerably younger, and apparently several inches taller; her hair was more golden, and she was rounder of chin and more ebullient of nature. The artist had depicted her laughing, one hand upon her sister’s shoulder in a graceful expression of affection.

“Who painted this, ma’am?”

“Mr. Hoppner. T’was painted only a sixmonth before he died. Evie would hardly sit still, but you see he caught her very nicely.”

“It is a lovely portrait. May I borrow it for a few days? I will undertake to return it to you as soon as I may, but it will be useful to be able to show it when I am inquiring for your sister.”

Mrs. Brown nodded. “That is why I brought it.”

Miss Tolerance looked again at the pretty, laughing girl in the portrait. “She is charming looking.” She reflected that it might take very little time for the girl’s looks and high spirits to be ruined along with her name. “How long has she been gone?”

“Ten days.” Mrs. Brown looked down. “Miss Tolerance, you said you honored me for my concern, but I must tell you it took me several days to summon the resolve to come to you. I am not proud of it, but I love my father, and the habit of obedience is strong.”

Miss Tolerance, dismayed that so long a time had been permitted to elapse, sighed. “I understand those habits, ma’am. You need not reproach yourself, but from now on I hope you will tell me anything you learn more timely. Now, the day is half gone, and I should probably be out upon your business while I may. A few things first.” When she outlined her fees her opinion of Mrs. Brown’s station was confirmed. The woman agreed without hesitation to three guineas a day, plus expenses.

“And how shall I contact you, when I have news to report?”

Mrs. Brown’s face fell. She had clearly not considered this consequence of anonymity. Miss Tolerance was moved to contrive a solution.

“If you wish to call here, or to have a servant do so every day or so, I will leave any messages addressed for you with the porter.”

Mrs. Brown nodded. The expression of anxiety which she had worn at the beginning of their meeting had been replaced with one of confidence. Miss Tolerance would have found that touching had she been more certain of her ability to find, in a city of more than a million, one gently-reared girl of sixteen years.

Chapter Two

Miss Tolerance was by nature inclined to occupation. It was only a few hours past noon, and while she had an engagement that evening, she was thriftily aware of how much of Mrs. Brown’s business might be accomplished before that time. It was regrettable that Mrs. Brown knew so little and had been unwilling to reveal all of what she knew; the girl’s family name would likely have been a help, and information from the household staff might have resolved the matter instantly. Dismissing the governess was a fine way to encourage the servants to silence; perhaps that had been the aim of the girl’s choleric father. Finding a dismissed governess was likely to be as protracted a task as finding the girl herself.

Lacking recourse to the servants, Miss Tolerance’s first chore, and it was like to be a lengthy one, was to inquire at coaching inns. For the purpose she invented a pretty story of a country cousin alit at the wrong inn, with herself in the role of anxious relative. She walked briskly toward Picadilly, where she inquired first at the White Bear and the White Horse. They were closest to Duke of York Street, and while she felt that it was a chancy thing to elope from an inn so close to the bride’s home, she did not know that Miss Evadne and her seducer would have felt the same caution. She showed the portrait round at each inn but had no satisfaction, and asked an ostler to hire a chair to take her to the more distant precincts of Aldgate (the Saracen’s Head) and Fleet Street (the Bolt and Tun), where east-bound carriers were found. Again she showed the portrait in the stables and taproom, asking for word of “my poor sweet cousin Evie.” She did not specify why she was seeking the girl in the picture; a liberal application of silver generally served to divert attention from any holes in her story. The tapsters and stableboys in both houses disclaimed any knowledge of the girl, nor did inquiry yield any suggestion more than that she should ask any of the old women who who sat in the taproom with the attitude of habitués. Miss Tolerance reminded each of the persons she spoke to that she could be reached through Tarsio’s Club on Henry Street, and hinted broadly at a significant reward

Then she took herself to Ludgate Hill and the Bell Savage, where she had an acquaintance with the owner. Mrs. Wallace ran a small empire from her office above the coffee room. The inn was an enormous structure built around a courtyard where coaches arrived and departed on the quarter-hour. The stables took up one full wall of the courtyard, with a hurly-burly of ostlers, drivers and passengers milling about the yard. Miss Tolerance made her way through the throng and into the coffee room, where several dozen persons—travelers just off the stage, or waiting for the next departure—took their meals with one eye upon the door, waiting for the announcement that the coach was leaving. As she had expected, neither the barman nor the maid would tell her a thing until they had Mrs. Wallace’s leave to do so.

Miss Tolerance was pointed to the narrow staircase just behind the bar, and found herself in the hall outside Mrs. Wallace’s office, in time to see the lady scolding one of her maids.

“…and if I iver catch you doing such a thing again, Sukey Pitt, it’s oot on the road you’ll be, sa fast t’will make your arse burn. It makes me nae mind what your uncle did in his taproom—this is the Bell Savage, and we doon’t water the whisky. Na, fetch up a bottle of wine for me and my guest and be smart aboot it!” Casually, Mrs. Wallace boxed the girl’s ear before she sent her off down the hallway.

Mrs. Wallace waved Miss Tolerance into the room. “Ye’ll have some wine, I hope? Na that idiot child has gone off to fetch it for us?”

“Thank you, ma’am. I shall.” Miss Tolerance took the seat she was offered. The office was a narrow rectangle, its windows facing into the busy courtyard. Two tables were both stacked high with papers, ledgers, and strong-boxes. The smell of coffee and ale mingled, not unpleasantly, with the earthy smells of the stables below, and with Mrs. Wallace’s lingering scent of lavender. The hosteliere was a short, bony woman of advancing years with a ruddy complexion. She had a fondness for turbans which hid her thin, graying hair, and wore today’s turban with a dress of purple bombazine.

“Na, to what d’I ooe the honor?”

“Why, I have come to beg some information from your staff, ma’am, which they quite rightly will not give me until you have said they may.” Miss Tolerance took the glass which Mrs. Wallace passed her and sipped at the wine, a light, sour claret.

“What sart of information?” Mrs. Wallace drank her own wine down in a gulp and put her glass down on the table with a force which seemed intended to shatter it.

“Only if anyone in your coffee room saw a young woman waiting for a coach sometime in the last fortnight?”

“Runaway?”

“It is possible. She is not suspected of anything criminal.”

“Ah, weel. I don’t suppose there’s any harm to it.”

“Rather a considerable good.” Miss Tolerance took up her reticule. “Indeed, Mrs. Wallace, I would be grateful to the tune of—”

Mrs. Wallace waved her hand. “Keep your sil’er for them as need it, Miss Tolerance. That lad at the bar doonstairs will be grateful, I’m sure, although I’ve little faith he’ll have noticed anything. Not the observing sart. You’re going to all the coaching inns? That’ll give ye a good several days’ work. You’ll do better asking the auld bawds that wait to collect stray girls, rather than the ostlers and tapmen. Or seek her in places like that Rillington woman’s reformatory. I’ll give ye that advice for gratis. You and me air wimmen o’ business, and must stick together when it don’t discommode us to do so.”

Miss Tolerance understood this to mean that Mrs. Wallace hoped to beg a favor at some future time. “Indeed we must, ma’am. I shall always be honored to render assistance to you in turn,” she said dryly. It was worth some extra effort to stay upon Mrs. Wallace’s good side.

Mrs. Wallace nodded her satisfaction. “Well, you tell Seth and the rest doon stairs that they may tell you what e’er they may. More wine? Ah, weel, then. I shall hope to see you another day, Miss Tolerance.”

“Thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Wallace.”

They exchanged curtseys and Miss Tolerance went down the narrow stairs again to speak, first to one bar maid, then the other, and finally to the tapster. She showed each of them the portrait of Miss Evadne without much expectation of satisfaction.

The barman said at first that he had not seen the girl or any like her. When Miss Tolerance insisted that he actually look at the picture rather than giving all his attention to polishing his tankards between customers, he took the miniature in his hand and examined it.

“No,” he said flatly. “Ain’t seen either on ‘em. Ain’t to say she mightn’t ‘a been ‘ere when I was off me time. Talk to Jase, he’d might know. Or ask the grannies.” He gestured with his chin in the direction of three comfortable-looking women who sat near the fire, positioned to face the doorway. “They’s always on the lookout for pretty girls at loose ends, so to speak.”

Miss Tolerance nodded. “Thank you.” She slid a sixpenny piece across the satiny surface of the bar. “If you should happen to see the young woman, you will let me know?” She gave him a card with Tarsio’s direction and asked him to pass on her question to the other tapmen.

The tapster slid the coin into his pocket, his mind apparently on the next pint of bitter to be drawn off. Miss Tolerance turned to the table where the women sat, to find that all three had disappeared as if they had been absorbed into the wall behind them. They might like to approach unescorted females, but clearly she did not constitute the sort of woman that tempted them.

The afternoon was now coming to a close, and Miss Tolerance had an engagement to prepare for. She requested one of the Bell Savage’s ostlers to find her a hackney carriage, and directed it to Spanish Place, where a gate in the ivied wall permitted her direct access to her cottage. She left her bonnet and gloves there, then entered her aunt’s house through the perpetually busy kitchen. Cook, up to her elbows in dough, offered the information that Mrs. Brereton was in her little salon, taking tea and writing letters.

“Do you go up and join her, Miss Sarah. There’s cakes, fresh made. You look as if you could do with some feedin’ up.” Cook, ample herself, believed everyone to be on the verge of inanition.