The Sleeping Partner Read online

  The Sleeping Partner

  A Sarah Tolerance Mystery

  Madeleine E. Robins

  Plus One Press

  San Francisco

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Plus One Press

  THE SLEEPING PARTNER. Copyright © 2011 by Madeleine E. Robins. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Plus One Press, 2885 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, California, 94118.

  www.plusonepress.com

  Book Design by Plus One Press

  Cover portrait photo © 2011 by Annaliese Moyer, used under license from Stage Right Photo: www.stagerightphoto.com.

  EB362x5501

  First eBook Edition: December, 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Penny and Emil, with love and history

  The Sleeping Partner

  Another London, April 1811

  Chapter One

  No one who had seen Miss Sarah Brereton as a child would have taken her for a heroine. She was a well-behaved girl, affectionate and active, given to rolling hoops and running races with the gardener’s children. Her upbringing was neither intellectual nor revolutionary, being designed to make her what she was destined to be: the well-bred wife of a gentleman of means. That she had failed to achieve this goal was not the fault of her family but derived from some flaw in her character: at sixteen, Miss Brereton had fallen in love with her brother’s fencing master and eloped, ruining forever her chances at respectability and marriage. Seeking to contain the damage, Sir William Brereton disowned his daughter and forbade to have her name mentioned. With the girl as good as dead, the honor of the Breretons was restored to a near-unsullied state. The family went on much as before.

  In this, Sir William was particularly prudent. Society is harsh to those contaminated by the breath of female indiscretion. Should he have suffered his neighbors to whisper after him in ballrooms, or permitted his daughter’s misjudgment to spoil her brother’s chance at an advantageous marriage? Sir William saw no reason to waste further resources upon a child who had so lightly and ungratefully disposed of her virtue. He washed his hands of the girl; his heir did the same.

  For society exists to suffer revelry in men, reward virtue in women, and to promote and protect the sanctity of marriage as the best instrument to secure property. Even in the Royal family these distinctions are observed. The Princes carouse as they please; only the Prince of Wales married young, and that marriage, to a Catholic widow, drove his Royal father to the madhouse and removed the prince from succession. There was no doubt that marriage and family had tamed the Prince’s most exuberant impulses; one had only to look at the excesses of his brothers. And the Queen Regent took care to arrange marriages for her six daughters as early as she might, in the belief that an unmarried woman, even a Royal one, was always in danger of corruption.

  By such examples is a nation led. Women learn early that unblemished virtue is the brightest jewel in their adornments. Young men learn that any girl with a question about her may be ripe for the plucking. And families know the dire consequences which any breach of feminine virtue may bring to them. Once her reputation is lost, a woman might as well adopt a nom d’amour and resign herself to a life of whoredom. Reputation, more than virtue itself, must be protected.

  This laudable goal is sometimes achieved with pistol or sword in a private meeting at dawn. Sometimes it is achieved through the power of a bit of information brought to light, or a secret well hidden. Miss Sarah Tolerance, who had begun her life as Sarah Brereton, was of the opinion that a woman who makes her living by the acquisition and protection of information had best keep her pistols primed and her sword edged and ready.

  Miss Tolerance had been set down by a hackney coach in Fleet Street at Whitefriars, not far from Bridewell Prison. Even at six in the morning the streets around the prison were thronged, both with victualers who were fetching in provisions, and with the hangers-on of prisoners. The street was clamorous: vendors and visitors yelled to each other; the prisoners screamed out at the windows. The stench of too many persons packed tight together—few of them given to bathing—vied with odors from the prison sewer. In the crowd whores and pickpockets moved freely; every brief stir or outcry meant busy fingers at work.

  Miss Tolerance followed Whitefriars toward Salisbury Square, happy that she had no business at the prison today. The morning fog was burning off, leaving thin, coal-hazed sunlight and a damp breeze in its wake. She turned left and through the arched entrance to Hanging Sword Alley, where many of London’s salles des armes were to be found. Half-way down the street she entered a building much papered over with bills advertising cures for pox and fever, and climbed to the second floor. She had barely raised her hand to knock when the door was opened by a scrawny, spry man quite old enough to be Miss Tolerance’s grandfather. His face was narrow, his eyes small and bright blue, and his lopsided jaw gave him a comical look. His white hair was worn in an old-fashioned queue bound with black ribbon. He wore breeches, shirt, and waistcoat, and was stocking-footed. He looked in turn and without surprise at Miss Tolerance’s unusual attire: men’s breeches, boots, and coat, and a sword hanging at her left hip.

  “Come ready, have you?” The old man grinned. “Come in, then, Miss T., and let’s to work.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Blaine.” Miss Tolerance shed her coat and removed her boots.

  Mr. Richard Blaine’s fencing salle was not the most celebrated in London; Mr. Blaine himself was not an extraordinary fencer. He was, however, an excellent teacher and, quite as much to the point, he was willing to have Miss Tolerance bout with him when she had the time. That she paid for her lessons was, he assured her, beside the point. It was a pleasure to him to fence with a pretty girl, particularly one who could teach him a trick or two.

  “If that is so, perhaps you ought to be paying me?” Miss Tolerance stretched and lunged, feeling her chilled muscles begin to warm.

  “Ah, but there’s the rent on this magnificent space,” Mr. Blaine said quickly.

  “And the upkeep of the magnificent Mrs. Blaine and your grandchildren,” Miss Tolerance agreed. “I don’t begrudge the shilling, Mr. Blaine. Now, sir, are you ready?”

  The two fencers saluted each other briskly and went to it. Mr. Blaine was, by his nature, a quick and dramatic fencer given to sudden inspiration. After a flurry of attacks in the high line, he lunged for Miss Tolerance’s left hip; Miss Tolerance parried in sept with enough force to knock Mr. Blaine’s sword from his hand, and had her point at his throat before he could move. Blaine laughed; Miss Tolerance dropped her point and permitted him to retrieve his blade.

  “A neat touch, Miss T!”

  They returned to work.

  Within a quarter hour Miss Tolerance’s shirt clung damply to her back and her face was flushed with exertion. Mr. Blaine had ceased his regular stream of quips and comments and saved his breath for his work. Both fencers were grinning with the pleasure of hard work well done, and so involved that neither one heeded the first, or even the second knock on the door. At the third, Miss Tolerance dropped her point and stepped back. “Someone is here, sir.”

  Blaine dropped his own point and looked to the door.

  “Sit and rest you, Miss T. I’ll return in just a moment.” Mr. Blaine put down his foil, wiped his face and hands with a spotted kerchief, and went to the door. Miss Tolerance dropped onto a bench and wiped her own face and hands, paying no attention to Mr. Blaine’s conversation until the visitor in the doorway shoved the old man into the room and advanced upon him threateningly.

  �
��You’ll give me what I come for, you mick sharper! You and them false tats! You ain’t comin’ over me—” The man was square-jawed, square-built, and grubby. His color was high, and in his maroon coat he resembled a bad-tempered brick.

  Mr. Blaine held out a placating hand. “Mr. Wigg, I tell you true, I keep no money here. I could not return your money even were I of a mind to do so. And as the dice I used were honest as the dawn—” Mr. Blaine spoke quietly, the only sign of distress a Killarney lilt to his speech that Miss Tolerance had never detected before.

  “Is there a problem, sir?” Miss Tolerance rose to her feet and spoke clearly, as calm as her fencing partner.

  If Mr. Wigg was startled to find a witness in the salle, he did not permit it to distract him from his quarry. “You took seventeen shillin’ off me,” he said to Blaine. “Ain’t no one could do that but they was cheatin’.”

  Miss Tolerance stepped closer. “Is it the sum that troubles you, sir? I have known thousands of guineas to change hands at dicing, with quite honest dice. What makes you believe that Mr. Blaine’s dice were fixed?”

  This time Mr. Wigg turned his head. “You’ll keep out of it,” he snarled.

  Then he stopped, dumbstruck, taking in the sight of Miss Tolerance. Her dark hair was pulled back from her face and braided; her waistcoat covered the most obvious evidence of her gender. Still, it was clear to anyone with an eye to see it that Miss Tolerance was a female in the costume and occupation of a man. Mr. Wigg looked as appalled as a man who has found half a worm in his apple.

  “You keepin’ a nuggery, now?” he snarled at Blaine.

  “Merely a fencing school, Mr.—Wigg?” Miss Tolerance said “It is very nervy of you indeed, insulting a man with a sword—and his student. But I suppose you think we will not offer much resistance to your bullying.”

  Mr. Blaine looked at Miss Tolerance warily, as if he was not certain her interference was wise. Miss Tolerance was not to be intimidated; she had taken Mr. Wigg in dislike. Mr. Wigg appeared to return the feeling.

  “Have you evidence that Mr. Blaine’s dice were fixed?”

  Wigg faltered, then turned back to Blaine. “Seventeen shillin’ you took off me, and I want it back. Wiv interest!”

  “I haven’t got it, I told you,” Blaine said. “I would be happy to permit you to win the money back, or even to have you come at another time to discuss—”

  “So you can ‘ave a bunch of bully-boys ready to crush me skull for me? The ‘ell with that. You’ll give me my money or I’ll take it out your skinny ‘ide.” Wigg stepped forward again, towering over Mr. Blaine.

  “Do you prefer to handle this yourself, sir, or may I assist?” Miss Tolerance asked politely.

  This appeared to be more than Mr. Wigg could stand. “You? ‘Elp? I’ll soon teach you to mind your place, you whore!”

  “There have been a good number of gentlemen who have tried to do so, sir. Curiously, none has yet managed it.” Miss Tolerance took a relaxed stance in the center of the room, her sword point down.

  “Don’t think that cheese-toaster’ll ‘elp you,” Wigg warned. “What you need’s the sense beat into you.” He glanced around him nonetheless and made for a rack of weapons near the window. He swung back to Miss Tolerance with a rapier in his hand. He had chosen badly, she noted; while none of Mr. Blaine’s swords were untended, this was an old blade, the grip too small for Wigg’s beefy hand. Mr. Blaine made a noise of professional dismay at the mismatch of man and blade.

  “Forgive me, Mr. Blaine. Do I interrupt? Would you prefer that I step back?”

  Blaine shook his head. “He appears to wish for death, this fellow. Do what you must, Miss T.” He sat down on a bench and wiped his face again.

  Wigg hefted the sword in his hand and charged at Miss Tolerance. He had, perhaps, hoped to frighten her. He misjudged his opponent; she stepped away from his charge, spun and brought the flat of her sword up against his backside with a sold thwack. Wigg stumbled forward, caught himself on the wall, and turned back to her.

  “I’ll have that damned thing off you!” he roared. This time he advanced upon her deliberately, swinging his sword from side to side, his other hand outstretched.

  “If you grasp my blade, sir, please be careful. I keep it very sharp.”

  Wigg was not cautioned. He continued forward until Miss Tolerance cut in sixte to stop his blade moving, stepped in and delivered a sharp blow to his sword hand which knocked the blade to the floor.

  Wigg jumped backward, looking wildly from side to side, apparently for another case of swords, but Miss Tolerance stood between him and any other weapons. Behind him was only the door to the salle. This seemed to enrage Mr. Wigg enough to defeat all common sense; he began to advance, swordless, upon his opponent. Miss Tolerance, who had no real desire to skewer the man, stood her ground until he was a little less than five feet away, then brought her point up to his throat. In so doing, she slit the flying tail of his neckerchief.

  “Please stop.” Her tone was mild.

  Wigg stood, looking cross-eyed at her swordpoint, then followed the blade back to Miss Tolerance. She stood, strong-armed but relaxed, looking at him with an expression of polite interest.

  “Hell,” he said. He turned his head a little to look to Mr. Blaine. “‘ide behind the whore’s skirts, do you?”

  Miss Tolerance pushed her point very gently forward. “I cannot tell you how much I dislike being called whore, Mr. Wigg.”

  “Beg your pardon,” Wigg muttered, eying her point again.

  “Spoken like a gentleman. Now, you are done with your business here. You have lodged your complaint with Mr. Blaine, he has given you his answer, and I think you ought to go off and break your fast somewhere. Everything will look better after you have eaten, I’m sure. Perhaps you will drink my health?” She paused to put a hand in her breeches’ pocket and drew out a coin. “Coffee, I would suggest. In the future you will know to avoid dice games.”

  Wigg stepped forward to accept the copper and was briefly brought up short by the point of Miss Tolerance’s blade. She withdrew the point and dropped the coin into his hand.

  “The door is there, sir.” She nodded her head in that direction. Wigg backed toward the door, looking malignly first at Blaine and then at Miss Tolerance. When he reached the door he put Miss Tolerance’s coin into his own pocket. Then, looking very sour, he turned and thundered down the stairs.

  “Well.” Mr. Blaine exhaled. “That was exciting, sure.”

  “I generally prefer my excitement after breakfast,” Miss Tolerance said. “Do you often have men coming to accuse you of cheating?”

  Blaine grinned. “‘Tis the first time,” he allowed. “I’d have thought him too far gone in the drink to have noticed anything. I’ll have to be rid of them tats, indeed.”

  Miss Tolerance could not decide whether to chide or laugh. “Mr. Blaine, I am very disappointed in you. A man of your years, and a grandfather.”

  “Miss T., I shall try to do better.”

  “Will you throw away your crooked dice, sir, or only endeavor not to be caught out again?”

  Blaine chuckled. “You’re a caution, Miss T., you are that.”

  Miss Tolerance agreed that perhaps she was. She was not likely to reform a man old enough to be her grandfather. “Well, sir, if you have had sufficient rest, are you ready to resume?”

  Another half an hour with Mr. Blaine and Miss Tolerance departed, streaming with sweat and pleasantly tired. She made her way through the crowds in Salisbury Square and returned to Manchester Square, where she lodged in a cottage behind her aunt’s establishment. Mrs. Dorothea Brereton was the proprietor of one of the most refined and celebrated brothels in the city, and mornings were a busy time there, with patrons to be sent upon their way, staff to be fed, and mountains of linens to be gathered for the laundress. Not wishing to add to the servants’ burden, Miss Tolerance sent a request for hot water for bathing “when quite convenient.” Miss Tolerance broke her fast with bread
and cheese and a mug of coffee, bathed, and dressed again, this time in clothing appropriate to her sex. A little past eleven she left her cottage, wearing a steel-blue walking dress and a neat straw bonnet, and headed toward Henry Street and the handsome Palladian structure which housed Tarsio’s Club.

  Tarsio’s was remarkable in that it was the only establishment of its sort whose membership included both men and women. Nor did the membership committee make respectability its first concern; so long as a member was able to pay the commons fees and charges and conform to the establishment’s rules, anyone—courtesan, MP, actress, lawyer, even a poet—might belong. For Miss Tolerance, who preferred to keep business away from her cottage and from her aunt’s establishment, membership in Tarsio’s provided a neutral place to meet with clients. As she had lately been unemployed, she made it a point to spend a part of her day there, available for consultation.

  She moved through the busy streets, dodging between a flower girl and a dairyman who, backs to each other, were crying their wares as they approached collision. The chill of the morning had warmed away with the increasing sunshine. Mingled with the smells of ordure, human sweat, and fish from the barrow just now being pushed past, Miss Tolerance detected a green scent. Spring was coming to London. She stepped across a gutterful of muck and turned onto Henry Street.

  At Tarsio’s she was greeted by the hall-porter, Corton, a large, older man whose respectable demeanor put the lie to Tarsio’s raffish reputation.

  “I hope I see you well today, miss.”

  “You do, Corton. Very well, as I hope you are. Any messages?”

  Corton shook his head with genuine regret. Miss Tolerance, when in funds, tipped well. “Nothing yet today, Miss. Was you expecting something?”