Point of Honour (Sarah Tolerance) Page 6

  “Now, sir,” Miss Tolerance said firmly. “You must understand something about the work that I do. It is often necessary, for that very discretion which you desired, for me to appear to be doing one thing when I am, in fact, doing something else. I appeared to be shopping this afternoon—I bought a pair of gloves to lend veracity to my imposture. But in fact I was interviewing shopgirls about the possible whereabouts of your Mrs. Cunning.”

  “By God, how am I to judge the truth of that?” Trux sputtered. “You can say whatever you like and charge me three guineas a day for nothing. For gloves!”

  “You will not be charged for the gloves, sir. I intend to keep them for myself. Now, my lord: I must operate my investigation in the way that seems best to me. I am not a common thief-taker; you came to me, I had supposed, because I have some experience in such matters. If you cannot have faith that I know my business and am working to do your will in the swiftest manner I can, then we had best part company at once, and I will send you a report and a bill for my services to this date.” She smiled sweetly at him.

  Lord Trux looked deflated. His lower lip drooped and his brows knit together fiercely. “There has been progress?” he urged.

  Miss Tolerance nodded. “Indeed, my lord, given how little information you gave me to work with, and how much of that was flawed, the progress has been considerable.” She indicated the pile of notes by her hand. “Would you like a written report?”

  “No.” He seemed suddenly to recollect where he was. “I had thought you lived in Mrs. Brereton’s establishment,” he said. “Surely this is not very comfortable.”

  “It does me well enough. More tea, sir?”

  Trux shook his head. “No,” he said almost sadly. “I must go. I have a dinner to attend, and I must be shaved and dressed.” He looked around him as he turned toward the door. “It’s such a small little place,” he said peevishly. “You cannot be comfortable here.”

  “Ah, but I’ve only myself to worry about. I really am far more comfortable here than I would be at Mrs. Brereton’s. Now, may I bid you good evening?”

  Miss Tolerance stood in the door of the house, watching as Trux crossed the garden to the back of Mrs. Brereton’s, where she was sure Cole was waiting to show him to the street.

  “Well,” she murmured. She turned back into her house and settled herself by the fire again, musing. “Well. A fan missing these twenty years is, overnight, the subject of some anxiety to its owner. My dear Lord Trux!” She clicked her tongue thoughtfully. “What have you neglected to tell me about your Italian fan?”

  Four

  Miss Tolerance dreamt she was in Amsterdam, fencing in the salle des armes. The dream was a sum of many sensations: sweat beading between her breasts and on the nape of her neck; the damp cling of linen across her back; the protest of muscles as the sword drill went on and on. The high-vaulted ceiling of the salle echoed the bite of boot heel against wooden floor as she advanced, thrusting to head, to wrist, to hip, to shoulder, and around again; then retreated, parrying in quarte, in tierce, in prime, and sixte. There were the smells of sweat, worn leather, and burning torches, and beneath them the pleasant memories of straw and horse dung: the salle had once been a stable.

  Gradually, without words, Sarah and Connell shifted from drill to sparring, caught up in the exchange of blows, as if each cut expressed a feeling that could be expressed no other way. The torchlight flicked and danced, and they moved in and out of the shadows as they traversed the room, so focused on each other’s faces that Sarah felt she would fall into her teacher’s dark eyes. Still they fought on.

  At last she caught Connell’s blade on the forte of her own and pressed in, corps a corps, until their faces were only inches apart. Their arms, and their swords, were caught between their close-pressed bodies, and Sarah felt the hard, rapid beat of his heart against her forearm. He was tall; she had to tilt her head up to look into his eyes, which met her own, steady and unsmiling. His breath came as raggedly as her own, and smelled sweetly of fennel seed. Sarah flushed with heat and exertion. Her lips trembled. He bent his head as if to kiss her, and she awoke.

  Her heart was still pounding, and the bedclothes were tangled and damp as if she had fenced among them. She lay in the dark, waiting for her pulse to slow, letting the heat and the pain of memory seep from her. At last she lit the candle at her bedside and took up Art of the Small Sword, but tonight even Mainley’s dry prose could not soothe her. She was still awake at dawn, staring at the book’s pages without seeing them.

  In the morning Miss Tolerance turned her cottage inside out looking for her riding crop. She was very soon satisfied that the crop was not there, and a few minutes’ reflection convinced her that she had left it in Leyton the day before, most probably in Mrs. Smith’s musty, odorous parlor. It would have been a simple thing to forget the matter and buy a new crop, but Miss Tolerance was fond of this particular one; she liked the balance, and knew several neat defensive tricks calculated to its weight. That the crop was one of the few possessions remaining to her that had once belonged to her seducer, the fencing master Charles Connell, was of course incidental to the necessity to retrieve it. Swearing at her stupidity, Miss Tolerance went round to the mews to arrange for the hire of a horse for another day. She would retrieve the crop from Mrs. Smith that morning and hope that when she returned to Manchester Square, there would be news of Mrs. Cunning’s whereabouts awaiting her.

  She made the trip as quickly as she could. As she rode up the quiet lane toward Mrs. Smith’s house, the greasy smell of the river again rose up to assault her. Not for the first time, Miss Tolerance thanked God for her own small, snug establishment, so insulated from the worst of London’s smells and sights. She dismounted and tied her horse, and knocked upon Mrs. Smith’s door.

  After a few moments of knocking, Miss Tolerance was forced to the conclusion that the old woman was not at home. She only hesitated a moment before trying the door—she had no desire to ride out to Leyton yet again on this errand, and after all, she had only come for her own property—which yielded at once to her touch. Again Miss Tolerance found herself in the dark, dusty box of a hallway. To the smells of cat, river, and dried flowers, the scents of burnt bread and meat had been added, and something else, a faint smell Miss Tolerance could only identify as an old lady’s scent. She wrinkled her nose and entered the parlor to retrieve her crop.

  She found it lying where she had left it, on the cushion of the sofa she had occupied the day before. Mrs. Smith’s body half covered it. She was dead; her eyes and mouth were wide open as if in surprise or outrage. She lay on her side, one hand outstretched, her temple crushed against the carved wooden arm of the sofa. Blood from her temple had flowed down the arm of the sofa onto the seat cushion and left a sticky, half-dried puddle. There was blood, too, on the white-work embroidery of her cap that had been knocked askew and bunched under her head. On the old woman’s cheek, Miss Tolerance noted, there was a dark, plummy bruise. A lamp and several candles had been knocked to the floor, and at least one bowl of dried flowers upended. In the scattering of lavender and verbena across the floor and rug, she saw cat prints, and the print of a man’s boot.

  Miss Tolerance swore.

  She had seen death before, been its cause, even. But she did not like finding the corpse of an elderly woman who had apparently died by violence; a blow to the face that had sent her crashing into the knobby arm of the sofa. The bruise was full and purple; Miss Tolerance surmised that the old woman had taken some little while to die. Had she been conscious? Afraid? Miss Tolerance shivered at the thought.

  After a moment, the hardheaded concerns of commerce asserted themselves. Miss Tolerance considered what to do, and in the end decided there was no point in becoming further involved in Mrs. Smith’s tragedy. Leaving matters as they were was cowardly, but reporting the death would inevitably lead to interviews with the authorities, perhaps even the magistrates of Bow Street. (Miss Tolerance had made it a practice to steer clear of the Bow
Street Runners, feeling that contact with the civil investigative force would only draw attention to herself which was professionally and personally unwelcome.) Much better, if possible, to retreat immediately. Someone else would find Mrs. Smith before long, surely. Gingerly, Miss Tolerance drew the crop from under the old woman’s body, tucked it under her arm, and left the room.

  She was untying her horse when she realized she was being observed. Across the lane, standing on the lawn of a pretty brick house, a small child was watching curiously; behind her a woman stood, eyeing Miss Tolerance with familiar hostility. The woman was several years older than Miss Tolerance, heavyset and in the dove gray of half mourning. The child was no more than four or five, and fidgeted with a hoop and stick as she watched. Their silent observation forced Miss Tolerance to change her plans. Better to report Mrs. Smith’s death than be remembered later as the person who had not reported it but had departed under suspicious circumstances.

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am. Can you direct me to the justice of the peace or magistrate?” Miss Tolerance called.

  The woman frowned. “Why do you need one?” Her accent was genteel. A navy widow, perhaps, Miss Tolerance thought. There had been enough battles in the endless war with Bonaparte’s forces to widow half the nation. This woman clearly did not approve of young women who traveled about the countryside in breeches any more than her neighbor had.

  “Mrs. Smith—” Miss Tolerance stopped, not wanting to voice her suspicions before the child. “I’m afraid Mrs. Smith has died.” She gave the woman a look as full of meaning as she dared. The woman drew back, eyes wide, and turned to the child.

  “Anne, you go inside. Now, if you please.”

  The child went reluctantly, gawking at Miss Tolerance. When she was gone, the woman turned back. “You’re one of her sort,” she stated.

  Miss Tolerance bit back her first denial. “I am not—what she was.”

  “Then what are you doing here? Like that?” the woman asked.

  Miss Tolerance felt the threads of her patience fraying badly. “I am looking for direction to the magistrate,” she said again. “It is my belief that Mrs. Smith died by force, sometime last night or early this morning. A report must be made. Perhaps you would prefer to send a servant to inform the authorities, ma’am?”

  The woman took another step back, as if violence might be contagious, and appeared to consider what was to be done and whether her own involvement was necessary. “Robbery?” she asked.

  “I honestly could not tell you, madam. Which is why I would appreciate it if you could direct me to the justice or magistrate.”

  The woman turned back to the house. Miss Tolerance watched her in the doorway in brief conversation with a maidservant. Then the maid came out and directed Miss Tolerance to the justice of the peace. The woman herself had gone into the house without another word.

  The justice of the peace was a heavy, dull-eyed gentleman farmer with no other apparent business than to sit at a desk surrounded by numbers of the sporting gazettes. The books that lined the wall behind him were all on agriculture; Miss Tolerance wondered if he had read them, or merely kept them there to give himself the appearance of industry. The house was a stolid cube in the middle of a cropped lawn; the office a small, chilly chamber with a desk, the bookshelf, an undusted globe, and an inkstand. The justice listened to Miss Tolerance’s tale without enthusiasm, his eyes trained on the front of her double-breasted riding coat as if trying to imagine what it concealed and thus to reassure himself of her gender. At last, after Miss Tolerance had finished speaking and the room had been silent for several minutes, Mr. Gilkes heaved himself from his chair and demanded that she return to the house with him.

  There was, of course, nothing to be done for it. Damning the whole business, Miss Tolerance went.

  They found the house as Miss Tolerance had left it. Now that the shock of finding the body had abated somewhat, her curiosity was strongly in play. Mr. Gilkes made disapproving noises at the sight of Mrs. Smith’s body while Miss Tolerance looked into the other room on that floor: a kitchen, which overlooked the river. On the table she found the basket she had sent from the Queen’s Arms, with the cheese and the bottle of wine still in it. A loaf of bread had been cut in two, and Miss Tolerance found the charred remains of one half fallen from the fender onto the hearth, with a blackened slice of ham next to it. The ham itself lay on the floor, scarred with the small, dainty marks of cat teeth and cat claws. There was barely anything else in the larder: several bottles of Mrs. Smith’s dreadful cordial, a few eggs in a rush basket, and a packet of tea leaves. As she turned to leave, Miss Tolerance saw the card she had given the innkeeper with her own name and Mrs. Smith’s direction on it. She pocketed it and returned to the hallway.

  She had her foot on the first step of the narrow stairway when the justice emerged from the sitting room. He held his handkerchief to his nose, which gave him the look of a mourner, and he had clearly had his fill. “Tragic, tragic,” he said in monotone. “But we can do no good here. I’ll have the parish clerk arrange a funeral.”

  Miss Tolerance gestured toward the staircase. “Perhaps we should look abovestairs?”

  Mr. Gilkes frowned heavily. “For God’s sake, Miss—” he faltered over her name. “You’re in the presence of death! Show a little respect.”

  “I meant no disrespect at all, sir. But I was hoping—”

  “Whatever your hopes were, the old woman’s death has put paid to them neatly, eh? There’s nothing more for you here.”

  “Perhaps not, sir. Will I be needed for the inquest?”

  He looked past Miss Tolerance to the door, clearly wishing he were on its other side.

  “Will not the coroner have to rule upon the death?” Miss Tolerance persisted. “She was clearly struck down.”

  “I see no evidence of that.”

  “The bruise on her face. She was struck down and left to die.”

  “She could have got that bruise at any time. All that concerns us is that she fell and hit her head.” He frowned. “She was old, these things happen. I consider it death by misadventure, with nothing suspicious about it. There is no need for the coroner to put himself to the trouble of saying so. A sad business, but consider her life, ma’am. Consider her life. Surely such an end was inevitable.” The justice looked meaningfully at Miss Tolerance, as if prophesying just such an end for her. He clearly hoped not to pursue the matter himself and saw no profit in encouraging Miss Tolerance to do so. It seemed that a small consideration such as his obligation under law meant little to him, and he could conceive of no reason other than money for Miss Tolerance to care. Miss Tolerance had not wanted to become involved. She should be blessing this imbecile for his lack of interest, but Mrs. Smith’s eager, monkeyish face played in her memory and she found herself reluctant to let the matter go.

  Mr. Gilkes firmly led Miss Tolerance out of the house. He promised again to have the parish clerk see to a funeral. There were, he was certain, no relatives who would wish to be privy to the arrangements. There was no reason for Miss Tolerance to stay in Leyton, he thanked her very much for her attention, but strongly recommended that she be on her way.

  Had it not been for the justice’s utter lack of imagination and drive, she might have suspected him of some suspicious motive in suppressing inquiry into the death. However, it was plain to her that the inconvenience, and a squeamish dislike of what Mrs. Smith had once been, had ruled Mr. Gilkes’s decision. With little choice, Miss Tolerance mounted her horse and started back to Manchester Square. There was nothing she could do for Mrs. Smith; although Miss Tolerance doubted that Gilkes would put himself to the trouble of seeking out Mrs. Smith’s true name and family, she was equally persuaded that any family Mrs. Smith owned would prefer not to hear of her death from another Fallen Woman. Common sense dictated that she return to London and the matter of the Italian fan, and yet she was unable to erase from her memory the image of Mrs. Smith, sprawled without dignity across her sofa,
reaching out for help.

  Why would anyone offer violence to an elderly female of decayed morals, long retired from her profession and living in pressed circumstances? The motive had surely not been robbery, at least not by any common thief. The foot that had ground the lavender into the rug had not worn a heavy workman’s boot but a narrow, more fashionable one, perhaps one made for riding. A gentleman’s footwear. And the state of the parlor spoke to her of sudden rage, not the planned cruelty of a burglar. As her horse jogged along the lanes, Miss Tolerance returned again and again to a single conviction: that her own visit to Mrs. Smith had somehow precipitated the old woman’s death. Almost, Miss Tolerance turned the horse back to Leyton to ask at the Queen’s Arms if anyone had inquired as to her own movements the day before. But there was the matter of the damned fan to be resolved, and seeking Mrs. Smith’s killer would not pay her rent.

  When Miss Tolerance returned to Manchester Square, it was a little after three. She handed the horse to her aunt’s groom to be returned to the stables from which it had been hired, and retired to her cottage to think. The day was nearly gone; she could not in justice charge Lord Trux the entire day’s fee, but perhaps she could salvage some little part of it in considering the next steps to be taken in the matter of the Italian fan. Her luck appeared to turn, for she had not been home for above half an hour when Cole arrived with a letter which had been that moment delivered to her—and a look betokening a burden of gossip.

  “What’s the matter, Cole? You look …” She searched for the correct word. “Full of news.” Miss Tolerance took the letter from him, and looked at it briefly: not inscribed in a hand familiar to her. “I wish no more than you to breech my aunt’s promise of discretion to her clients, but if you can say—”

  Cole shook his head. “Ain’t one of the clients, miss. Not the meat of it, anyway. But one of ’em-I shan’t say which, it’s as much as my job’s worth—he says … it’s the Queen Regent, miss.”