Petty Treason

by Madeleine E. Robins

  An unpleasant idea had occurred to Miss Tolerance.

  “Mr. Colcannon, had your sister any friend who might have shared your suspicions and, perhaps, taken steps to put an end to it?”

  “Friend? Miss Tolerance, I don’t believe my sister knows above a dozen people in the city. We grew up in Somerset; she married after a short season and set up housekeeping. She had very little time to forge friendships before her marriage, and I doubt she has done so since—” He stopped and turned to look at Miss Tolerance with dismay. “You do not use the word friend to mean a friendly acquaintance, I take it.”

  “I mean it in the sense of anyone who might feel strongly enough to take drastic action to help your sister, sir.”

  “You are asking if my sister had a lover.”

  Miss Tolerance maintained an attitude of polite inquiry.

  “You have only to meet my sister to know the thing is quite out of the—”

  “Mr. Colcannon, if the question could occur to me, you may be certain it will occur to Mr. Heddison and his constables. If you truly wish me to keep your sister safe you must be honest with me. You must trust me, as well, to keep anything I learn a secret. Might your sister have a friend who, even without her awareness, knew of her situation and thought to repair it?”

  To his credit Mr. Colcannon appeared to weigh the sense of Miss Tolerance’s words before he spoke. “I know of none,” he said at last. “Indeed, when you have met my sister you will see how very unlikely such a thing is. It was d’Aubigny who … formed connections outside of his marriage. Nor were his liaisons discreet. He made certain all the world knew of them. My sister finally ceased to go into company to avoid the humiliation.”

  If that were so, Miss Tolerance reflected, the Widow d’Aubigny was more sensitive than half the wives in London. What had the girl expected, married for her fortune as she plainly had been? But was Colcannon aware of the motive his story suggested? There was no time to ask a question which would have doubtless offended her client: they had turned the corner into Half Moon Street, where the crowds were still jostling for a better view of the murder house. Indeed, as they approached the door they heard a heated conversation between the same manservant who had admitted Miss Tolerance the day before and a tall, flashily dressed man who stood on the step, waving his pocketbook about in a fashion she thought very ill advised.

  “Only a little peek in the murder room,” the man was insisting. “The lady wouldn’t never know I been there.”

  The manservant rejected this plea with the air of one who has heard it before. He was firm, but as he recognized Mr. Colcannon he adopted an expression of more explicit outrage and rejected the offer again, more firmly. The thin man cast a bitter look at Mr. Colcannon and Miss Tolerance and turned on his heel, muttering that he had no doubt these ‘uns would be admitted without payin’ a shillin’.

  Colcannon pushed past the gawker as if he were not there, greeted the servant by name (Beak, identified in the Coroner’s Court as the chief manservant of the house) and started into the house. Beak admitted them, but not without giving Miss Tolerance a look of some disapproval. Again they were conducted to the room at the rear of the house, and Beak went to apprise the mistress of their visit.

  In a few moments Anne d’Aubigny appeared at the door.

  While brother and sister exclaimed over each other and embraced, Miss Tolerance observed the widow. She was a full head shorter than Miss Tolerance, fair and fine-boned. She lacked her brother’s sturdy country manner and ruddy complexion, and might readily have been imagined the sister of the china figure on the table. The inky mourning she wore made the widow’s skin look as sickish-white as parchment, and her eyes were pink as a rabbit’s, presumably from crying. Miss Tolerance rose and curtsied.

  “You called here yesterday,” Mrs. d’Aubigny said. Hers was the first voice Miss Tolerance had heard the day before: tremulous and softly reproachful. Whom was she reproaching? “William?” The widow looked to Mr. Colcannon.

  “Anne, may I present Miss Sarah Tolerance?”

  Mrs. d’Aubigny bowed her head in a tiny acknowledgment, then turned to her brother and murmured something to him. From the rigidity of her carriage and Colcannon’s red face, Miss Tolerance thought Mrs. d’Aubigny was not pleased to find a Fallen Woman in her parlor.

  Colcannon replied audibly. “I did not think of that, but indeed, it is exactly as she represented the matter yesterday. I am sorry if you dislike it, but I entreat you to speak with her. I think only of your safety—”

  Miss Tolerance took pity on Colcannon’s embarrassment.

  “If I might speak a few words with you privately, I believe I can satisfy you as to my qualifications, ma’am. But I will first assure you that, whatever my status, I am not one of that professional sisterhood with whom I apprehend your husband was very familiar.”

  Anne d’Aubigny looked shocked. Miss Tolerance felt a moment of impatience, but kept her own expression studiously neutral. She waited. Mrs. d’Aubigny thought, then turned to her brother and said, “Willie, go away.”

  Colcannon left the room.

  Mrs. d’Aubigny did not ask Miss Tolerance to sit. She stood just inside the door as if ready to run, waiting for an explanation she clearly did not believe would improve her opinion.

  “You have a natural dislike of contact with that which is impure,” Miss Tolerance began, “perhaps made greater by what your brother tells me was your husband’s behavior. You must make up your mind to trust me, but I will tell you that, while I am indeed Fallen, I have never been a whore.” Anne d’Aubigny flinched at the word. Miss Tolerance continued. “Indeed, I took up my profession to avoid being handed from man to man. I made what the world calls a mistake in whom I loved, ma’am. Perhaps I am wrong, but I imagine that mistake is one which might be familiar to you.”

  The widow twisted a handkerchief between her fingers. “What the world calls a mistake? You do not call it so?”

  Miss Tolerance shrugged. “I know all the evils that attend a woman who has cast aside propriety for love. But there are many a man and woman joined by vows who have been less man and wife than … my seducer … and I.”

  “And yet you did not marry him.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Anne d’Aubigny’s frown deepened. “He had a wife?”

  It was perhaps unreasonable of Miss Tolerance to resent this question. “I was not so lost to principle as that, even at sixteen! We eloped to the Continent, and marriage of a pair of English Protestants would have been difficult. But he was Catholic, which made the matter more complex, particularly because I did not want to be wed in the Catholic rite. It was the one quarrel we did not resolve before he died.” The crux of the widow’s objection occurred to her. “I can promise that I was not flaunted before a wife; I did to no woman what was done to you.”

  Mrs. d’Aubigny moved to the sofa and sat down. Tears stood in her eyes, and she appeared a little amazed.

  “How could you know that?”

  Miss Tolerance looked at the other woman with some kindness. “It is writ on your face for anyone with the eyes to see it, ma’am,” she said. She passed over what Colcannon had told her; the widow would likely prefer to divulge the secrets of her marriage herself.

  “I’m sorry.” Anne d’Aubigny waved her handkerchief vaguely in the direction of an armchair, which Miss Tolerance took as an invitation to sit. “It has been difficult.” She took another moment to master her emotions, then sat up and regarded Miss Tolerance steadily. Her blue eyes were reddened from crying, but as direct now as they had been guarded a moment before. “Will you explain what my brother has hired you to do, Miss Tolerance?”

  “He wants me to uncover your husband’s killer,” Miss Tolerance said. She was startled by her hostess’s sudden reversal, but much preferred this more rational woman and intended to get as many questions answered as she might before the widow sank into tears again. “He feels strongly that your safety depends upon it, and I regret to say th
at he places no particular reliance upon the civil authorities to do it.”

  Mrs. d’Aubigny sniffed, apparently sharing her brother’s opinion of Mr. Heddison and his constables. “But why should my safety be in question?”

  “The way this murder was done bespeaks great rage or fear or—perhaps madness itself behind that anger. Someone who killed from rage or madness once might return to do it again.”

  Mrs. d’Aubigny looked unconvinced.

  “Perhaps more to the point for you, ma’am: once the murderer is uncovered, the constables will stop intruding upon your peace.”

  “But what can you do?”

  Miss Tolerance smiled. “I can ask questions. I can take the answers I get and ask more questions, and perhaps come to an answer.”

  “The magistrate and his men can do as much,” Anne d’Aubigny said.

  “Indeed they can. But because I am who I am, I can ask them of a great many people, some of whom will not tell the constables what they will tell someone a little removed from the law—like myself.” She smiled with a little humor. “‘Tis one of the ways in which my situation proves useful.”

  The widow considered. “You will want to ask questions here, I collect?”

  Miss Tolerance nodded.

  “And go among my husband’s acquaintance as well?”

  “I will.”

  “And you think you may get some good of it?”

  “It is my hope, ma’am.”

  A peculiar mix of expression played across Anne d’Aubigny’s pale face. Whatever the thoughts behind it, in the end the widow folded her hands in her lap like an obedient child determined to do an unwelcome task and bade Miss Tolerance ask what she liked.

  Miss Tolerance took out a small bound book and the end of a pencil and asked the names and positions of the house servants. In a schoolgirl’s voice to match her demeanor, Mrs. d‘Aubigny recited the names: Adolphus Beak, the chief manservant; Peter Jacks, a second man who served to do heavy work and run messages; Mary Pitt, the housemaid; Sophia Thissen, a ladies’ maid; and Mrs. Ellen Sadgett, the cook. There was in addition a laundress who came twice a week, Mrs. Sadgett’s cousin, but Mrs. d’Aubigny could not remember her name. Did these servants sleep in the house? All except Mrs. Sadgett and the laundress: Mrs. Sadgett left the house after dinner was prepared each night and returned early in the morning to prepare breakfast. On the morning of her husband’s death, Mrs. d’Aubigny believed Mrs. Sadgett had not been in the house above an hour.

  “And where were you when you husband’s body was discovered, ma’am?” Miss Tolerance asked.

  The widow set her chin. “I was asleep.”

  If she expected Miss Tolerance to take exception to this answer she was disappointed. “Do you know what time your husband retired on the night prior to his death, ma’am?”

  The widow gave a sniff that might have been supposed to express amusement. “I live a little withdrawn, Miss Tolerance. That night, like most nights, we dined, my husband left, I did a little sewing, the tea tray was brought in at half past nine, and I went upstairs directly afterward.” She nodded in the direction of an embroidery frame that stood near the fireplace.

  “You did not hear your husband come in in the night?”

  “My husband and I do not share—did not share—a room.”

  “But someone would know what time your husband returned to the house,” Miss Tolerance persisted.

  “I imagine Beak would. Or my husband’s valet, except that the last one left a sennight before. Jacks had been assisting Etienne until a new man could be hired. My husband spoke very feelingly upon the subject of Jacks’ shortcomings.”

  Miss Tolerance had been wondering whether there would be mention of a valet. “You did not name the valet when you gave the servant’s names, ma’am.”

  “Did I not? I suppose I didn’t think of Norris after he left—he was hired away to Leicestershire.”

  “Had he any reason to dislike the chevalier, ma’am?”

  Mrs. d’Aubigny shook her head. “You mean, could he have borne my husband a grudge? He was offered a good deal of money to travel out of the city. And even if he did dislike my husband, he was in Leicestershire when my husband died.”

  “The mail coach runs quite regularly to and from Leicestershire, ma’am,” Miss Tolerance said mildly. “Your own maid also sleeps in the house?”

  “Yes. In the servants’ quarters on the top floor. Sophia retired after I did.”

  Miss Tolerance nodded, made note, and changed her tack. “You say that your husband went out most evenings. Do you know where your husband went on that night, ma’am?”

  Mrs. d’Aubigny shook her head. “He rarely told me unless—”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless he thought he could cause me pain by doing so, Miss Tolerance.” The widow pursed her mouth. “It pleased my husband to tell me about his women—their names and the things he did with them. I learned not to mind, or to give no sign that I minded, but even that did not please him. If he could not hurt me that way, he found other ways.”

  Half a dozen questions occurred to Miss Tolerance, but Come back to them, she thought.

  “What were your husband’s other pastimes?”

  “All the expensive ones of gentlemen, Miss Tolerance. Gaming and sport and drink. The vilest of the Fallen—oh dear, I beg your pardon!” Her tone changed as she recalled to whom she spoke. “I did not mean—”

  “Of course not,” Miss Tolerance said. “Please proceed.”

  “Etienne was rarely home of an evening. He had friends among the émigré set. That French widow Touvois—”

  Miss Tolerance blinked. D’Aubigny an habitué of Madame Camille Touvois’ salon? It was not surprising that an émigré might be part of a circle hosted by another émigré, but nothing Anne d’Aubigny or her brother had said about the dead man had painted him with the sort of social, artistic or financial luster that would have made him welcome at one of the most celebrated—perhaps the proper word was notorious—liberal salons of the day.

  Mrs. d’Aubigny continued. “He might have been there, or at his club, or in some horrid gaming den or with—with one of his women. Sometimes he said that there was work that kept him at Whitehall.”

  “Do you think that he lied?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps not.” The woman shook her head. A lock of pale hair came loose from her cap. “Why should he? I was not important enough to lie to.”

  Miss Tolerance could think of nothing politic to say.

  “Ma’am, this question may be difficult to answer, but I ask you to consider carefully. Can you think of anyone who might have a reason to kill your husband?”

  Anne d’Aubigny’s mouth twitched into a peculiar smile. “Rather say, can I think of anyone who might not.”

  Oh, dear. “Ma’am?”

  “I am sorry, Miss Tolerance. Such an answer is likely worse than no answer at all. But the women he—the women. And the men he gambled with—my husband was not lucky at play. I imagine he owed a great deal everywhere in town. It was often difficult to pay the tradesmen. Lately he’d had a little luck—a few weeks ago he came home and threw a fold of paper money upon my desk. He said there would be more, but there was not.”

  “Might he have borrowed that money, ma’am?”

  “From whom? Oh, from a moneylender.” Anne d’Aubigny looked off into the hallway as if seeking answers there. “But would a moneylender come into our house and kill my husband?”

  A fine question, Miss Tolerance thought. Mrs. d’Aubigny, she saw, was beginning to lose the animation that had briefly energized the discussion. The chime of the gilded clock that stood alone on the mantel gave her an excuse to bring the interview to an end.

  “Ma’am, I shall surely wish to ask other questions of you later, but I will not take the whole of your afternoon. I should like to see your husband’s room, and then, may I speak with your staff?”

  Mrs. d’Aubigny nodded. “If you wish. I shall instruct Beak. H
e will see to it.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. Two last questions, then, and I shall leave you to rest. Who is the Mrs. Vose whom I met yesterday? She is not one of the staff?”

  The widow’s cheeks flushed and she looked away from Miss Tolerance, toward the window, toward the fire, toward the door and, finally, to her own hands. “She is—that is, she’s my husband’s —his cousin.”

  Miss Tolerance understood that Mrs. Vose was likely not the chevalier’s cousin nor any relation at all.

  “And at what time that morning were you apprised of your husband’s death, ma’am?”

  This question appeared to retrieve the widow abruptly from some place she had wandered in her thoughts. “I beg your pardon, Miss Tolerance?”

  “I note from the reports in the paper that Mary Pitt found your husband, Beak sent Jacks for the watch, the watch came at once and examined him. No one mentions you, ma’am. Nor did the coroner have you testify. This argues a conviction upon his part that you had little or no useful testimony to share.”

  Mrs. d’Aubigny pursed her lips again. “I had taken a sleeping draught the night before, Miss Tolerance. I often have trouble sleeping, and when I have taken the draught I am rather thickheaded when I wake. I believe Sophia called me about nine o’clock in the morning, my usual time.”

  “Two hours after the body was found?”

  “Yes,” the widow said.

  “Is that not rather odd, ma’am? Your husband had been killed in a dire manner here in your house, but the servants let you sleep after the discovery?”

  Madame d’Aubigny’s lips trembled. She pursed them again, seeking to control herself. “Sophia and the others are very protective of me, Miss Tolerance. What could I have done, half-asleep and addled by my sleeping draught? Wrung my hands and had hysterics? It may have been an error in judgment, but it was kindly meant.”

  There was that in the lift of her chin which said to Miss Tolerance that it was time to stop the interview. She rose and thanked her hostess.

  “May I come to speak with you again?” Anne d’Aubigny nodded. “I thank you for your patience, ma’am.” Miss Tolerance curtsied. “If you will ask your servants’ cooperation in my inquiries I shall be grateful.”