Petty Treason

by Madeleine E. Robins

  The greedy light returned to Mrs. Strokum’s eyes. She thought for a moment or two, then seemed to come to a decision.

  “That Millward, would it be, um, Tom Millward? Skinny fellow? Prig?” At Miss Tolerance’s blank look: “Gent in the receiving line?”

  Miss Tolerance shrugged noncommittally. “A fence? It might be.”

  “I didn’t see ‘im that night,” Mrs. Strokum said flatly. “And Boyse was with me most of the night—left at dawn’s turning.” She regarded Miss Tolerance as if this would be unwelcome intelligence. “There. So there’s naught you can pin on ’im.”

  “I see,” Miss Tolerance said gravely. “You’re certain?”

  “As the grave,” Mrs. Strokum said, and gnawed sideways at the bone.

  “And this Millward? Where might I find him?”

  Mrs. Strokum shrugged. “Dunno. Here and there, I ’spect.”

  “He is a receiver of stolen goods; does he work with any particular dips or footpads?”

  Mrs. Strokum shrugged again. Clearly she was not going to volunteer more.

  Miss Tolerance took up her pocketbook and slid a half-crown toward the whore. If Mrs. Strokum had hoped for more, she appeared philosophical. Miss Tolerance rose and paid the shot, then came back to the table.

  “If you remember anything further, you may leave a message at Mrs. Brereton’s house in Manchester Square. You know of it?”

  She might have been talking of St. James’s. Mrs. Strokum’s eyes lit. “Know it? You from there? D’you think you might put a word in for me there? I’d like fine to get off the streets, and I’m a good worker. I can do a dozen men a night, maybe more if needful.”

  Miss Tolerance contended briefly with the image of her aunt confronted with the overripe and underbred Mrs. Strokum. “I do not recruit for Mrs. Brereton,” she said. “But you can get a note to me there, if you wish.”

  Mrs. Strokum did not seem to take the rejection amiss. “I could do that, could I write a word,” she agreed. “I ‘spect you and I are quits, darlin’. Thank ye for the dinner.”

  Miss Tolerance did not smile until she had gained the street. Betty Strokum had mistaken Miss Tolerance’s purpose in asking about Boyse’s whereabouts; thinking to provide an alibi for his actions, she had instead raised a question as to whether Boyse had talked to the informant at all.

  It was Miss Tolerance’s custom, when searching for a person of illegal profession, to inquire first of all with that person’s colleagues who, in the highly competitive venue of London, were likely to track the progress of their rivals closely. There were, however, so many receivers of stolen goods in London that one could not have a single resource—a Joshua Glebb—of whom to inquire. Should she look in the area of Oxford Street, near to the Duke of Kent? No; the barman at the Duke of Kent, who had a broad acquaintance with local characters, professed not to know Millward, which suggested that he fenced his goods in another district. But which district?

  At last she decided to call on a professional woman whom she had found had rather more acquaintance than the general run of receivers in the central part of the city. She hailed a hackney coach and gave a direction in Shoreditch. The afternoon was now growing late; she was sure to find Mrs. Nab at work.

  The hackney deposited her in a narrow street lined on both sides with ramshackle wooden houses. The varying heights of these buildings, and the fact that they had apparently been built without recourse to the carpenter’s plumb, gave the street the look of having been knocked askew. Here and there a lantern burned by a door, the light abetted by the cold glow of the moon above the rooftops, visible for the first time in several nights. The street was busy; people were fetching home food from cookshops or tucking brown bottles of ale inside their coats with more tenderness than they showed the children who followed after. Miss Tolerance threaded her way through the crowd, counting houses on the left side of the street. She entered the fifth one, stepping over a drunk snoring in the doorway, and proceeded straight back to a door in the shadow of the stair. The occupant of the rooms behind the door evidently expected visitors: a chair and a tiny table stood on one side of the door, and a rush light glowed sullenly in a jug. Miss Tolerance ignored these amenities and knocked on the door.

  A child, a girl of eight or nine, quaintly dressed in a shabby dress and clean apron, her cap tied under her chin and her hair spilling down her back, opened the door halfway.

  “Is Mrs. Nab in?” Miss Tolerance inquired.

  “I’ll see, ma’am. May I tell her who’s inquiring and what you’ve brung?” The girl’s accent was so deeply Cockney as to defy orthography.

  Miss Tolerance gave her name and the assurance that she would take only a few moments of Mrs. Nab’s time. The girl dipped a tiny curtsy, closed the door, and returned a moment later to inform the visitor that Mrs. Nab would be pleased if Miss Tolerance would walk in.

  The first room was well lit, and Miss Tolerance saw two more girls of six or seven, similarly attired, busily picking over piles of clothes—mostly silk and linen handkerchiefs—examining each item and folding it neatly. At the rear of the room a boy of like age in old-fashioned knee breeches and a clean white shirt was looking over a tray of pocket watches, holding each to his ear and shaking it gingerly. Mrs. Nab’s fences-in-training. It seemed to Miss Tolerance that no keeper of an orphanage or poorhouse could have a better-ordered set of charges working with more laudable industry.

  Mrs. Nab was in the rear chamber. The room was dominated by a large chest made of dark wood and piled high with such an assortment of silver plate that that side of the room glowed in the candlelight. Mrs. Nab herself sat at a desk in the center of the room, examining a row of glass-and-silver bottles and decanters. She was a comfortable-looking woman of middle years, wearing a blue worsted dress and apron, with a plain cap neatly containing her iron-gray hair. Her face was ruddy but her expression was placid—hardly what one would expect of a master criminal.

  “Come in, Miss Tolerance, come in. Tabitha, tell Arabella she may put some sausages on for supper by and by.” Mrs. Nab waved the girl out of the room. “What can I do for you?” Despite her cozy appearance, Mrs. Nab’s manner was all business. There was no chair for Miss Tolerance to sit in; she suspected Mrs. Nab preferred to keep her clients standing, and likely to take the first price offered for any item they brought to her.

  “I won’t take your time, ma’am. I merely wanted to ask about a competitor of your—”

  “Not asking for a reference, are you?” Mrs. Nab raised an eyebrow.

  “No, ma’am. Only a direction where I might find the fellow. I simply need to ask him a question or two.”

  “Where was you when such and such happened? I won’t be thanked for getting a competitor into a quizition with the law.” Mrs. Nab picked up a decanter of cut glass and held it to the light.

  Miss Tolerance shook her head. “The man I want has already spoken to the law; I merely want to ask him about his evidence.”

  “So this competitor’s peached on someone else?” Mrs. Nab said. “And who are we speaking about? All this ‘man in question’ such-and-such don’t tell me naught.”

  “I was told his name is Tom Millward. I know only that, and that he is a receiver.”

  Mrs. Nab turned the decanter in her hands. The candlelight threw tiny rainbows across the bridge of her nose.

  “Millward? Millward? What’s ’is territory?”

  Miss Tolerance shrugged. “I don’t know. I was hoping you might tell me.”

  “And you’re certain-sure he’s a receiver? Because I thought I knew most of my competitors in this neighborhood, and a goodly number of ’em about town, and I don’t know that name a-tall.”

  “That was the name I was given,” Miss Tolerance said. “Perhaps he’s new to the business.”

  “Anyone new of consequence I’d ha’ heard of straightaway. Not a whisper of anyone by that name have I heard. I’d go back to them as give you the name, my dear.”

  “Perhaps anothe
r neighborhood—”

  “P‘raps.” Mrs. Nab’s tone offered little hope. “Ave you ’quired of Noah Abraham in Southwark?”

  Miss Tolerance shook her head. “I came to you first, ma’am.”

  “Right flattering, that is. I’m sorry I can’t offer you no more ‘elp than that, dear. I don’t know of no one named Millward, Tom nor any other, as is receiving. You talk to the Jew in Southwark, why don’t you? He’s perhaps got a broader ’quaintance among ’is own people—though Millward don’t sound a Hebrew name, does it?”

  Miss Tolerance agreed that it did not. In the interests of maintaining a good business relationship, she gave Mrs. Nab a token payment and requested that if she heard anything of Millward she get word to her at Tarsio’s.

  “A‘course, a’course,” Mrs. Nab said. She had taken up a silver pitcher and was examining it closely.

  Miss Tolerance took her leave, went out past the industrious children with their stolen goods and, after some walking, found a hackney carriage to take her to Southwark.

  By ten that evening Miss Tolerance had been from Shoreditch to Southwark to Whitefriars to the back parlor of a chophouse just off the Knightsbridge Road. Not one of the receivers she spoke to would admit ever to having heard of Tom Millward. Either all of them were so fearful of Millward (or Boyse) that the lure of financial interest had no power to pry information loose, or she had been given false coin by Betty Strokum. One might almost think Tom Millward did not exist at all. What the law would make of that, and what bearing it would have upon Anne d’Aubigny’s case, was a very interesting question indeed.

  Fourteen

  Cold and tired, Miss Tolerance entertained a vision of home: a cup of soup, her slippers, and the novel she had borrowed from Marianne, to lull her to sleep. Then she recalled that home, at this moment, meant the yellow bedchamber at Mrs. Brereton’s, with a borrowed nightshift and slippers. The comfortable image of her cottage was exchanged for the notion of the more luxurious but less cozy chamber surrounded by other rooms in which Mrs. Brereton’s business was being pursued. Did her door have a lock? she wondered.

  It was easier, thinking of the cheerless luxury which awaited her, for inspiration to strike her as she reached the corners of Audley and Green Streets. Miss Tolerance’s face ached with cold and the healing of her bruises; the stitches on her forehead itched distractingly, but she was very near Mrs. Lasher’s establishment. Some useful bit of information might yet be salvaged from the evening. Miss Tolerance knocked at the door of Mrs. Lasher’s, inquiring for Josette Vose or, failing that, for Mrs. Lasher herself.

  The footman, looking no farther than Miss Tolerance’s Gunnard coat and topboots, displayed no awareness that he had seen her before. She found herself being treated with the respect accorded a potential customer: Mrs. Vose was not in the house at present, but he would inquire as to Mrs. Lasher’s availability. He left Miss Tolerance in a small parlor near the door, where she waited, warming her hands at the grate.

  When the door opened it was Mrs. Lasher herself who swept in.

  “Good evening, sir! I hope you’ll tell me how we can—”

  Miss Tolerance turned from the fire. She observed that the madam was handsomely dressed in purple jaconet and a spangled turban, scented to high heaven and preparing to offer the hospitality of the house. She observed, too, the moment when Mrs. Lasher recognized her visitor; her smile hardened and cordiality departed as if it had been blown from the room.

  “You? Wallace said you was a customer. What are you doing in that rig-out?”

  Miss Tolerance bowed. “It is convenient when I go about Town on certain errands. How do you do?”

  “Errands.” Mrs. Lasher dropped into a chair and waved at Miss Tolerance, indicating that she might seat herself. Her expression was less one of shocked dismay at the unconventionality of her guest’s attire than it was of dismay that a fat fee would not be forthcoming. “Should have known something wasn’t right. Single man, come all on his own without a such-and-such sent me, never been here before. What do you want?”

  “I was hoping to talk to Mrs. Vose.”

  “She’s not here.” Mrs. Lasher seemed far more delighted than the mere chance to thwart Miss Tolerance would explain. “On a very important call she is, with everything fine about ’er. Silk sheets and silver pisspots, and French wine too, I’ve no doubt. All of the best with His High—with my Lord Such-and-Such.” She rubbed her hands together greedily. “Quite covered in laurels. Brings distinction to the house. And perhaps custom, as well.”

  Miss Tolerance added a few facts and came up with a human sum which gave her a cold start. “The Duke of Cumberland.”

  Mrs. Lasher frowned. “How did you know?”

  “You all but had the Royal Warrant: by appointment to His Royal Highness. Beside which, I was there when Mrs. Vose was presented to the Duke. I had not realized until now that she had won her point with him.”

  Mrs. Lasher preened as if the conquest were her own. “Well, as you already know, I suppose there’s no ‘arm in speaking of it. She won ’im complete, Josie did. Like I said: everything fine about her. ‘E likes it all kept quiet, though. I s’pose ‘is family shouldn’t like to have it bruted about; ’e’s had enough scandal this year, and the public don’t much love ’im to start with—”

  “You find his money lovable enough.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t I? I’m a woman of business. Mind, I ain’t seen a penny yet. I have my hopes—but that’s neither ’ere nor there.” Mrs. Lasher pulled herself up short. “You didn’t come about Cumberland, did you?”

  “You’re quite right. And for what it’s worth, I doubt I shall remember a word of what you said on the subject,” Miss Tolerance lied reassuringly. “I was actually wondering if you could recall if Mrs. Vose was here on the evening of eighth November.”

  “What you want to know that for?” Mrs. Lasher asked.

  “I’ve been told two different stories, and knowing where Mrs. Vose was on that night would help me to know who was lying.”

  “I told you, Josie ain’t one of the house girls. She works when she likes—”

  “But surely you must know which evenings she is here.”

  “Of course I do. I run a business, miss. Just because it’s a whorehouse don’t mean I don’t need to keep accounts.”

  Miss Tolerance smiled sympathetically. “Of course not. There are so many things to keep count of. My aunt, Mrs. Brereton, seems to be aware of the smallest expenses—”

  “Your aunt? Mrs. Brereton of Manchester Square?”

  Miss Tolerance nodded. “Her ledgers are the most painstaking imaginable—”

  “Mrs. Brereton’s ledgers?” Mrs. Lasher appeared torn between awe and rank curiosity.

  “Oh, yes. Sea sponges and tea cakes and wax candles. Laundry and livery and victuals—but I needn’t recite to you the sorts of expenses a first-class house incurs. She doesn’t spend a penny out of place. And knows to the minute the time each of her employees spends with a customer.”

  Mrs. Lasher nodded sagely. The spangled fringe of her turban released a waft of unpleasantly musky scent. “You must do, that’s for certain.”

  “So you see, I was sure you would be able to tell me if Mrs. Vose had been here on the evening I mentioned,” Miss Tolerance finished.

  Mrs. Lasher sucked on her teeth and thought. “She wasn’t ‘ere that night,” she said at last. “’Ad a meeting with her old keeper—the chevalyer you were inquiring after the other day. Now I remember, I was a mite anxious she might decide to go back to ’im.”

  “She did not, I take it.”

  Mrs. Lasher shook her head. “Never fear that. It seems ‘e was just as nip-farthing as ever. They couldn’t come to terms, and she left before ever they got to business, so she made no money that night. She slammed right out the kitchen door, she said, like a scullery maid. Swore she’d never go back there while ’e lived.”

  “And nor did she,” Miss Tolerance murmured.

&n
bsp; “Now, Josie won’t want you queerin’ her pitch with Lord Such-and-Such,” Mrs. Lasher warned, suddenly recalling discretion. “All this talk about the chevalyer—”

  “My dear madam, you’ve only confirmed for me what Mrs. Vose would doubtless have said herself.” Miss Tolerance extended her hand. “My aunt would so appreciate the courtesy you have extended me.”

  “Would she?” Mrs. Lasher asked. “Well, she should, I s‘pose. Professional courtesy, like. Not but what—you’re not one of ’ers, are you?”

  Miss Tolerance shook her head. “No, ma’am.”

  “Pity. But why—” Mrs. Lasher’s puzzlement set her fringe to dancing again. “Then why do you care where Josie was—oh.” Mrs. Lasher’s intellect was calculating rather than imaginative. “That night you asked about, that’s the night ‘e was killed. But Josie wouldn’t—she never did—”

  “My dear Mrs. Lasher, calm yourself. I am not looking at Mrs. Vose as a suspect. As I said, someone else had told me she had an appointment with Mr. d’Aubigny—we had as well include his name in the discussion—and I merely wished to confirm it, so I can understand how much of the informant’s word I can trust.”

  Mrs. Lasher’s face had pinked remarkably. Now the color began to ebb. “Well, if that’s all,” she said slowly. “That’s twice now you’ve winkled something out of me. I should remember you’re a slippery one, but I suppose it ain’t done no damage this time. Because I do know for a fact that it couldn’t ha’ been Josie.”

  “Do you, ma’am?”

  “Oh, yes. When the papers come out with ‘Horrid Death’ all over them, she sounded a bit regretful-like. Told me about runnin’ out the house and going back to her room in Balcombe Street without a penny to show for it. Said she’d suspected the chevalyer’d go for his little wife after she left, but principle was principle and without money she wasn’t going to stay. Did say that whoever’d killed Dobinny done the wife a service, which made me wonder if perhaps one of the servants done it. Josie said none of them ’ad the brass to kill a rat. Nor the widow neither—Josie said she was always dosed full of laudanum by the time tea was brung in. I’ll tell you what I think.” Mrs. Lasher leaned forward. “I think it was spies.”