If Camille Touvois wished to appear as a woman grieved by the violent death of a friend, or her household as one in mourning, she had not considered the matter very thoroughly. Miss Tolerance found a small party in progress when she called upon Madame Touvois. The maid who took her coat appeared to find Miss Tolerance’s appearance, unescorted and uninvited, to be a little shocking. For a moment it seemed she might refuse to escort this intruder into her mistress’s sight, but Miss Tolerance overawed the girl with her best impersonation of bland assurance.
“Miss Tolerance, ma’am,” the girl announced, and fled.
Madame Touvois was seated on a low-backed sofa, talking animatedly to an audience of men—no other woman had ventured out on so unpleasant a night—who stood around her in attitudes ranging from appreciative to adoring. She smiled equally upon all of them, speaking quickly and laughing often, clearly enjoying her power to captivate. The effect upon her of Miss Tolerance’s name—and Miss Tolerance’s self, as well, it must be assumed—was subtle. Miss Tolerance was certain that her hostess was vexed by the introduction of a rival into her circle, but Madame Touvois did not frown; she rose and extended her hand as if Miss Tolerance were an awaited guest.
“My dear Miss Tolerance! How pleasant of you to call upon us.”
Miss Tolerance took the hand offered her. “Thank you for making me so welcome, madame. I trust I do not interrupt?”
Her hostess gave an exaggeratedly Gallic shrug. “What is there to interrupt? A few friends taking a cup of wine and discussing the news of the day. It is very cozy here by the fire. But what has brought you out on so inclement a night?”
“I came to condole with you upon the death of your friend, Mrs. Vose.”
Miss Tolerance had not expected to see Madame Touvois flinch at the name; her estimate of the Frenchwoman’s sangfroid was too high. Indeed, she did not flinch, but cast down her eyes in an impersonation of sorrow. “It is very kind of you, mademoiselle. It was a great shock to us all.”
“Will you go into full mourning, or will black gloves do?” Miss Tolerance’s tone was dry as dust.
Camille Touvois pursed her lips. “I have never much liked the dress of mourning, nor do I expect she would have wished us to depress ourselves with it. Ah, I was very fond of Josette.”
Miss Tolerance was sure that, had she been able, Madame Touvois would have produced one or two tears: just enough to be effective ornaments, not so many that her powder would have been compromised.
One of the men who stood behind the sofa coughed softly. They, more than Madame Touvois, appeared troubled by Miss Tolerance’s sudden arrival. Madame smiled equally upon her admirers but did not introduce Miss Tolerance to them, or they to her.
“Where are my manners? Mademoiselle, will you not take a glass of wine with us?”
She gestured, and a glass of Madeira was produced for Miss Tolerance. Turning her back on the gentleman, Madame Touvois linked her arm through Miss Tolerance’s own and began a leisurely circuit of the room. It took them out of earshot of the men, Miss Tolerance noted. Did La Touvois have something to say which she did not want them to hear?
“I feared that I would find you prostrate over Mrs. Vose’s death,” Miss Tolerance said at last.
“Prostrate?” Camille Touvois sniffed. “My dear Mademoiselle, I was very fond of Josette, but extravagant grief is so … extravagant. I find it as unconsoling as wearing black gloves. Did you think to find me swooning?”
“You do not strike me as the swooning sort, madame. But I did fear that you might feel some complicity in her death. It concerned me greatly.”
Madame Touvous stopped and turned to Miss Tolerance. However mild her expression, her gaze was acute. “How could I be complicit in Josette’s death?”
“It was in your household that she first encountered His Highness, the Duke of Cumberland, was it not?”
“So? What do you suggest?”
“Nothing, ma’am. Not the least thing in the world. Only that I had heard that you believe Cumberland was the murderer.” Miss Tolerance touched her lips to her wine glass. The Madeira was syrupy and overly sweet. “I wondered at the time how it was that Cumberland was a guest of yours. It seemed very unlikely. Surely he was not ever a connection of yours, madame?”
“You ask if Cumberland was my lover? I am still French enough to call a card by its face name, mademoiselle. No, he was not. I believe I told you, on that other occasion, that he came to see what the opposition had to offer.”
“Offer in what way, madame?”
“Offer in every way, mademoiselle. Of course, I am always delighted when my guests form pleasant attachments.”
“Or unpleasant. Which would seem to be the case, if Cumberland murdered Mrs. Vose.”
“Can there be any doubt?” Madame Touvois’ dark eyes were disingenuously wide and serious. “The poor thing, found with her finery rent, her throat cut, and a note from His Highness in her hand!”
“Damning. Perhaps a little too damning.” Miss Tolerance put her glass down. The woman did not care whether Miss Tolerance believed her; she was aiming for a far broader audience, and clearly did not consider that Miss Tolerance could do anything to affect that audience’s belief. “The matter has not yet appeared in the newspapers, and yet you seem to know all the details. I wonder how that happens?”
“My visitors, of course. Some are kind enough to tell me the latest news.”
“Of course. And you were so fond of Mrs. Vose.”
“Why should I not be? We got on well together, Josette and I.” Madame Touvois smiled.
“And it prospered her,” Miss Tolerance agreed. “It is a considerable jump, to go from being the mistress of a civil servant like d’Aubigny to a prince of the blood. You achieved quite a coup there, madame.”
“The coup was entirely Josette’s, Miss Tolerance. And look what a sad pass it has brought her to. But it might have been any woman. It might have been you, my dear.”
“I don’t believe so, ma’am,” Miss Tolerance said coolly.
“Oh, but of course. You brought your noble lover down, did you not?” Madame Touvois smiled sweetly. “But if you had not been so foresighted, he might have brought you down instead.”
Miss Tolerance regarded Camille Touvois without comment for the several moments it took to bring her emotions into check. The two cases were very far from being the same, she reminded herself.
“Are you suggesting that the Duke of Cumberland feared that Mrs. Vose would bring him down? Or—” Inspiration struck. “Or was it you he feared could do such a thing?”
With no perceptible change in her face, Madame Touvois’ smile hardened from sugar to flint. “I? How could I do such a thing?”
“’Tis an interesting question,” Miss Tolerance murmured.
Her hostess had herself in hand again. “I shall not cry if this brings Cumberland down,” she said. “How should I? Poor Josette died at his hand. But even were he guiltless, my sympathies are well known: I wear Whig colors. The thought of so deep-dyed a Tory as Cumberland controlling the destiny of this great nation is … repugnant.”
“I do not care for the prince’s politics either, but I would not wish a friend dead simply to keep him from the regency.”
“You think someone arranged for Josette’s death in order to compromise Cumberland?”
Miss Tolerance shook her head. “’Tis too much. Why bother to bring down a candidate for the regency whom neither party is likely to support?”
Madame Touvois shrugged again. “To create chaos, I suppose. There are some who relish the disarray of powerful nations. Does that seem grandiose to you? Well, you are young, Miss Tolerance. You have considerable force of character, but despite your history I find you rather naive.” She spoke the last word as if it were the coup de grâce after a long fencing match.
“I prefer to think of it as principled.” Miss Tolerance was conscious of a sense of breathlessness.
A burst of masculine laughter from the knot
of gentlemen grouped around the sofa startled both women. Madame Touvois looked toward the men and sighed.
“This is such a charming conversation that you have persuaded me to neglect my other guests, and that will not do. You have not yet told me, mademoiselle, what brought you to my house tonight.”
“Indeed I did. I came to condole with you upon Mrs. Vose’s death,” Miss Tolerance said again. “And having done so, I will beg you to return to your other guests, madame. Thank you for the wine.”
Miss Tolerance set her glass, almost full, on a table, and inclined her head. Madame Touvois put a hand on her sleeve and stopped her departure.
“But you have not told me, mademoiselle, how poor Josette’s death is connected to that task which I believe you had undertaken: to find the killer of the late Chevalier d’Aubigny.”
“That is simplicity in itself, ma’am. Mrs. Vose was involved with the chevalier, and now she is dead. How very convenient a thing for whoever killed the chevalier. For my part I dislike it very much when my witnesses die. It inevitably means more work for me.”
Again Miss Tolerance inclined her head in lieu of a bow. This time her hostess did not stop her from leaving.
Miss Tolerance shouldered her way into the eddies of snow on Audley Street. What was she to do now? She had left Madame Touvois’ rooms as she arrived, strongly persuaded that the Duke of Cumberland had not killed Josette Vose. Equally she was convinced that Camille Touvois meant to brew up as much scandal and rumor to the contrary as it was possible for her to do. Why? It was not impossible that La Touvois was simply trying her power, seeing how much trouble she could stir up. Her character appeared to be one which delighted in mischief: where Miss Tolerance believed her own testimony against the Earl of Versellion to have been a painful matter of principle, Camille Touvois clearly viewed it as a very good joke on established authority.
But the nation was at war, and playing practical jokes upon royalty and law served no purpose other than to give aid and comfort to the French and their enemies. Madame Touvois’ lies should be stopped. However little Miss Tolerance liked the Duke of Cumberland’s politics, she liked Bonaparte less.
It took some time to locate a coach to take her to St. James’s Palace, and considerably more time to persuade the porter to call a footman who would take a note to Cumberland. She could not be certain that the duke would read the note, or that he would take the warning seriously if he did, but she felt she must try.
Your Highness, she wrote.
I hope you will forgive my forwardness, and beg you will believe that I act only from a disinterested concern for the good of Crown and Nation. Rumors are being circulated in the city, implicating you in the death of a Mrs. Vose, who I believe was known to you. These rumors are not the inevitable murmurings of the London populace, but part of a deliberate campaign of whispers intended to blot the reputation of the Crown itself. I beg Your Highness will take measure to combat these rumors in the strongest possible way. If it is not stopped, this scheme can only cast the nation into confusion at a time when the war, and the question of Regency, depend rather upon clear thinking.
Please believe me, I am
Your respectful servant,
She signed the note, sealed it, and gave it to the footman. She would have departed then, but the footman asked that she wait for an answer, if any. She sat in a small, barren chamber off the hall from the porter’s room, which was not warmed by fire or cheered by anything other than a pair of chairs and a rickety table. Miss Tolerance sat, feeling her toes slowly go numb in the cold.
The door opened. The man who stepped into the room was very tall and very thin; Miss Tolerance had expected to see a footman or perhaps an aide. This was the duke himself. She bowed deeply.
“I have heard of you,” Cumberland drawled. “From my brother Wales. He is much impressed with your enterprising nature, and seems to feel it quite overrules the questionable nature of your morals. I am not so impressed.” Cumberland approached her, looking down. Miss Tolerance, tall herself, was not often looked down upon; she suspected the duke used his height to intimidate. She did not in the least wish to be intimidated; it occurred to her to point out that Prince Ernest was not always so particular in dealing with women of flexible morals—but she had not come to pick a quarrel with a member of the royal family. She set her features into a semblance of polite submission.
“I am sorry to have troubled you, sir, but I do believe the matter of considerable importance. Someone apparently wishes to implicate you in the death of—”
“Yes, yes.” Cumberland waved a hand impatiently, acknowledging Mrs. Vose’s death. “The rumors have begun anew. The populace cannot keep their grubby fingers from the coats of their betters.”
“But it is not the populace—” Miss Tolerance began. Cumberland cut her off.
“My valet attempted to assassinate me, and the rabble insisted I had slain him. In the end, they could not touch me. As to this matter, I regret the woman’s death. She was obliging.” He dwelt upon the word with a peculiar emphasis which made Miss Tolerance think of the contents of the Chevalier d’Aubigny’s wooden box. “A great waste. But I will not dignify rumors by responding to them. The populace can go to Hell.”
“I felt it my duty to tell you what I had learned. What Your Highness does with that information is, of course, entirely your affair.”
She could not leave until Cumberland dismissed her or left himself. It seemed clear to her that the audience was over, but Cumberland stood, looking down at her. From his expression, Miss Tolerance surmised he was trying to imagine what feminine shape might be hidden under her masculine clothing. It was an expression with which she had some familiarity; was he wondering if she would submit to an advance? Or perhaps deciding if persisting past her resistance would be worth the effort?
The minute or so during which Miss Tolerance submitted to this scrutiny was decidedly unpleasant. Then Cumberland nodded to her. “You have given me your message. If there is nothing more that you require to tell me, you may go. Unless, of course, you dislike to go out into the snow. I am sure we could find some place for you to weather the storm.”
A number of barbed responses came to Miss Tolerance’s mind. Common sense won out. She thanked Cumberland again for his patience, bowed again, and left. However gratifying it would have been to explain to His Highness the several ways in which his proposition repelled her, royalty was royalty, and a woman with her own way to make must practice tact. She stood for a moment in the falling snow, letting cold air clear her head. Then she went to find a carriage to take her back to Manchester Square.
Mrs. Brereton’s house was filled with custom, the snow having apparently an aphrodisiac effect upon a number of London gentlemen. The building glowed with light in the midst of snow, and Miss Tolerance was conscious of a grateful sense of homecoming. She made her way upstairs to the yellow room, where she rang for hot water and, after a moment’s thought, brandy. Her visits to Madame Touvois and the Duke of Cumberland had left her with a sense of unease which even hot water could not entirely scrub away. Clean and clad in a nightshift, she poured a glass of brandy and climbed onto the bed with a writing board, paper and pencil to hand, and spent a quarter hour bringing her accounts up to date. That done, she took up a fresh sheet and began to make lists of what she knew, hoping to diagram what, if anything, connected Mrs. Vose’s death to that of the Chevalier d’Aubigny.
She wrote on one side of the paper: d’Aubigny’s Death. Immediately under that she wrote: Josette Vose—visited d’Aubigny, failed to come to terms, left before midnight, working. In parentheses afterward she wrote: source: Mrs. Lasher. Then she wrote: Anne d‘Aubigny—laudanum, asleep. Which explained not only why she did not awake when d’Aubigny was murdered, but how she had slept through the hue and cry which followed the discovery of the body. Source: A d’A; servants.
She listed each of the servants: Beak, Jacks, Mary Pitt, Sophia Thissen: all in their quarters at the rear of the house. Do
or locked upon retiring by Beak. Source: A. Beak. Mrs. Sadgett: in her own home. Source: servants’ testimony. And nothing she had uncovered gave any of the servants a reason to want their master dead. Miss Tolerance might think the man unpleasant, but servants often had to deal with unpleasant employers. Murdering the master was too drastic a solution for so common a problem.
Miss Tolerance chewed the end of her pencil.
Henri Beauville, she wrote. With d’Aubigny earlier in the evening. At Mrs. Brereton’s from 10 p.m. until half past midnight. Afterward? Source: Beauville, Brereton.
Finally she wrote: Camille Touvois. And there she stopped. Her instinct was that the woman must be involved somehow—if only because she had ties to d’Aubigny, Vose and Beauville—but she had found nothing whatsoever to implicate her. Whatever games Madame Touvois was playing, they were too many and too deep to be easily discovered. Which might make her a perfect target for blackmail by Etienne d’Aubigny, Miss Tolerance reflected. If only she could find evidence that d’Aubigny had been blackmailing anyone!
A thought niggled at her; she got down from the bed and retrieved from the pocket of her Gunnard coat the white stuff she had prised from the chevalier’s grate. Examined closely, it was a roughly triangular scrap of fine lawn, with a bit of white thread which might have been embroidery on one edge. It seemed a strange thing to find in a gentleman’s fireplace; it was not a cleaning rag, although it was smirched with ash and soot. Alas, it told her nothing useful. She put the scrap into her wallet.
Turning back to her paper she wrote evidence found on the scene: damned little. After she had spent another half-hour staring at the paper Miss Tolerance sighed, put the paper and pencil aside, and retired to her restless bed to lie awake, listening to the distant sounds of venery, and pondering blackmail.
Seventeen
Snow in a great city creates an unaccustomed hush. Some of the usual sources of clamor—sellers hawking milk or blacking or silver sand—are inconvenienced by ankle-deep drifts. The clatter of wagon wheels on cobblestones is muffled; a soft whisking sound marks each corner, where the crossing-boys mar the pure snow, brushing it out of the path and mixing it with the unmentionable contents of the gutter. Miss Tolerance had lain awake for some hours the night before, her mind turning as her body attempted to rest. At last, lulled by the snow-borne quiet, she slept. She woke to find a fire, kindled in the grate while she slept, which made the room invitingly warm. It was only at last, and with reluctance, that she rose.
Petty Treason Page 27
