“You will believe what you like, sir. If there is nothing else to discuss, I will take my leave.”
“Not without assurance—”
“I have said I will make nothing public. I am not in the business of publishing scandal, Mr. Smith. Your master may congratulate himself for getting something for nothing.” Miss Tolerance pushed the folded banknotes across the table toward Mr. Smith. She was agreeably aware, as she left the room, that Smith had not moved to take up the money.
Miss Tolerance had walked several streets, pulling on her gloves, breathing the icy air and composing damning ripostes, before her common sense caught up with her. She had let her temper get the better of her, and only hoped she might not live to be sorry for it. She used the walk to Manchester Square to regain her composure, went in the house long enough to fetch the Chevalier d’Aubigny’s box and, in anticipation of a happier interview, turned her steps toward Half Moon Street.
William Colcannon, looking as much at ease in his sister’s house as she had formerly seen him uneasy, greeted Miss Tolerance effusively as the Savior of the Household, and offered to pay her twice, even thrice her agreed-upon fee. With the interview with Mr. Smith so recently past, Miss Tolerance found the idea of overpayment oppressive, and informed her client that the fee agreed upon, plus her remaining expenses, would be sufficient. “The amount of money I have expended in your behalf, on bribes and incentives, is likely to make you open your eyes,” she said. “You are soon to be married, and it is likely your sister will need your generosity as well; pay my fee, Mr. Colcannon, and we are quits.”
Colcannon thanked her again, three or four times, before noting that Miss Tolerance carried a good-sized wooden box under her arm.
“Your late brother-in-law’s property, which I am returning to your sister,” Miss Tolerance explained to him. “Is Mrs. d’Aubigny in seclusion, or may I speak to her for a moment and congratulate her upon her freedom?”
“She will be delighted, honored—” Mr. Colcannon’s vocabulary failed him before his enthusiasm did. He took Miss Tolerance up the stairs to the little room in which she had spoken to Anne d’Aubigny before. What a difference there was today: the dark drapes had been pulled and the afternoon light and a good fire made the room a very pleasant place.
“Anne, see who is here to see how you do! Your savior, Miss Tolerance!”
Anne d’Aubigny shook her head at her brother with amusement and affection. Her former pallor was much relieved. Even in her unflattering blacks there was a warm color in her cheeks, and the sunlight danced in her pale blue eyes. She had several books in her hands, but put them down to come forward and take Miss Tolerance’s hands warmly.
“My brother is right, Miss Tolerance. I have so much to thank you for. Please, will you take a glass of wine with me?”
Miss Tolerance thanked the widow and said she would be delighted. Colcannon took his leave of the women, and Miss Tolerance, before she took the chair Anne d’Aubigny had directed her to, put d’Aubigny’s carved box on a table.
“Perhaps you will not want to keep this, but it is yours,” she began.
Mrs. d’Aubigny was suddenly pale again. She put one hand up to her mouth in a gesture which should have been theatrical but was not. For a moment she appeared to be at a loss for words. At last she whispered, “What am I to do with it?”
Miss Tolerance felt a pang of impatience.
“I think we have seen that the privy is not a successful resting place for it,” she said drily. “It is fortunate, indeed, that the box turned up again, for the solution to your husband’s murder rested within it.”
“It did?” Mrs. d’Aubigny sat down. She had lost all of the animation of a few moments before; of course, Miss Tolerance thought. The widow still saw the box as the repository for the chevalier’s implements of pain. She knew nothing of its other secrets, which had assured her freedom.
“Your husband kept documents hidden in the lining of the box which will serve as the basis for the Crown’s case against Madame Touvois—if she is caught.”
“My husband was a spy?”
Miss Tolerance shook her head. “No, ma’am. Not a spy, although what he was doing was not much more savory. He was blackmailing the true traitors. It was a clever hiding place; even Mr. Beauville said he would not touch the box on the night of your husband’s death.”
“Did he?” Anne d’Aubigny took up a handbell and rang it twice. “Poor Mr. Beauville. The paper said he was killed trying to escape.”
“Yes.” Miss Tolerance found herself explaining the circumstances of Beauville’s death and her part in it.
“How brave you are, Miss Tolerance,” the widow said at the end of the tale. “It is a horrid thing, to kill someone, I imagine. For a woman. Men are more used to … to wars, and hunting and … I am sorry you were forced to it on my behalf.”
Miss Tolerance could not think what to reply, and was happy for the appearance of Jacks, with the tray, decanter, and glasses, and Sophia Thissen. For a few minutes there was a domestic bustle of clearing the table for the tray and pouring out the wine. Sophie took the box away with instructions to have it broken up and burnt in the kitchen fire.
“What shall you do now?” Miss Tolerance asked when both servants had departed.
With the box gone from the room its hold upon Mrs. d’Aubigny’s imagination seemed to be lifted, and she regained her earlier animation. She gestured at the books she had left upon the desk. Miss Tolerance saw a box nearby and realized she had interrupted the widow at packing. “I am going away. London has too many painful memories. My brother suggested I go to my cousins in India. Perhaps I can outstay the awful notoriety here.”
Miss Tolerance agreed that this was an excellent solution. Mrs. d’Aubigny began to enthuse upon the wonders she expected to see: she was evidently an avid reader of travel books. Miss Tolerance sipped her wine and listened.
Despite the warmth of the fire and the wine, and Anne d’Aubigny’s soft voice, Miss Tolerance could not relax and enjoy the completion of her work. Rather, she found herself becoming distracted, not listening to the widow but chasing a shadow of thought. At last she caught it. She felt a pang of pleasure and panic and raised her eyes to meet Anne d’Aubigny’s.
“The bloody box,” she said.
Mrs. d’Aubigny stopped short in her praise of Madras. “I beg your pardon—”
Miss Tolerance was seized with too much wonderment to apologize. “Beauville called it the bloody box, and I thought he meant it as a profanity. He was being purely descriptive. The bloody box. He was here the night of your husband’s murder, you see. There was a woman with chevalier, so Beauville hid in the hallway and dozed off. When Beauville woke the woman was gone, and he went in to find the chevalier dead. And the box was there. Smeared with blood and brains, I don’t doubt. That is why you had Sophie drop it into the privy, isn’t it?”
Anne d’Aubigny looked at Miss Tolerance quizzically, as if she could not think of the proper way to respond. Did she hope to win her accuser’s sympathy? Was she marshaling defenses that, with Beauville’s death, she had put aside? But perhaps she did the widow an injustice. Anne d’Aubigny finally nodded, as regal as any doomed queen.
“Will you tell me what happened that night?”
The widow, entranced, stared at some picture only she could see, and began to speak. Her words were not rushed but irrepressible, as if she would not rest until the last of them was spoken.
“My husband had gone out and I had thought myself safe for the night. I went to bed—Sophie brought me my sleeping draught, and I slept. I do not know how much later it was—everyone in the house was abed—when Etienne came to my room and woke me. He pulled me down the hall to his room; I was very addled with the laudanum, and very tired. He said Josette was gone, that he might as well have me as her. And he … he did.” The widow looked up at Miss Tolerance seriously. “I knew to submit. He went a little easier with me, so. But I was so tired, and stupid with the laudanum. Sometimes the drug made
it easier; either Etienne would go away when he found me asleep, or it would help me not to mind. But sometimes when I’m roused from a deep sleep it is worse. It was so, that night. When Etienne was done with me he pushed me off the bed and told me to go, to get out of his sight.” She laughed harshly. “He rolled over and was asleep at once. And I—I was bleeding, my nightshift was bloody and I felt near to swooning. I saw the box. Do you know the way in which one endows a place or a thing with some sentiment or history, Miss Tolerance? Look, my love gave me this ribbon, or see, that is where we danced … I saw the box and it was every cruel thing Etienne had ever done to me. I picked it up and thought, if I could destroy it he would not hurt me again. But then I thought: he will get another box. And he will punish me …”
The widow’s voice was high and thin at the memory. Miss Tolerance released a breath she had not known she held.
“Afterward I did not know what to do. I wanted to wash my hands but I could not bear to stay in the room with … him. I am not a person accustomed to action, as you are. I was not thinking very clearly. I ran back to my room to wash. I do not know what I was thinking; the rest of me was—there was—my nightshift was more befouled than before. Then I heard a noise in the hallway which scared me.”
“Beauville,” Miss Tolerance said.
“Did he know it was I who—”
Miss Tolerance shook her head. “He may have suspected it, but he did not say so to me.”
The widow nodded thoughtfully. “When I heard that noise I was certain that Etienne had risen up and was coming for me. Even with what I had done. His blood and his brains …” Mrs. d’Aubigny faltered for a moment over the memory. “It will sound foolish to you now, but I had to see if he was really dead. It hardly seemed possible to me that Etienne’s life could be so fragile. I waited until there was no further noise—no one had raised an alarm—and went back to his room. It was horrid, but he was dead. It sounds cold to say it, but you cannot imagine the comfort that was to me, Miss Tolerance.”
The widow sat in her chair like a child, hands in her lap, her eyes fixed upon Miss Tolerance.
“Do all your servants know—?” Miss Tolerance asked. She felt overwhelmed by what she had uncovered, and uncertain what her own feelings were. Was the murder justified? An act of passion? How was she to act now?
Anne d’Aubigny shook her head. “I don’t think so, not even Sophia. When I went back to my husband’s room the laudanum had begun to wear off and the meaning of what I had done came to me. I felt so free. And so frightened! When I was taken to prison I thought it was only my due. Only today, when I felt safe, did I begin to think I might have a chance at the sort of normal life I expected when I was a girl.”
Miss Tolerance kept her sympathy in check. She must hear it all first.
“When you returned to your husband’s room what did you do?”
Mrs. d’Aubigny regarded her steadily from watery eyes.
“I knew I must remove any sign that I had been there. I took off my shift and wiped—everything—off the box. That was dreadful. Then I threw the shift into the fire and let it burn.”
“Ah.” Miss Tolerance’s eyebrows went up. “Ah, yes, of course.” She took out her wallet and extracted from it the scrap of white fabric she had taken from the chevalier’s room. She laid the fabric on her knee, smoothing it carefully. “I found this in the grate. It is a bit that did not burn, I take it.”
Mrs. D’Aubigny agreed that it must be. “I thought I had destroyed it all. I took the box back to my room and put on a new shift and went to bed. In the morning I told Sophia to get rid of the box.”
“By throwing it in the privy?”
The widow nodded. “Sophia knew what Etienne did to me. It was she who salved my bruises and bound up the wounds. She understood what the box meant and why I would wish it destroyed.”
Miss Tolerance sat speechless. She could not tell if she were more outraged or saddened by the tale.
“You understood,” Anne d’Aubigny said with certainty. “From the first, you said—”
“I recall. I said I knew what it was to be mistaken in whom I loved. Did you imagine that meant that you should deceive me, or use me to make a mock of the law?”
“The law! The law permitted my husband to make a mock of our marriage vows!” Anne d’Aubigny’s gaze locked with Miss Tolerance’s. All meekness and submission had disappeared; the widow did not appear angry, only resolute. “What will you do?” she asked.
Miss Tolerance examined her own hands and considered. Had Anne d’Aubigny not murdered her husband, Henri Beauville would have done so, and for less cause. Beauville had not scrupled to direct suspicion to the widow; he had used Boyse to encourage that suspicion and remove it from himself. The law now appeared to be ready enough to fix the guilt in d’Aubigny’s murder upon Henri Beauville, who had, God knew, enough guilt for the death of Josette Vose; and with Camille Touvois, whom Miss Tolerance was certain would never be returned to London to hang. The matter could be resolved very easily.
And yet Miss Tolerance felt uneasy with the idea. Anne d’Aubigny had done murder; should she be permitted to escape punishment? A reasonable jury might well decide that she had acted to defend herself against further violence. A reasonable jury might well feel that she had been punished in advance of any crime, and ought not suffer further. And the law—Miss Tolerance stopped. The law permitted my husband to make a mock of our marriage vows! Was the law likely to make concessions on a charge of petty treason?
What if Anne d’Aubigny went free? Miss Tolerance could not believe that she, with sullied honor and no standing in society, found herself in the position of judge and jury. But, as the widow had said, she did understand what it was to be mistaken in the man she loved.
“Miss Tolerance?”
“You would never do it again,” she said, half to herself.
Anne d’Aubigny appeared shocked by the notion. “I will give you my oath! I would never—”
Miss Tolerance held up her hand. “Yes, I know. I hope you will forgive me; I need to consider the matter. When do you plan to leave?”
Madame d’Aubigny’s lips trembled. There is a ship sailing in a few days. The Lucy Singer, for Madras.”
“Then I suppose I must make my mind to tell the law what I know before that time, or lose the opportunity to do so.”
In the silence of the room the fire popped and the chimney whistled faintly. Anne d’Aubigny regarded Miss Tolerance steadily. At last she said, “I understand. And I thank you for your consideration, Miss Tolerance.”
As well you might, Miss Tolerance thought. She took a sip of her wine in a silent toast to the Widow d’Aubigny and her future.
Twenty
Miss Tolerance spent the evening in a reflective mood, quietly playing cards with her aunt. She had felt some guilt over her neglect of Mrs. Brereton in the past week; she might excuse that neglect by saying, truthfully, that she had no gifts as a nurse, but the fact was that it had been easier to be away on Anne d‘Aubigny’s business than to stay home fretting uselessly. If she had thought to wait upon an invalid, however, she had the wind taken out of her sails at the sight of her aunt, elegantly dressed and coiffed, with the Cent deck in her hand and an agreeably rapacious look in her eye. Mrs. Brereton’s fine complexion had regained a good deal of its well-tended clarity, but there was still a papery quality to the skin about her eyes, and a tentativeness in her manner, as if her illness had reminded her of a mortality she had successfully ignored for many years. But the worst of Mrs. Brereton’s illness was past, and the d’Aubigny matter was resolved. Miss Tolerance was happy to be able to sit talking amiable commonplace and playing piquet for paper points.
“But ought the Times not make some mention of the role you played, my dear?” Mrs. Brereton declared a blank and laid down five cards. “It was your investigation brought all to light.”
“There is no ought about it, ma’am. And Mr. Heddison is far more adept a player than I am; he made su
re that the credit, and the reward as well, I do not doubt, will go to the Great Marlborough Street Public Office. I don’t doubt he plans to deal with Mr. Boyse on his own, with as little public notice of the corruption in his office as possible. I would lament more, but I have been handsomely paid by my client.” Miss Tolerance saw no reason to mention the Duke of Cumberland’s attempt to bribe her. She suspected her scruples would make no sense to Mrs. Brereton, and dreaded the discussion that would ensue. “And what use is public notice to me? Versellion’s trial put me in grave danger of becoming a familiar figure. How could I do my work if every man on the corner recognized me as I passed?”
“So you will keep your involvement a secret?”
“I propose merely to say nothing unless asked, and then to exercise discretion. I believe that is ten points to you, Aunt.”
“So it is.” Mrs. Brereton smiled. “Cole tells me that the whitewashing in your cottage is finished. Will you return?”
“I certainly shall. What excellent news! I will ask Frost to have my clothes carried back tomorrow.”
“You need not go, you know. The yellow room is not needed. You are not discommoding anyone.” Miss Tolerance thought she discerned a note of anxiety in her aunt’s voice.
“You are very kind to offer it, Aunt, but you know I like my privacy. And you are always taking on new women—to say nothing of the fact that you haven’t replaced Matt. Do you mean to do so?”
“I haven’t yet found a boy that suits the house; molly-whores are tricky—”
“I miss him too,” Miss Tolerance said quietly. “But my point is really that you will need that room again. I ought not to occupy it if I cannot put it to use the way the rest of your staff does.” She put a gentle hand on her aunt’s. “You need not a fear a resumption of our former coldness, Aunt. I am sorrier than I can say that we allowed a stupid quarrel to estrange us. And indeed when I have my own place we are the better friends for it.”
“So you say,” Mrs. Brereton said. “Well, I know better than to argue with you. Perhaps I will give the yellow room to Marianne. And my ruff is—” she peered at her hand and totaled the cards in her best suit. “Twenty-four.”
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