The Sleeping Partner

by Madeleine E. Robins

  Finally the largest boy raised his head, looked around to his mates and, on some signal of group agreement, pointed to a good sized house of gray stone across the street and half-way to St. James’s Square.

  “You are sure?”

  The heads bobbed in ragged agreement. Miss Tolerance dispensed a penny to each of the boys, which caused a second ripple of bobbed heads, and mumbled thankees. Miss Tolerance took a tuppenny piece and held it up between gloved fingers.

  “Can any of you tell me the name of the people who live there?”

  The leader turned to his mates, eyebrows lifted as if to encourage an outpouring of information which did not come. “Noffin’?” he prodded. The boys looked back and forth between the coin and the house; she watched each one consider and abandon the idea of a lie.

  “Never mind it,” Miss Tolerance said bracingly. “What can you tell me about the people who live in that house? How many are there?”

  “Fambly or servints?” the leader asked.

  “For now, just the family.”

  “There’s your young ladies,” one of the smallest boys piped up. “Only the sittin’ one in the picher, she ain’t always ‘ere no more.”

  “Catch-fart! She’s married! ‘Er ‘usban’ come to visit wiv’er.”

  Miss Tolerance was required to head off a quarrel by reminding the boys of the question under discussion.

  “The one that was standin’ in the picher, she live here,” the small boy reported.

  “Yeah, and ‘er da, too,” said another boy, in the tone of one who is telling a tremendous joke. Miss Tolerance looked down her nose at him and his merriment subsided. There was some subsequent discussion of the nip–farthing ways of the men of the house, who never paid for a sweeping.

  “Nah, the young gent pays,” a sandy-haired boy offered. “‘E’s aright. Ast me once ‘ow many we ‘ad at ‘ome, and ‘f we got enough to eat.”

  “Whot ‘e want to know that for?” the leader objected.

  The sandy-haired boy shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe ‘e wanted to invite us all over for Sunday dinner.” This was met with a roar of merriment.

  “When is the last time any of you saw the younger lady?”

  This question caused a good deal of head-scratching and twisting up of faces. In the end the consensus was that it had been more than a week. “The young ‘un, miss? Spec’ she’s gone to the country,” one of the boys said. “A-huntin’ of foxes or summat, ‘ey, miss? They cuts the tails off,” he added with relish. The other boys were much impressed with this bit of trivia. Miss Tolerance wrenched the topic back to the family in the stone house.

  “I have a task for as many likely boys as I can find. I need to have that house carefully observed, and I will pay each boy who works for me…” she paused thoughtfully. “Thruppence a day upon my errand.”

  “What we observin’ for, miss?” the tall boy asked.

  “To see who comes in or goes out, over the next few days. But you must be careful that no one in the house knows what you are doing—including the servants. I will need a report each day of the visitors that come to the house. Can any of you write?”

  After a moment of silence one of the smaller, grubbier boys raised his hand. This occasioned a chorus of ooohs, half-taunting and half-admiring, from his fellows.

  “I can’t spell so good, missus, but I know me letters. Me mum taught me ‘fore she died.” The boy, who gave his name as Ted, eyed his mates with some anxiety, but being orphaned apparently legitimized his literacy.

  “Excellent. Then each morning you and—what is your name?” she indicated the ringleader.

  “Bart, miss.”

  “Ted and Bart shall gather up all the information and make up a report and leave it for me with the porter at Mrs. Brereton’s house.” She gave the direction. “He will give you your money. If you do not distribute the coins to all your mates, I shall hear about it.”

  Bart nodded. “But what about sweepin’, miss?”

  “Sweeping?” It was necessary for Miss Tolerance to reassure the boys that she did not wish them to stop sweeping, and more particularly that she did not require a cut of whatever money they took in. She had no interest in developing a syndicate of street-sweeps. She had the boys recite their instructions again, and left them to their watch. Not one of the boys had expressed any curiosity as to why she wanted the house watched. Clearly the motives of a madwoman with money to spend were less important than each boy getting his share.

  Having put spies in place in the vicinity of Miss Evadne’s home, Miss Tolerance took another turn up the street and around the green in St. James’s Square. Upon her return she observed her agents at the corner of Jermyn Street sweeping the crossing and keeping covert watch upon the gray stone house. Pleased by the sight of youth at work, Miss Tolerance continued to the next part of her chore: discovering Miss Evadne’s family name.

  Miss Tolerance extracted a slip of paper from her reticule and clutched it in her hand, peering at it with a good counterfeit of myopic anxiety. As she progressed along the street she squinted at the doors of the houses, looked to count their number, peered again at the paper. When a stout man in a leather apron backed his way from the tradesman’s entry of the house next door to that of her quarry, Miss Tolerance bustled up to him and asked, in the most agitated tones, whether this was number 11.

  “Nah,” the man said shortly. He was carrying an empty cage; from the skirl of white feathers that eddied in the bottom of the cage it was evident he had been delivering poultry.

  “Are you certain?” Miss Tolerance was insistent. “I am positive they said—Oh, dear. Are you certain that isn’t number 11? Where the Pontroys live?” She permitted her voice to tremble a little.

  The poulterer regarded her with an expression of exasperation and dismay. “H’aint no Pontroys live there, miss. Naow, you’ll escuse me?” He hefted the cage and started up the stairs.

  “Well, who does live here?”

  “Family name of Hampton,” the man said.

  “Hampton? No, that’s not right. Well, what of this one?” She pointed to the gray stone house. “Is that where the Pontroys live?”

  “That’s Lord Lyne’s ‘ouse, miss. No Pontroys there, neither.”

  “But I don’t want Lord Lyne. I was told specifically—” Miss Tolerance’s pitch climbed. “They told me number 11, Mrs. Pontr—and that’s not even number 11, you stupid man! Whatever shall I do?” Miss Tolerance turned her back on the poulterer and stalked off toward St. James’s Square, muttering unhappily.

  When she turned the corner she tucked the scrap of paper into her reticule, called a chair, and gave the direction of Tarsio’s.

  The Library at Tarsio’s Club was a small room generally reserved for the use of the club’s male subscribers. Women were permitted in the library only if a porter was sent beforehand to ascertain that feminine presence would not perturb the men dozing there over the newspapers.

  Miss Tolerance, mindful of these rules, arrived at the club and at once enlisted Corton as her advance guard.

  “I only need to look at a book for a few minutes, then I shall take myself back to the Ladies’ Salon,” she promised.

  After this anxious preparation it was a disappointment that there were no men in the Library whom Miss Tolerance could inconvenience with her female self. She went at once to the Peerage, a thick, important looking tome bound in gilded calf, which rested on its own stand but, by the evidence of a slight rime of dust, was not much consulted by Tarsio’s members. Miss Tolerance paged through until she found the entry she sought.

  Lyne of Wandfield

  Charles Loudon Thorpe, Third Baron, b. June 12, 1758, Wandfield, Warwickshire, m. September 12, 1781 Henrietta Mallon, daughter Sir Peter Mallon (d) and Anne Crossways of Warwick. Issue: Henry Mallon Thorpe, b. 1782; John David Thorpe, b. 1784; Clarissa Adele, b. 1787; and Evadne Henrietta, b. 1795. Principal residence Whiston Hall, Wandfield, Warwickshire.

  There was more regarding the fami
ly’s history; the book was also a decade old, and did not mention the husband to which “Mrs. Brown” had referred, but it was quite sufficient for Miss Tolerance’s purposes. Blessing the fondness of her countrymen for setting down such information usefully where a working woman could find it, Miss Tolerance copied the entry, made her way downstairs, and desired Steen to call her a hackney carriage to Savoy Court. She intended to call upon an expert of her acquaintance, to see what she could learn about the family of Evadne Henrietta Thorpe.

  The Liberty of Savoy has been since the days of Henry III a harbor from arrest for debtors and Sunday-men of all sorts. Here can be seen gentlemen whose silver buttons, pocket watches and handkerchiefs have lately been pawned to pay for dinner, drink, or another round of play; businessmen hoping to stay ruin by borrowing at calamitous interest; ladies picking their way through the muck to find a sympathetic cents-per-cent with an open purse; and, always, poor men on the lookout for the Bailiff’s staff. The air in the Liberty of Savoy might smell of ordure, sweat, mold, and coal dust, like many other London neighborhoods, but the underlying reek was of desperation.

  Mr. Boddick, the tapster at the Wheat Sheaf, was drawing off a pint. On observing Miss Tolerance he nodded cordially, delivered the ale to its purchaser, and inquired what her pleasure might be.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Boddick. How do you do? And Mrs. Boddick? Is Mr. Glebb very busy?” She looked toward the corner nearest the fire, where an elderly man wearing blue broadcloth and a clean, highly starched shirt was in close conversation with an anxious fellow in smock and gartered sleeves.

  “There’s two or three already waiting for ‘im, miss. Will you take something?”

  Miss Tolerance slid a coin across the bar, ordered coffee for herself and, as was her custom, urged Boddick to draw a pint of something for himself. The tapster nodded his thanks, served Miss Tolerance, then drew off a pint of bitter and drank a long gulp with every evidence of pleasure.

  “The weather is turning warm,” Miss Tolerance observed.

  “‘Tis that, miss. What brings you ‘ere today?”

  “The search for understanding, Mr. Boddick. A consultation with Mr. Glebb seemed the place to start.” Miss Tolerance drank a little of her coffee and looked around the room. In one corner near the fireplace Mr. Joshua Glebb held court over a crowd of five or six people. The rest of the room was near empty; she did observe a man sitting on a stool at the far end of the bar by the hearth, in an attitude which suggested that he was not a patron but a member of the establishment. The man’s singular aspect of misery drew Miss Tolerance’s eye; he was pale, unshaven and, despite the fire burning nearby, shivering.

  Mr. Boddick’s gaze followed Miss Tolerance’s. “My brother Bob. Used to be an Army man ‘til his lot got sent to Walcheren with Chatham’s force that took the fever.”

  Miss Tolerance regarded the unhappy Bob with sympathy. The British assault upon Napoleon’s naval forces in the low-lands of Holland in 1809 had been turned back, not by force but by a virulent malaria which had killed more than four thousand men outright, and invalided twice that number.

  “Bob was sent ‘ome to us; sixpence-a-day pension, and ‘e’s a good worker when ‘e’s well. But when the fever’s on ‘im, ain’t much ‘e can do but sit as you see ‘im.”

  “I am sorry to hear it. Is there no help for him?”

  “Quinina—that’s what the Spaniards call it—stops the shakin’ and the fever. Peruvian bark, that is. But it’s ‘ard to get and dear when you find it. Damned Frenchies run up the price by attacking merchant ships. Now if the Crown was doing what they ought—”

  For the next quarter hour Mr. Boddick maintained a monologue highly critical of the Government’s pursuit of the Peninsular War. Boddick was a whole-hearted Tory, while Miss Tolerance’s sympathies partook more of the Opposition line, but both maintained a keen interest in the progress of the war. Mr. Boddick, like his brother a veteran, was vehemently anti-Bonaparte; it was one issue upon which he and Miss Tolerance, who had lived under the Corsican’s rule, were wholly in sympathy. Poor Brother Bob, withdrawn and shuddering at the end of the bar, offered no opinions.

  When they had disposed of the war, Walcheren, and the politics of the commission investigating that debacle, they returned again to the weather, thence to the price of corn, which looked to return them to the subject of politics again. But Boddick looked back to Mr. Glebb’s table. “Ah, seems ‘e’s free now, miss. A pleasure talkin’ with you, as always.”

  Miss Tolerance wished him a good day and carried her coffee off to Mr. Glebb’s table.

  Joshua Glebb’s head, bald, with a long fringe of yellowed hair circling the back, shone in the dusty light from the far window. His entire being appeared to be in the process of succumbing slowly to gravity; his mouth turned down, and his chin, shoulders and gut all looked to be making a slow progress downward until they would puddle around his boot-soles. Until that should happen, Mr. Glebb resembled a fussy and dyspeptic head clerk, respectably dressed and sour of expression. His mouth attained—not a smile, but an absence of frown—when he looked up at Miss Tolerance, and his shrewd eyes lit.

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t rise, miss. My bones is giving me some trouble today.”

  “You must not stand upon ceremony with me, Mr. Glebb.” Miss Tolerance took a seat opposite him. “I have come, as usual, to ask questions.”

  “Well, asking’s free. It’s answers cost the ready.” Glebb looked into his coffee pot, found it empty, and gestured to Boddick. “Answers is what I have.”

  Mr. Glebb did a brisk trade in information of a specific sort: he had ties to virtually every money lender in the city, from respectable banks to the meanest sharks, and to the pawnshops and fences as well. Mr. Glebb was a sort of financial matchmaker, putting those in need of money together with those of a lending disposition—for a fee. He loaned no money, but he knew everyone who did. Miss Tolerance had always found him to be reliable, if somewhat tainted by cynicism. She opened her pocket book and withdrew several coins.

  “I shall get straight to the matter. What can you tell me of Lord Lyne?”

  Mr. Glebb pursed his lips together in a soundless whistle. “Flying high, are we?”

  “Oh, I mix in the best society.”

  “Well, they ain’t the best if they ain’t beforehand with the world,” Mr. Glebb advised.

  “Do I understand that to mean that my lord is deep in debt?”

  Glebb shook his head. “Just speaking in a general way, miss. Lyne—” Mr. Glebb put his finger to the side of his nose as if that constituted an aid to memory. A drop of clear fluid hanging there trembled but did not drop. “Banks with Coutts and with Hammersely. Man of property and business, as I recall it.”

  “And what sort of business would that be?” Miss Tolerance asked.

  Glebb shrugged. “New World trade, I think. And the usual sorts of property here at home as well. I can find out more particulars if you’re desirous of it. There’s something else, something in the last few years, but I can’t call it to mind. Tomorrow I can get you a full accounting.”

  “‘Tis why I come to you, sir.”

  “A full dow-see-hay for you on the morrow.” Glebb mangled the French with relish. “This a new customer? No, no, I know you won’t tell me so.” Boddick arrived at that moment with a fresh pot of coffee. “Thankee, Boddick.” Glebb nodded but did not look up at the tapster. “D’you come back, miss. I’ll have something for you.”

  Miss Tolerance rose. “Thank you, Mr. Glebb. May I ask one more favor of you? Would you ask about to learn if this young woman—” she took the portrait from her reticule and showed it to him—”pawned anything here in London in the last fortnight?”

  “Anything?” Glebb blew his nose. “That’s a mighty broad question. You don’t know what she’d be a-pawnin’ of?”

  “Something of the sort that a young woman of good family might have to hand.”

  “I take your meaning, miss. Gee-gaws and pri
nkery. I’ll ask about. Might I know the lady’s name?”

  Miss Tolerance shook her head. “That I cannot tell you, Mr. Glebb.”

  Again Glebb shrugged. “Half of them that gives a name gives a lie anyway.”

  “You have seen what the girl looks like and you may imagine what might be available to her to pawn. If the lack of her name makes the task more difficult, console yourself with the sum you can command of me when the job is done.” She slid a half-crown across the table. “Shall I leave this on account, to be going on with?”

  Glebb nodded. “That’ll do for a start.” He regarded the coin with fondness before he deposited it in his waistcoat pocket. “Good afternoon, Miss Tolerance.”

  “Good afternoon, sir.” Miss Tolerance curtseyed and departed, nodding farewell to Boddick as she went.

  She walked back to Henry Street, enjoying the fine day and the sight of her fellow citizens about their business. On her return to Tarsio’s she ordered tea and went up to the Ladies’ Salon; she had promised her client a report and meant to write it now.

  It proved a more difficult note than she had anticipated. Miss Tolerance had not been idle, but she had not been particularly successful, either, and she was certain that a long list of the inns at which Evadne Thorpe had not been seen would not allay Mrs. Brown’s anxieties. At last Miss Tolerance began to write, framing her note in terms of what the lack of news told her about Miss Thorpe’s whereabouts.

  Unless Miss E and her companion have been more than usually sly, I believe that they must still be in London. No one at any of the coaching inns I have approached has seen any sight of her; and whilst they might have traveled from the city by post, such travel is expensive. As I have not been able to determine any information about the gentleman, I do not know what his finances are and thus how likely post travel might be. It would be very helpful if you could tell me

  Here Miss Tolerance paused and sipped at her tea. She had been about to ask if any of the sister’s jewelry was missing, but would that mean the girl had taken it with her, or that it had been pawned over a period of time to finance the elopement? The latter argued a degree of fixed purpose (or moral laxity) which seemed at odds with Mrs. Brown’s description of her sister.