The Sleeping Partner

by Madeleine E. Robins

  Miss Tolerance blinked away the image this colorful phrase produced.

  “So two years ago he was in dire straights. I saw no sign of it when I called at his house. What happened?”

  “The ready flowed to him from some place, Miss T. What’s troublous is, I can’t tell from where.” Glebb scowled. “I’d know about loans, in course. Unless they was private. To my mind there’s somethin’ havy-cavy about a fortune I can’t find a trace of.”

  To my mind as well. “And how does Lyne’s business now?”

  Glebb shrugged. “Prospering. No debt to speak of, the Indian property’s back in ‘is hands. The South American plantation’s still his, though I don’t know he’s seen a penny from it lately, even trading with his contacts there. But how’d he come about? Where’d that money come from? Offends my professional dignity that I can’t find it out.”

  “I understand completely, Mr. Glebb.” Miss Tolerance grimaced sympathetically. “And the son?”

  “Older son, yes. No love lost there; a regular Squire of Alsatia, can’t wait to spend ‘is Dad’s money. Cards and drink and money, mostly, if I understand right. Deep in debt, he was, only a year ago. Then all ‘is trade debts paid—which means the gambling debts must ‘a been paid long before. Trade is always paid last. There was talk a few years ago that Lyne meant to ship the boy off to South America to learn some business—and keep ‘im from the card sharps—but when things got so unsettled there nothin’ came of it.”

  “I imagine all Mr. Thorpe’s associates are similarly dissipated?”

  “Oh, proper noblemen, every one of ‘em. From what I hear, he ain’t the worst of his set by a long chalk—more for cards and wine than—” Glebb paused, as if concerned for his guest’s sensibilities.

  “The others prefer fornication to faro?” Miss Tolerance suggested. Glebb nodded. “Well, this is very useful. Now, what of my other question?”

  “Pawning of items by that pretty girl? I’ll assume you don’t want me sayin’ the name of Lyne’s daughter in the same breath—”

  “You understand me very well. Has this nameless female pawned anything?”

  Glebb shook his head. “Nothing’s come on the market that was recognized as belonging to that household. Nor anyone recognized a girl of that description pawning trinkets. She might ‘ave sent an agent, but that could be anyone: Abigail, friend—”

  Lover. “Have you any other counsel, Mr. Glebb?”

  “I hear Lyne’s a rough man to cross, Miss T. Do you ‘ave a care. As for the girl—” he shrugged and dabbed at his nose with the kerchief. “I’d not be happy to have a girl of mine without friends in the city.”

  Miss Tolerance roles. “Nor would I. For the moment at least, I have appointed myself her friend, Mr. Glebb.”

  Chapter Eight

  Miss Tolerance did not consider Men as a group to be a particularly tidy species, and it piqued her considerably that Evadne Thorpe’s lover was so tidy a fellow that he had left no discernible trail. Not a single person she had spoken to could name man or boy who might have been in the girl’s confidence, let alone her lover. To further muddy the waters, the girl had disappeared after a quarrel with her father which did not involve the lover (that might have made her elopement more comprehensible). Lord Lyne, with his business reversals and repairs, was an interesting study, as was Mr. Henry Thorpe. Did they bear more scrutiny? And if so, with which should she start?

  Miss Nottingale and Mr. Glebb had both mentioned Thorpe’s profligacy. Thorpe himself said he ran with a bad crowd. Is it possible, Miss Tolerance wondered, that this is not a simple elopement? That one of Thorpe’s creditors might have taken the girl as a means to compel payment? The note Evadne Thorpe had left behind gave the lie to that theory, but anyone might force a girl to write a note. To think the thing out to its conclusion: if Evadne Thorpe had been taken and Henry Thorpe contacted to pay a ransom, would he be so facetious? Would even a hardened rake let his sister be taken in lieu of payment? And would not the family have produced the cash to redeem the girl by now? Mr. Glebb would have learned of it had Lyne suddenly shown a need for a large sum of cash, but he had said nothing. Miss Tolerance was inclined, in the absence of other intelligence, to dismiss the florid notion of ransom. Still, information was what she needed, and she had a notion of how to acquire it.

  She would have to return to Duke of York Street.

  Bart and two of his confederates were standing on the corner of Jermyn Street when she approached him. She watched with a little amusement the dawn of apprehension on his face, that the fellow who walked toward him was actually herself. Miss Tolerance had no wish for Lyne or his family to find her talking with sweeps at the end of their street.

  “A stroll, miss? A walk, like?” Bart’s sang-froid was admirable.

  “Exactly like a walk.” They went up Jermyn Street, pausing to examine a handsome blue coat in a tailor’s window, then continuing to thread between pedestrians until they were several streets away. They stopped again, this time in the perfumed doorway of a tobacconist whose wares could be seen in tiers of neat white canisters and jars.

  “Your assignment has changed,” Miss Tolerance told the boy.

  Bart shrugged. “No more money, then, miss?”

  “On the contrary, I shall need you boys to work for several days. I hope an extra sixpence a day will not burden you?”

  The boy’s regret that the assignment was about to end was expressed by his relief at its enlargement. He grinned widely, his ragged teeth bright against a grimy face. Miss Tolerance was warmed by that grin.

  “No, miss, ‘ardly a burden t’all, that is.”

  “Well, then. I shall need a boy to follow each of the family members in that house—that is, Lord Lyne, the father—”

  “That ol’ man’s a lord?” Bart was impressed.

  “He is. Lord Lyne, the father. His two sons, Lady Brereton—”

  “Wait, oo’s that?”

  “The older of the two ladies in the picture I showed you yesterday. And her husband, Sir Adam—” she gave a brief description of her brother. “That’s five boys, and one to stay behind and watch the house. Neither son lives there, but when either visits I should like to know where he goes afterward. And I shall need a report each morning of what you observe. Can you do all that?”

  “‘A bender apiece, each day?”

  “Sixpence, yes.”

  “And we can still sweep when there’s no follerin’ to be done?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The boy puffed out his chest and became very important. “We’s your men, miss.”

  “Excellent.” They stepped out of the doorway and continued on along the street. “Now: I am very interested to know to whom Mr. Henry Thorpe—that’s the older brother—speaks. But any visits to or from the house, to any member—”

  “I understand, miss. Is they—Bart stopped dead and looked up, his eyes bright. “Is they spies? ‘Ave you told the Watch?”

  Miss Tolerance sighed. In the current climate what was the boy to think? There were likely not so many spies in England as the broadsheets liked to suggest, but the threat was real; she herself had clashed with a pair in the last sixmonth. But most of the villainy to be encountered on the streets of London was not authored by Bonaparte but by more local criminals. “No, they are not spies. The Watch does not need to know of my inquiry. I am simply doing a job of work that requires silence from me—and my assistants.”

  “Gotcher, miss.” Bart nodded. “Quiet as mice, we is. And you want us to start today?”

  “Now,” Miss Tolerance said firmly.

  “Right-o, then. I’m off.” As good as his word, Bart turned and ran off, showing Miss Tolerance a pair of heels far cleaner than any other easily viewed part of himself. Miss Tolerance followed more leisurely, reclaimed her horse from the boy she had charged with watching it, and returned to Manchester Square.

  She had exhausted most of the inns she might reasonably expect a girl and her lover to uti
lize in flight from the city, promised lavish payment and extracted assurances at nearly all of them that she would be alerted should a girl answering Miss Thorpe’s description appear there. She saw little point in visiting more inns; it was a tedious job, and she was glad to think she might quit it. Still, there were hours of daylight left.

  She determined to use them to visit as many of the Magdalene houses as she might. It was possible Evadne Thorpe could have taken refuge in one. To approach such an establishment in men’s dress would hopelessly prejudice the proprietors against her; she changed once more into her respectable blue walking dress and set out again, this time by chair.

  Most reformatories were small, established by some organization or person with a charitable bent, and housing only a handful of women who had come to escape a life they found intolerable. “Beaten into submission with religion,” Mrs. Brereton had said of these women. “Trained in hemming and psalms, and sent off to be laundry maids and die early.” Miss Tolerance thought a woman was as likely to die early as a whore as by working in a laundry, but she knew better than to argue with her aunt upon the subject. She gave the direction of a Magdalene house of some fame—the proprietor, a Mrs. Rillington, was known to give tours on Tuesday afternoons for the edification of the gentry, in order to raise subscriptions for the support of her good works. Miss Tolerance did not expect to enjoy the visit, and in this expectation she was not disappointed.

  Mrs. Rillington’s was a tall, narrow house of dark brick. There was something severe in its aspect, as there was in the dress of the girl who answered the door. She was a wan little thing in a cheap brown gown with a muslin apron over all, her light hair scraped back and hidden in a muslin cap. She took Miss Tolerance’s name without expression, disappeared for a moment, then returned to lead her down the whitewashed hall. From behind a closed door Miss Tolerance heard a woman’s voice reading scripture. There was no other sound in the house. At the end of the hall the girl opened a door, stepped aside to let Miss Tolerance enter, then vanished silently.

  Miss Tolerance stepped into a comfortable parlor filled with heavy, old-fashioned furniture. There was a sofa, several chairs paired with small tables, and, at the end of the room near the fireplace, a large table in use as a desk. Seated behind the desk in the attitude of royalty receiving an embassy from afar was a square-faced woman of middle years.

  “I am Mrs. Rillington,” she said, as if there might be dispute about the honor. She rose and inclined her head. She was massively built, her silk gown of the same brown as the maid’s. If Mrs. Rillington dressed in imitation of and solidarity with her inmates, it had not that effect. Her dress was clearly worth a dozen of the maid’s gown, and her gray hair was covered with a cap of expensive lace.

  Miss Tolerance curtsied.“I thank you for seeing me, ma’am.”

  “I am happy that you have come to us, my dear.” Her tone, as much as her words, suggested that she had delivered this homily often. “It is time to turn your back on a life of—”

  Miss Tolerance interrupted. “I am not come to be reformed, ma’am, although I do ask for your help.”

  From the look on Mrs. Rillington’s face it was clear that she was not much accustomed to interruption. “If you do not wish to turn away from sin, how may I possibly help you? From your name—”

  “My name is my name, but I am not one of those women whom you aim to assist. “Miss Tolerance had no intention of discussing her history with this woman. She hurried on. “I am searching for a girl—”

  Mrs. Rillington nodded and smirked. “A lost lamb. A young sister, perhaps, who has gone astray? Who can say what hardships your sister has already faced. If you find her here you will know, at least, that she has received the most tender care and instruction. With God’s help—”

  Dear heaven, must I hear the entire sermon? Miss Tolerance sought a way to cut the other woman short. She struck upon a politic lie.

  “Mrs. Rillington, our mother is very ill. It is her wish to see my sister one more time before—” she paused delicately, her voice suggestive of tears. “And if my sister is not here I must look elsewhere. You will pardon my impatience?”

  The melodrama of a dying parent appeared to excuse Miss Tolerance’s haste. Mrs. Rillington rose from her desk and proceeded, like a great ship under sail, to lead Miss Tolerance down the hall to the door she had passed earlier.

  “Girls!” Mrs. Rillington stood in the doorway blocking Miss Tolerance’s view of the room, but from the sudden attentive bustle she understood that all the women in the room had come to attention. “We have a visitor who is seeking her sister. She will pass among you; turn your faces up to God’s light, my dears!” She stepped aside to let Miss Tolerance enter.

  The room was a little smaller than the parlor they had lately quit, whitewashed and with no ornament but two windows that admitted afternoon sunlight. Wooden benches lined three walls, facing two chairs at the head of the room where two women sat, both with Bibles open in their laps. On the benches sat the rest of the inmates of the house, perhaps a dozen women, each with a workbasket at her side and a piece of sewing in her hands. There were candles—the room reeked of tallow—in tall holders at the ends of each bench, but they had not yet been lit, and the women bent to peer at their work.

  Mrs. Rillington urged her visitor forward. “Walk among them, madam. Girls, your prayers!”

  At her command all the women in the room raised their faces up and began to murmur the Lord’s Prayer. Miss Tolerance walked among them as required, looking at each woman’s face. They were of varying ages, all thin and tired looking; several appeared sickly; at least two of them had once been very pretty. None of them was Evadne Thorpe. Miss Tolerance finished her circuit, shook her head, and thanked the women for their time.

  Mrs. Rillington frowned. “Back to your work, then!” She turned and left, compelling the visitor to follow. The readers took up their Bibles again. In the hall Mrs. Rillington waited to dismiss Miss Tolerance.

  “I am sorry your sister was not here, my dear. If you will give me her name I can tell you if she comes—”

  Miss Tolerance had no intention of giving Evadne Thorpe’s name to this woman. “By then it is likely to be too late to help my mother, ma’am. I thank you very much indeed for your assistance. I must continue my search, but first,” she took a coin from her reticule and pressed it into the other woman’s hand. “Let me give you something toward the maintenance of this good house.”

  Mrs. Rillington nodded as if it were only her due. She did not wish Miss Tolerance luck in her search—apparently no girl not fortunate enough to come to her was anything to her—but did wait until Miss Tolerance was on her way out the door to examine the amount of the coin she had been given.

  The rest of Miss Tolerance’s afternoon was very much the same. She managed to visit four more reformatory homes, all similar in look and piety to Mrs. Rillington’s. Two were under the aegis of the church, one was a private charity, and the last was run by a pair of beleaguered Roman Sisters, but all of them depressed Miss Tolerance mightily. By the time she had left the last it was near dusk and she was hungry. She had not been to Tarsio’s that day; perhaps Lady Brereton had left a message for her. She gave the chairmen orders for Henry Street and sat back. She had now a long list of places Evadne Thorpe had not been seen, and between that and the effect of visiting five Magdalene houses in a single afternoon, she felt in need of restoratives.

  Corton, Tarsio’s second porter, met her at the door. “I was just about to send round to you, miss. You’ve a visitor just come.”

  Miss Tolerance raised her eyebrows interrogatively. “Salon or kitchen, Corton?” If this was a tapster from a coaching inn neither he nor Tarsio’s clientele would be comfortable with her interviewing him in the Ladies’ Salon. Corton took her meaning at once.

  “I’d reckon you might want to go somewhere else, miss. The Spotted Dog, p’raps? He’s waiting downstairs.”

  Miss Tolerance understood from this that he
r caller was an upper servant whose dignity would not permit him to be visited in the kitchen. “The Spotted Dog is an excellent suggestion.” She pressed a coin into his hand. “If you will tell the man that I will meet him there in five minutes?”

  Corton, delighted to have provided an appropriate solution to a problem, bowed Miss Tolerance out of the club before going to give her message to the visitor.

  The Spotted Dog was one of those public houses which cater to London’s serving class. As its habitués were in the main upper serving-men with strong opinions on what constituted proper service, it was as comfortable a meeting place as Tarsio’s might have been. Miss Tolerance arrived, causing a little stir by bringing her female self into a surrounding as masculine as any club in London, bespoke a pot of coffee, and sat by a window. There was an observable hierarchy among the clientele, based both upon their own rank and the position of their employers. Miss Tolerance witnessed a passage between a senior servant from a gentleman’s household, attempting to maintain his status with a junior man in service to a Marquess. The Marquess’s man appeared to be winning. Faint strains of “When we were visited by the earl of Liverpool…” could be heard from the footman as she went past.

  “Miss Tolerance?”

  The man who inquired for her was short, bandy-legged, and wiry. From his build Miss Tolerance would have taken him for a stableman, but he wore a suit of broadcloth appropriate to an indoor servant. He had short-cropped white hair, very blue eyes, and the ruddy complexion of the inebriate. He seemed sober enough now, however. He presented a note to her.

  “Lady Brereton’s compliments, miss. I believe you were wishful to speak to someone from the house.”

  “Indeed I was, sir. Pray sit. Will you take coffee, ale, or wine?” Miss Tolerance opened the note from Lady Brereton, which introduced her visitor as the chief footman at Lord Lyne’s house, by name John Wheeler. Mr. Wheeler requested ale, which was ordered at once.

  “Lady Brereton will have told you why I wished to meet with you?”