A Conspiracy of Paper (8 page)

Elias was something of a fop, I suppose, but a thoughtful one—if the thinking fop is no contradiction of terms. I knew him to be a surgeon of uncommon skill, but he was none the most devoted to his art. Had he spent as much time pursuing surgery as he did women, I believe he might have been the first name in fashionable society, but his love of his craft could not compete with his love of his pleasure. Elias was friends with every bawd, whore, and merrymaker in town. Whores, I suspect, liked me because I was pleasant and courteous, and perhaps because they found my Hebrew physiognomy entertaining. They liked Elias, however, because he spent all of his money among them and therefore he was an honored guest in every bawdy house in London.

This dissolute manner of living left him happy but short of ready money. Consequently, he was always eager to offer me assistance for a few pounds thrown in his direction.

In light of Elias’s lax attention to his surgical arts, I was surprised to learn he was about the town assisting a patient when I called on him, so I cooled my heels in the parlor of Mrs. Henry, his landlady. She was a delightful widow; once, I suspect, quite pretty, but now, past thirty-five, she was in the autumn of her beauty. Yet she had charms aplenty to keep me occupied in a parlor, and as I had often detected a fondness she harbored for me, there was no small amount of gratification in passing the time with her.

“Have you some particular business today?” Mrs. Henry asked me as we sat together. She stared bluntly at my head.

I had all but forgotten that I wore a wig. I should have forgotten entirely, but for the unusual warmth of this autumn afternoon. “I had need to appear the great gentleman for a matter of business in which I am currently engaged,” I explained.

“I should very much like to hear more of it,” she told me, as her servant wheeled in the tea things. I found Mrs. Henry to have a most complete service. Tea had not yet reached its stature of domestic necessity, but Mrs. Henry was enamored of the drink, and her tray held a variety of charming china. The drink she poured was a strong blend that she told me had been sent by a brother who was in the East India trade.

“I am employed upon a complicated if uninteresting affair,” I told her evasively, while gently indicating that I wanted none of the sugar she was poised to drop into my tea.

“Do Hebrews not eat sugar?” she asked me with a genuine curiosity.

“As much as anyone, in the abstract,” I told her. “This Hebrew too much enjoys the taste of tea to have it compromised by a cloying sweetness.”

She squinted in confusion, but she handed me the dish just the same. “Can you tell me about this employment?”

“I’m afraid not, madam. I am operating under strict confidentiality at present. Perhaps when the matters are resolved I may be able to inform you—omitting proper names, you understand.”

She leaned forward. “You must learn so much in your line of work that others do not know.”

“You make it seem far more interesting than it is, I assure you. I suspect a woman in your position to have more knowledge of the doings of the town than ever I could.”

“Then should you ever require information, I hope you will not hesitate to ask it of me.”

I thanked her for her kindness just as Elias appeared, to Mrs. Henry’s evident disappointment. He entered the room wearing a scarlet waistcoat, with a royal-blue frilled shirt beneath. His wig was over-large, almost a relic of fashion since past—a bit spotty in places and excessively powdered. It draped onto his angular face, which, like the rest of his body, was thin and marked by sharp and unexpected protrusions of his skeleton. Elias’s trousers had an obvious tear above the left knee, and though they were similar enough to attract no undue attention, I could not help but notice that his shoes were not of precisely the same color. Yet my friend walked in with the dignity of a returned conqueror and the self-assured stance of a favored courtier of Charles II’s day.

“It is so very warm outside, Mrs. Henry,” he said to his landlady, waving an indigo-colored handkerchief at her. “Lady Kentworth nearly fainted, though I took scarcely a thimbleful of blood from her. She has the most delicate constitution, you know. Hardly prepared for this kind of weather in October.” Elias had been marching toward Mrs. Henry, no doubt prepared to pay her in gossip what he could not afford her in rent, but he saw me offer him a slight smile from my tattered but comfortable armchair. “Oh,” he said, as though I were a debt collector. “Weaver.”

“Have I reached you at a bad time, Elias?”

Remembering himself, he forced a smile. “Not at all. Merely a bit out of sorts from this dreadful heat. You must be, as well. Shall I bleed you?” he asked, recovering from his momentary confusion by displaying the kind of impish grin he reserved for the moments he wished to harass me with either railleries or requests for ready money.

Elias thought my refusal to undergo phlebotomy was perhaps the most entertaining thing he knew of, and he jibed at me constantly. “By all means, bleed me,” I said. “And perhaps you would like to remove my organs for me and place them in a box. Where they will be safe.”

“You mock modern medicine,” Elias noted as he strolled across the room and seated himself, “But your mockery does not lessen the value of my surgical skills.” He turned to Mrs. Henry. “Perhaps some tea, madam.”

Mrs. Henry flushed and then stood, holding her body unnaturally erect. She smoothed out her skirts. “You expect many honors, Mr. Gordon, for a man who has not honored me with the rent this quarter. You may pour it yourself,” she said as she left the room.

Upon her departure, I asked Elias how long he had been bedding his landlady.

He took a seat across from me and removed a snuffbox, taking a delicate pinch. “Is it so obvious, then?” He turned to inspect a painting upon the wall, that I might not witness his embarrassment. Elias always preferred that I should think of him as successful with only the most beautiful young ladies of the town. Mrs. Henry was still handsome, but hardly the sort with whom Elias wished to be identified.

“I have never heard of a landlady refusing to pour tea for a tenant upon any other grounds,” I explained. “I assure you, Elias, I have myself negotiated rent in a similar fashion.”

“Gad!” he nearly snorted snuff about the room. “Not that virago with whom you now rent, I hope.”

I laughed. “No, I cannot say that I have had the honor of sharing an intimacy with Mrs. Garrison. Do you think it worth a try?”

“I have heard you Hebrews to be lascivious,” Elias said, “but I have never seen any evidence that you lacked judgment.”

“Nor have I with you,” I told him, hoping to make him feel at ease with my discovery.

He set aside his snuffbox and arose to pour himself a dish of tea. “Well, it’s been a pleasant arrangement, you know. She’s not a terribly demanding mistress, and the money I save in rent is useful.”

“Elias,” I said, “these private matters are always fascinating, and I should very much like to hear about your amorous conquest of all the landladies in London, but I have come upon business.”

He returned to his chair and took a cautious sip of the hot drink. “A very bewigged business, I see. What occupies your thoughts, Weaver—your overly phlegmatic, in want of being bled, thoughts?”

“Quite a bit, in fact. I have a complicated matter to attend to, and a ticklish one to set aside before I can address it.” Feeling invigorated by Mrs. Henry’s excellent tea, I took the time to tell Elias not only of my unexpected encounter with Balfour but also of my troubles in retrieving Sir Owen’s pocketbook. I felt perfectly at ease confiding in Elias, for though he loved gossip more than any man I knew, he had never betrayed a confidence when I had asked for his silence.

“I am not at all surprised to learn that Sir Owen Nettleton should find his life complicated by whores and the French pox,” Elias assured me with a smug twitch of his eyebrows.

“You know him, then?”

“I know the principals in fashionable life as well as any man in this metropolis. Besides,” he added with the practiced look of the sly rogue, “who do you think it is that has treated Sir Owen each time he finds himself clapped?”

“What can you tell me of him?”

Elias shrugged. “No more than you might imagine. He holds a large and prosperous estate in Yorkshire, but his revenue in rent is no match for the costs of his pleasures. He’s a notorious bawd and a womanizer—an exceptionally vigorous one, even by my standards. I shouldn’t be surprised if he had tried every whore in town.”

“He takes no small pride in his prolific dealings with the ladies of the street.”

“These men of wealth must do something to fill up their time. Now, who is this jade who took his things? I wish to know what goods your little misadventure has taken out of circulation.”

I gave him her name.

“Kate Cole!” he exclaimed. “Why, I’ve tasted of her wares—no poor wares are they, either. You’ve gone and ruined a perfectly good whore, Weaver.”

“Am I the only man in London not to have swived this Kate Cole?” I gasped.

“Well, I should not think it too late,” Elias said with a grin. “She must owe you something if you’ve purchased for her a room in the Press Yard. You could buy tumbles for a year on what a month in the Press Yard will cost you.”

I opened my mouth in order to change the topic, but Elias, as he often did, took command of the conversation. “This matter of Balfour, now
that
is interesting. I can only imagine your disorder when you heard him speak so of your father’s death. You will certainly contact your uncle now.”

Elias knew of my estrangement from my family, and indeed he had often urged me to approach my uncle. He, too, had spent several years in the displeasure of his father. Elias had been in attendance at Saint Andrews University when his father had learned of malicious, if entirely accurate, accounts of my friend’s many debaucheries. This knowledge had produced a rupture between Elias and his family, and rather than continuing in studies that would have led to a career as a physician, Elias was forced to leave and take up as a surgeon—without burdening himself by attending to the usual seven years of apprenticeship. After many years of no communication, Elias had managed to resolve the difficulties with his family, if not entirely, then at least to the point where he received a quarterly remittance. This arrangement seemed to me to be to everyone’s advantage, for Elias’s older brother, to whom the family estate should descend, was a sickly fellow, and the family patriarch wished to at least be on amicable terms with Elias should fate decree that he become the scion. I could easily relate to Elias’s difficulties as a younger son, for my elder brother, José, had always appeared to my father to be destined for greatness, while I, the bearer of the congenital defect of having been born four years after him, had been made to feel like an expendable appendage.

I recounted for Elias the details of my conversation with Balfour, and my friend became less interested in mending for me the rupture with my family than in learning more about what Balfour believed to be the true story of these deaths. “I must say, Weaver, that this inquiry is indeed unusual. How will you find a murderer whom no one has seen or even believes exists?”

“I do not know that I can. But I must look to Kate Cole first, I think.”

“Kate Cole is devilish less intriguing, I assure you, than your phantom murderer. But you are right—we must attend to these letters, and that shall certainly give me time to think on how we are to proceed with finding this killer.”

“I say, Elias, you are an enthusiastic sort. Balfour is hardly paying me so much that I shall be able to share excessively with you.”

“You wound me, sir. You think it is only money I am after. I find the challenge stimulating, you know. But I assume your wealthy baronet shall be able to reward me more generously than your impoverished parvenu.”

“My wealthy baronet has so far proved himself generous.” I now had Elias’s attention, and explained to him that I was in a bit of a bind and required him to play a role for me.

“It sounds shockingly exciting,” he said, his eyes sparkling at the thought of this adventure.

“Oh, I hope not too exciting.”

I had concocted a delightfully simple plan to retrieve Sir Owen’s letters of this prig Arnold. I would enter the Laughing Negro dressed as a porter. Kate Cole had no doubt spoken to Arnold of a muscular gentleman, and I did not want to complicate things by having him suspect me to be the man who killed Jemmy. Elias, whom no one would accuse of being overly muscled, would enter and speak to Arnold, explaining that he was the owner of the letters. I had authorized him to give up to twenty pounds for their return, though he was to start with five pounds, for I still clung to some small hope that this business of the pocketbook would not run me into debt. If I could profit but a few pounds, and Sir Owen, in turn, was to speak well of me in public, then I would have good reason to consider my efforts well expended.

I had advised Elias that when dealing with this thief he was not to use Sir Owen’s name—for there was a good chance that he had not read the letters, or at least not read them all the way through. I was sure Sir Owen’s contrition and his widow’s sentiments were too dull for a common thief. In any event, even if he knew the letters were not Elias’s, I could not imagine him refusing the coin on a matter of principle.

I arrived at the Laughing Negro near seven in the evening. I easily spotted a man with coppery whiskers and bristly hair several shades darker than his beard. One eye was a cold and penetrating blue, the other lay dead in his skull. This was the man Kate had described to me. He sat at a table with four other men, each as dangerous in appearance and as foul in grooming habits as he. They were a miserable and drunken lot, grimly rolling a few dice back and forth across the table at one another. I paid for a pint of yeasty ale and sat as nearly behind him as I could, selecting a spot from which I could best observe Arnold and his companions without appearing to do so.

Elias came in precisely as I told him. His fanciful attire—all bright reds and yellows—rendered him the object of the room’s attention, and the scrutiny instantly made him uneasy. I judged his discomfort a useful thing, however, for a gentleman in such a place should be uneasy. I had withheld from him Kate Cole’s description of Arnold that he might have no expectations of the man. He thus inquired of the counterman, who pointed him to the fellow we sought.