The Sleeping Partner (22 page)

Sir Walter frowned. “You were hurt yesterday.”

“I was, but not more gravely than I have been before. The risk of what I do is not new to me, Sir Walter. I go armed for a reason. My work carries some hazard, but I am well able to defend myself. Most of the time,” she added fairly, with a gesture to the lump on her head.

“Until you grow eyes in the back of your head, your friends will continue to worry about you,” Sir Walter said quietly.

“And I thank my friends for their concern—and their friendship! I am well aware how I put you out by arriving here, uninvited, to make a sickroom of your parlor.”

Sir Walter shook his head. “I only wish I could do more.”

Miss Tolerance looked at her friend’s narrow, foxy face and read a fleeting, and disquieting, tenderness. But the expression lasted only a moment before he asked, “Would you like me to make inquiries about this Tickenor?” She was able to smile with genuine appreciation.

“I would like it very much. Now: as it is Sunday, perhaps you mean to go to church? I beg you will not permit my presence here to keep you from that. Frankly, the matter of dressing and eating breakfast has quite done me up.”

Sir Walter left her to doze before the fire, where Mrs. Yarrow occasionally appeared with tea and delicacies intended to tempt an invalid’s appetite. Miss Tolerance found she could not read for more than a few minutes at a time before her headache returned. She had no other occupation: her concentration was too scattered to spend time in rumination upon Evadne Thorpe’s whereabouts. In consequence, by the time Sir Walter returned that afternoon Miss Tolerance was bored and impatient. It was a considerable effort to be cordial.

Rather than take offense, Sir Walter appeared to understand without saying the effect of enforced idleness. “Mrs. Yarrow says you have not eaten enough to keep a sparrow alive, by which I think she means she has been plying you with cakes you did not want all day long. Let us dine—and let her go home—and perhaps we will have a hand of cards.” He set about amusing her with such easy kindness that Miss Tolerance was soon in a better frame of mind. They dined, and after dinner played piquet for paper stakes; Miss Tolerance was pleased to find that her thoughts were becoming orderly enough to permit her to beat Sir Walter.

“Unless, of course, you permitted me to win.”

Sir Walter shook his head. “I would do many things to preserve our friendship, Miss Tolerance, but to cheat at cards is not one of them. I believe this is my deal.”

Miss Tolerance handed him the deck. “What new tales of Bow Street?”

“The usual sorts: thievery in the main. A woman brought a complaint that the cook at a chop house had put broken glass into her dinner, but it was proved that she hoped to extort money from him.”

Miss Tolerance declared
tierce.
“How does anyone think of such things? I never should.”

“You have an honest soul.
How high?
I wish you might have been there—the woman brought her family, all ready to swear she was made of truth. Mrs. Bread—”

“
To ten.
Bread was her name?” Miss Tolerance chuckled. It made her head ache, but only a little.

“Good. And a half dozen little Breads, and an Aunt Bread and Uncle Bread and a dozen neighbors who might well have been Butters for all I could tell.”

“I take it you are not always so amused by the people who come before you?”

“Very rarely. But this has been a week for eccentrics. I had to sentence a man who broke into an apothecary’s shop to steal medicine to treat his son’s ague, and an old woman accused her neighbor of stealing her cat, and told me she knew it was her cat because she had given birth to it.”

“To the cat?”

“To the cat.” Sir Walter looked at her over his cards. “The animal was brought to court to testify for the plaintiff, but it stood mute, and I confess I could see no resemblance between the old woman and her putative child—”

Miss Tolerance laughed hard enough to make her head hurt, and all at once she found herself near to tears. She pressed her lips together to contain an expression of her pain and fatigue.

Sir Walter observed it at once. “You are tired.” He put his cards aside and got to his feet. “Please let me help you upstairs.”

Miss Tolerance was certain she could climb the narrow stairs by herself, but permitted Sir Walter to take her elbow and assist her to her chamber. The hand supporting her was warm and solid; she was again conscious of an intimacy in Sir Walter’s gaze. When they reached the door of her room, however, Sir Walter released her elbow. “You will be all right without assistance?” he asked.

She assured him that she would, and thanked him gravely. There they parted as chastely as could be imagined, and Miss Tolerance went in to lay her aching head on the cool pillow.

Miss Tolerance woke in the morning determined upon returning to Manchester Square. “I have trespassed upon your kindness long enough. My aunt will be wondering if I am lying dead under London Bridge, and my client will wish some report of the inquiries I have
not
made while I have idled here.”

“I wish I could persuade you to idle a little longer.” Sir Walter looked disapproving but did not attempt to persuade Miss Tolerance against her plan. He only requested that she break her fast there, and that he be permitted to take her back to Manchester Square before he went to Bow Street. “I hope you will not exert yourself too greatly for the next several days,” he said mildly.

Miss Tolerance’s stomach had finally settled, and she set to the food Mrs. Yarrow provided with an appetite. She was aware of a certain tension between Sir Walter and herself which she thought was inevitable, coming at the end of this period of enforced intimacy. She did not directly address it, but made a point of thanking Sir Walter again for his kindness, and of apologizing for the disruption of his household.

“I hope you will always come to me when you need assistance.” Then, as if he too felt the awkwardness of their situation he joked, “Your arrival has inestimably improved Michael’s bragging rights among his friends.”

“Has it? I am delighted to help Michael—”

Miss Tolerance was interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Penryn, the younger of Sir Walter’s investigators. He was a Cornishman, short and wiry, his coat loose on his frame, his dark hair falling untidily around his unshaven face; Miss Tolerance knew him to be clever.

“Beg pardon, Zor Walter—” the Runner stopped short, took in Miss Tolerance’s presence at the table, bobbed his head in her direction and tactfully did not remark upon it. “Miss, Zor Walter, there’s been murder done in Primroose Street. Will ye come?” Penryn looked at Miss Tolerance; did he fear that she would keep Sir Walter from his duty?

“You must go at once,” she said. “You must not wait for me.”

Sir Walter was as composed as if murder at breakfast was quite a usual thing for him. “Penryn, please fetch a hackney carriage. Miss Tolerance, if you will go so far out of your way as to accompany us to Primrose Street, I will return you to Manchester Square afterward.”

“There is no need—”

“There is every need. I told you I would take you home, and I will not be forsworn. And you may be of help to me. I should value any opinions you may form upon seeing the scene of the crime. You have a unique eye.”

Miss Tolerance was a woman working in a man’s world, and her vanity was not immune to an such an appeal
.
She smiled, and Sir Walter sent Michael upstairs to fetch down their visitor’s few possessions.

Primrose Street was little more than a dozen streets from Sir Walter’s house. The coach Penryn had hired was new and passably comfortable for a public conveyance, but it was small and crowded, the cobbled streets full of ruts, the ride a series of starts and stops, and the sunlight very bright in her eyes. By the time they arrived in Primrose Street Miss Tolerance was forced to acknowledge to herself that she was not completely recovered. She said nothing, and whatever Sir Walter suspected, he did not offer sympathy or coddling. They alit at the corner of Bishopsgate and pushed through the inevitable crowd, with Penryn to the fore bawling, “Make way! Clear way for Magiztrate! Oot the way there!”

They won through the crowd and found Hook, Penryn’s partner, standing protectively over the body, which lay face-down in a puddle of blood and gutter-muck. Hook was a little taller than Penryn and very thick through the body. He stood with his chest puffed out as if the red waistcoat he wore—the uniform of the Bow Street runners—might itself hold the crowd at bay. The crowd seemed unimpressed and an elderly woman was screaming something at Hook as Sir Walter’s party arrived.

“Took yer time,” Hook growled at Penryn. He turned to Sir Walter, but was stopped, apparently by the sight of Miss Tolerance beside him.

“What report can you make?” Sir Walter asked.

Miss Tolerance saw Penryn exchange a look with Hook that offered sympathy but no explanation, then he stepped in to push the crowd back. Hook turned to the magistrate. “Watch reported this man ‘ere found dead about an hour ago on ‘is rounds, sir.” Hook took out a small book and thumbed to a page where he had written some notes. “Being as the Watch is known to me personally, he come fetched me, and I been ‘ere wiv the body since—sent Penryn there to bring you. Nobody in this crowd knows ‘im—he gestured at the corpse. “‘E seems to ‘ave been right clawed-off, like someone ‘ated ‘im particular. I waited for you to turn out the pockets, sir.”

Sir Walter nodded and bent to examine the corpse.

Miss Tolerance, very much aware that she was here as an observer, stood to one side and watched as Hook and Sir Walter bent to roll the dead man over on his back. He had been beaten so severely that his face looked like something better suited to a butcher’s stall, and there were marks of throttling on his neck. Half-dried blood mixed with muck oozed sluggishly from one ear. Miss Tolerance swallowed hard, then leaned forward to point at something.

“He was struck there,” she said, indicating a swollen area behind the ear. “Perhaps that was the first blow, which rendered it easier for his assailant to continue?”

Hook opened his mouth, then closed it. Sir Walter nodded thoughtfully.

Hook sank to his haunches and began to pull out the pockets of the dead man. Each article he removed, he handed without comment to Sir Walter: a small purse of red leather stamped with a fading gilt design, containing six shillings fourpence halfpenny; a broken clay pipe; a pocket knife; two pocket handkerchiefs, one ink-blotted and the other incongruously clean; a pouch of tobacco; and a knitted scarf in stripes of gray and red. There was a wallet with a dozen more scraps of loose paper, most with figures written on, a few with names or addresses, all of which Hook read to Sir Walter before handing them over.

“I beg your pardon, what was that last?” Miss Tolerance asked.

Hook looked at her with frank dislike, clearly wishing that she would go away and leave the business to the men. His eyes flicked to Sir Walter, then he sighed and repeated, “An address for someone name o’ Thorpe, at Squale ‘Ouse in Pitfield Street.”

Miss Tolerance frowned. The sunlight was making her head hurt, the smells of urine, dung, and blood made her queasy, and she felt stupid and slow. Something about the address—it meant something to her. Squale House.

“May I see the paper?” she asked.

Sir Walter nodded to Hook, who handed it to her, scowling.

The note was written in tidy clerk’s script on a scrap of vellum:
Thorpe, Squale House, Pitfield Street.

“In that neighborhood, Squale House ain’t no mansion,” Hook said.

“No, it’s an almshouse,” Miss Tolerance said vaguely. For a moment she could not recall how she knew that, and yet she saw the place in her mind, and a plaque:
Squale House for the Relief of the Poor.
She had wondered who Squale was.

And then the threads knitted themselves together. But what was the name and direction of Lord Lyne’s younger son doing in the pocket of a nameless corpse?

Chapter Twelve

It is a curious feature of a blow to the head that, for some time after the injury itself occurs, the thoughts and memories of the victim may be considerably disordered. Miss Tolerance had made this discovery on earlier trials and found it no less true, or frustrating, now. Her limbs would take her where she wished; her stomach had settled, the pain was abating. But to her disgust she found that she began sentences and forgot how she meant to end them; that where she sensed a connection between two thoughts she could not always articulate it. Riding with Sir Walter from Primrose Street to Manchester Square, Miss Tolerance struggled to explain.

“I know—I
know
that I know something more than I can put my finger upon. The paper—”

“There were a great many papers in that unfortunate man’s pockets,” Sir Walter pointed out. “I wish you will not distress yourself. You are still far from well—”

“I beg your pardon, Sir Walter, but I am not an invalid! I thank you very much for your care—indeed, I can hardly express my gratitude!—but please do not tell me not to distress myself. When I know there is something I am forgetting, it does not help to be treated like a pretty simpleton.”

“I would never presume—” Sir Walter began.

I have hurt him.
“I know.” Miss Tolerance made her tone conciliatory. “I am sorry, Sir Walter. My irritation is with myself, with my uncooperative brain, which will not tell me what it has locked away. And I, all ungentlemanly, lash out at you when you have naught but concern for me.”

To his credit, Sir Walter took Miss Tolerance’s apology and her assertion seriously. With a little humor he pointed out that Miss Tolerance had time to wait until her thoughts re-arranged themselves. “There is no hurry. The poor fellow will not become more dead.”

That made good sense as far as the dead man himself was concerned. But Miss Tolerance was certain that the man must be connected to Evadne Thorpe—and for Miss Thorpe time might be of the greatest concern.