The Sleeping Partner (27 page)

Miss Tolerance curtsied. “I am Miss Tolerance, sir. I am seeking Mr. Thorpe.”

Hearing her name, with its implication that she was not one of the
virtuous
poor, Parkin’s manner became more distant. “I regret, Mr. Thorpe is not here. Is there some way in which I may help you?” His tone suggested he hoped there was not.

“Perhaps, sir. Can you tell me if a Mr. Tom Proctor ever called upon Mr. Thorpe?”

Mr. Parkin looked blankly at Miss Tolerance. “Proctor?” He shook his head. “I don’t know the name. We’ve a good many visitors in the course of the day, but most of them are women and children—” he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the classrooms. “Some visitors must be kept away; men who visit are sometimes seeking the victims of their own brutality—”

Miss Tolerance detected the beginning of a well-rehearsed sermon. “I don’t believe that Mr. Proctor is one such, Mr. Parkin. That is really all I needed to learn. When Mr. Thorpe returns, would you tell him of my visit and my question? He will know how to contact me. It is a matter of some urgency,” she said.

Parkin, seemingly untroubled that his lecture had been interrupted, nodded. Miss Tolerance curtsied and turned; Parkin did not trouble himself to see her to the door. As she left, Miss Tolerance reflected that were she in need, assistance would have come more palatably from Mr. John Thorpe than from his colleague.

Until she could speak with Mr. Thorpe it was impossible to tell what importance to put upon the paper found in Tom Proctor’s pocket. Had the man spoken to Thorpe? Upon what business? When? Miss Tolerance picked her way carefully down the steps and came face to face with Hettie the pickpocket. Without thought Miss Tolerance put her hand to her reticule.

“Ooo ye wantin’ this time, dearie? An’ wossit worth to ye?” Hettie reached out her hand to Miss Tolerance, up.

Miss Tolerance considered. “Are you here most days?”

Hettie nodded vigorously. “When I’m not dining with the Prince o’ Wales, I’m ‘ere rain or shine and fog betwixt ‘em.”

“Do you know Mr. Thorpe, who runs the alms house?”

“Which, the sourish fellow wiv the yellow poll or the nice liberal gent?”

“I believe,” Miss Tolerance said, “he would be the liberal gent.”

Hettie licked her lips. “Lovely. Nice manners, sometimes ‘as tuppence for an old woman, too. Din’ even ‘old it agin me when I tried the dip on ‘im.”

“A true philanthropist. Tell me, do you see who comes and goes at the alms house? Excellent. Did you ever see a young man—”she struggled to call more of Proctor to mind than his birthmark and scarf. “A young man, tall, dressed like a clerk. Dark hair and a strawberry mark here—” she pointed to her own left cheek—”very likely wearing a red and gray scarf.”

“Straw-bry mark, miss?” Hettie mimed thought with a finger to her brow. The odor of stale hops and juniper berry clung to her; each time she opened her mouth there was a whiff of decay: one of her teeth was rotting in her head. “Straw-bry mark an’ a scarf. Might be I did, miss. Lemme think on it a moment.” She scratched her scalp audibly. “Coupla days ago, this’d be? Great gawk wiv ‘is ‘air floppin’ down so—” one gnarled finger sketched a diagonal line across her brow—”an’ the mark right there, shaped bottle-like.” She grinned. “Ye might say that’s a shape I got a familiarity wiv, miss. ‘E gone into the alms house, then come right out again. Matter of a minute ‘r two.”

“Do you know if he spoke with Mr. Th—the liberal gent?”

Hettie looked affronted. “I ain’t the damned val-let, keepin’ track of who’s jawin’ to who.”

“Of course not,” Miss Tolerance said. “I only wondered. And this was two days ago?”

Again the woman scratched her scalp. “One day’s like the other ‘ere. No, the bell was ringin’ for church, so p’raps it was Sunday. It wun’t raining, that I know.”

It had not rained for a fortnight. Miss Tolerance sighed and gave Hettie a pair of tuppenny pieces. Before she could thank her the woman had scuttled away in the direction of the gin shop.

All very suggestive, but nothing conclusive. Somewhere, she thought, must be the thread to pull to unravel this mystery, but whether Evadne Thorpe would prove to be at the center of it she was not sure. Miss Tolerance thought of the twist of paper she had taken away from Proctor’s box, and decided to seek professional assistance.

If she felt any trepidation in visiting Mr. Halford’s apothecary shop, so near the site of an attempt upon her life, Miss Tolerance did not mean to let anxiety rule her. She did survey the street before alighting from the hackney carriage, and gave instructions to the driver to wait for her.

Mr. Halford, again neatly turned out in apron and cuffs, was making pills from an ivory-colored powder. He was finically careful, measuring out the powder over a piece of paper, wiping out the pill-form and filling it, flipping the lever to compress the powder into a lozenge, and carefully removing the resulting pill to a paper packet he had ready-made on the counter. Miss Tolerance thought it a shame to interrupt him, but Halford looked up from his work and smiled.

“How m-may I help you, mmmiss?”

His expression was blankly courteous; he did not remember her from her previous visit. Miss Tolerance took the twist of paper from her reticule and offered it to the apothecary.

“I wonder if you might tell me what this is, sir. Going through my—” she thought rapidly. “My late grandfather’s effects, we found a jar with a good deal of this substance, and wonder what it is. My brother says it is
not
snuff—”

Halford touched gingerly at the caked powder, stirred it with his finger, then, as Sir Walter had done, raised his finger to his lips.
Am I the only one who thinks that unwise?

“You h-have a g-good deal of this substance, miss? I w-would be happy to p-pp—to
buy
it from you—”

“Tell me first what it is, sir, if you please.”

“
Cinchona pubescens.
Often called Jesuit’s bark or
quinina
. Good for lowland fevers caused by bad air. Since the W-walcheren exp-p—”

“It is in very short supply, I believe. But surely you must be adequately supplied with the stuff?”

“Sadly, no. B-b-bark is often hard to c-c-come by, p-p-articularly now. If you w-wish to sell your supply—” Halford’s expression was hopeful. Miss Tolerance felt a moment of remorse at having raised his expectation.

“I must consult with my family first, sir. But I thank you very much for your assistance. When I next have need of a remedy you may be assured I shall come to you,” she added, to save the man the trouble of making the request himself.

Halford gave the slightest of bows, already turning back to his pill press. Miss Tolerance returned to her waiting hackney coach and gave the direction of Tarsio’s. The carriage, fortunately, was fairly new and well sprung; it made the journey from Throgmorton Street to Henry Street without too much juddering, which permitted Miss Tolerance to doze. It was four days since she had been attacked, and she had not really been free of headache in that time.

At Tarsio’s Miss Tolerance ordered a pot of tea and went directly to the Ladies’ Salon. There she sat at a desk and occupied herself for some little time in writing letters: a second request for payment from a client, then a brief note to Sir Walter Mandif, explaining what the contents of Proctor’s box had been. She was sealing this second missive when her tea, and the mail, arrived. A former client had, she was delighted to see, at last sent a bank draught which had been promised for some time. Miss Tolerance suspected that a run of luck at the faro bank had coincided with the arrival of her last dunning letter, but however the funds arrived, she was happy to have them. The second note was from Mr. Joshua Glebb, whose handwriting was narrow and excessively curled; it took her several minutes to be certain of the contents. He had new information regarding Mr. Abner Huwe; he would be at the Wheat Sheaf until dark fell or the custom died away; he was her earnest servant.

Earnest? Miss Tolerance finished the tea in her cup and left to return to the Liberty of Savoy.

Even so late in the day it was mild, but Miss Tolerance found Mr. Glebb alone at his table near the fire, hunched forward as if against a deep chill. She saw why at once; he had a cold. His long nose was red with mopping and his eyes were watery. Whatever he drank from the tankard before him, it steamed and smelled of rum. “Glad to see you, miss.” His voice made Miss Tolerance want to clear her throat.

“My dear Mr. Glebb, should you be away from home in this condition?”

He shrugged his narrow shoulders. The yellowing fringe of hair on his collar stirred and settled, and Glebb leaned over his tankard as if to summon warmth from it. “You order something for yourself, miss. Then we can talk.”

Miss Tolerance raised a finger at Mr. Boddick, mouthed
coffee,
and turned back to Glebb. “I hope this information is important enough to risk your health for, Mr. Glebb.”

“I’d no notion I’d be taken so bad, nor so quick. After our business is complete I’m for home and my bed, no mistaking. Mrs. Glebb can put a hot iron to my feet and give me gruel and toddies until I feel better. But I had other business to—” he coughed deeply and spat into the fire. “Other business to tend to than yours, so don’t go putting this to your own account.”

“At least tell me what you have learned so I may release you to your wife’s care, sir.”

Mr. Boddick put her coffee down before her and was gone before she could thank him. Miss Tolerance took a sip of her coffee—unfortunately watery and burnt—and gave her attention to Glebb.

“I did a little more asking about Huwe. He’s a nasty piece of work; bad temper, and mutterings everywhere about shady doings. Nothing as you could point a finger—or a magistrate—at, though.” He stabbed at the air with his forefinger. “What I did learn—did you know that two of his ships was first on the scene bringing shipments to Walcheren?”

“Provisions?” Miss Tolerance was perplexed.

“Cinchona bark. There’s hundreds of men fell sick almost as they landed, and the Navy with no more than a teaspoon of the stuff to hand. Then on the horizon privateers appeared with chests full of the stuff.
Providential
like.”

His tone was not lost on Miss Tolerance. “The privateers charged hefty prices, I take it. The commission investigating the Walcheren debacle has not looked into the role of those privateers?”

“Not that I know of. But look you, Miss T: a man owns a ship filled to the rafters with just what’s needful, and sends it along to make a profit, that’s reasonable. A man owns two such? Just at the right time? That’s
speculation
in time of war. They brought in
tons
of the stuff, miss. The bark. Where’d he get it, when it’s hard to come by? How’d he know it was going to be needful? I ain’t the sort sees plots, but this is the sort of thing begs a little attention, don’t you think?”

Miss Tolerance nodded. Glebb rose unsteadily to his feet. “Well, I’ve passed that along to you to fret over. I don’t mean no unseemly haste, Miss T, but I’m for home and my bed.” As he started to bow his pear-shaped body was racked by a spasm of coughing. When he recovered himself Mr. Glebb made his way out of the taproom without further word to Miss Tolerance or Mr. Boddick.

Miss Tolerance sipped her coffee, thinking. She did not like Abner Huwe and was quite ready to believe him capable of villainy, but dislike was not proof. Nor was she certain what this new information had to do with her own business. If Huwe was involved in a scheme to drive up the price for Peruvian bark, that might explain why his employee Mr. Proctor had died with so much of the stuff in the box. What it did not do was concern Lord Lyne or his missing daughter. Without making something up from whole cloth Miss Tolerance could see no connection.

She settled with Mr. Boddick and was favored with his opinion on the Army’s late success in the Portuguese town of Sabugal for several minutes before she was able to excuse herself and start for Manchester Square. It had been a day, Miss Tolerance thought, in which a good deal of effort had been expended to little purpose, but she was tired and her head was hurting. She would beg some supper in her aunt’s kitchen, darn a stocking, and go to bed.

The carriage left her in Manchester Square. Miss Tolerance walked along to the gate in Spanish Place and entered there. There was a rosy gilding of light on the upper stories of Mrs. Brereton’s house, but the garden below was blue with shadow. As Miss Tolerance started along the path to her cottage she heard an unaccustomed sound from the farthest corner of the garden, by the necessary house. Someone was weeping.

“Hello?” She kept her voice low. The sobs, raw and coarse, continued.

Miss Tolerance stopped to the left of her house, stepping as carefully as she might among flower beds that were just beginning to green and send up shoots. The necessary house was, by design, in the most shadowed corner of the garden; beyond a flash of white—stocking? scarf?—she could see nothing of the author of the noise.

She essayed again: “Hello?” This time the sobs stopped. Who would choose such an unlikely, not to say noisome, place in which to relieve her feelings?

And then, as she looked around the corner of the privy, she saw that it was not
she
at all. A boy sat behind the necessary house, heedless of the stink and of the dirt that sullied his fawn breeches. He had his arms looped around his knees and his face forced down between them; in the dimness she could tell only that his hair was light and his legs were long. A shudder shook the boy, and a small hiccup.

“You cannot stay there all night, you know,” Miss Tolerance said at last, gently. “I had planned to make a pot of tea. Will you come share it with me?” When the boy made no move she added, “I may have some toast as well. With butter and jam.”

Whether it was butter or jam that persuaded the boy, she did not know. He raised his head; what light there was caught on the smear of snot and tears across his cheeks. It was Harry, Mrs. Brereton’s new boy, who had been hired to take the place of Matt Etan.