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Authors: Janet Gleeson

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She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “I am very sensible of the kind of man to whom you refer, sirs. But I have no expertise in such matters. Why should you wish me to visit such a person for you?”

“Because, Mrs. Meadowes, as Justice Cordingly has said, there is no doubt that this murderous robbery has been most carefully orchestrated. Marcus Pitt is the most influential thief taker in this locality. Few crimes that take place hereabouts are unknown to him. It may well be that whoever inside our business or household betrayed us conspired to do so with his aid, using a thief under his control. Even if the culprit had no link to him, if anyone can find the wine cooler, it is he.”

“If Mr. Pitt is so powerful and influential, is it wise to entrust me to speak to him? Would it not be more prudent for you to approach him directly?”

A shifty gleam appeared in Theodore's eye. “We would, but Pitt forbids it. He prefers to deal with an intermediary—says it only causes trouble if those that are robbed come too close to those that perpetrated the crime.”

Agnes sensed that there was more to why she had been chosen than Theodore had revealed. “But am I a prudent choice for such an important role? There is Mr. Williams, can he not go?”

Theodore shook his head emphatically and flashed a knowing look at the justice. “Rest assured, Mrs. Meadowes. You are adequate for the task. Mr. Pitt is a consummate businessman. He conducts similar transactions every day. Besides, you may discover more than a man. I hear he has a taste for handsome women.”

Agnes recoiled inwardly, trying not to dwell on this last remark, unable to see a way of averting the inevitable. Was she to be offered to this loathsome thief taker—a man who profited from others' misfortune—as bait to entice him to help? No, she told herself, Theodore would never misuse her in such a way. His earlier arguments—the age and fragility of the remaining upper servants, Mr. Pitt's preference for an intermediary—these were the reasons for her unwelcome appointment.

Theodore expected nothing but compliance, and interpreted her troubled silence as acquiescence. “You should not, of course, reveal that you are my cook—I do not wish him to take insult by my sending a domestic servant,” he continued. “Rather say you are an engraver from my workshop, come on my behalf. I will notify him in advance. Do what you can to play on his sympathy—it can only help. Let him know you are recently arrived and fear you will lose your position if the business flounders, as it certainly will in the face of such a prodigious loss.”

The hammering started up again. This time it was gentler than before, but Agnes shrank inwardly as she anticipated every stroke. “And how much do I offer to pay?” she murmured.

“To begin with he will merely require a fee to register the loss. Assuming he finds the wine cooler, the negotiations for its return will come later. At very least he will expect the melted value of the metal. I am prepared to offer that sum plus a modest additional payment. But I don't wish you to disclose that in the first instance. Nor do I want Sir Bartholomew Grey's name mentioned. Heaven forbid we attract Pitt's unsavory attention toward his household or I'll never see another commission from him.” Theodore paused. “I should also say, if you acquit yourself well in this I shall reward you handsomely. Find the wine cooler and I will pay you twenty guineas.”

Agnes's stomach tightened. Twenty guineas was six months' wages. She still felt a powerful presentiment of doom, but if she took on this role, she might not only save the Blanchard enterprise but benefit Peter. She nodded hesitantly. “Very well, sir,” she said. “When shall I call on Mr. Pitt?”

Theodore smiled and mopped his brow again. His mood seemed less fraught. “Tomorrow at midday. I will tell my wife to inform Mrs. Tooley you are to be permitted extra freedom to assist me. Marcus Pitt will be expecting you. Philip will escort you to his premises.”

“I could go on my own, if it is more convenient, sir,” said Agnes, who did not in the least relish the prospect of a journey disturbed by the garrulous Philip.

Theodore shook his head. “Do not underestimate the dangers of this undertaking, Mrs. Meadowes. Pitt might pose as an arbiter of the law, but from all I hear he is as much a rogue as those with whom he deals. Heaven forbid the same fate should befall you as that poor fellow last night…”

Chapter Seventeen

S
OME HOURS LATER
, Agnes stood at the kitchen table with a newly boiled calf's head on a platter before her. She inserted the point of a sharp knife midway between the eyes and slowly raised the skin. Faced with the practicalities of preparing supper, she attempted to push all thoughts of Marcus Pitt from her mind. The only matter superseding the steaming head and its forcemeat stuffing was her pressing need to retrieve Peter from Mrs. Catchpole. Theodore's proposal offered money and, more immediately, a chance to escape her usual duties. She would thus be able to find somewhere for Peter to stay. She began to view the proposed mission with a measure of willingness—gratitude, even. And yet Theodore Blanchard's final thoughtless words of warning were not forgotten. The prospect of involving herself in matters outside her world frightened her. But if she could brazen out the perils for Peter's sake, she could return to her former existence.

Agnes's thoughts were then diverted along another path. Lydia had encouraged Theodore to choose her as his aid. Did Lydia's interest in Rose lie behind her recommendation? Or was she trying to help Agnes gain the freedom she had asked for without offending Mrs. Tooley? She had, after all, shown some sympathy to her plight. If Lydia had tried to assist her, it was only right that she should continue her efforts to discover what had happened to Rose. Besides, she could not deny that she too was curious to find out where the girl had gone.

Both Lydia and Mr. Matthews had suggested there might be an alliance between Rose and Nicholas Blanchard, and Mr. Matthews had seen Rose upstairs the day before she disappeared. But assuming Rose had stolen the pistol, thought Agnes, this was most likely when she had done so. It did not prove there was an improper alliance. Lydia had implied that Rose might have left because she was carrying Nicholas's child. What had caused her to form this opinion? There was only one person who had Lydia's wholehearted confidence, and she was currently standing fifteen feet away in the laundry room cleaning one of Lydia's hats with a velvet cloth.

Leaving the calf's head to cool, Agnes accosted Patsy. “Has Mrs. Blanchard said anything to you about her interest in Rose Francis?” she inquired with an ingenuous smile. Patsy looked askance, but a moment later weakly returned the smile. As lady's maid, she liked to pretend she had nothing in common with the other maidservants. She was older and more finely dressed, and to underline her importance she aped Lydia's manners—crooking her little finger when she drank tea, picking daintily at her food as if she had no appetite. Her placid expression and cool manner were also strangely reminiscent of Lydia. Agnes often wondered if this was a further affectation on Patsy's part or if she had unconsciously grown to resemble her mistress.

When it came to Agnes, however, Patsy was, as a rule, more convivial. Agnes suspected that this was because Patsy longed occasionally to exchange ideas with someone to whom she was not always expected to defer. Doubtless that was why, offered an opportunity to discuss the matter of Rose freely, Patsy seized it. “Yes, but I don't for the life of me see why. I should have thought she would be grateful the girl had gone,” she said candidly, scratching a tiny blemish on the hat brim with her fingernail.

“Why do you say that—had Rose annoyed her?”

“Not exactly.”

“What, then? Had it to do with Nicholas?”

“Mrs. Blanchard wondered why the wretched girl had been upstairs,” said Patsy importantly.

“When was this—yesterday?”

Patsy gazed into the middle distance in the same unfocused way that Lydia had done in response to Agnes's request for time off. “No, not then. I don't recall exactly. A week or so back, perhaps. I think she mentioned it to Mrs. Tooley.”

“Why did she not question Rose herself?”

Patsy paused, as though considering her reply. “She never caught her. It was something she discovered—a letter, I believe—that showed the girl had been there.”

“A letter?” Agnes recalled John mentioning that a letter had been the cause of the fight between Rose and Nancy. “Was it Mrs. Blanchard who found it?” she pressed.

“No, I believe Nancy handed it to her.”

“What did it say?”

Patsy shook her head ruefully. “It was written by Rose, and concerned a man. Mrs. Blanchard read it to me so quickly and I was tidying her things at the time, so I didn't hear exactly.”

A man, Agnes thought; what else would a letter penned by Rose concern? “And what did Mrs. Blanchard say after Rose's disappearance?”

“She was troubled, though Lord knows why. If you want my opinion, Mrs. Blanchard hasn't enough to occupy her.”

She would have liked to discover what else Patsy might reveal, but remembering the calf's head, Agnes returned to the kitchen table. As she assembled the stuffing with ingredients Doris had prepared—a pound of bacon fat scraped to beads, the crumbs of two penny loaves, a small nutmeg grated, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and a little grated lemon peel—she thought about the letter Nancy had found. Why had she lied earlier today when Agnes had asked her what the argument was about?

A few minutes later, Patsy emerged from the laundry room with the hat in her hand and the cord of an evening bag draped about her wrist, as if she were off to some grand assembly. She hovered by the table, as Agnes deftly mixed the stuffing.

“Lord knows why she went off,” she proffered suddenly in a bitter tone, “or why there's such a fuss over her going. It seemed to me she gave us both the runaround on occasion…Mrs. Blanchard wanted me to ask you whether you found anything among the wretched girl's things to show where she has gone.”

“You may tell her I have looked, but discerned nothing.”

Agnes added the yolks of half a dozen eggs to her stuffing, cracking each one over a small bowl so the white ran into it, then dropping each golden orb into the crumbled mixture, where it gleamed like a small sun. Taking up a long metal spoon, she began to stir the ingredients together, cutting again and again through the mix until it had transformed to a rich yellow-tinged forcemeat. “Did Rose plague
you,
Patsy? If so, I never knew it.”

“I wouldn't allow her to bother me, Mrs. Meadowes. But that didn't mean I was blind to what she was.”

Agnes pressed a small quantity of forcemeat into each ear of the calf's head and the rest into the head cavity, molding the skin over so that it once again resembled a head. The sharp tone of Patsy's reply made her look up. “How d'you mean?”

“Rose lacked modesty. She was forever sticking her nose in matters that didn't concern her. You let her get away with it, but that didn't mean it was right.”

Agnes knew she ought to have been more forthright, but Patsy's criticism galled her. Her feelings toward Rose were ambivalent—the girl had lacked modesty, but had she really been as black as everyone painted her? “She wasn't all bad, Patsy. She was quick enough around the kitchen, and no worse than you would find in any household.”

Still riled, Agnes picked up the calf's head and plunged it into a pot with white wine, lemon pickle, walnut-and-mushroom catsup, an anchovy, a blade of mace, and a bundle of sweet herbs, then set the pot on the stove.

Patsy, meanwhile, seated herself at the table, still clutching Lydia's belongings as if they were a badge of office. She leaned forward toward Agnes. “Speaking confidentially, it wasn't what Rose did or said so much as what lay in her thoughts that made me take exception to her. She was forever trying to wheedle round me, wanting to know where I went with Mrs. Blanchard and who we met.”

Agnes arched a brow. “You mean her attempts at conversation offended you? That was why you disliked her?”

Patsy frowned. “It was what inspired the conversation, more like.”

“What, then?”

Patsy fiddled with the brim of Lydia's hat. “She wanted my position. She thought her duties as kitchen maid beneath her, and wanted to better herself. That's why she sneaked upstairs. She was scheming for my post and trying to engineer meetings with Lydia to get it. I can't pretend I'm sorry she's run off, and that's the reason why.”

 

A
FTER
P
ATSY HAD GONE
, Agnes wiped her finger around the inside of the bowl in which her forcemeat had been made and licked the savory mixture. There hardly seemed to be a soul in the house with whom Rose had enjoyed an uncomplicated relationship. She
should
have reprimanded Rose more. Why had she shied away from confrontation? Was it only her embarrassment at Rose's familiar manner with men? Agnes did not remember a time when she could speak to a man without self-consciousness and constraint. Her father had kept her apart from them; her unhappy marriage had shown her the dangers of them. And as for behaving as Rose had done in the larder—such wantonness was unimaginable. But then a worrying thought struck her: was a small part of her jealous of Rose?

Unsettled, Agnes posed a more straightforward question. What means could she employ to trace Rose? Was there a family to whom the girl might have written of her intentions? She mulled this over before it occurred to her, with a further stab of self-recrimination, that while she and Rose had worked together almost every day for the last year, their conversation had invariably been about food and its preparation. Agnes's reluctance to discuss her own history meant she rarely asked personal questions of those around her, and Rose had never volunteered any information. Not once had she mentioned her family, or where she had come from.

 

“F
ORGIVE ME
for disturbing you, Mrs. Tooley. Might I trouble you for a bottle of preserved plums? I need them for my sauce.”

“I suppose so, Mrs. Meadowes.” Mrs. Tooley twirled her quill and peered over the rim of her spectacles as suspiciously as if Agnes were asking her for gold rather than a jar of fruit. Accounts from the grocer, fishmonger, butcher, and chandler were arranged in exact piles all over the table. She was checking them off against orders recorded in her household ledger; those she had verified had been impaled precisely in the center on a large iron spike.

Mrs. Tooley put down her quill on the pewter inkstand that had been a gift from Lydia Blanchard. She patted her linen cap and smoothed the lappets, as if reassuring herself of their pristine condition. Removing her spectacles, she bustled to her store cupboard and threw open the doors wide. The shelves were filled with a spectacular array of preserves and pickles as richly colored as jewels. She brushed a finger over the middle row, where bottled fruits were stored, giving a proprietorial glance to jars labeled quince, morello cherry, damson, peach, greengage, grape, and finally plum. She selected a jar of ruby-colored fruit and proudly handed it to Agnes. “I believe you'll find these as tasty and firm as any you've tried. Anything more you require, Mrs. Meadowes?”

Agnes hesitated. Realizing how little she knew of Rose's past had made her conscious that she was equally ignorant of Mrs. Tooley. Where did the housekeeper go on her days off? On a sudden whim she said, “I wonder, Mrs. Tooley, do you have any family to visit in your free time?”

Mrs. Tooley looked puzzled. “Family? I have a brother, but the last time I stayed with him I found the disorder in his house most disconcerting. It made me appreciate the tranquillity here. That was two years ago. I have not found the opportunity to go there since.”

“I see,” said Agnes, thinking that a little disorder was not necessarily a bad thing. She moved on to more pressing matters. “Has Mrs. Blanchard spoken to you on my account?”

“She has. I understand you are to make an excursion to a thief taker and might not be back in time to make dinner. I suppose I should be grateful that it is you being sent, not I. But do take care, won't you, Mrs. Meadowes? I cannot possibly manage without you.” As she spoke, Mrs. Tooley raised a slender hand to her papery cheek, and her head began to tremble slightly.

Agnes felt touched and guilty that she had so quickly given up her attempt at friendly conversation. When she was less pressed she would try again. “Do not trouble yourself over my welfare,” she said. “I shall return as swiftly as I can. But there is one other matter I should raise with you. I need to see Rose Francis's reference. Do you happen to know where it is?”

“What possible use can that be now?”

“Mrs. Blanchard believes there may be some connection between the murder and theft and Rose running off, and that she should be questioned on the matter—wherever she is. It occurred to me that her background might help ascertain her whereabouts.”

“There was a written character,” said Mrs. Tooley carefully. “I always insist upon it. As I recall, she stated at her interview that she had no family to speak of. Both her parents had died. She had gone into service for that reason, and came here from a large household in Bruton Street.”

“The family name?”

“Lord and Lady Carew, as I recall.”

“Carew?” echoed Agnes. The name meant nothing to her. “What reason did she give for her departure from their household?”

“She wanted to better herself and thought a position as kitchen maid might lead to her learning to cook.”

BOOK: The Thief Taker
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