Death by Silver (22 page)

Mrs Digby had cleaned, more or less, though there was an indignant note on his desk about unfriendly plants, which perplexed him until he turned up the gas and saw that the tendril of foliage he’d retrieved from Ned’s trouser-leg had somehow managed to take root between the sofa cushions. It had put out a pair of spiky leaves and a somewhat optimistic bud, which gave him enough to identify it as
Urtica mordax
, biting nettle, and sent him looking for his winter gloves before he tried to deal with it. He freed it from the sofa with some difficulty, and settled it into an empty glass. Potter’s
Care and Feeding
proclaimed that it would nourish itself on small insects as long as it was gently watered, and also suggested slivered ham if insects were lacking. He fetched water from the bathroom and placed the glass on the table where it would have a chance to get at any flies, then poured himself a small glass of brandy and stretched out on the sofa. The morning’s enchantment had worn off long ago, and the busy day and the lack of sleep the night before was threatening to overcome him.

It was a relief, though, that Albert wasn’t exactly sanguine about the Nevetts. At least he didn’t think Julian was weak for still being angry – and Albert had gone so far as to take his money out of the bank where Victor worked. It might not be reasonable, but he wasn’t alone. He set aside the brandy, rested one arm over his eyes. Yes, everyone said that their school was bad, but Toms’ – it had been different, especially the first two years.

The memory came out of nowhere, the stink of snuffed candles and the hiss of the single gas jet, the worn carpet beneath his knees, his back and buttocks still stinging from the cane. And Staniforth with his trousers open, presenting his erection, Noyes and Larriby waiting their turns.
Kiss the rod, Lynes…

He jerked upright, the old feelings of shame and arousal warring in him, swore as he kicked the brandy over. He picked up the glass and found a rag to mop up the spilled liquor, then turned the lights up as high as they would go. For a moment, he thought about another enchantment, but refilled his brandy glass instead, and reached for
Care and Feeding
. He would read about
Urtica mordax
and not think of other things.

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Ned collected Miss Frost on his way to the Commons dining room, wanting to talk out his next moves. “If you don’t feel it’s too improper,” he said.

She smiled a bit wryly, if she felt he were being naïve. “It’s a crowded dining room,” she said. “And no one will think anything they don’t already.”

“I’m sorry for that,” Ned said after a moment.

She shrugged. “My mother tells me often enough that I should have been a clerk for a life-insurance company,” she said. “There’s a very nice one she’s heard of with a separate lunchroom for ladies, and everything arranged so that you never have to be alone with a man. I don’t expect you to do anything about her.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I’m not interested in life insurance,” she said. “If you’re ready, Mr Mathey?”

“I am, Miss Frost.”

The dining room was busy, most of the tables occupied by the older members of the Commons who preferred it to the pub. Miss Frost attracted notice but not complaints; the membership had voted several years previously to allow women in the dining room at lunch, although not in the evenings as a general rule, except for ceremonial banquets at which wives were expected to make an appearance.

The waiter settled them at a table against one wall, a rather cramped one far from any breath of fresh air, but all Ned could expect given his status. In the winter, he preferred to stick to Blandings, where it was possible to get a table reasonably near the fire, if only by bribery.

The waiter fetched Ned’s knife, engraved with his initials, along with the menus, and Ned set it momentarily beside the rest of the cutlery, expecting to have to hand it over chivalrously to Miss Frost. Owing to an unfortunate curse that had at one point afflicted knives “belonging to the Commons,” members were required to provide their own, and Ned hadn’t put up more than the requisite one. That made having guests a bit awkward, and while Julian had seemed willing enough to dissect his dinner with a penknife on the one occasion he’d eaten there, he couldn’t expect that of a lady.

Miss Frost unpacked a set of picnic cutlery from her reticule with cool aplomb, however, and Ned was grateful not to be forced to limit himself to courses that could be eaten with spoon and fork. He ordered the vermicelli soup, despite its tendency to be spiced at random, cold beef and blackberry tart, while she chose the soup and lobster salad.

“Suppose you were hiring servants,” Ned said. “Where would you look for them?”

“Word of mouth is best,” Miss Frost said.

“But short of that. Assuming Miss Doyle is looking for a new place…”

“A registry office, then.”

The soup arrived in soup plates painted with moving snakes that slithered gracefully around the rims of the bowls in endless circles, biting their own tails; it didn’t particularly make up for the fact that the soup tasted perplexingly of cinnamon.

“My theory is that they’re trying metaphysical correspondences in the kitchen,” Miss Frost said. “In five years, they’ll have created a soup that keeps itself warm at the small price of tasting like asafoetida and pickled onions.”

“Spirit lamps might be more to the point,” Ned said. “Or might set the tables on fire. That’s better kept at Blandings. Any particular registry office?”

“Whatever’s close to hand, I expect. Some are better than others. She’d have to give the address of the last place she worked and say they’d give her a good character to get on the books, though.”

“That’s not likely, unless she gave the mission. Which I suppose she might have. It doesn’t seem from everything I’ve heard of her that she’s the type to forge a letter of reference, anyway, even if she can write well enough, which I don’t know.”

“You’d be surprised at the number of young wives who can’t write a sensible letter,” Miss Frost said. “But she wouldn’t necessarily have to. She’s young enough that she could claim she was looking to go into service for the first time, as a maid-of-all-work, and the registries don’t always ask for references from them. They just let them sit on benches, all in a row, and you look them over and ask whatever questions you want of the one you want to hire.”

“Can you tell much from that?”

“Hardly,” she said. “They might well steal your tea and smash your dishes, but on the other hand, you might be a harridan who screams at them and never gives them an evening out, or worse, so it’s a bit of a gamble both ways. My mother used to do a bit for MABYS – the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants, that is. Benefit teas and that sort of thing…”

She looked awkward for a moment. Ned had gotten the impression that she and her mother had come down in the world when her father died, although precisely why remained a mystery. He guessed that even if her mother brought in a bit of money through embroidery or playing social secretary she wouldn’t describe herself as
working
, while Miss Frost was frank about the fact that she had to earn her own living.

Miss Frost busied herself with her soup for a moment, possibly to pass off her expression as a result of the cooking, and then went on. “I suppose Miss Doyle might have gone to them, if she knew they existed. They’re really more for girls coming straight from the workhouse, but they’re a lot of soft touches, and if she played up how sad it all was, someone might have found her a place.”

“I’m not sure she’s the type to play up anything.”

“Probably not,” Miss Frost said. “But you don’t get far waiting timidly for someone to offer you a position.”

She had, in fact, knocked at Ned’s door the afternoon he moved into chambers at the Commons, bearing both impeccable letters of reference from her university tutors and a typewriter in a mock-alligator case. He’d hired her largely on the strength of approving of audacity, but he suspected she was right that Sarah Doyle would stick to more established methods.

The waiter replaced their soup bowls with plates. “You didn’t need the knife,” Ned pointed out as she poked exploratorily at her lobster salad with a fork.

“No, but if I hadn’t brought mine, you’d have given me yours, and then I’d have gotten to watch you eat cold beef with a fork,” she said. “Which would have been entertaining, but probably unkind.”

The beef would indeed not have yielded to a fork, and yielded only reluctantly to being sawn apart with a knife. “How many servants’ registry offices are there in the city?”

“A couple of dozen?” she ventured, and then saw his expression. “There can’t be more than a handful near Limehouse, though.”

Examination of the business directory in Ned’s chambers made it closer to a hundred employment registry offices than two dozen, although many were for trades and professions unrelated to domestic service.

“Or we could try scrying,” he said. Miss Frost looked as dubious as he felt. It had never been a particular talent of his, and it was tricky in the best of circumstances. All the same, he laid the pillowcase out of his desk hopefully, unfolded a city map over it, and began constructing the enchantment.

It took a few minutes to work out how best to specify that he was looking for the sleeper who’d last rested her head on the pillowcase, and he shook his head at the stilted grammar that resulted. He wasn’t getting marks for elegance, he told himself, and sketched the enchantment in the air.

For a moment, nothing happened, and then a faint glow shimmered over a hands-width of the map. It included Limehouse, and a generous portion of the rest of the city as well.

Miss Frost shook her head. “At least it narrows it down?”

It did, at least. Ned made a note of the registry offices that were in that part of the city, and also took down the address of the largest MABYS branch from Miss Frost.

“I expect she’d have gone to her brother, though,” she said.

“And she might well have. She might be at Mr Ellis’s mission, for all we know, but suppose she isn’t and she didn’t? Or suppose she did run to her brother, but he’s in service and can’t do more for her than give her a few shillings and a shoulder to cry on? I expect she’ll be looking for work somewhere.” He shrugged. “Besides, I hate sitting around and waiting.”

“I would never have guessed,” Miss Frost said.

After several hours spent and far too many shillings gone in cab fare, Ned began to suspect that waiting might have been the better option.

“You’re sure you haven’t got a Sarah Doyle on your books?” he asked for what felt like the thousandth time that day. He was trying to give the impression of a hapless husband sent out to negotiate a process he barely understood, which under the circumstances was easy enough. “Mrs Mathey said she’d heard she was a reliable girl, and it’s so hard to know…”

“No Sarah Doyle,” Mrs Vickers behind the desk said, closing her ledger with a snap. She was a faded-looking woman with clothes that were cheap but aggressively neatly ironed. “We’ve got several parlormaids on the registry, though, very reliable all of them.”

“Any trained at the Mission for the Education of the Employable Poor? I think that’s where she got her training.”

“I don’t believe so,” she said, opening the ledger again grudgingly and flipping pages. “You’ll find that references from the past employer are better to judge from, though. Some of those schools don’t teach the first practical thing. All sums and geography and Bible verses, and then the girls can’t make a bed or peel potatoes. But, no, there’s no one who put down that they got their training at that particular establishment.”

“What about the girls in there?” He nodded toward the door to the back parlor.

“Are you looking for a trained parlormaid, Mr Mathey, or a maid-of-all-work? Have you got a housemaid at all?”

“Not at present,” he said. “We’re still living with her parents, you see, and I’ve promised her I’d arrange things…”