The Sleeping Partner (26 page)

“Then you have a stronger regard for coincidence than I do,” Sir Walter said lightly. “Is it not likely that the murder of a man who is connected to your investigation should be related to that investigation?”

“Alas, quite likely.” Miss Tolerance was unwilling to involve the magistrate in her search for Evadne Thorpe, at least until she had had time to learn if Proctor’s death could be factored into Miss Thorpe’s absence. “And I wish I could be more useful to you, Sir Walter, but—”

“I understand your scruples. I hope you understand that at some point it may become impossible for me to honor those scruples.”

Her head hurt and despite her regard for Sir Walter Miss Tolerance found herself wishing she were elsewhere and alone. “I do understand, Sir Walter. I hope you understand that I may not be able to accommodate your curiosity in the matter.” She looked at him directly; Sir Walter returned the gaze.

“We must hope it will not reach that point,” Sir Walter began. Any further comment was cut off by the return of Penryn. The Runner had his face screwed up as if he had smelled something foul.

“Well, Zor Walter, I found it.” The Runner pointed an accusatory finger at the third house, a four story frame building that listed slightly toward its left-hand neighbor. Two elderly men sat upon the stone steps to the doorway, watching Penryn with a combination of curiosity and amusement. One man had a square blue gin bottle in his hand, the other a flyswatter which he plied vigorously and at some peril to his fellow. Behind them the door, frame as much askew as the building, opened inward on a hallway of Stygian emptiness.

“Do you wish to come in?” Sir Walter asked.

“Yes, very much.”

The two men at the door, as Sir Walter’s party approached, leaned away from the entrance as if to give easier access; the man with the gin fell backward and off the steps, where he lay, giggling weakly. His fellow paused in his fly-swatting and reached out a hand to touch Miss Tolerance’s dress as if it were a relic of some sort. Miss Tolerance reached one gloved hand down and pushed the man’s fingers away gently.

“Is the landlord in?” Sir Walter asked.

The old man screwed up his face in a moue of denial. “Out on business. Lef’ ‘is boy ‘ere. Donal’. Be in the orfice.” He reached for Miss Tolerance’s dress again. “H’aint seen noffin’ this pretty since Aboukir year.”

Miss Tolerance reached again to disengage the man, but Sir Walter was there before her. “Do not presume to touch this lady.” He was icy. “The office is to the right?” He stepped back, blocking the old man, to let Miss Tolerance pass into the building before him. She did not know whether to be touched or annoyed by his protectiveness.

The hallway was hot and fetid. Penryn slipped past Miss Tolerance and pounded on the office door. There was a muffled “Come on, then!” from the other side.

A youth of twelve or so years sat with his boots upon the table, cleaning his nails with a pen knife, a task to which he was giving his whole attention. His face was spotty; his dark hair fell around his face disorderly. He did not look up. “Whot?”

Sir Walter stepped into the room with an air of command. Miss Tolerance stood to one side and Penryn stationed himself full in the doorway as if to discourage flight. “You have a lodger here named Thomas Proctor?”

The sound of Sir Walter’s voice, both more authoritative and more gentlemanly than he had apparently expected, startled the boy. He jabbed himself with the knife, swore, slid his feet off the desk and looked up at his visitors. He put his finger, which was bleeding slightly, into his mouth.

“You wan’ who?” he asked around the finger.

“Thomas Proctor.”

The boy looked at Penryn, then back to Sir Walter. “He ain’t no kin o’ yourn, I reckon. Whoz ‘e done?”

“He has been murdered.” Sir Walter’s voice was matter-of-fact, but the effect on the boy was immediate. He took his finger out of his mouth and stared at Sir Walter as if he were a Drury Lane melodrama in and of himself.

“Murdered? Where? ‘Ow? Z’ere going to be trial?”

“When we find the man who did it. What can you tell me about Mr. Proctor?”

The boy snickered. “That ‘e’s dead? I dunno. Paid ‘is rent on time. Slep’ in—” he paused and thought, visibly, frowning as if it hurt him. “Slep’ in number four, on the first floor, wiv five other gents.”

“And his personal belongings?”

The boy shook his head. “Dunno. They’s cupboard up there, but I don’t know ‘e ever used ‘un.”

“Perhaps you should show us Mr. Proctor’s room.”

“Yes, sir. My da would know more’n me, sir.”

“You know enough to show us to number four, do you not?”

The boy nodded. He peered past Sir Walter and Miss Tolerance to regard Mr. Penryn with interest. “Zat a real Runner, sir?”

“He is. The room, boy.”

In near darkness the boy led Sir Walter’s party up narrow stairs that, like everything else in the house, listed to the left. At the top of the stairs he opened a door and went in. Miss Tolerance heard him fumble with the tinderbox, then there was a glow of candlelight. The boy returned to wave his visitors into the room. Three of them could barely fit in it: in the yellow light Miss Tolerance could make out a windowless space containing two beds, and a large chest with six cupboards fitted with dull brass plates. The beds were not overlarge, and she tried to imagine three grown men sleeping in each of them. At least they had beds to sleep upon; some lodging houses did not provide even that sort of amenity.

“‘At’s the cupboard, sir.” The boy jabbed his finger toward the chest.

“And do you know which of the cupboards would have been Mr. Proctor’s?”

The boy shook his head. “Me da might, sir. “E keeps a book wiv numbers of the keys boarders take out. So ‘e can charge for the service, like.”

Miss Tolerance saw an expression of impatience fly across Sir Walter’s face; he kept his voice admirably impassive. “Would that book be in the house?”

The boy nodded.

“Then perhaps, if I send Mr. Penryn down with you, you can discover which of these cupboards, if any, was claimed by Mr. Proctor.” The notion that this was a suggestion was belied by Sir Walter’s voice and Penryn’s demeanor. “We will await your return.”

Miss Tolerance advanced to the chest, took out her handkerchief, and rubbed at the brass plate on the first cupboard. Gradually the number 1 could be perceived. The kerchief came away blackened with tarnish.

Penryn reappeared in the doorway, his narrow face eloquent of irritation. “That beetle-headed boy! Found the ledger at last, Zor Walter, but he doon’t read, zo spent five minutes gazin’ at the page ‘zif it would speak to him.”

“Did it speak to
you?
” Sir Walter asked.

“Yon Proctor rented a key to number five. But no key was there here. Nor did he have a key ‘pon his person when we inspected the body, Zor Walter.”

Miss Tolerance reached out and attempted to pry open cupboard number five with her gloved finger, but it was locked.

“Shall I break it down, zor?” Penryn asked hopefully.

Sir Walter shook his head. “Whatever is there will wait until the landlord has returned.” He directed Penryn to stay and oversee the opening of the cabinet. “I do not want anyone to anticipate us in doing so. Anything of interest that you find should be brought straight away to Bow Street.”

Penryn nodded dourly. Miss Tolerance doubted he was enthused at the prospect of sitting in the fetid heat waiting.

“There is one other thing we might try, Sir Walter,” she offered.

Sir Walter raised an eyebrow encouragingly. Miss Tolerance reached up and removed a hairpin which she held up to the candlelight and bent. It took her several minutes working at the keyhole with the pin. At last it yielded to her efforts with a click, and she prised the cupboard open.

Penryn shouldered her out of the way and removed from the cupboard, cataloguing as he did so, three pairs of stockings, two shirts, a leather wallet, a pair of shoes in good enough repair to have been Proctor’s Sunday best, a small knife, a half-carved figure of a soldier. At the bottom was a small coffer of dark wood banded in copper. It was locked. Without comment Miss Tolerance offered her hairpin to Penryn and he attempted to pick the lock. When he failed, Miss Tolerance tried as well, with no more success.

“We will take it with us,” Sir Walter said.

Penryn tucked the coffer under one arm and led the way out of the room and down the stairs. “Nasty place,” the Runner muttered. “Not a breath of air. Three men to a bed, packed close as African cargo. You lie down here, you wake w’ the fleas.”

Yet it was no worse than many such places in the city and—depressingly enough, Miss Tolerance thought, rather better than some. The party reached the ground floor and the little bit of fresh air that stirred through the crooked front door. Sir Walter paused long enough to make sure the boy in the office understood that he expected to see the landlord in Bow Street at his first opportunity. Then, gratefully, they reached the street and their hired coach.

“I have known you for a twelvemonth and still you surprise me,” Sir Walter said to Miss Tolerance as the carriage rolled away from Well Street.

“How is that, sir?”

“Your…
skill
with a hairpin. I am not certain I should take official notice of it.”

Miss Tolerance laughed. “I should certainly never exercise it except under the aegis of the law.”

“But where did you learn such a thing?”

“From a man in Amsterdam who could not pay for his tuition in our
salle
any way but in kind. He wished to learn to fence.”

“I would have thought the sort of man who could pick locks would have been well able to defend himself.”

“The man was working for British Intelligence, Sir Walter. There are times, I gather, when a pistol is too loud.”

Penryn, again seated opposite Sir Walter and Miss Tolerance, pursed up his mouth consideringly, then gave a bark of laughter. The coffer, which rested in his lap, jumped.

“Will you open the box?” Miss Tolerance asked.

Sir Walter nodded. “A wedge and mallet should take care of the matter. Do you wish to stay to see what is inside?”

“I should like to, just to satisfy curiosity. Do you mean to open it at once?” Sir Walter nodded. “Then, if you do not mind it, I will stay. Once we have discovered what is in the coffer, I must return to my own business.”

“You do not think this business is in any way connected to your own, then?”

“At this moment I do not. Still, I am of a curious nature, and a locked box belonging to a murdered man must always command some interest.”

Chapter Fourteen

When the carriage drew up in Bow Street, Mr. Penryn led a small procession through the thronged foyer of the court, holding the coffer clutched to his chest as if it contained rubies. Miss Tolerance and Sir Walter followed into Sir Walter’s office, where Penryn placed the box on the desk and went to find tools. Miss Tolerance and Sir Walter stood across the desk from each other and bent to examine the box. She was aware of his nearness; the brim of her bonnet seemed to envelop him as well as herself.

Penryn returned. Sir Walter and Miss Tolerance stepped back and watched as the Runner applied wedge and mallet to the lock. It took two blows to splinter the hasp from the coffer.

Sir Walter stopped Penryn from striking again. “No need to destroy the box itself, man.” The magistrate lifted the lid and all three, Sir Walter, Miss Tolerance, and Mr. Penryn, stared at the contents.

“Dirt!” Penryn wrinkled his nose.

It was not dirt, in fact, but a powder, like in color to snuff but too fine and in too great quantity. The coffer was nearly half full of reddish-brown dust, motes of which skirled into the air and made Miss Tolerance’s nose itch.

“What soorta cod’s head keeps a box o’ dirt?” Penryn stalked from the room, shaking his head.

“A fine question.” Sir Walter put a finger into the dust, sniffed it, licked it, and spat. “Foul stuff. I wonder what it is.”

Miss Tolerance refrained from pointing out the unwisdom of tasting an unknown substance, particularly one found in such unwholesome surroundings. Instead she took a scrap of paper from her reticule and twisted a bit of powder into it. “Perhaps Mr. Penryn’s question is more to the point. Why would your dead man keep a locked box full of—whatever it is?” The air was full of dust motes; she found she wanted powerfully to be away from the musty, acrid smell. “My curiosity has been allayed—if rather inconclusively. Unless you have further need for me, Sir Walter, I must return to my own inquiry.”

Sir Walter closed the box and bowed over Miss Tolerance’s hand. “Thank you for your help. You will let me know if there is any way I may be of assistance to you.”

Miss Tolerance smiled and curtseyed, and turned to make her way through the outer offices to the sunny street.

Miss Tolerance hailed a carriage to take her to Squale House in Pitfield Street. Her thoughts strayed to the note Lady Brereton had received; even if Evadne Thorpe thought she did not wish to be found, she might not know her own best interest. It was still Miss Tolerance’s belief that the girl had written the note under compulsion.

In Pitfield Street the door to the alms house gaped open. Miss Tolerance stepped inside. To her left behind a closed door she heard the voices of children raggedly chanting their ABCs. Further along the hall in the room in which she had spoken with Mr. Thorpe she saw three very young women, babies in their arms, clustered around a matron with a tin basin. “Never put your babe in the basin without you check how hot the water is first,” the woman said. From the expression on the faces of the young mothers, the notion of immersing a baby in water at all was new and unsettling.

“May I help you?”

Miss Tolerance turned. Her interlocutor was a stocky tow-haired man of middle years. His expression was patient rather than kind; his dress and manner were gentlemanlike. Miss Tolerance strove to call his name to mind.

“You are Mr. Parkin?” That was the name of Thorpe’s partner in benevolence.

The man inclined his head in lieu of bow. “You have the advantage of me, madam. I am Parkin. How may I be of assistance?”