The Sleeping Partner (31 page)

The big man stumbled back and crashed into the doorframe. He slid down along it until, top-heavy, he toppled into the doorway and lay like a fallen bear, quite unconscious.

“I cannot tell you how much I dislike being called whore,” Miss Tolerance muttered. She kicked the prising bar under the desk, lest Worke come to himself and think to use it again. Her earlier plan of telling Abner Huwe to call off his man was gone. She would leave, find Sir Walter in Bow Street, and lay the entire matter of Proctor’s death, and Worke’s assaults upon her, in his hands. The Law could take responsibility for Worke and Huwe.

Worke made a sizeable barrier in the doorway. She would have to step over and around him, but at least the clerk Abel had not come to investigate the noise. Perhaps he was accustomed to the sound of conflict emanating from the office. Miss Tolerance glanced back at the door to the back room as if to assure herself no one was waiting there.

“You do not intend to leave us, surely?”

Miss Tolerance’s head snapped round so quickly she was reminded that only a few days before she had been an invalid with a broken crown. Abner Huwe had appeared in the door to the outer office, just beyond Worke’s prostrate bulk. He held a business-like pistol.

“You will put aside your sword, please.” Huwe’s tone was as pleasant as if he had asked that she close the window or pour the tea. Miss Tolerance’s daily reading of the Dueling Notices left her with no favorable impression of the accuracy of pistols in general, but she was not tempted to test the weapon or Mr. Huwe’s skill. She put her sword on the desk to her right and stepped away. Her own pistol was a solid weight against her thigh, but she doubted Huwe would let her extract it before he discharged his own weapon.

“I would barely have known you for a woman.” Huwe gestured toward her with his pistol.

“If you must point, Mr. Huwe, may I ask that you do so with your hand alone?”

“Was I impolite? It’s hard to know how to speak with a
lady
such as yourself.”

“Do you think to distress me by reminding me I am no lady? I’m aware of it. As for my dress, these garments are more congenial in hazardous settings.” She nodded to indicate that she included the offices of Amisley and Pound in that class. She kept her voice level and amused: a show of confidence was her best tactic. “My work sometimes takes me to venues where muslin and kid boots would be a positive hindrance.”

“What work would that be? Nosing about, bringing magistrates to my door?” He tapped Mr. Worke’s head with his foot. Worke remained unmoving. “Attacking my clerks.”

“Your clerk attacked me, sir, in the street outside my home and, before that, in Threadneedle Street. I came to ask you what your design was in sending him to me. As for what my work is, I am paid to find things and answers and sometimes people.”

Rather too quickly Huwe said, “I’ve no people here that oughtn’t to be.”

“You did have a visitor in that room recently.” She did not take her eyes from Huwe, but indicated the door behind her with a quick jerk of her head. “A lady. I don’t suppose you’d permit me further investigation?”

Mr. Huwe’s lips twitched. “For a woman, you’ve a sense of humor, surely. No, I’m minded to stay where we are until it comes to me what I am to do with you.”

“You might let me go,” Miss Tolerance suggested. “My business is to find a young woman, Evadne Thorpe. As she is not here, I must seek her elsewhere.” She used the name to startle, and indeed Huwe’s smile disappeared. “You know the name, sir?”

“Should I know it?”

“She is the daughter of your associate, Lord Lyne.”

Huwe shook his head. “He would be no associate of mine.”

“With all the visiting between you of late? Yes, I know of it. I think you and Lord Lyne had some business between you a few years ago that has its hooks in you to this day. Something to do with the box which was found by a magistrate in Mr. Proctor’s room? Somehow poor Miss Thorpe became entangled in her father’s business.”

“Again this girl. What use would I have for a girl?”

“What use has any man for a young, pretty girl? And—” As the whole of an idea came to her she spoke her thoughts aloud. “Knowing you held his daughter would surely keep Lord Lyne from disclosing details of your arrangements.”

“Our arrangements!” For the first time the pistol in Huwe’s grip shook. “I say again, we are no associates. What business would his lordship conduct with such as me?”

“I am piecing it together. Lord Lyne has a plantation in South America with ties to trade there, and is, I believe, an enthusiast of military history. And his son worked in the War Office. I understand that Lord Castlereagh dismissed Lord Lyne’s counsel regarding the insalubrious climate of the Dutch lowlands. And you have ships, two of which were the first to arrive at Walcheren, fortuitously laden with chests of cinchona bark when His Majesty’s Navy had not more than a day’s supply. It takes no extreme leap to conjecture that Lyne procured the bark which you sold. I imagine that you together made a very handsome profit. Almost an indecently handsome profit, the sort the Walcheren Commission might take interest in.”

“Conjecture. Guesses.” But Huwe’s pleasant, snub-nosed face was stony. “How could you know such things?”

“As I said, sir: my work is to find answers. All I meant to do was find Miss Thorpe, but the looking has led me to a budget of other matters. Did you really hold Miss Thorpe here, sir? Where is she now? Did Proctor help her to escape? I imagine that would have angered you. Mr. Worke has already admitted to Proctor’s death—”

Huwe kicked his clerk again. “He’s a damned coarse instrument, Worke. I’d have done better to manage the matter myself.”

“You would not have killed Proctor?”

Now Huwe stepped over Worke’s shoulder into the room, testing the ground beneath him carefully. His pistol arm had dropped a little, enough to give relief to the fatigue of holding the thing at arm’s length. He regained his smile. “Proctor’s body would never have been found. The boy stole from me, and meant to help my little prize escape. I’d have killed him for either,” he said easily. “I am not to be crossed.”

“Not by clerk or business partner.”

“That’s the truth of it.”

“You took Evadne Thorpe to use as a weapon against her father.”

Huwe nodded as if this were a particularly clever thing. “It was needful to do something. There’s still money to be made in the bark trade, but Lyne wanted to cry quits. Worried we’d be discovered. But the risk was all mine! They won’t hang a peer for anything less than high treason. The old man kept whining on about the disgrace if we were found out. I meant to give him a taste of disgrace.”

“By kidnapping his daughter?”

Abner Huwe’s face was flushed, his expression a mix of anger and pleasure. His rusty hair stood on end as if he had been pulling it. Miss Tolerance heard a woman on the street selling hot potatoes. The rattle of carriage wheels, and a dog barking, and the sound of voices like a river’s churning, all came to her from the distance. “Even then he was more fearful for his name than for the girl.”

“How did you remove the girl from her father’s house?”

“You’re a deal too nosy for your own good.”

“You are not the first to remark it, sir.”

Huwe snorted with amusement. “It’s a great waste to have to kill you.”

“If you truly mean to kill me, sir, you ought at least to satisfy my curiosity. How did you take her?”

Huwe smirked. “A last request, you mean? Well enough. Mr. Worke went round, told the man at the door he’d a book for the girl from the library. Man went back to his dinner, Worke took the girl straight from her dad’s hall, easy as cream.” He shook his head.

“Will you satisfy my curiosity on another point, Mr. Huwe?” Huwe still blocked the door, and she was sure he would not permit her to push past him, leap over Worke’s body, and depart. No one other than the old man in the front office knew she was here. Fortuitous rescue was unlikely. She must keep Huwe talking while she found a way out of her dilemma. “When did Miss Thorpe take leave of your hospitality?”

Huwe rocked onto the balls of his feet. “Only yesterday. I had business at the docks, and Worke—” he aimed another kick at the clerk—”he took it upon himself to seek the box Proctor had thieved from me. He left old Abel here alone.” His nostrils flared, but whether his contempt was for Abel or Worke was unclear.

“Mr. Abel was not aware of her presence here?”

Huwe spat. “Mr. Abel’s half deaf and sees naught beyond his nose. He’s a fine hand at totting up numbers—a regular mathematician. For the rest, I’d not trust him to guard my hat, let alone a valuable property.”

Valuable property.
Miss Tolerance’s stomach heaved at the thought. “So Miss Thorpe escaped Mr. Abel’s indifferent care—”

“Not for the first time,” Huwe interjected.

“—and she went…where?”

“How in Hell do I know? Crept out with my property and ran. I thought she’d gone home to her dad, and I went to fetch her back, but Lyne wasn’t at home to me, if you please. Sent the porter to turn me away, as if I hadn’t enough proof to turn his
name
to shit.”

“How very frustrating for you, sir.”

“Don’t take such a tone, you.” Huwe raised the pistol yet again. “I’ve the whip hand here, had you not seen?”

“I meant no disrespect, Mr. Huwe.” Holding the whip hand was the great thing for Huwe, Miss Tolerance thought. “You did not regain Miss Thorpe?”

“
Miss
Thorpe? There’s precious little
Miss
to her now, and naught she don’t understand about the way of a man with a maid. No, I did not regain her. But if you’re still looking for the piece it means Lyne has not got her,” Huwe said with satisfaction. “I can still get her back—”

Miss Tolerance shook her head. “I will not let that happen.”

Again Huwe snorted. “Look about you, woman. There’s no one to help you. Though you’re handsome enough. If I took you back to my little room, perhaps I’d let you persuade me to let you live.”

“Without the least wish to be melodramatic, sir, I think I would rather die. And surely a pistol shot emanating from these offices would bring someone to investigate; you cannot kill every person who finds you out.”

Huwe looked at the pistol in his hand. “Mayhap it’s too noisy without I close the door, and this—” he kicked Worke in the knee—”blocks me from doing that. But it should be no great thing to dispatch you by hand.”

Miss Tolerance was under no illusion that she could best Huwe with strength. If she reached for her sword quickly enough to keep him away he would likely fire the pistol regardless of noise; nor could she reach for her own pistol, still in the pocket of her Gunnard coat. She stepped back a pace, looked about her and saw nothing but papers—not even a convenient paperweight.

Huwe took a step closer, then another. He was almost within her reach. Could she kick him as she had Worke, hours ago that morning? But the damned man was sidling, making his groin a difficult target.
Think.

He was on her, one hand circling her throat, the other reaching back to tangle itself in her hair like a lover’s caress. She tried to stomp his foot but could not find it. She kicked, struck him, but not so hard as to make him drop his hands. As he squeezed and his flushed, contorted face swam before her eyes, she fumbled at her coat pocket and found—not her pistol, but Evadne Thorpe’s kid slipper. She pulled it out and swung it against Huwe’s head hard enough that he dropped his hands. She sprang backward, panting, and reached again, this time grasping the pistol which she cocked and thrust, with the same motion, at Huwe’s belly.

He stopped, looking down at the muzzle that disappeared in the front of his waistcoat.

“Had a trick or two laid by, did you?” He was panting as hard as she and, she realized with disgust, was aroused. “Well, what are we to do now?”

She meant to give him no time to hatch a new scheme for her defeat. “Turn around, Mr. Huwe.”

“Shoot me in the back, will you?”

“No, sir. Now, to your knees.” With her left hand she pushed hard on his shoulder until the man went down, first on one knee, then the other. “Lie flat, now.”

When Huwe was prone on the floor Miss Tolerance knelt over him, the bore of her pistol to the nape of his neck and her knee in the small of his back. “Do not move, sir, or you will not even know that I have killed you.” With her left hand she pulled off the long black ribbon with which she had clubbed her plaited hair. “Now, put your hands behind your back, Mr. Huwe. Very slowly and very carefully.”

One handed, Miss Tolerance tied his wrists together; not until she was confident that he could not loose himself from the weave of ribbon around his wrists did she rest her pistol on his back. Two handed, she tied several knots to secure the ribbon. Then she reclaimed the pistol and stood.

“I’ll ask you to rise now, Mr. Huwe.”

“What do you think to do with me?” The man rolled to one side and managed to get himself to his feet.

“I mean to bring you to Bow Street. Mind your step as we go through the door. Mr. Worke is a sizable obstacle.” Left-handed, she regained her sword and returned it, awkwardly, to its sheath. She jabbed Huwe once in the shoulder with the pistol in her hand to encourage him to move. Huwe shuffled toward the door—who would blame him for his reluctance? Miss Tolerance followed, her left hand now on his shoulder, her pistol still aimed at his back. As they went through the door Huwe stepped with cruel weight on Worke’s hand.

The clerk moved and groaned. Huwe staggered backward into Miss Tolerance, forcing her pistol back against her.

The pistol released its charge.

In the moment when the report seemed to hang in the air like a note of music, she was not sure if she had shot Abner Huwe. But the man reeled forward, away from her, still bound but unhurt. At that same moment Miss Tolerance felt a horrid pain radiate from her upper arm. She had shot herself.

Her first emotion was impatience: this had gone on too long, she was tired, she would needs have recourse to the surgeon again and she disliked surgeons. When Huwe rounded and charged at her like an angry bull she abandoned any thought of subtlety. She used the butt of her discharged pistol to smash him in the head. Unlike Worke, a single blow did not handle the matter: she had to strike again. Even then he was only stunned, not unconscious, when he slumped to his knees.