Authors: Madeleine E. Robins
Petty Treason (7 page)
W
illiam Colcannon called the next morning to escort Miss Tolerance to Half Moon Street personally. He apologized half a dozen times to her as they made their way to the d’Aubigny house, and wondered aloud who Mrs. Vose was. This struck Miss Tolerance as odd: the woman had seemed fully at home in the d’Aubigny household; the servants had evidently taken her word as law. How should the widow’s brother not know Mrs. Vose?
illiam Colcannon called the next morning to escort Miss Tolerance to Half Moon Street personally. He apologized half a dozen times to her as they made their way to the d’Aubigny house, and wondered aloud who Mrs. Vose was. This struck Miss Tolerance as odd: the woman had seemed fully at home in the d’Aubigny household; the servants had evidently taken her word as law. How should the widow’s brother not know Mrs. Vose?
“Were you not in the habit of visiting your sister, sir?”
They walked along Duke Street, which at this hour was thick with tradesmen seeking out the service entries of the great houses to which they brought food, flowers, casks of ale, and cases of wine and sundries. Miss Tolerance let herself seem to be watching a pair of carters carry a pianoforte, but observed her companion closely.
Mr. Colcannon flushed.
“I did not—that is, I am so much in the country, Miss Tolerance. It was not always convenient to visit.”
Miss Tolerance nodded. “But you and your sister are on comfortable terms?”
“We are on most affectionate terms, ma’am.” His tone was just short of protest.
“And you and your brother-at-law?”
Colcannon colored yet more deeply. “He and I—were not friends, if that is what you mean.”
“You will pardon me if I ask why, sir?”
“I did not like his treatment of my sister,” Colcannon said. “I know one cannot interfere between a man and wife, but it made it damned uncomfortable to visit and see Anne—” He broke off, his eyes focused on some scene in his mind.
“She was unhappy? What did the chevalier do to cause her unhappiness?”
“What did he not?” Colcannon said with bitterness. “You know, at the first their marriage seemed promising. It took nearly a year for d’Aubigny to change—”
“Change, or revert to previous behavior?”
Colcannon looked blank. “I cannot say. I did not know him before he married my sister. My father had inquiries made—”
“But they largely concerned his income and his prospects, I collect. Please go on.”
“At first he seemed merely thoughtless, taking her for granted. Then he became discourteous, and in the last years,
brutal.
There is no other word for it. He humiliated her. He made fun of her country accent and how she ordered the household. If I took dinner with them he would mock what was served and what she wore and what she said—all in a tone which invited me to be scornful too. Anne told me if I tried to speak to him it would only make things worse. Finally I stayed away, Miss Tolerance. It is not to my credit—”
brutal.
There is no other word for it. He humiliated her. He made fun of her country accent and how she ordered the household. If I took dinner with them he would mock what was served and what she wore and what she said—all in a tone which invited me to be scornful too. Anne told me if I tried to speak to him it would only make things worse. Finally I stayed away, Miss Tolerance. It is not to my credit—”
“But perhaps not to your discredit, either,” she said.
“And there is worse.” His voice dropped low. Miss Tolerance had to make an effort to hear him over the clamor of carriages and vendors around them. “When I visited her I saw—several times, I saw marks. Some on her wrists, twice on her neck: the marks of fingers, as if he’d held her down …” Colcannon paused to recover himself. “That was when I asked my solicitor what I might do to help my sister, but the answer was very little. Unless he beat her bloody on the steps of Parliament it is unlikely the law would have taken notice. And Anne would say nothing against him; she feared to do so, I think. He was the Devil to her.”
An unpleasant idea had occurred to Miss Tolerance.
“Mr. Colcannon, had your sister any friend who might have shared your suspicions and, perhaps, taken steps to put an end to it?”
“Friend? Miss Tolerance, I don’t believe my sister knows above a dozen people in the city. We grew up in Somerset; she married after a short season and set up housekeeping. She had very little time to forge friendships before her marriage, and I doubt she has done so since—” He stopped and turned to look at Miss Tolerance with dismay. “You do not use the word
friend
to mean a friendly acquaintance, I take it.”
friend
to mean a friendly acquaintance, I take it.”
“I mean it in the sense of anyone who might feel strongly enough to take drastic action to help your sister, sir.”
“You are asking if my sister had a lover.”
Miss Tolerance maintained an attitude of polite inquiry.
“You have only to meet my sister to know the thing is quite out of the—”
“Mr. Colcannon, if the question could occur to me, you may be certain it will occur to Mr. Heddison and his constables. If you truly wish me to keep your sister safe you must be honest with me. You must trust me, as well, to keep anything I learn a secret. Might your sister have a friend who, even without her awareness, knew of her situation and thought to repair it?”
To his credit Mr. Colcannon appeared to weigh the sense of Miss Tolerance’s words before he spoke. “I know of none,” he said at last. “Indeed, when you have met my sister you will see how very unlikely such a thing is. It was d’Aubigny who … formed connections outside of his marriage. Nor were his liaisons discreet. He made certain all the world knew of them. My sister finally ceased to go into company to avoid the humiliation.”
If that were so, Miss Tolerance reflected, the Widow d’Aubigny was more sensitive than half the wives in London. What had the girl expected, married for her fortune as she plainly had been? But was Colcannon aware of the motive his story suggested? There was no time to ask a question which would have doubtless offended her client: they had turned the corner into Half Moon Street, where the crowds were still jostling for a better view of the murder house. Indeed, as they approached the door they heard a
heated conversation between the same manservant who had admitted Miss Tolerance the day before and a tall, flashily dressed man who stood on the step, waving his pocketbook about in a fashion she thought very ill advised.
heated conversation between the same manservant who had admitted Miss Tolerance the day before and a tall, flashily dressed man who stood on the step, waving his pocketbook about in a fashion she thought very ill advised.
“Only a little peek in the murder room,” the man was insisting. “The lady wouldn’t never know I been there.”
The manservant rejected this plea with the air of one who has heard it before. He was firm, but as he recognized Mr. Colcannon he adopted an expression of more explicit outrage and rejected the offer again, more firmly. The thin man cast a bitter look at Mr. Colcannon and Miss Tolerance and turned on his heel, muttering that he had no doubt these ‘uns would be admitted without payin’ a shillin’.
Colcannon pushed past the gawker as if he were not there, greeted the servant by name (Beak, identified in the Coroner’s Court as the chief manservant of the house) and started into the house. Beak admitted them, but not without giving Miss Tolerance a look of some disapproval. Again they were conducted to the room at the rear of the house, and Beak went to apprise the mistress of their visit.
In a few moments Anne d’Aubigny appeared at the door.
While brother and sister exclaimed over each other and embraced, Miss Tolerance observed the widow. She was a full head shorter than Miss Tolerance, fair and fine-boned. She lacked her brother’s sturdy country manner and ruddy complexion, and might readily have been imagined the sister of the china figure on the table. The inky mourning she wore made the widow’s skin look as sickish-white as parchment, and her eyes were pink as a rabbit’s, presumably from crying. Miss Tolerance rose and curtsied.
“You called here yesterday,” Mrs. d’Aubigny said. Hers was the first voice Miss Tolerance had heard the day before: tremulous and softly reproachful. Whom was she reproaching? “William?” The widow looked to Mr. Colcannon.
“Anne, may I present Miss Sarah Tolerance?”
Mrs. d’Aubigny bowed her head in a tiny acknowledgment, then turned to her brother and murmured something to him. From the rigidity of her carriage and Colcannon’s red face, Miss
Tolerance thought Mrs. d’Aubigny was not pleased to find a Fallen Woman in her parlor.
Tolerance thought Mrs. d’Aubigny was not pleased to find a Fallen Woman in her parlor.
Colcannon replied audibly. “I did not think of that, but indeed, it is exactly as she represented the matter yesterday. I am sorry if you dislike it, but I entreat you to speak with her. I think only of your safety—”
Miss Tolerance took pity on Colcannon’s embarrassment.
“If I might speak a few words with you privately, I believe I can satisfy you as to my qualifications, ma’am. But I will first assure you that, whatever my status, I am not one of that professional sisterhood with whom I apprehend your husband was very familiar.”
Anne d’Aubigny looked shocked. Miss Tolerance felt a moment of impatience, but kept her own expression studiously neutral. She waited. Mrs. d’Aubigny thought, then turned to her brother and said, “Willie, go away.”
Colcannon left the room.
Mrs. d’Aubigny did not ask Miss Tolerance to sit. She stood just inside the door as if ready to run, waiting for an explanation she clearly did not believe would improve her opinion.
“You have a natural dislike of contact with that which is impure,” Miss Tolerance began, “perhaps made greater by what your brother tells me was your husband’s behavior. You must make up your mind to trust me, but I will tell you that, while I am indeed Fallen, I have never been a whore.” Anne d’Aubigny flinched at the word. Miss Tolerance continued. “Indeed, I took up my profession to avoid being handed from man to man. I made what the world calls a mistake in whom I loved, ma’am. Perhaps I am wrong, but I imagine that mistake is one which might be familiar to you.”
The widow twisted a handkerchief between her fingers. “What the world calls a mistake? You do not call it so?”
Miss Tolerance shrugged. “I know all the evils that attend a woman who has cast aside propriety for love. But there are many a man and woman joined by vows who have been less man and wife than … my seducer … and I.”
“And yet you did not marry him.”
“No, ma’am.”
Anne d’Aubigny’s frown deepened. “He had a wife?”
It was perhaps unreasonable of Miss Tolerance to resent this question. “I was not so lost to principle as that, even at sixteen! We eloped to the Continent, and marriage of a pair of English Protestants would have been difficult. But
he
was Catholic, which made the matter more complex, particularly because I did not want to be wed in the Catholic rite. It was the one quarrel we did not resolve before he died.” The crux of the widow’s objection occurred to her. “I can promise that I was not flaunted before a wife; I did to no woman what was done to you.”
he
was Catholic, which made the matter more complex, particularly because I did not want to be wed in the Catholic rite. It was the one quarrel we did not resolve before he died.” The crux of the widow’s objection occurred to her. “I can promise that I was not flaunted before a wife; I did to no woman what was done to you.”
Mrs. d’Aubigny moved to the sofa and sat down. Tears stood in her eyes, and she appeared a little amazed.
“How could you know that?”
Miss Tolerance looked at the other woman with some kindness. “It is writ on your face for anyone with the eyes to see it, ma’am,” she said. She passed over what Colcannon had told her; the widow would likely prefer to divulge the secrets of her marriage herself.
“I’m sorry.” Anne d’Aubigny waved her handkerchief vaguely in the direction of an armchair, which Miss Tolerance took as an invitation to sit. “It has been difficult.” She took another moment to master her emotions, then sat up and regarded Miss Tolerance steadily. Her blue eyes were reddened from crying, but as direct now as they had been guarded a moment before. “Will you explain what my brother has hired you to do, Miss Tolerance?”
“He wants me to uncover your husband’s killer,” Miss Tolerance said. She was startled by her hostess’s sudden reversal, but much preferred this more rational woman and intended to get as many questions answered as she might before the widow sank into tears again. “He feels strongly that your safety depends upon it, and I regret to say that he places no particular reliance upon the civil authorities to do it.”
Mrs. d’Aubigny sniffed, apparently sharing her brother’s opinion of Mr. Heddison and his constables. “But why should my safety be in question?”
“The way this murder was done bespeaks great rage or fear or—perhaps madness itself behind that anger. Someone who killed from rage or madness once might return to do it again.”
Mrs. d’Aubigny looked unconvinced.
“Perhaps more to the point for you, ma’am: once the murderer is uncovered, the constables will stop intruding upon your peace.”
“But what can
you
do?”
you
do?”
Miss Tolerance smiled. “I can ask questions. I can take the answers I get and ask more questions, and perhaps come to an answer.”
“The magistrate and his men can do as much,” Anne d’Aubigny said.
“Indeed they can. But because I am who I am, I can ask them of a great many people, some of whom will not tell the constables what they will tell someone a little removed from the law—like myself.” She smiled with a little humor. “‘Tis one of the ways in which my situation proves useful.”
The widow considered. “You will want to ask questions
here,
I collect?”
here,
I collect?”
Miss Tolerance nodded.
“And go among my husband’s acquaintance as well?”
“I will.”
“And you think you may get some good of it?”
“It is my hope, ma’am.”
A peculiar mix of expression played across Anne d’Aubigny’s pale face. Whatever the thoughts behind it, in the end the widow folded her hands in her lap like an obedient child determined to do an unwelcome task and bade Miss Tolerance ask what she liked.
Miss Tolerance took out a small bound book and the end of a pencil and asked the names and positions of the house servants. In a schoolgirl’s voice to match her demeanor, Mrs. d‘Aubigny recited the names: Adolphus Beak, the chief manservant; Peter Jacks, a second man who served to do heavy work and run messages; Mary Pitt, the housemaid; Sophia Thissen, a ladies’ maid; and Mrs. Ellen Sadgett, the cook. There was in addition a laundress who came twice a week, Mrs. Sadgett’s cousin, but Mrs. d’Aubigny could not remember her name. Did these servants sleep in the house? All except Mrs. Sadgett and the laundress: Mrs. Sadgett left the house after dinner was prepared each night
and returned early in the morning to prepare breakfast. On the morning of her husband’s death, Mrs. d’Aubigny believed Mrs. Sadgett had not been in the house above an hour.
and returned early in the morning to prepare breakfast. On the morning of her husband’s death, Mrs. d’Aubigny believed Mrs. Sadgett had not been in the house above an hour.
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