Cynthia Bailey Pratt (6 page)

Jocelyn found it surprisingly difficult to make up her mind what to do. She stood on the wide steps, turning her head to look between the shop and the alley until she was dizzy. Finally Jocelyn decided it would be best to make her purchases before going to see if Hammond had regained his health. The few things she needed to buy would not long delay her. She pushed open the wooden door, setting the bell jangling.

Though everyone called it a tobacconist’s shop, Harry Yalter sold many other goods. Jars of tea, coffee, and spice breathed out rich odors, as magicians in tales conjured sights of distant lands. Great bolts of cloth gleamed in the dim lamplight above the counters, unraveling like rainbows when a purchase was made. Racks of ribbons, to refurbish gowns if not to remake them, shone like pieces of the same rainbow shredded in beveled glass.

Several other people were in the store. A lady in shiny green twill considered a tray of two-penny embroidery thread while gossiping vigorously with the oldest clerk. A gentleman tested pomades with Mrs. Yalter, flirting innocently. Two clerks stood in the back taking an inventory of muslins. One was the proprietor’s son, who, so Arnold liked to pretend, was in love with Jocelyn. He hastened forward upon seeing her enter.

In the darkness of the shop a small, elderly lady dressed in unrelieved black tried in vain to catch the eye of one of the clerks. When young Yalter came over, she brightened. He passed her by to attend Jocelyn, with a deep bow. The older lady looked so cast down that Jocelyn said, despite her impatience, “I believe you were before me, ma’am.”

“Oh, thank you.” The lady pulled from her reticule a list three pages long, closely covered, front and back, with minuscule writing. She groped for her spectacles. “Now, let me see. I shall want some red grosgrain ribbon for my great-niece Elviry. Red, mind you, not scarlet. She has a wish for scarlet, but I don’t think it’s respectable, do you? Even if no one’s ever to see it. It’s to trim her new night rail, you know.’’

The other clerk disappeared. Jocelyn waited a long while as neither of the two clerks present in the store seemed in any hurry to finish with their customers. She took up a flyer for patent medicine on the counter and studied it, trying to create an interest in a miraculous cure for the stomach gout and noxious humors. Try as she might, however, she could not prevent her foot from tapping or impatient sighs from escaping her.

At last the elderly woman finished choosing and gave instructions for delivery. “It’s the yellow stone house on the edge of the wood. Not the painted yellow house, mind. That’s Mrs. Breagle, and I shouldn’t trust her to pass
everything
on to me. Now, let me see. Did you remember the soap? And the cinnamon wafer? And Dr. Hexham’s tincture? Thank you, then. Good day.”

Finally Jocelyn could approach the dark oaken counter to make her own small purchases. Jocelyn gave the clerk her list, instead of trying to read it to him as the elderly lady had. “Yes, Miss Burnwell,” he said, smiling and bowing. “I’ll get these things for you at once.”

Master Yalter went about collecting Miss Burnwell’s desires in the most heedless fashion. He hung one-handed from the ladder that reached the top of the shelves to obtain the freshest tobacco. He searched among the bottles of scented water to find that with the deepest purple liquid. He opened the big glass jar and dug deep into the center of pale candies for those with the richest flavor. Bringing her purchases to her like a rajah laying rubies before a princess, he said eagerly, “May I do anything else for you. Miss Burnwell?”

Jocelyn felt that it was just as well that Arnold was confined to the house. He teased her unmercifully about her supposed admirer. She pretended not to notice that the young man held her hand a moment longer than necessary when returning her halfpenny’s worth of change. He never left it on the counter like the other clerks.

“Thank you, Master Yalter,” she said, putting her purchases in her basket. She couldn’t help noticing how crushed he seemed by the boyish title. Perhaps Arnold is right, she thought as she turned to go, but that’s hardly my fault. I haven’t done anything to encourage him.

Master Yalter sprang to open the door for her and counted his acrobatic efforts worthwhile when she smiled her thanks.

Once more in the sunshine she turned to the left. A dozen yards away she could see the entrance to the alley that would lead her to Hammond. Surely it would do no harm to inquire for him at the inn. They would at the least tell her whether he was alive or dead. Jocelyn walked quickly along the pavement, wishing she could run as she had yesterday.

In a moment she would find out the answer to the mystery that plagued her. She asked herself if the mystery was Hammond himself or how Hammond would behave when he saw her. She ignored the question. There seemed no time for it now.

A dish-shaped barouche came to stop beside her, the harness jingling. “Jocelyn!” A beautiful young woman dressed in perfect accord with fashion stepped down from the open carriage. Miriam Swann seized Jocelyn by the arms, a square indispensable swinging from her elbow.

“My dear, let me see you,” she cooed. “Out of the way, you booby!” she said sharply to the tall footman beside her.

Blocking the pavement, Mrs. Swann turned again to Jocelyn. “My dear, you should bless the heavens you’re not overly burdened with servants. They are always exactly where you don’t wish them to be. Let me look at you. . . .” From beneath her white hat she looked her friend over carefully. “You’re blooming. Such a color in your cheeks.”

Jocelyn said, “You’re looking well, too, Mrs. Swann.”

“Thank you, my dear. London agrees with me wonderfully. But never ‘Mrs. Swann’ between us. Come, call me Miriam as you used to.”

A man pushed between the two young women, not even bothering to raise his hat. “And let us get out of the street,” said Miriam. “Sit in my carriage.” With a wave of her violet-gloved hand, she indicated her black and gray carriage, a gray horse standing patiently between the shafts and a smartly clad coachman holding the reins.

“Are you visiting the shops?” Jocelyn asked, stepping into the barouche, holding up her skirts to keep them from the gutter. She hoped it would not be long before she could get away.

“Yes, but I’m in no hurry. Only a trifle my mother-in-law took a fancy for.”

Miriam Driscoll and Jocelyn had been jointly instructed at a dame school in Libermore and retained a friendship from it. Much admired for her vivacity and flirtatious blue eyes, Miriam had been pursued by many beaux and finally caught. Two years ago Jocelyn attended Miriam during her wedding to the well-set-up and fashionable Bartlett Swann of London and Libermore. Since then they had exchanged a rare letter and visited whenever Miriam came down with Mrs. Alastair Swann to her country house.

Seated across from Miriam and looking at her in the strong light of day, Jocelyn saw new fine lines about her eyes and noticed that her hair had lost a measure of its blond fluffiness. London, for all its glories, was evidently more trying than Miriam said.

Miriam coughed stagily to distract Jocelyn from too close an inspection, crimping the bow on the ruffled neck of her peppermint-striped silk gown. She ran her hand lingeringly over the sleeve of her pink waist-length spencer as if reassuring herself of its fashionableness.

Jocelyn, accustomed to her friend’s artifices, did not trouble to compare her self-sewn book muslin to a London modiste’s creations. She admired, however, the new narrowness of the costume’s skin augmented by deep tucks all around Miriam’s ankles. Jocelyn wondered if it would be possible to add these embellishments to her own clothes and looked closely to see how they were achieved.

“Yes,” Miriam drawled, pleased by this sort of attention. “Never in my life have I had such a time as in this Season. Last year was nothing to it. Dear Swann spoiled me dreadfully, though, naturally, I found myself left somewhat to my own devices. Such routs and parties, all quite gay. I attended the theater virtually every night. And, of course, His Highness’s plans for this Peace Celebration have sent everyone’s hat over the windmill. Oh!” She placed her fingers over her full lips, flicking a glance at the stiff back of her coachman.

She said in a more natural tone, “I didn’t mean to say that; it’s so vulgar. They call it ‘cant.’ Isn’t it dreadful? Mrs. Swann says it’s the worst thing a lady can do.”

“It doesn’t seem so bad.”

“No, and everyone in London does it. It’s so frightfully wonderful there, Jocelyn. I can’t begin to tell you. But then, Libermore hasn’t been exactly peaceful. I was never so surprised in my life as when I heard.”

“Well, trade has improved enormously with peace, and—”

Miriam looked at her friend with raised brows. “No, my gracious! I mean this awful business about the knife! Not to dissemble, that is why Mrs. Swann sent me to town. We only know the barest details and Harry Yalter’s sure to have more information. He hears everything.”

“I’m afraid I know nothing. What knife?”

Miriam put her hands together and leaned closer to whisper, “The bloody knife! They found it, all stained bright crimson, in a cart under a load of fish. Nobody knows how it came there, and nobody knows whose blood it is.”

Jocelyn felt in her basket for her handkerchief and pressed it to her lips, looking into the water-swept gutter. The horror whispered so gleefully into her ear made her feel strange. That, coupled with the thought that she knew quite well whose blood it was, caused the small carriage to whirl about her.

“Oh,” Miriam said, waving away Jocelyn’s foolishness. “If you’re going to be squeamish . . . isn’t it thrilling? I wonder where they’ll find the body?”

“Body?” Jocelyn asked.

“Well, of course! Our butler said . . . and he got it from a gardener who is related to the man carrying the fish, and that’s as good as I want. Anyway, Mincer said the wound must have been a mortal one because the bloodstain ran clear up the blade to the hilt. Which means there must be someone dead somewhere. It’s just too thrilling!”

“Oh, yes,” Jocelyn said faintly.

Mrs. Swann peered into her friend’s face, noting her sadly drab bonnet. Why the girl didn’t trouble to dress when one could do it so cheaply . . . There would be no possibility of a husband for Jocelyn. After two years in London Miriam Swann had become quite talented at recognizing the differences between those who would marry and the unfortunates that could not. Her friends were often left limp with laughter after Miriam described the Season’s hopefuls.

Miriam had also learned how to conceal her thoughts and said only, “My dear, you look ghastly. Now, you won’t walk all the way home. No, I refuse to let you, that’s all. You’d faint in a minute even if it wasn’t so very hot. You sit here until I’ve had my little chat, and we’ll have you home in a trice.” Mrs. Swann stood up and rapped the footman briskly on the shoulder with her parasol while making a comical face at Jocelyn.

Jocelyn did feel a sinking in the pit of her stomach. However, she did not know if this was the harbinger of a faint or the fear brought of knowledge. She knew Hammond had been stabbed, and yet she’d never stopped to think of who had done it. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of a thief stabbing his prey and leaving him for dead.

The temptation to go and see Hammond again, if only to question him about his wound, grew ever stronger. She would sit for another moment until her knees, queerly shaking, steadied themselves. Then she would go ask him. She leaned her head against her hand.

With a gasp she remembered his dry lips moving and the words
Damn Frenchies.
The coldness she felt before was nothing to the chill that went over her now. She tried to dismiss the words as the wandering wits of a wounded man. The terrible Corsican was utterly defeated and safely en route to Elba. The talk had been of nothing else since Wellington’s victory over Soult at Toulouse. Hammond must have been confused. After twenty years of war, a man could hardly be faulted for blaming all his misfortunes on England’s erstwhile enemies.

Jocelyn pressed her hands against her cheeks. Sitting where she did, she could see Stone Alley plainly. She half-rose to her feet before it occurred to her that Miriam would think her behavior so odd. And everyone knew Miriam’s tongue was hinged at both ends.

She sat down again and chanced to look up the road. Lumbering toward her was Constable Regin. Jocelyn became fascinated by the stitching of her glove.

“Good day, miss,” the constable rumbled as he passed.

“Constable,” she said in reply without lifting her head. The large, deep bonnet covered her face like a knight’s vizard but felt very revealing. Surely Regin could see through her female styles to the raucous boy of the day before. The heavy footfalls continued past the barouche without a pause.

Jocelyn let out her breath in a great sigh. She couldn’t go down Stone Alley now. How odd it would be for her to descend from the elegancy of this carriage to walk down a dirty and dingy alley to a disreputable hostelry. Miriam would talk about her. Constable Regin would certainly follow her, to protect her if not to interrogate her. No, it would be too dangerous to try to see Hammond now. Jocelyn fought down her disappointment.

Miriam came out of the shop. Unfortunately for the Swanns, Harry Yalter knew no more than they, except to say that the magistrate had sent for the knife and for the men who found it.

“That’s good news, at any rate,” Miriam said, once more seated across from Jocelyn. “We know Sir Edgar very well. I think he is fond of Mrs. Swann, although they’re so old. I’ll mention that he’s looking into the matter, and I’m sure Mrs. Swann will invite him to take supper. Perhaps even tonight, although there’s nothing fit in the house to offer him. Tomorrow night will more likely be convenient.”

The carriage set off, rattling over the stony street, the footman clinging to the tiny seat dangling behind. As Jocelyn caught at her bonnet, she looked again at the entrance to the dark alley, the end of which contained so many mysteries. She felt an impulse, nearly impossible to resist, to stop the carriage and get down.

She half-turned in her seat to reach for the coachman. The memory of Miriam’s lively curiosity stopped her once more. Jocelyn looked at her friend and thought her like a curious kitten, determined to explore all the mouse holes in her reach. She couldn’t give Miriam any reason to explore Stone Alley. Hammond’s secret, whatever it may be, should not be revealed by any action of hers. All the same, she wished Miriam had not decided to be kind.