“Betty Strokum told a tale on me, sir?” Boyse’s menacing affability slipped. “She didn’t ought to do that. Of course, you can’t trust whores, sir.” He turned and looked meaningfully at Miss Tolerance.
“Or barmen, Boyse?”
This appeared to confuse Boyse. “Barmen, sir?”
“Are barmen less reliable sources of information?” Heddison sighed. “How did you know it was Mrs. Strokum I meant? She was beaten the other day, and accuses you of—”
“What, beating her? Whores need a good thumping now and then, sir,” Boyse said. “Wouldn’t you say, miss?”
Miss Tolerance kept her eyes on Heddison, who was in no way as sympathetic to his constable’s humor as Boyse seemed to expect. The magistrate turned to her.
“At what time did the barman at the Duke of Kent say Boyse arrived there, Miss Tolerance?”
Miss Tolerance took a notebook out of her reticule and paged through it. “About half past eight o’clock, sir.”
“Eight o’clock? That would certainly allow a few hours for him to become inebriated, as he says. The question arises: where was he in the hours before that?”
“Was he not working for you?” Miss Tolerance asked with some surprise.
At almost the same moment Boyse leaned forward confidingly, as if hoping to convey some information to his employer without including Miss Tolerance in the communication. “When I brung you the evidence, your honor, we talked about my—my deereeliction of duty. That I stepped out on that ’ere assignment.”
“And I had assigned you to—” Heddison paused, as if in recollection. “We did discuss it. Your dereliction started at what time, Boyse?”
The constable stared at his employer. “Beg pardon, sir?”
“At what time did you start drinking, man?”
“Oh. Maybe six of the clock, sir.”
“And you never foll—got to the piece of business I had assigned you?”
Boyse’s eyes shifted from left to right, from Mr. Heddison to Miss Tolerance. “No, sir. I went straightaway to drinking.”
The men were speaking around a piece of information Miss Tolerance did not have. It was not a sensation she liked. “The barman at the Duke said that Boyse was not drunk when he arrived, sir. He arrived—” she looked at her notes again. “‘Sober and full of himself,’ I was told.”
Boyse put out his hand as if he might take the notebook from her, then thought better of it. The hand, his left, dropped to his side, just by Miss Tolerance’s shoulder. Miss Tolerance felt unnaturally aware of the meaty hand so near to her. Uneasily she turned
back to Heddison, to see what he made of all this. His expression was quizzical.
“Do you know Mr. Beauville, Boyse?” Heddison asked.
The warmth which had radiated from Boyse’s body abruptly faded. Miss Tolerance looked up at the man and saw his gaze still fixed upon her. His smile looked like a mask behind which an animal was trapped. He did not answer, and the quiet in the room became both oppressive and communicative.
“Perhaps we ought to put all the cards upon the table,” Heddison suggested. “Miss Tolerance says that there never was a Millward, Mr. Boyse. She claims to have testimony—from people who are readily available—to this effect.”
Boyse turned his head and spat.
“If you cannot provide a better account of your whereabouts on that night, I will be forced to give more credence to her evidence. When you left my company on that evening your instructions were clear, and the only reason I absolved you of negligence in leaving off the task to which you had been assigned was that you chanced upon evidence in the case …” Heddison trailed off, looking at his constable with concern.
“I should very much like to know what this task was to which Mr. Boyse was assigned,” Miss Tolerance said. Both men ignored her.
“I hope I have not been mistaken in you, Mr. Boyse. The law allows us some latitude in how we achieve justice, but where there is testimony to counter—”
Boyse, still standing uncomfortably close to Miss Tolerance, seemed to be on the verge of explosion. His pocked face was very red, and he rubbed his fingers together as if the friction might discharge his anger. She sat poised on the edge of her chair, ready to leap away from him if necessary.
“What, Betty’s word? The word of a whore? I told her if she said anything I’d have her by the throat—”
“You beat her? A
witness
?”
“A witness? That drunken bunter? If I did beat her she’d never ’ave noticed it. They get used to it in your line of work, don’t they, miss? Whores? Looks like you and Bet got more’n one thing in common.”
Without volition Miss Tolerance found that her hand had moved to her cheek, where the shadowy bruises of her own beating were still visible. She looked up at Boyse with horrified fascination, and something slid into place in her mind.
“What hand do you sign your name with, Mr. Boyse?”
Both Heddison and Boyse looked at her as if she were mad.
“Your left, is it not? And you lead with your left, don’t you, sir? Did Mr. Beauville ask that you beat me, or did you decide to do it on your own?”
“What?”
Mr. Heddison rose from his seat, leaning forward over his desk as though he could not tell at whom to aim his outrage.
“WHAT?”
Miss Tolerance could see Boyse’s chest heaving under the red waistcoat he wore in imitation of the Bow Street constables. His large, square hands flexed at his side, nearer to her neck than she liked. She spoke to Heddison, but did not take her eyes away from Boyse.
“Was
I
the task to which you assigned Mr. Boyse that evening, sir? As you can still see, I was accosted and beaten that evening, and when I consider it, my assailant had a remarkably similar fist to that of the man who beat Mrs. Strokum. He was a very big man, and one who led exclusively with his left—as I am bruised on the right. Did you assign Mr. Boyse to follow me, sir? I cannot believe that you would have authorized a beating.”
Boyse was almost glowing with rage. His hands flexed as he glared back and forth between his employer and his accuser. Miss Tolerance continued.
“I was followed from—from an interview in Balcombe Street. I was frankly tired and not so careful as I might have been. My assailant was well muffled against the cold and rain, so I could not make out his face. I am not sure if his object was my death, but it certainly seemed that way at the time.”
“You’re here, ain’t you?” Boyse snarled.
“Allow me some skill at what I do, Mr. Boyse. Had I not been likewise bundled against the cold I would have had my smallsword out, and the ending would have been very different. You had a lump on the back of your head that was bothering you the next evening when you came for Anne d’Aubigny, didn’t you, sir?” Miss
Tolerance’s smile was calculated to enrage the constable. If Boyse attacked her, would Heddison make any effort to stop him?
“Did Mr. Beauville ask you to kill me? Was he afraid I would come too close to him?”
“He ‘ad nothing to do with it!” Boyse bellowed. “I thought you’d caught a bloody eyeful. Thought you knew who was followin’. How was I to know you couldn’t see my face?”
“You were about the law’s business!” Heddison barked. “What could the woman have done but come and complain to me, and I’d have sent her away with a flea in her ear!”
“I just—she didn‘t—Christ, sir! Look at her! Whore. And wearing men’s clothes. Her so full of herself, needed takin’ down a peg. I—” Boyse choked.
“You don’t like me,” Miss Tolerance finished for him. “So you beat me—then went off to a public house where you were known, to establish the best alibi you could. But what did Beauville have to say to you that night?”
Boyse looked again at Heddison. Miss Tolerance thought he saw no help there.
“He just wanted to know what progress on the case—’e was paying me to tip ’im the gen because he was a friend of the dead. I tol’ ’im I couldn’t say just then. That’s
all,
sir!” He turned to Heddison again.
“But you did tell him later?” Heddison asked.
“Aye.”
“Told him what?”
“Only that we’d been to the widow’s that afternoon and found this one with ‘er. That she—Miss Tolerance—said summat about the doors bein’ locked or unlocked. I don’t recall precisely. That I’d followed her to some whore’s place in Balcombe Street—”
Miss Tolerance drew in a sharp breath.
Heddison looked back at Miss Tolerance. “What?”
“The woman who was found dead in Cleveland Row yesterday morning, sir. With evidence incriminating a man of some importance. Until a month or so ago, she was also Etienne d’Aubigny’s mistress.”
Heddison sank back into his chair.
“I do not know what to make of this,” he said at last. “There is too much—I must think about what it all means.”
“Yes, sir,” Miss Tolerance agreed. “But while you are thinking, I hope you will arrange to have my client freed from Cold Bath Fields Prison? I have exploded one piece of evidence against her, and provided you with a few new suspects.”
Heddison shook his head. “I must hear from the witnesses of which you spoke, Miss Tolerance. I cannot release a prisoner on the say-so of—”
“Of, sir?”
“Of an interested party. As for you—” Heddison turned to Boyse. “If Miss Tolerance does not prefer charges against you for assault—wholly outside of your authority as an officer of the law—perhaps this Mrs.—” he turned to Miss Tolerance to supply the name.
“Betty Strokum.”
“Perhaps this Mrs. Strokum will.”
Mr. Boyse, who had stood mute and defeated since the revelation of Mrs. Vose’s identity, leaned over the magistrate’s desk to protest. Heddison, his cane still in hand, rapped sharply on the desk, which brought Boyse to attention.
“You have no one but yourself to blame for this, Boyse. Beating
women
—of whatever condition—who by the nature of their frailty should be most liable to your protection.”
“What, her?” Boyse did not look at Miss Tolerance. “I should have bloody killed ‘er when I ’ad the chance.”
“But you did not,” Miss Tolerance said.
The thought of what might have been was apparently too much for Boyse, who rounded on Miss Tolerance with a roar and would have taken her throat in his grasping hands had she not rolled away from him and come up, awkwardly, behind her chair. Miss Tolerance dimly noted Heddison roaring at his constable to stop, but she was more engaged in evading Boyse’s attack. She picked up the chair she had vacated and used it to keep Boyse away, but Boyse grabbed the seat and began to wrestle the chair from her. Miss Tolerance was weighing her next action when Boyse suddenly dropped and curled up on the floor, keening. Behind him,
Mr. Heddison stood, red-faced, with the knob-headed walking stick in his hand.
“Thank you, sir,” Miss Tolerance said breathlessly.
Heddison gave no reply, but banged the stick against the door again. Mr. Cotler appeared at once, and was instructed to send in Mr. Greenwillow and any other of his colleagues who should be in the house. Cotler took one look at the scene before him: magistrate with cane in hand, Miss Tolerance still holding the chair before her, and Boyse curled on the floor; whistled, and closed the door.
Mr. Heddison shook his head. “If assaulting the very people whose protection we have undertaken was not bad enough, it seems you have been taking money to relay the course of the investigation! I am saddened beyond my ability to say it.”
Mr. Greenwillow and another man appeared in the doorway.
“Detain him. Assault and abuse of privilege,” Mr. Heddison said curtly, indicating Boyse with a nod of his head.
Awkwardly, the two constables stepped forward and took Boyse by the arms. Boyse looked wildly a the two men. “Teddy,” he implored his former partner. Greenwillow looked everywhere but at Boyse’s face. As the three men started out the door Boyse glared at Miss Tolerance.
“You whore. You bitch. I should have kilt you.”
“But you did not,” Miss Tolerance said again.
M
iss Tolerance left the Great Marlborough Street Public Office with a sour taste in her mouth. She had promised Heddison to provide Mrs. Strokum at her earliest opportunity, and to send the barman at the Duke of Kent to him as well, to corroborate her story. To her own mind Boyse had convicted himself, but if was not her mind which must be satisfied upon the score if Anne d’Aubigny was to be released.
Mrs. Strokum had to be persuaded with gold and assurances to leave the safety of Mrs. Lasher’s house and call in the Great Marlborough Street Public Office. When Miss Tolerance explained how matters stood with Boyse, that he was in custody and unlikely to be released, Mrs. Strokum appeared very pleased,
particularly when Miss Tolerance made it clear to her that the beating she had suffered was one of the crimes for which he was being held.
“Prefer charges? I should damned well think I shall!” Dressed in the dark stuff gown which she had worn at Mrs. Lasher’s, the whore looked surprisingly respectable except for her bruises, and that lascivious toothless grin.