Point of Honour (12 page)

Rooms
was a charitable word for the chamber in which she found herself. In reality, Mrs. Cook’s suite was made up of one small room, with an even smaller alcove at the rear in which Miss Tolerance could see a clothespress and a small bed. The furniture crowded into the room; shabby, but the wood was polished and the whole rendered cozy with pillows and shawls probably made by the occupant herself.

“Please come in,” Mrs. Cook urged. “I am very sorry not to greet you by name, but Nancy forgot to tell it to me. She’s a good child, but forgetful.”

“The fault is mine, Mrs. Cook. I don’t believe I told the girl my name. I am Sarah Tolerance, at your service. It is very kind of you to see me all unknown.” Miss Tolerance stepped into the room, taking in the pleasant clutter of fabric and pattern books, with Mrs. Cook at its center. She was settled in a broad old armchair and surrounded by four embroidery frames, each with a piece of work in progress; she had another frame in her lap. The woman was enormously fat, with a heart-shaped, pretty face framed by a highly ruffled cap. Her hair, a soft, fading brown, curled in a fringe above her brow. Her dress was of a style and fabric that had been popular some years before, and she wore two shawls over her meaty shoulders. Her swollen feet had been squeezed into old leather slippers; as Miss Tolerance came closer, the older woman tucked them under the sofa as best she could, as if she were ashamed of their shabbiness. But her smile was charming, and from it and the low, sweet tones of her voice, Miss Tolerance thought she could understand the reasons for Mrs. Cunning’s early success.

“By your name and your dress, I take you for a member of”—Mrs. Cook paused delicately—“that
interesting
sisterhood to which I once belonged.”

“In a sense, ma’am. In fact, I am here on behalf of a gentleman who believes that you may be in possession of something he wishes to purchase.”

Mrs. Cook seemed genuinely surprised. She looked around the room as if to remind herself of its contents, then shook her head. “As you see, Miss Tolerance, I live quite inexpensively; money is always scarce. I cannot imagine what I could possess—”

“A keepsake,” Miss Tolerance interrupted. “A token given to you many years ago by a connection of yours; his son now wishes to regain it, as it has some familial value, and he is willing to pay handsomely for it.”

The older woman’s shoulders slumped slightly. “I do not think …” She paused as if the admission were painful to her. “I sold so much of what I was given when I was young, to buy the annuity that supports me now. My dear Miss Tolerance … if one who is considerably older may presume to offer you advice, do not squander your money, for when you are no longer young and handsome … this is a hard world, Miss Tolerance. It forces you to make choices you would not like to make, to make associations unpleasant to you, to do things—” She turned her face to the room’s single window and was silent for several moments.

At last Miss Tolerance put her hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “I thank you for your advice, Mrs. Cook. You need have no fear for me, however—”

Mrs. Cook turned back to her emphatically. “No, you must believe that even you may be overtaken by—”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” Miss Tolerance interrupted. “I have not made my situation clear. I am indeed—that is, while I lost my virtue some years ago, I did not adopt the profession from which you have retired.”

Mrs. Cook looked puzzled. “I do not understand. I thought you said the son of one of my lovers had sent you?”

“So he did, ma’am. But I am his agent, nothing more.”

“You are his agent but not his mistress?” Now the older woman seemed troubled, as if the fact that a woman might lose her reputation and yet maintain her autonomy confused her.

“May I sit down, ma’am?” Miss Tolerance asked. Mrs. Cook nodded and motioned to a chair. “I have fashioned an odd career for myself; I solve puzzles, unravel little mysteries, and find things out for the people who honor me with their patronage.”

Mrs. Cook drew back. “You are a
spy
? Has this thing you wish to purchase to do with the war with France?” Her eyes went round with shocked disapproval; her unlined, fleshy face quivered with outrage.

For the love of heaven,
Miss Tolerance thought wearily. “I am no spy, ma‘am. Not in the way you mean. My patrons are most likely to be ladies who wish to find out if their husbands are spending their jointures on light-o’-loves, grandfathers who need to learn whether their dissolute grandsons are incorrigible wastrels or merely sowing wild oats, or men who need to learn if their stewards are cheating them.”

“Are you a lady thief-taker, then?” Mrs. Cook asked. She appeared determined to fit Miss Tolerance’s calling into a form recognizable to herself, even one outmoded by several decades. Miss Tolerance was hard put not to smile at the notion of a lady thief-taker, like something out of a broadside ballad.

“I don’t think of myself as a thief-taker, ma’am, although on occasion I have caught a thief when my client required it. I call myself an agent of inquiry. And sometimes I find things for persons who do not wish to be seen making inquiries themselves.”

“Then ’tis not political, what you do?” Mrs. Cook considered for a moment. Her posture had relaxed, but there was still a furrow between her brows. “I am sorry, Miss Tolerance. Living in a naval town, where everyone seems to be a sailor, or to have a brother or son who is a sailor, the war, and fear of spies, is perhaps more present with us than it is in London.”

In her turn, Miss Tolerance apologized. “I should perhaps have explained the capacity in which I am visiting more clearly, ma’am. Although you see it is not easily explained! But I promise you on my honor that the object I am seeking has no connection to the war.”

The older woman nodded. “I thank you for your assurance, Miss Tolerance. Now.” She looked around her as if hoping to find something she knew would not be there. “I regret I cannot offer you refreshment, my dear, but I am afraid … I keep no wine, you see, having too great a weakness for it myself. And I would ring for tea, but it is near the end of the quarter, and …”

She was so obviously eager to make amends for her suspicions with hospitality that Miss Tolerance’s heart went out to her.

“Mrs. Cook, if you will allow me to call the maid up and order refreshments—I assure you, the expense will be borne by my client, who can well afford to indulge two ladies in a light nuncheon.” She made sure to speak confidingly, as if buying cakes and tea were a slightly wicked dissipation. The gesture worked. The older woman sat back and smiled.

“If you will ring the bell for Nancy, then? It is there, by your hand. I do not move about as well as I was used to once. I am sadly dropsical, as you see.” She held out her pudgy, swollen fingers for her visitor’s inspection. Miss Tolerance rang the bell sharply, hoping that the girl in the coffee room would actually hear it. “Now, Miss Tolerance, perhaps you can tell me which of my former connections has sent you to me, and what he is seeking?”

“Yes, ma’am. May I first ascertain that in your youth your professional name was Deb Cunning?”

Mrs. Cook looked embarrassed, but nodded.

“Well, then. I have been sent by the Earl of Versellion, who hopes to regain a fan that his father gave to you some twenty years or so ago.”

“Oh, longer than that, my dear. It was …” Mrs. Cook’s expression became at once pleased and dreamy. “It was in ’85, for my twenty-first birthday. I had not thought of that fan in an age! Such a pretty thing, gold sticks and silk painted with an Italian landscape, cypress trees, you know, and a jewel set in each stick. It was the last thing he gave me, and I kept it—”

“You have it now?”

“Oh, mercy, I don’t know! I sold so much over the years. I cannot be sure if I sold the fan when I sold my rings and the other pretties. Ah, but here is Nancy.”

Indeed, the door had opened, and the girl whose acquaintance Miss Tolerance had made downstairs stood waiting.

“Nancy, we would like tea and currant cakes, if Mrs. Mardle has made any this morning? Thank you. And if you would ask Mr. Mardle for the box he keeps for me downstairs? Yes, dear, bring it along, if you please.”

When the girl had gone again, Mrs. Cook asked, as delicately as possible, what sort of remuneration Lord Versellion was offering for the fan, should she still have it. Miss Tolerance was torn between the impulse to promise the entire five hundred pounds she had been authorized to spend, and a more hardheaded sense that her patron would be appreciative if she was able to bring Mrs. Cook to settle for less.

“How much would you expect to receive for it?”

Mrs. Cook flushed. “I do not know its worth, really,” she said. “And were I not in such reduced circumstances, Miss Tolerance, I should happily return it to Versellion without requesting payment. As it is … do you think he might pay fifty pounds?”

If Mrs. Cook was serious, Miss Tolerance understood her aunt’s comments about the woman’s improvidence. Certainly she was no adventuress.

“I think Versellion can be brought to part with such a sum,” she agreed.

The look of pleasure on the older woman’s face was almost childlike. “Then you must have five pounds for yourself!” she insisted. “What wealth! I can have a new dress, and slippers, and pay my shot here without waiting for the payment of my annuity, and have money for vails. I shall ask the bookseller to order a copy of
The Curse of Kehama!”

Miss Tolerance thanked her hostess for the offer, but assured her that she would be more than adequately compensated by the earl for her exertions. Privily she resolved to get at least two hundred pounds for Mrs. Cook if she could. There was remarkable charm in spending someone else’s money.

Until Nancy reappeared with a tray and a dusty locked box, Mrs. Cook kept up a happy monologue upon the subject of what she might buy or do with her potential wealth. When the maid arrived at the door, she immediately stopped speaking except to thank the girl. The box was settled upon the arm of Mrs. Cook’s armchair; the tray, with a pot of tea, a plate of currant cakes, and a small bowl of jam upon it, was settled on the footstool nearest Miss Tolerance’s chair, and she poured out tea as Mrs. Cook fumbled in her pocket for the key to the box.

It was opened to reveal several packets of papers, all of them covered with the same loose, ornamented schoolgirl hand and tied together inelegantly with bits of twine: not love letters, certainly. Beneath those packets, two more packets of letters, these tied up more romantically with ribbon, each of them subscribed in handwriting more masculine. Below those, a necklace of amber beads, a brooch of brilliants, a fan—but quite an ordinary one with wooden sticks, covered in white lace.

Mrs. Cook surveyed the contents sadly. “
That
fan came from Johnny—my first, you know. I had misremembered it as Versellion’s fan, I suppose. It would have been so very nice to have a little nest egg.” She looked up at Miss Tolerance. “But I have had tea upon the strength of your kind visit, and that was a treat I did not expect.” She lifted up the bits of trumpery jewelry and revealed another pile of papers, unbound and shuffled together every which way. “Oh! Would it be of any value to you to know to whom I sold the fan?” she asked. “I might still have the receipt.”

Miss Tolerance, who had taken the loss of her only material lead to the fan with as much composure as she could, released the breath she had been holding. “It would be of great help to me, and it would give me great pleasure to pass along a small gratuity in exchange.”

Mrs. Cook smiled and took up the pile of papers at the bottom of the box, rifling through them, murmuring to herself as one, then another of them called up memories for her. “Ah, I had not thought of that bracelet for years! And the locket! And …” Then she came upon a slip of paper which she silently proffered to Miss Tolerance.

There was a date seventeen years in the past.

Sold to Mr. Humphrey Blackbottle, one pr. emerald earbobs, 2nd qual. One garnet brooch. One fan, gld sticks w brilliants. One pr. gold and jet earbobs …

“Who was Mr. Humphrey Blackbottle?” Miss Tolerance asked. It saddened her to note how little money Mrs. Cook had realized by the sale of her treasures.

Mrs. Cook sighed. “A jumped-up tradesman, quite well-to-do. He bought great quantities of jewelry, but never anything very fine and never anything from a jeweler. He fancied himself a very sharp fellow, as I recall, but as you see, he thought the diamonds on the sticks of the fan were mere brilliants.”

“Do you recall what trade he followed?”

“I believe …” Mrs. Cook made a moue of concentration. “No, I can recall nothing helpful. The whole matter was handled by the landlord of the rooms I had then, who undertook to sell my jewels for me as a favor. I know Mr. Blackbottle’s name seemed familiar to me at the time, but to be frank, I cannot recall why.”

It was clearly useless to press further. Miss Tolerance smiled at her hostess. “It makes no mind, ma’am. I thank you very much for your help, and I shall see that you are rewarded for it. Now, I have taken a good deal of your time.” She rose. “Will you pardon me? The sooner I can locate Mr. Blackbottle, the sooner you and I will both receive our rewards.”

Mrs. Cook put an anxious hand on her visitor’s sleeve. “But—I hate to ask it, but you will see to the matter of the tea, Miss Tolerance? It is quite beyond me at this present moment.”

Miss Tolerance took up her hat, nodding. “I promise it,” she said kindly.

Only later did it occur to her to wonder how often, and with what expectation of fulfillment, Mrs. Cook had heard those words.

A
fter an uneventful ride back to London, Miss Tolerance returned her horse to the stables. It was nearly two o’clock, and she had no time to change to more feminine attire before she walked to Henry Street for her next appointment. At the door of Tarsio’s Club, Steen greeted her with a look of significance.

“I’m that glad to see you, miss. You’ve a visitor in the Conversation Room. An important one—Mr. Jenkins is beside hisself to have such a personage in the house.”