Milford waited for them at his offices, eager to show them his partial analysis of the Talbot papers. “I’m barely scratching the surface, Shadow. I need more hours in the day. But look here.”
Prue was the first to make sense of the figures Milford showed them. “Talbot was working for Tolliver?”
Milford looked reprovingly over his spectacles. “Talbot was receiving payments from Tolliver. How many of his activities were on Tolliver’s behalf remains to be seen.”
He waved at shelves behind his desk, filled with notebooks, file boxes, and neat stacks of paper, each stack tied in a crisscross of tape. “I have much yet to consider, Shadow.”
“We plan to collect Miss Dorothea today, Milford. Can you put her to work on some of these papers?”
Milford grimaced, but nodded. “I will try, Shadow. But I make no promises. She will have to prove herself.”
“She wishes a chance, Mr. Milford,” Prue said. “I suspect few women are in her profession by choice, and she is certainly anxious to leave it.” Milford was a devout follower of Wesleyan Methodism, and like the founder of the movement, was a kindly soul under his doctrinal rigidity. “Did the Christ not say, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’?”
Milford coloured at the reproof. “You are correct, Mist. I shall treat the young woman with the respect due one who intends to turn to a life of virtue.”
“And how your Dorothea will like that, David, I do not know,” Prue said, as they walked the distance to the Dancing Dove, detouring past Prue’s boarding house so she could change. Bound and padded to conceal her curves, she made a passable short, plump man, in a coat shiny at the elbows and a round-topped hat, and was largely ignored in the negotiations with the formidable Mrs. Hatcher.
Mrs. Hatcher began by setting the price for ‘my dear Fanny, who has been like a daughter to me’ at two hundred guineas. David apologetically offered seventy-five pounds, ‘for I am only a poor clerk, Mrs. Hatcher, and will need a few pounds left to provide for my new wife.’
In the end, they settled on one hundred twenty pounds, and Dorothea was permitted to leave with David and Prue, clutching a letter that confirmed full payment of her debt to Mrs. Hatcher and the Dancing Dove.
Dorothea was taking over Prue’s rooms, at least for the next two months, and while Prue changed back into her walking dress, Dorothea insisted on repaying the extra twenty pounds. “I have earned one hundred pounds, Mr. Walker,” she said, “and will take only what I am owed.”
They escorted her to Milford, introduced the odd pair, and left them discussing the correct angle to cut a nib and whether standing or sitting promoted the best penmanship.
They were meeting Tolliver on Queen’s Walk in Green Park, where the fashionable world was out in force, there to see and be seen rather than to take the air. Tolliver was near the north end of the walk, frowning at the daffodils.
He turned the frown on them when they came up, one on either side. “Shadow. Mist. I told you to leave Selby alone.”
“You did not tell Selby to leave me alone,” Prue observed, wryly.
His frown deepened. “Now he is in the wind; Annesley is dead; and Tiverton has shipped out for Egypt. And heaven alone knows what blackmail materials they still hold. As for Talbot…”
“Yes. Funny that you should mention Talbot,” David told him. “Mist and I have some questions we would like answered, ‘Uncle Tolly’.” He tucked his hand into Tolliver’s arm. “Shall we take a stroll?”
Tolliver fell into step, and Prue came up on his other side. He glanced at her, but turned his attention back to David and went on the attack. “Talbot has disappeared, Shadow. Stripped his house, fired his servants… who tell an odd story about finding their master tied to his own bed with silk scarves. Your preference for binding prisoners, as I recall.”
“At the beginning of this investigation, ‘Uncle Tolly’,” David’s voice was gentle, even meditative, “you promised not to withhold information.”
“I reminded you of the near disaster in the Penworth investigation, and you said, ‘That was a mistake’,” Prue said. Tolliver’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared, but he said nothing.
“On the twenty-fourth of January, you paid Captain Talbot twenty pounds.” David’s tone did not change, and Prue kept her voice calm too as she added, “And a further thirty-five guineas on the eighteenth of February, just before you commissioned us to investigate Talbot, among others.”
“Further payments at the end of February and in March,” David said.
“We would like to know what you paid for, Tolliver. We have enough evidence to convict Talbot a dozen times over, of every crime you can imagine including at least one murder, probably two. But how many of those crimes were at your command?” Prue asked.
Tolliver’s inscrutable mask slipped. “You cannot think that I…” He stopped as he recovered his poise. “So it was you. You took Talbot’s records and sent him running, along with the foreign spy I was using him to trap.”
“Little Joy.” David made that a statement, not a question.
Tolliver stared straight ahead, saying nothing.
“We will find out, you know.” Prue stopped walking, and Tolliver turned to face her. “Shadow is the best enquiry agent in the United Kingdoms,” she continued, “and together, we will uncover the truth.”
“May I remind you, Mist, that you work for me,” Tolliver said. “And I took you off this case.”
Prue took a folded letter from her reticule and handed it to him. “My resignation. I work for David now.”
“With,” David said. “We are partners, Prue.”
Tolliver looked from one of them to the other, then back again.
“And if I ask you to drop the matter?” he said. “In light of the past we have shared?”
“In light of the past we have shared,” Prue told him, “we have come to seek your explanation.”
“But our country is at war, Tolliver,” David added. “We will not work against it, or close our eyes to protect those who do.”
Tolliver nodded gravely.
“Very well. And I suppose it is of no importance now.” He sighed, but glared at them both. “What I tell you is in the strictest confidence. Some of my—er—colleagues would take exception to me sharing this with you, and would find another way of dealing with any annoyance you might cause.”
Prue nodded slowly, exchanging a glance with David. Neither spoke, but Tolliver must have been satisfied. “Talbot was, I will grant you, a poor choice. But he came to us, you understand.”
“I would like to understand,” David said.
“Talbot came to you with what?” Prue asked.
“Information. He had met a woman who was masquerading as a courtesan, but who was, or so he believed, a spy. He would not tell us the name of the woman, and he had many contacts in the demi-monde—we quickly realised he was living well beyond his means.”
“But you decided to use him anyway.”
“We decided to feed him news that was… tailored, shall we say. We asked him to pass it on to his contact, and then we watched to see where it would pop up.”
He fell silent, scowling, until David prompted him. “And?”
Tolliver made an impatient cutting gesture with his hands. “And nothing. The woman was as much of a whore in her spying as she was in her public life. Whoever paid first could have her gleanings. The colonials. The Ottomans. The French. And putting Talbot onto the idea was a bad one. He began to collect information on his own account.”
“This would have been useful to know when you set Prue on the case, Tolliver.” David allowed a thread of his irritation to creep into his voice.
“I told you no lies, Mist. Aldridge brought Lord Jonathan to us with his story. By then, we had discovered Talbot’s informant was the woman known as Joy Fraser. We had no idea of her connection to the Palmer women. We thought Talbot might be using them as a source, but blackmail of the type Lord Jonathan described seemed unlikely.” Tolliver shrugged. “It was decided that the two cases were separate.”
His steps had slowed, but now he sped up again, so Prue had to take two steps almost at a run to keep to his side.
Tolliver continued, “And what you found out seemed to point away from Talbot. Even the link with Annesley… it was of a piece with Talbot’s other activities. Annesley’s friend Tiverton needed to replace what he had stolen.”
“Ah. And Talbot was with the navy, so had a source of such supplies.”
“Talbot always had a source. I have people hunting for him, and for the woman. If you have any idea where they might have gone, tell me. He has been useful, but now it is time to close him down.”
Prue met David’s eyes again. Best to just ask the man outright.
“Who do you work for, Tolliver? The Duke of Haverford?”
Naked shock, quickly masked, but not before Prue recognised heartfelt disdain.
“That old lecher. What makes you think he has any interest beyond his own status, and any advantage that may accrue to his title? No. I work for the Crown, as I have told you before.”
“A convenient fiction, ‘the Crown’, but one that needs human minds to decide what is in the best interests of the King’s realm. Your mind?”
“Among others. I will give you no names, Shadow.”
Prue continued on the attack. “You say you are not Haverford’s man. Are you claiming coincidence, then? That the three of us have a connection with the house of Haverford?”
Tolliver sighed.
“Not entirely coincidence, Mist. I came looking for you at the behest of the Duchess of Haverford. You, too, Shadow. She does her best to look after those her male relatives have…” with a sheepish glance at Prue, he finished, “…seduced and abandoned. I help her when I can.” He shrugged. “You had skills I needed. If you had not, Her Grace would have found you other work.”
Prue paled. “Her Grace has known about Antonia all this time?”
“Since the child was born. One of your sisters wrote to tell her, I believe.”
Hope, probably, living up to her name. Or perhaps Charity, trying to be helpful. But if the duchess had known about Antonia since birth and not taken her, perhaps David was right, and she had no intention of doing so.
“I want whatever you took from Talbot, Shadow,” Tolliver said.
“You took me off the case, ‘Uncle Tolly’, remember?”
“Housebreaking is illegal,” Tolliver reminded him.
David grinned at that. “If Talbot wishes to take me to the law, I shall answer to the courts.”
Tolliver was not amused. “What is your price?”
Prue thought it time to take a turn. “Do you have Captain Talbot’s servants in custody, Tolliver?”
Tolliver nodded cautiously, as David smiled his understanding.
“Then we may be able to come to a trade. Let us question the servants, and we shall report on relevant findings from the Talbot papers.”