CHAPTER FORTY
A Life in Letters
“A man concerning whom great expectations are formed, and various parties look at him as a card which . . . they might like to play . . .”
Bury, Charlotte, The Diary of a Lady-in-Waiting
One of the genuine problems with turning novelist, reflected Alice as she entered the White Swan, was that one developed a tendency to narrate one’s own life.
Our heroine stood poised on the threshold of the iniquitous tavern. Inside, every sort of rough and rowdy man might be found. Thankfully, they were too engaged with their strong drink and merry bragging to notice the slender girl in dark coat and wide bonnet slip past them and run—heart and slippers pattering—up the dismal staircase....
It was dark upstairs and smelled of damp and of old dinners. Alice felt her nose wrinkling, both at the odors and the possibility that she should have taken George up on his offer to accompany her.
Unused as she was to such dim and dangerous surroundings, she nonetheless summoned her courage. She reminded herself of the urgency of her errand, that lives hung in the balance....
Light seeped out from under the fourth door on the left, illuminating a section of stained and splintered flooring. Alice knocked and waited and knocked again.
She heard the sounds of shuffled papers and rustling cloth. A moment later the door opened, just a fraction of an inch, and a bespectacled eye in a pinched White man’s face glared at her.
Faced with this penetrating and entirely hostile glare, she felt herself grow faint....
Which would do very well for fiction, where heroines were expected to be close to fainting the majority of the time. The truth of the matter was that this particular eye most likely belonged to a belligerent boy.
“I’m looking for Mr. Tauton,” Alice announced.
“What business—” began Young Belligerence. But there was movement behind him, and a thick hand reached over his shoulder to pull the door open.
Now Alice could see the dingy, paper-filled room. It was not a large space, and the presence of Samuel Tauton made it feel positively cramped.
Still, someone had evidently made a great effort to get things into order. Three lamps burned their brightest to banish even the possibility of shadow. Every flat surface was covered with tidy stacks of paper, most of them bound in black, red, or blue ribbon and labeled with slips of paper on which were written cryptic notations—A-1, D-3, 2-L.
Young Belligerence turned and glowered up at Mr. Tauton. “I am under orders to admit no one.” He turned to Alice, taking hold of his spectacles, as if they might fly away. “You’ll have to leave at once, miss.”
“But I’m not no one.” Alice slipped over the threshold. “As Mr. Tauton can tell you.” She beamed at the officer and was rewarded with a tolerant chuckle.
“She’s right, Bingham,” Mr. Tauton said. “This is definitely not no one. This is the legendary scribe and literary light Miss Alice Littlefield.”
Alice made her curtsy. “Why, thank you, Mr. Tauton. How do you do?”
“As you see.” He swept out his hand to indicate the whole of the room. “Awash in papers and babysitting this young pup.” He nodded toward Mr. Bingham, who frowned and resettled his spectacles farther up his nose. “What brings you to these sorry chambers?”
“I’m on an errand for Miss Thorne and Mr. Harkness. I need to know if you have found the name of Captain George Dawson among these papers.”
“Mr. Stafford left instructions I am not to speak to anyone,” groused Mr. Bingham.
She turned, her heart beating like that of a captive bird, and gazed into the eyes of this brutal man who had set the whole of his will against her....
“Mr. Bingham,” she said. “I fully understand you have your duty. Now, I could bat my eyes and cry and so forth to try to gain your sympathies. But you and I both know you are too experienced and too professional for that to have any effect.”
Mr. Bingham’s chest swelled at this flattery, just a little. Behind him, Sam Tauton’s eyes twinkled. Alice made herself ignore that.
“I promise I am not asking out of idle curiosity,” she went on. “Captain George Dawson may be tied to the murder of Mr. Poole, and the coroner needs to know if they were in business together or if they had any other ties.”
Bingham scowled at her, very much on his dignity. He glanced at Tauton, but there was no help there.
“Oh, very well.” He began flipping back through his ledger. “Correspondence to one George Dawson, three letters, filed under 4-D.”
“This is an impressive system you’ve created.”
Mr. Bingham thawed a little further. “I take pride in my work.” He undid the black ribbon, leafed through the papers, and extracted three pages. “Here we are.” He held them out to her. “They cannot leave here,” he warned.
“But may I make notes? I would not want to give Sir David an inaccurate account.”
“You may use the table,” said Bingham in a manner that was surely meant to be gracious.
Alice exchanged a small smile with Mr. Tauton as she squeezed past him to perch on the edge of the crooked chair. She opened her own modest, battered notebook.
Mr. Tauton settled himself on the bed, which creaked in loud complaint.
With trembling hand, she reached for the letter. At first, her eyes refused to read, and then her mind rebelled at understanding what she saw. . . .
She spread out the three letters Mr. Bingham had unearthed. She scanned them rapidly, absorbing the main points, and then read them again more slowly, noting the language and the tone, the handwriting and the underlines and exclamations.
Then she read them a final time, this time adding notes to her book in her rapid, irregular shorthand:
Item: Geo. D. in debt for 2000 pounds, interest accumulating weekly, three separate moneylenders. Chief expenses: clothes and spiritous liquors . . .
Item: Geo. D. applied JP for assistance managing affairs, putting off creditors . . . Father threatens to cut off son. . . . Lenders likewise threatening . . .
Then came the final letter, dated just three days before.
Item: JP delivered good news to Geo. D. that creditors had been satisfied. Terms heavy?
Alice underlined the last words.
“Have we found something?” inquired Mr. Tauton.
“I believe that we have,” Alice said. “In fact, we may have found what everybody’s been looking for.”
Item: Geo. D. writes: “Regarding our arrangement, I know you hold promise, but circumstance changed . . .”
Suggests meeting to explain.