Bibby’s face turned a fiery red. “I should’ve, maybe, but you got enough to worry about, ain’t you?”
Constance blinked. It wasn’t the first time she’d come across the girls’ protecting her, but it always surprised her. And took the wind out of her sails.
“Did either of you see him that night?” she asked.
They both shook their heads.
“We both went up to bed before midnight,” Mrs. Cate said. “That weren’t no lie. The lights were all off.”
Constance nodded. “Look, I don’t mind tea on the doorstep. And you know your friends are welcome to call. But we can’t have strangers in the house. Ever. Everyone’s safety depends on that. And you have to tell me important things, like recognizing the man who died.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Bibby whispered.
“I know.” Constance drew a breath. “So tell me about Nevvy.”
*
“He appears tohave been a man of few words,” Constance said to Solomon later, when they finally met up in his office at Silver and Grey. “But when he did speak, it was quietly and politely. Bibby said he spoke a bit like me. Admittedly, I cultivated this accent for professional purposes, but why would a vagrant trouble to do that?”
“He wouldn’t,” Solomon said. “Nevvy was probably hiding his natural accent but it slipped out sometimes. So you think he was educated? From a respectable family fallen on hard times?”
“Maybe. There was the knife too, too fine for such a poor man, and yet he never sold it. And according to Harry and the others I spoke to, he might have begged, but he never stole, and the only time he was roused to violence was when of their own tried to steal his knife. It was all he had, apart from a blanket. But he liked the opportunity to wash at the hospital. Something remained of a better life. No one saw him leave his doorway that night, or noticed him passing in the street. Harry thinks someone must have taken him because he was too weak to walk the distance.”
Solomon frowned. “Someone brought him here to die? Or picked him off the street when he did die and brought him to your doorstep? Why?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps he asked to be brought. Mrs. Cate and Bibby just confessed to feeding him with tea and kitchen scraps in the past. On the doorstep largely, and always during the day. So he could have been sitting there, waiting hopefully, when St. John came across him.”
Solomon sat up straight. “What if the hospital gave Nevvy opium? What if he gave it to St. John, who took too much?”
“What, just eating it, like a child will eat sugar? It doesn’t seem to fit with what we know of St. John. Unless you’ve learned more.”
“I went to his clubs,” Solomon said, “but he wasn’t at any of them after midnight on the night before he died. I spoke to a couple of friends who named a tavern he was fond of, but he wasn’t noticed there either. He seems to have been a convivial fellow, but no one has seen him drunk or incapable. I asked around the hackney stands, too, without luck. None of our neighbors that I spoke to, either in the houses or in the mews, saw or heard anything that could have been people unloading bodies from a vehicle before five o’clock in the morning. Your own stable lads say the same, and Jeremy is still adamant.”
Constance sighed. “Then we are left with the likelihood that they came on foot and voluntarily. Which doesn’t fit with either Nevvy’s physical weakness or St. John’s habits. Why would he be creeping around other people’s back gardens?”
“Perhaps he was in the mews and saw Nevvy come in that way, followed him to see what he was up to?”
“Possible,” Constance said discontentedly. “But how would we ever know?” She drummed her fingers on Solomon’s desk, impatient for answers, then forced herself to stop. “How did Janey get on with the St. Johns’ servants?”
“I don’t know. She isn’t back yet. We really do need to get someone else to hold the fort if Janey is going to be making more inquiries.”
“I thought of Hat. She can read and write and she’s friendly. She thinks she wants to work in a shop, but she might like this. If she doesn’t, I’ll send her to my mother. If you like her, I can ask her.”
“Will she be there tonight?”
Constance glanced at him in surprise. “Tonight? Do you mean to come to the party?”
“I thought I might escort my wife. She’s fond of music.”
Though conscious of a pleasurable warmth seeping through her, Constance said anxiously, “Are you sure? You don’t want to betooassociated with the establishment.”
“I already am. Unless you feel I’m smothering you…”
She seized his hand, squeezing it hard. “Never,” she said fiercely. “The more I’m with you, the better I like it.”
“Then anything else has been said before.”
He was right. She had spoken before of her determination not to drag him down into her world in the eyes of others. He had responded with highlighting the charitable aspects of the establishment to raise her respectability. Beyond a certain point, of course, that ambition could never succeed. But at the moment, it seemed the best compromise. Especially for the girls going into respectable work.
