CHAPTER THIRTEEN
On Monday morning there was an air of purpose about the Grosvenor Street breakfast table. Julia and her mother were preparing to call on the Cattsons, Verity was ready for a morning with Charles, her mother was devoting her day to finishing off the inventory of everything they could take from the dower house to Furze House and listing what they would need to purchase.
“Are you sure you would not rather call at the Temple with me?” asked Verity.
“No, dear, there is much to do if we are to remove as soon as Charles can arrange it. I own I am looking forward to the change, even though I shall be sorry to leave London. I am very much enjoying this visit. Pray tell George I am so grateful for him calling and would be pleased to see him again whenever he is at leisure. I had not realised how shackled I had become. One forgets how wide the world is, when one is powerless to do anything but accept a situation.”
“You could come with me and tell him yourself,” suggested Verity.
Her mother exchanged a glance with Mrs Congreve. “I would not distract him for the world. It is better if Charles deals with this matter.”
Verity puzzled over her mother’s statement as Bridget inserted her into her outer costume. Better? Better why? In what way?
The Bowman attorney was located in a different building to Mr Tweedie’s chambers. Verity tucked her hand into Charles’s arm and remarked that for all they were there on business, this felt very much like a tour.
Charles smiled down at her. “I did not know you had ever been on a tour, Verity. I cannot believe your father approved of such things.”
“He didn’t, and I have not, but the mistresses at school used to take stout boots and walking sticks and go off together on a tour every summer. They would sketch what they saw and write it up in great long journals and that would form part of our instruction the next year. I used to read the journals aloud to the other girls every evening in the parlour while they worked on their needlepoint.”
“That sounds a far more pleasant method of education than my schooldays. Did it give you a curiosity for travel? Should you like to see new places?”
“Very much, I think. I have been struck by something Mama said, that she had not realised how constrained she had become. I have learnt so much this week, Charles. There is a great deal more to the world than my narrow circuit. I am ashamed I know so little of it.”
Was it her imagination or did his smile twist before he looked away. “Perhaps when you are married, you and your husband can take tours of your own.”
She shook her head. “I am not going to marry. I believe that is how the restriction happens, unless one has the good fortune to meet with a very superior kind of gentleman. Jenny and Adam Prettyman are happy together, as are Caroline and Alexander Rothwell, but it is clear Kitty does not like being wed, and Mama seems not to have held her marriage to Papa in any affection. I consider I shall be far better entertained keeping to the single state, going about as I like, and sharing Furze House with Kitty and the women she knows. Women who are not ashamed to work, but who fear men and the strength they carry with them. Women who need a refuge and a place of their own.”
“You cannot house them all, Verity.”
“That is no reason not to try.”
Mr Dryden’s rooms were more cramped than Mr Tweedie’s, and there was only one clerk in the outer office to the three that Charles and his partner kept busy. This accorded exactly with how Verity would have expected her father to do business.
Mr Dryden glanced at her disapprovingly and addressed himself exclusively to Charles. Realising Charles would be able to bargain far more persuasively without her presence, Verity bestowed a charming smile on the clerk and settled herself on a hard chair by the wall to wait.
Mr Dryden huffed, called for the papers relating to Mrs Bowman’s jointure, then slammed the door into the inner sanctum behind himself and Charles. The clerk timidly asked Verity if she might move so he could lift the papers down from the shelf above her head.
“Certainly,” said Verity. “It was not at all my intention to be in your way. May I be of assistance in holding anything?”
“Thank you, miss. Such a lot of clients we have. The Bowman papers are those in the purple ribbon at the bottom of the pile. If you could just hold these, please, while I get them down...”
Verity balanced a tottering stack of papers, then passed them back one at a time once the required bundle had been retrieved. The Bowman papers proved to be an unwieldy accumulation of packets and when the clerk tried to extract the particular set required, the ribbon around them was found to be completely knotted. In his hurry, the clerk made it worse.
“I need Mr Johnson’s deeds,” ordered another attorney, striding through the door and glaring at the clerk. “Now.”
“Certainly Mr Dent. I’ll just...”
Verity stood up. “Shall I undo the knot around our papers?” she offered. “I have had a great deal of experience untangling snarls in ribbons and silks. There is a knack to it, I find.”
The harassed clerk accepted gratefully and Verity’s fingers busied themselves with the purple ribbon. She located the key knot and gently teased it loose. The clerk and the other partner still had their backs turned while they looked for the missing deeds.
Curious, Verity riffled through the papers under the pretext of squaring them together more tidily. The top packets in the stack appeared to be mostly labelled ‘boundaries’ and ‘fishpond’ and ‘gifts to John’, but half-way down was a slim package marked ‘Papers relating to Catherine Margaret Bowman’. Verity didn’t stop to think. She whipped it under her cloak. By the time the clerk had dealt with his other employer, she had redone the ribbon around the bundle with a perfect bow. “There, that will make it easier for Mr Dryden to handle, will it not?” she said with a smile.
“My thanks, miss.” The man hurried it through Mr Dryden’s door.
Some twenty minutes later, during which time Verity daren’t look down for fear of seeing her cloak positively on fire with the purloined papers, Charles emerged with a air of satisfaction and escorted her back to his own chambers.
“It is possible a celebration is in order,” he said. “Come through to my office while I jot down the main points of the discussion.”
This was fortunate. Verity immediately slid Kitty’s papers from her cloak to the table. “Oh, how foolish of me. I appear to have carried something off by mistake.”
Charles read the label and looked a horrified question at Verity.
“I do hope it isn’t something important,” she said mendaciously. “That office was desperately untidy, was it not? Nothing like as well regulated as this one.”
“Verity...”
She looked at him, limpid-eyed.
One of the clerks appeared in the doorway with a letter. “Just arrived, Mr Congreve. The gentleman’s gone.”
Charles cleared his throat. “Thank you. Do please have a seat, Miss Bowman.”
“Certainly.” She arranged herself sedately.
“Verity, where did you find these?” he demanded once they were alone again.
“Half-way down that great bundle of papers. I did not see why John should have this package when it quite clearly pertains to Kitty.”
There was so much exasperation in his gaze that Verity almost quailed before it. “Did you learn nothing at Bow Street? Does the term ‘theft’ hold so little meaning for you?”
“Fiddle. The place was in such a muddle, they will never miss it. And if they do, and if they happen to remember I was in the outer room - which they won’t, for I am sure Mr Dryden looked through me as if I wasn’t there - I have a most excellent attorney. Come, Charles, do not be mean. What do the papers say?”
“One day, Verity, I will not be there to save you. Think on that the next time you have one of your impulses.” Nevertheless, he unfolded the sheets and read them through. He frowned and glanced over them again.
“Well?” asked Verity, unable to keep silent any longer.
“It is very puzzling. One sheet is a few lines signed by a Reverend Good recording the marriage between Captain Simon Eastwick and Miss Catherine Margaret Bowman.”
“That does not sound puzzling.”
“The next sheet is an agreement stating that as Catherine has not made a suitable marriage as was stipulated in Mr Bowman’s first wife’s settlement, her half of the six thousand pounds from the late Mrs Bowman shall now be made over to her brother John on his making a suitable marriage, or on his majority, whichever is the sooner. In other words, he gets the whole settlement.”
“Oh, isn’t that just like Papa. Everything was always for John. Always. Why do you look so perplexed? I assure you he would have given John the moon on a plate if he could.”
“I believe you.” Charles tapped the documents softly. “What puzzles me is how your father knew.”
“I do not follow you. The whole of Kennet End knew Kitty and Mr Eastwick had eloped within an hour of the maid finding her note.”
“I am not disputing that, but how did your father come by Kitty’s marriage lines? She ran away. Her letters to your mother were never received, and in any case, this is hardly a thing she would have sent. How, then, is this document with his official papers? You said he did not go after her himself, or put any measures in place to find her.”
“He didn’t. It was as if she ceased to exist as soon as she had left Kennet End. How strange. I shall ask when next I see her. Is there anything else in the packet?”
Charles lifted a slip of paper. “A memorandum recording that the final five hundred pounds had been paid as agreed.”
“Five hundred pounds? To who? By who?”
“I do not know. It is unsigned and undated.”
“Perhaps it was caught up in Kitty’s papers by mistake. It sounds like one of Papa’s transactions.”
“Perhaps so. I would still like to know about the marriage lines. It also occurs to me that your sister was surely under age when she eloped. They would not have had permission for the marriage. I will take you back to Grosvenor Street, and then I think I may have to find this Reverend Good and put a few questions to him.”
“May I not come with you?”
“You may not. One meander through the less salubrious parts of the city within the last few days is quite sufficient. I will call on you tomorrow and tell you my findings.”
As riddles went, it was an unsatisfactory one. Reverend Good had breathed his last several years previously. When Charles asked if there might be a note in the church ledger expressing any doubts or anything out of the ordinary about the marriage, the present incumbent raised his eyebrows and said frankly that weddings weren’t so common amongst his parishioners that any priest hereabouts was going to go asking for proof every time a bride assured him she was twenty-one.
Charles sighed, nodded his thanks and gave the man a couple of shillings for the poor relief.
The rector accepted the money cheerfully. “I won’t put it in the box,” he said. “No sense tempting the congregation when it’ll do more good in my housekeeper’s soup cauldron. At least then everyone gets a share in it.”
“You know best. What did your predecessor die of, by the way?”
“A cosh to the back of the head. All for the cross around his neck and the thruppence three-farthings in his pocket.” The vicar brought forth a workmanlike truncheon out from under his robes and hefted it fondly. “God works in mysterious ways, Mr Congreve, but so far He’s not regretted calling me to this parish.”
“So that’s a line of enquiry that is going nowhere. What of Mary Cattson, Julia? Did you manage to draw her out on the subject of Mr North?”
His sister smiled like a cat who had no idea where the bowl of cream in the kitchen had gone nor how anyone could even imagine she might have had something to do with it. Charles schooled his face to a blank. Julia had used that same expression ever since she was small. It had long since ceased to work on him.
“I did indeed,” she said. “Mr North was invited to the house by Mary’s brother. It seems the foolish boy had lost money at play but Mr North, being a capital sort as her brother put it, tore up the IOUs and said he would not profit by a run of ill luck. The only thing was, he now found himself a trifle embarrassed until his money came in at the end of the quarter, so could he perhaps defray his expenses by staying quietly in the country with Cattson for a couple of weeks? Mary’s brother naturally agreed to this - and there you have it. I declare, was there ever a more idiotic pair?”
“Gulled, both of them. Did you discover how much was paid?”
“Unfortunately not. Mary was sheltered from all such sordid talk. But she did whisper that Frank’s losses were in the region of £400, so I daresay that was paid and more again.”
“You have done extremely well, Julia. Thank you.”
“I enjoyed it. Is there any future, do you suppose, in hiring oneself out as a female Bow Street Runner?”
“None,” said Charles crushingly.
“That is a shame. Well, what do we investigate next?”
“We don’t. I am going to my chambers to get on with what I am paid to do. You will no doubt spend the rest of the day preparing yourself for whichever party you are attending this evening.”
“All this studying of the law has made you very cross, Charles. However, as we are invited to Mrs Stanhope’s rout this evening, though where she is to find enough people at this time of year to warrant the name is a matter of considerable conjecture, I should perhaps look over my gowns.”
She drifted out of the room. Verity smiled at Charles. “I neglected to thank you for battling Mr Dryden on Mama’s behalf yesterday.”
He took her hand in his. “Don’t tell Julia, but I enjoyed it very much. The man is as prosy as your brother. I may drop by his rooms again to ensure he treats the matter with despatch.”
“Are you going to return Kitty’s papers?”
He smiled down at her. “Oh, I don’t think so. The place was in such a muddle, they will never miss them.”
“Charles!”
“You are a terrible influence, Verity. Goodbye. I hope you do not find this evening too much of a crush.”
“Do you not attend?”
“I am rarely invited. Many people find themselves perplexed by the social anomalies inherent in entertaining a gentleman who is also a practising attorney.”
Verity looked disapproving. “It does not seem to me in any way an odd thing to invite doctors or attorneys or bankers to the dinner table, but perhaps that is because I am used to country habits. It appears to be different in London, and not nearly so intelligent. Is it difficult for you balancing your profession with your friends?”
There were times when she was too perspicacious for comfort. Charles hurriedly dropped her hand and left the room in search of his hat and gloves. “I have never thought so before,” he said.