“Sir, there was no time. I am afraid my encounter with the woman went somewhat shakily.” I proceeded to inform Sir Owen of the previous evening’s adventure. This confession was unguarded, but I felt the need to secure the baronet’s trust. And I knew that he understood his implication in this matter quite clearly, for I could not be brought forward for punishment without exposing Sir Owen’s secret. He listened to my story with grave concentration. “Gad,” he breathed. “This is a serious dilemma. You know that this whore must never speak. She must not be permitted to drag you into a trial, and you must not drag my name into it. You understand that such a thing cannot happen.” His voice rose with increasing levels of panic. “I cannot allow that such a thing could ever happen.”
“Of course,” I said, as if soothing a child. “You have made it clear that your privacy is of the utmost importance, and I shall treat it as such. In the meantime, I believe I have imparted unto Kate the importance of keeping silent and leaving London. There is little to fear on that head.” I overstated the case, but it was important that I resolve the baronet’s anxieties. There would be ample time to manage Kate Cole should she prove unruly. “We must concentrate now on finding your property. If these papers have fallen out of your book, or happened to be among any other possessions, then they are still among Kate’s goods now, wherever that may be.”
Sir Owen let out an exasperated sigh, and seeing him to be in need, I stood up to gather for him some refreshment. “Might I pour you some wine?”
He looked flushed. “I fear wine will not do the business, sir. Have you any gin?”
I had not. I knew too well the insidiousness of gin from the unfortunates with whom my trade brought me into almost daily contact. Cheap, flavorless, and potent, it ravaged both the minds and bodies of countless thousands in London, and I ill-trusted my indulgent nature with so powerful a poison. Instead, I offered Sir Owen a dram of a Scottish liquor that my friend Elias Gordon had brought me back from his native land upon his last visit. Sir Owen sniffed the dram glass with hesitant curiosity, squinting at the liquor’s sharp, malty odor. Absently nodding as I warned him of the drink’s great strength, he proceeded to probe it with his tongue. What he found excited his curiosity, and he then swallowed the contents with a mighty gulp. “Wretched,” he said after screwing his face into a look of both disgust and a kind of surprised enjoyment. “The Scots are certainly animals. But it does the business.” He helped himself to another glass.
I took my seat again and studied Sir Owen carefully, attempting to gauge his mood. His agitation thickened the room like summer humidity, and I wished to comfort him, though I knew not how. I could not imagine the nature of these documents, but I assumed the baronet feared some knowledge contained therein falling into the wrong hands. “Sir,” I began hesitantly, “I wish to retrieve your private papers. I do not think all is lost. I have many contacts in London; I can find Kate Cole, and she can bring me the documents. But,” I said slowly, “I must be able to recognize this packet when I see it. I must be able to tell I have your papers, sir. And that I have all of them.”
He nodded. “I see that I am exposed before you, Mr. Weaver. My own foolishness, many times over, has put me in this situation, and now I must rectify it. So be it.” He straightened himself into a posture of fortitude. “I shall have to trust you.”
“I assure you that I shall never reveal your secrets.”
He smiled as to show his faith in me. “Do you, Mr. Weaver, trouble yourself with the matters of fashionable life—marriages and those sorts of affairs?”
I shook my head. “I fear my business does not leave me the time for pursuits of that nature.”
“Then you will not have heard that in two months I am to be married to the only daughter of Godfrey Decker, the brewer. Decker is a rich man, and his daughter comes with a considerable portion, but I care nothing for the wealth. It is a love match.”
I awkwardly offered a sympathetic nod. I wished to avoid any appearance of cynicism, but while I considered Sir Owen to be a man of many feelings, I was not convinced tender love was among them.
“There has been some talk,” he continued, “for it is scarce a year since my late wife, Anne, passed on. You must not think that I was, or still am, unaffected by her loss. I loved her very dearly, but mine is a susceptible heart, and in the loneliness that comes with a widower’s state, Sarah Decker has brought me much contentment and happiness. Yet the passing of my wife is no simple matter, sir, for she died of a disease that she contracted of me.” He paused for a deep breath and then turned away. “A disease that I, in turn, contracted of an amour.”
“I understand,” I said after a moment, wanting to fill in the silence but feeling foolish for having said anything at all. Sir Owen would hardly be the first fashionable gentleman in London to have clapped his own wife. I shall not understand why so many men refuse to take the trouble of procuring the armor of sheep intestines to guard against Cupid’s most pernicious arrows.
“I had always responded so well to the treatments the surgeons offered, but the disease proved too much for Anne’s delicate constitution. Perhaps because she knew not what she had and waited too long to seek help.”
I had no skills to find the right words and I could only wait for him to continue.
“I fully intend to reform my behavior once married to Sarah,” Sir Owen continued. He sniffled a little and I thought I saw something vaguely tearlike in his eye. “I am a changed man. The papers that are missing testify to that. It is a series of letters, Mr. Weaver, between me and my dear, lost Anne, in which I express in damningly unambiguous terms the nature of my transgression and a spirited and sentimental desire to reform. A reader of these letters would quickly discern the nature of her disease and the nature of its contraction. I have tried very hard to conceal this information from Sarah, who is a virtuous young woman of exceptional delicacy. Should she learn of the contents of these letters, I fear she would sever our connection. And if some unscrupulous villain were to learn of the contents, he would have me at a terrifying disadvantage.” He poured himself another dram of the Scottish liquor. “I can only hope the letters remain sealed. I kept them about me wrapped in a yellow ribbon, with a wax seal bearing the imprint of a cracked shilling. A broken seal I should see as the worst news in the world.” He lifted the glass and swallowed hard.
“I cannot risk these letters falling in with a man like Wild. He should rake me over the coals before returning to me what is mine. But your reputation precedes you, sir. I believe you to be the only man in London who has both the knowledge and the integrity to retrieve what I have lost.”
I bowed at Sir Owen. “As it is a matter of delicacy, you are certainly right to come to me rather than to have gone to Wild.”
“You see why I am very much in your power.”
“As I am in yours,” I returned. “For you know of my involvement in a man’s death. We are thus beholden to each other, and neither man may fear the indiscretion of the other.”
He brightened considerably at this observation, and I must confess that I was no longer horrified that the matter was not yet concluded. I even felt somewhat relieved. Had I returned the pocketbook and its contents been intact, then the matter would have been resolved. I would have had to wait to learn if there would be any consequences of Jemmy’s death. Sir Owen’s missing letters gave me license to involve myself in the matter once more. I could not say if this involvement would prove to my benefit, but by taking action I would feel less powerless.
“I shall begin my search for these letters immediately,” I told Sir Owen, “and this search shall be my first priority until they are recovered. If I have any news, sir, any news at all, I shall not hesitate to send it to you.”
Sir Owen rolled the glass between his hands. “Thank you, Weaver. I flatter myself that I shall see my letters soon. You do understand, sir, that if you must ask questions of any of these scoundrels, you should make no reference to what these papers contain.”
“Of course.”
“My happiness, you see, is in your hands.” He turned to my window and stared outward. “Sarah is such a lovely woman. So very delicate.”
“I am sure you are a most fortunate man.” My words sounded to me hollow platitudes.
After making certain there was nothing else of use Sir Owen could tell me, I showed him out and began to formulate a plan of action. I decided the most effective course would be to visit some of the unpleasant institutions I knew of, in which the dark engineers of the underworld convened to discuss their business and unburden their minds in fellowship. Such a place was a gin shop on Little Warner Street, near Hockley-in-the-Hole—a place equally repulsive to the senses of smell and sight, for it was so close to that fetid sewer known as the Fleet Ditch that it was not uncommon for the entire place to be flooded with the sickening scent of kennel and waste. This gin house had no proper name, and the sign above it was merely a faded image of two horses drawing a cart—a remnant of a previous shop. Among its patrons, the house was known as Bawdy Moll’s, for its proprietress was an affectionate
