“Surely you have already asked these questions. I do not love your taking liberties with Mr. Pepper’s memory in this way.”
“I have indeed already asked these questions,” I admitted, “but having not yet received sufficient answers, I find I must ask again. As for the matter of Mr. Pepper’s memory, I hope you will allow me to point out that in these inquiries we have a much greater opportunity to honor his memory by discovering the lost instances of his cleverness.”
It was my own cleverness I now celebrated, because I saw my words had the desired effect upon the affectionate widow. She appeared no less skeptical, but I observed that she could not allow any opportunity to celebrate the saintly Mr. Pepper to pass.
“I don’t know much about it, except that he was always at his books, reading and making notations of one sort or another and making his drawings.”
I thought it highly unusual that a silk weaver would have books, let alone many books, in his possession. Books cost a great deal of money, and a silk weaver has little enough of that, though I had learned enough of Mr. Pepper to see that he was an exception to virtually all rules. Whatever his interest, it must have been more than an idle curiosity. It must have been something he believed would return the investment of time and money. “How did he afford the books?” I asked.
“We never suffered for them, I assure you. Important though his learning may have been to him, he would not have been able to endure it if it had resulted in my doing without what I needed or desired.”
“And his drawings: Did you know their nature?” I pressed on.
“He didn’t share that with me. He said it wouldn’t answer to trouble a woman with what he had in mind.”
“So your husband never spoke to you of his intentions?”
She shook her head.
“You mentioned he kept books. May I see them?”
She shook her head once more. “When the man from the silk weavers’ guild came, he said those books and papers and such would be of the greatest good to the guild and offered to buy the lot of them for another ten pounds. They weren’t of any use to me, and I would have sold them anyway. I don’t know if ten pounds was a good price, but I reckoned that even if it weren’t they had been so good to me it might be uncivil to resent them over such a thing.”
“They took everything, then.”
“I said they did,” she answered, irritation peaking through her voice.
Now I understood why it was that this particular Widow Pepper should be the one to receive compensation. The Company had paid her for Pepper’s books and papers. “Tell me, Mrs. Pepper. I understand that your husband never discussed his researches with you directly, and such arrangements are certainly common among husband and wife, but it is an unusual household in which information does not seep through the cracks, the way the smell of a soup wafts from the kitchen to the adjoining rooms.”
She nodded, and I waited, but she did not follow my lead any more than to comment that she did not like for the smells of her kitchen to infect the rest of the house.
“Is it not possible,” I continued, “that you overheard Mr. Pepper speak of his business to friends and associates? I cannot emphasize how important it is that we learn of his work. It may be the very thing,” I added with a deliberate twinkle in my eye, “to lay to rest any questions regarding this annuity.”
“Why must there be questions?” Her voice was now several pitches higher than its usual.
“Indeed, my most earnest desire is to lay such questions to rest and to leave your arrangement unperturbed. You will help me to do so, will you not?”
It was abundantly clear that she would. “He never much talked about his researches, as he styled them, with me, but he did have one particular friend with whom he did discuss such things. I never met this gentleman, for he was never invited to our home, but Mr. Pepper used to mention him in the loftiest terms as a fellow who could appreciate and encourage and aid his researches. He would go off to spend great amounts of time with him and their books, learning whatever it was they wished to learn.”
“Did you learn this gentleman’s name?”
“Aye, but not the name entire. Mr. Pepper only referred to him as Mr. Teaser.”
It took a great deal of will to stifle a grim smile. Mr. Teaser sounded like nothing so much as a character from a stage comedy. I began to suspect that he might not have been so much a he as a she, and that when Pepper met this particular friend, little in the way of research was conducted. Nevertheless, I had no choice but to inquire fully into the matter.
“What can you tell me of this Mr. Teaser?”
“Very little, I’m afraid. He spoke of him infrequently, and when he did so it was with a strange mixture of satisfaction and something like contempt. He would praise Mr. Teaser’s perspicacity but at the same time laugh at him, saying he was as simple as a child, and that he—my husband, the late Mr. Pepper—might lead that poor man where he wished.”
“Is there any hope,” I inquired, “that you chanced to overhear the location of these meetings?”
“In that I may assist you. On one occasion, I did chance to overhear Mr. Pepper speaking to a friend of his, describing a forthcoming meeting, and he identified the location as a house on Field Lane, bordering a tavern called the Bunch of Grapes, if I recall. I cannot say if this is a public house or a private one, but I do recall hearing him give that direction.”
“Did you ever follow that direction yourself?”
“No, why should I?”
Because you were curious, I thought. Because you would never have recalled the location if it had been of no consequence to you. Nevertheless, I held my tongue, for I had nothing to gain by exposing that I knew more of her heart than she wished to allow, and it would little serve my ends to demonstrate that I saw she was, in a very strange way, jealous of this Teaser.
Further inquiry revealed that Mrs. Pepper had nothing more to tell me, so I thanked her for her time.
“And what of my annuity?” she asked me. “Is it safe?”
Having no desire to eliminate what I believed might still be a useful fount of knowledge, I chose to remain vague. “I shall do all I can to serve you,” I said, with a bow.
She bit her lip in clear distress. “If I show you something,” she said, “if I let you look at it, you must accept that I do it in the spirit of co operation and you will do what you can to help me.”
“Of course,” I promised, making all possible efforts to banish from my mind the hypocrisy of words. I could not say to what ends the East India Company paid this lady an annuity, but should I expose their secrets, in all likelihood the money would run dry. In short, I made every effort to convince this woman to aid in her own ruin.
She bade me wait and then disappeared for a moment, returning with a thin calfskin-bound quarto in her hands. She clutched it to her bosom so that I could observe a large discolored streak along the front of the book.
“It was always a peculiarity with my husband, the late Mr. Pepper, that his books were his memory—or so he told me several times. He had to write down his ideas, nearly at the moment he had them, lest they be gone in an instant, never to be recovered. Indeed, he believed he had forgotten more fine notions than a whole army of men will enjoy in their lives. So it was that he kept books about him at all times and took notes incessantly. Many of these books, he believed, had fine ideas, many others, nothing of note. When the men of the guild came for his books, they said they wanted everything. And yet I held something back. Just this one volume, and only because he told me it was a book of false starts, terrible ideas. It was a book he once told me he would never care if he lost. I recollected this volume, for it had the imperfection in the calfskin that looks almost like a letter P—for Pepper, you know. In any event, I dared to keep it for myself.”