“I believe you have asked to see me,” he said quietly.
“These gentlemen are Mr. Benjamin Weaver and his associate, Elias Gordon,” Mother Clap informed him, making it clear she intended to remain for the interview.
Elias and I both rose to offer our bows. “You are, I believe, Mr. Teaser?”
“That is the name I use here, yes,” he said.
He took his seat, and so we did the same.
“May I inquire your true name?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I prefer to keep that private. You must understand that I have a wife and family, and they should be very troubled to know of my dealings here.”
I had no doubt he was entirely correct on that score. “You are familiar, I believe, with a Mr. Absalom Pepper.”
Teaser shook his head. “I have never heard of any such man.”
I felt a pang of despair, but then it occurred to me that Teaser was not his real name, and there was no reason to believe that Pepper would be any more forthcoming. “A man with an interest in silk weaving,” I said. “One who carried a book and made notes upon the subject.”
“Oh, yes,” said Teaser, who now perked up with interest and even agitation. “Miss Owl. Do you know of her? Where is she?”
“Owl,” Mother Clap said. “Why, it’s been some months since we’ve had word of her. I’ve been concerned, I have.”
“What news of her?” Teaser asked. “Did she send you to find me? I have been so concerned. She one day merely stopped attending, and I feared the worst. I feared that her family must have discovered our secret, for why else would she abandon me so? Still, surely she could have sent me a note. Oh, why did she not?”
Elias and I exchanged a glance. I looked at the floor for a moment while I gathered the courage to meet Teaser’s eye. “You must prepare yourself for unhappy news. Owl, as you style him, is no more.”
“What?” Mother Clap demanded. “Dead? How?”
Teaser sat stunned, his eyes wide and wet, and then he slumped over in his chair, one hand pressed to his head in an attitude of theatrical despair. However, I had no doubt that he felt it quite sincerely. “How can she be dead?”
The confusion of gender began to wear at me. “It is a rather complex affair,” I said. “There is much of this I myself don’t entirely understand, but there are those who believe the East India Company may have been behind the mischief.”
“The East India Company,” Teaser said, with an affecting mix of anger and misery. “Oh, I warned her about crossing them, but she would not listen. No, she would not. Owl always had to have things her own way.”
Given that the worthy of whom we spoke, at the time of his death, was married to at least three women as well as consorting with sodomites, I could not find any reason to challenge this assessment. “I know this must be a terrible shock to you,” I said, “but I must nevertheless beg you to answer some of our questions at the moment.”
“Why?” he asked, face cradled in hands. “Why should I help you?”
“Because we have been asked to find out who did this terrible thing and bring those responsible to justice. Can you not tell me why you believed the East India Company would wish him dead?”
“By whom have you been hired?” he asked. “Who wants to see justice served?”
I understood I was at a crossroads. There could be no turning back, and in truth I was tired of half lies and deceptions. I was tired of conducting half an inquiry, and I wanted things brought to a head. And so I told him. “A man named Cobb hired me.”
“Cobb?” Teaser said. “Why would he care?”
My reader can imagine how I had to contain the urge to jump from my seat. No one in London ’s business or social circles had ever heard of Cobb, but here a sodomite once involved with a man with three other wives spoke the name as though it were common as dust. And yet I knew that if he were to trust me, I needed to maintain authority and withhold my surprise.
I therefore shook my head. “As to that I cannot say,” I told him, as though the matter were nothing to me. “Cobb is but the man who hired me. His motives are his own. Though it is an interesting question. Perhaps you might speculate.”
Teaser rose from his chair so quickly, it was nearly a leap. “I must go. I must lie down. I-I want to help you, Mr. Weaver. I want to see justice done, I promise you. But I cannot speak of it this instant. Give me a moment to lie down, to weep, to collect my thoughts.”
“Of course,” I said, casting a glance at Mother Clap, for I did not wish to impose on her hospitality. She nodded her assent.
Teaser left the room quickly, and the three of us were left in awkward silence.
“You made no great effort to soften the blow,” Mother Clap said. “Perhaps you don’t believe that mollies feel love as you do.”
“Of course not,” I said, now feeling somewhat irritated. Mother Clap seemed to feel that my insensitivity toward sodomites was at the root of all the world’s evils. “When it comes to delivering unpleasant news, it is my experience that no way is kind or sensitive or gentle. The news is what it is, and far better it should be out, that it might be dealt with.”
“I see you do not understand the situation. Owl was not merely Teaser’s friend, or merely his lover. Owl was his wife.”
“His wife,” I said, making a great effort to keep my voice even.
“Perhaps not in the eyes of the law but surely in the eyes of God. Indeed, the ceremony was performed by an Anglican priest, a man who moves through the world as effortlessly and as free of taint as you do, Mr. Weaver.”
Evidently, she knew little of my life, but I let that pass. “The men here marry one another?”
“Oh, yes. One assumes the role of a wife, who is forever referred to as she from that point on, and their match is as serious and unbreakable as that between man and woman.”
“And in the case of Mr. Teaser and Owl,” Elias asked, “was this an unbreakable match?”
“On the part of Teaser, certainly,” Mother Clap said, with a certain amount of sadness, “but I fear Owl may have been more varied in her interests.”
“Among the other men?” I asked.
“And, if you must know, among the ladies as well. Many men who come here would never, if they had their way, gaze upon female flesh again, but others have developed the taste and cannot move away from it. Owl was such a one.”
“If I may be so bold as to say so,” I told her, “I am not surprised by your intelligence.”
“Because you think all men must lust after female flesh?”
“Not for that reason, no. For the reason that Mr. Absalom Pepper, whom you call Owl, was married to at least three women simultaneously. He was a bigamist, madam, and I believe a shameless opportunist as well. It is my belief that Pepper wished to use Mr. Teaser for some means of his own. To that end, he must have seduced the poor fellow to make his heart soft and his purse open.”
“A man,” Mother Clap observed, “is always trying to open one sort of purse or another.”
She opened her mouth to elaborate but was interrupted by a loud crashing noise from outside our room. This was followed by several shouts, some rugged and manly, others in the falsetto of a man imitating a woman. I heard the sound of heavy objects toppling and more shouts, these low and with the air of authority.
“Dear Lord!” Mother Clap sprang from her chair with a surprising amount of agility for a woman her age. Her skin had grown white, her eyes wide, her lips pale. “It’s a raid! I knew this day must come.”
She opened the door and threw herself out. I heard a somber voice cry out that someone must stop in the name of the king, and another cried out that someone must stop in the name of God. I found it difficult to credit that anyone out there was acting with the authority of either.