Page 11 of Miss Delightful
Shroop remained behind the scarred counter, beneath which he’d doubtless secreted a knife or possibly a loaded gun.
“I took those items on consignment,” Shroop said, “and it’s not like you think.”
“It never is,” Alasdhair replied. “Enlighten us.”
“I liked Melanie—Miss Fairchild. I wanted to get the best price for her.”
Miss Delancey folded her arms. “Do go on.”
“She needed money, worse than usual. She’d brought by some halfway nice things before. Clothes mostly, a Bible, a hat. But the furniture… Folk around here don’t have the means to pay what that was worth. I put it in a shop down in Knightsbridge, where the nobs go to look for bargains.”
“When?” Alasdhair asked.
“The rocker right around Michaelmas, and it sold within a fortnight. Got her a good price for it. She brought in the cradle just before Christmas. I hated to take it, but does a lad need coal or a cradle more?”
A lad needed both.
“And has the cradle sold?” Miss Delancey asked.
Had she used that arctic tone on new recruits, they would have been quaking in their uniforms.
“Not as yet, missus. It’s only been a few weeks. Miss Fairchild was in here on Monday asking me about it.”
Alasdhair kept his eyes on the man’s hands. “Did you offer to make her a loan?”
Mr. Shroop swallowed. He stroked a finger over each side of his mustache, and his gaze flicked downward. “I’m not that sort of pawnbroker.”
“I’m no sort of pawnbroker at all,” Alasdhair said, “but if I find out you propositioned Melanie Fairchild when she’d entrusted goods to you for sale and that you withheld the money she was due so you’d have a better chance of getting under her skirts, I will rid London of your existence. Now, what is the name of this fine establishment in Knightsbridge?”
“Or,” Miss Delancey said, “is it actually in Bloomsbury? Think very hard, Mr. Shroop, before you answer. I would not want to add your eternal soul to the list of the departed for whom I pray nightly.”
Oh, she was good. Naughty schoolboys would swear eternal reform for her, and at the time they made those oaths, they would mean them.
“The shop’s in St. James’s,” Shroop said. “Caters to gents looking to furnish second households, if you take my meaning. Good quality, not necessarily made-to-order. Marplewood’s, just around the corner from the fencing school and Jackson’s.”
Around the corner, where a fellow’s comings and goings would be a trifle more discreet, but only a trifle. Setting up a mistress was a rite of passage for young men of a certain ilk.
“And has the cradle sold?” Miss Delancey asked again, ever so pleasantly.
“As of Friday, it had not. I swear that.”
Miss Delancey cast a gimlet eye over the dusty shop. “That is fortunate, because the cradle did not belong to Miss Fairchild. It belonged to her son, and she did not have the authority to surrender the cradle to you.”
Bless the woman, she wielded a barrister’s reasoning like a cudgel. Shroop glanced to Alasdhair, as if expecting masculine solidarity. Alasdhair gave him Uncle Whitlaw’s best thee-art-bound-for-hell-laddie stare.
“But her son’s just a…”
“Right,” Miss Delancey said, “a baby. Now he’s a motherless child. What else can you tell us about Miss Fairchild? Was she upset when she paid her call on Monday?”
“Not upset,” Shroop said. “Melanie wasn’t like that. She was sunny by nature, always looking for her situation to improve, but she was worried. She would usually stay to chat and at least pretend to be looking over the inventory, but she was in a hurry, and she came straight to the point. I thought she had to get back to the baby. Said he was cutting teeth.”
That detail rendered an otherwise dodgy recitation trustworthy. “Miss Fairchild patronized your shop regularly?” Alasdhair asked.
“She’d come in with other women from time to time, but about four months ago, she started doing business with me. She’s not a woman a man like me would forget.”
What he meant was that Melanie had been pretty, with a lady’s airs and graces. Motherhood without benefit of wedlock had befallen her nonetheless. She had been both desirable and—in the opinion of the Shroops of the world—available, albeit perhaps for a price.
“Recall her in your prayers,” Miss Delancey said. “And her infant son as well. Shall we be going?”
