The rant left me puzzled for a moment as to the best way to proceed. Elias, fortunately, ever the diplomat, bowed slightly, and led the way.

“Madam, as we’ve tried to explain to your servant, we mean no harm, but we have the most urgent business with Mr. Teaser. Allow me to assure you that you have very likely never had two gentlemen upon your stoop less likely to engage in church palaver. My associate is a Hebrew and I am a libertine-one inclined toward women, you understand.”

This woman now peered at the card I had handed the servant and then looked up at me. “You’re Benjamin Weaver, the thieftaker.”

Despite my ill ease, I offered a bow.

“The man you ask about ain’t done nothing. I wouldn’t think you sunk so low as to be seeking to earn your coin by prosecuting mollies.”

“You misunderstand me,” I assured her. “My business with the gentleman is to obtain information about an acquaintance of his. I have no interest in bothering you or your friends.”

“You swear it?” she asked.

“You have my word of honor. I want only to inquire of him a few significant matters, and then I shall be gone.”

“Very well,” she said. “Come in, then. We can’t have the door open all night, can we?”

This woman, I had no doubt, was the infamous Mother Clap, and she now led us through her home with a sense of wary proprietorship. The place had the cast of a fine home from the previous century, but all was now disheveled and tattered. The building smelled of mold and dust, and I had no doubt that, were I to stamp upon the rug, a cloud of filth should arise.

We wound our way through the house, following our Virgil as she took us through surprisingly tasteful halls and well-appointed chambers. The people inhabiting these spaces, however, were another matter entirely. We came into a large room in which a ball of sorts was under way. Tables had been set up for revelers to sit and drink and talk, and three fiddlers played while six or seven couples crossed an old warped wooden floor. Some two dozen or so men stood on the edges of the floor, engaged in conversation. I observed that, among the dancers, each couple contained one ordinary-looking man and one man much like the servant who had opened the door, dressed unconvincingly as a woman.

Mother Clap led us to a parlor in the back of the house, where a fire burned pleasingly. She invited us to sit and poured us both a glass of port from a decanter, though I observed that she took none herself.

“I’ve sent Mary to fetch Teaser. He might be indisposed, however.”

I shuddered to think what might indispose him. I believe Mother Clap must have read my expression, because she gazed at me rather unkindly. “You do not approve of us here, Mr. Weaver?”

“It is not for me to approve or disapprove,” I answered, “but you must acknowledge that the men who spend their time here engage in most unnatural acts.”

“Aye, it is unnatural. It is unnatural too for a man to see clearly at night, but that does not prevent you from lighting your way with a candle or lantern, does it?”

“But is it not so,” Elias chimed in, with an eagerness I knew represented more the pleasure of exercising his intellect than because he felt passion for the issue, “that the holy writings forbid sodomy? They do not forbid illumination.”

Mother Clap gave Elias an appraising look. “They do, indeed, forbid sodomy. And they also forbid fornication with the ladies, do they not, Mr. Libertine? I wonder, my good sir, if you are as quick to raise the objections of the holy scriptures on that score as well.”

“I am not,” he agreed.

“And did not our Savior,” she asked me, “command that we raise up the powerless and wretched, take in and give comfort to those whom the powerful and privileged shun?”

“You must direct all inquiries regarding the Savior to Mr. Gordon,” I said.

Elias inclined his head in a seated bow. “I believe you have the best of us, madam. We are creatures shaped by the morals of our society. It may well be, as you propose, that our society’s objections are the arbitrary products of our time and place and nothing more.”

“One may be inclined to be the product of his time and place,” she said, “but is not the virtuous man obligated to make the effort to be more?”

“You most certainly have the right of it,” I said, by way of surrender, for though I could not master my feelings on the subject, I knew well that her words were just. As there appeared to be nothing more she could add to illuminate her feelings, and as we inquired no more, we sat now in silence, listening to the crackle of the fire, until, some minutes later, the door opened and a rather ordinary-looking fellow, plainly dressed like a merchant, entered the room. He was perhaps seven or eight and thirty, with an even, boyish face, marred by both freckles and irregular blotching of the skin of the sort more generally associated with much younger men.

“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?”