Meanwhile Mr. Peter Taffata, better known as Taffy Tatler (one of The Tatler’s best rattlers, as they were called) waited patiently outside Sheffield House. He knew that the Earl of Sheffield and Downes had a younger brother named Patrick, and he knew that this Patrick was inside the house, doubtless being entertained by the young countess. Taffy had no personal animosity against either of these two people. As a matter of fact, he had a good deal of sympathy for the countess. It was a crime that her parents had married her off to an impotent man. Still, all this hobnobbing with her husband’s brother looked as if it might warm up to a really good story, perhaps even a whole page to himself.

He’d been puzzling over one question for the last hour or so, rather like a terrier with a cow bone. That’s why I’m so good, Taffy thought absently, because I keep at a problem when I find one. And the problem here was: Why hasn’t a fancy butler come out of the house and told me off soundly? Usually Taffy had to deal with butlers who were more puffed up than their masters, their noses so far in the air they couldn’t smell their own toes. But this house didn’t seem to have a butler. In Taffy’s experience, that meant that the butler had either scampered—or got himself fired. And Taffy fancied the latter idea. Because, he thought, who ever left the employ of an earl? The three footmen who had tried, very inefficiently, to get him to move his stumps had looked well-fed enough, and they were dressed in spry uniforms.

So it was just a question of catching one of the kitchen maids and getting her to cough up the name of the exbutler, and then he, Taffy, could get a real story.

Taffy looked at the unwelcoming eyes of Sheffield House. He had a strong sense that the footmen had tattled on him, and that Patrick Foakes had snuck out the back of the house. Of course, he could report that Foakes never left, but stayed the night…. He chewed this over for a while, but finally dismissed it. Too risky. What if Foakes had gone off to his club? Bound to have. In six years of chasing gossip Taffy had noticed that gentlemen headed back to their clubs like flies to a horse.

He needed to find that ex-butler. Taffy headed around the back of Sheffield House with renewed energy. One hour later he was possessed of a trembling, weeping kitchen maid who kept protesting how she shouldn’t ’av, even as she hotly clutched ten shillings in her hand. And from the kitchen maid had come a name, Staple, and his favorite pub, The Raven.