No Good Deed 54

Miss Shepherd led me at a clip out of the park. Her quick short steps devoured the ground at a surprising rate. My breath came short as a consequence and from time to time she looked back at me with a most provocative smirk. Therefore we made rapid progress down the road away from the State Capitol, until we arrived on River Road; a wide street with chandlers, bars and rooming houses meant for the flotsam and jetsam of the Mississippi trade. Clearly Miss Shepherd had some destination in mind, but she did not deign to enlighten me as to what it might be. We had almost reached the Public Dock when she took us on a sharp left onto a street which was somewhat misleadingly named North Boulevard. It may well have stretched in a northerly direction but the few scrawny trees which ran alongside its ungenerous with gave the second part of its name the lie in no small degree.

The young lady brought me up short in front of a clap-board fronted building, which bore a painted sign advertising that the establishment was a “Miss Porter's Rooms”. We did not enter by the front entrance, but took a walkway barely wide enough for my shoulders to pass through to the rear of the building. In light of the establishment's name, I half expected a bordello of some sort, but it was in fact a reasonable facsimile of a tea-room. It was, of course, no Twinings of the Strand, however it seemed pleasant enough and a lady of advanced years led us to one of the many empty tables. We took our seats and the woman, I assumed her to be Miss Porter, asked, in a voice as dry as a snapping twig,

'What kin I getcha?'

I was spared any reply to this on my own behalf, by Miss Shepherd's long litany, which began with the word tea and finished with English muffins, having passed through every manner of sweetmeat, from strudel to pirozhki via “old-fashioned American pancakes” as she so quaintly put it. She had been most circumspect in her description of the extent of her hunger in the park, in my opinion. She thought me a most tremendous glutton, else.

In any event, such was not the case. After the tea arrived, a grand succession of dishes, heaped high with sugary confections of the baker's art began making their appearance. Miss Shepherd scooped the topmost exemplar from each before the bottom of the plate touched the white tablecloth. I watched in fascination as she crammed pastries, eclairs, scones and all manner of delicacies which oozed creams , custards and preserves which covered the lower part of her face. She had removed her gloves by this time, employing the fingers of both hands a most talented tongue to remove these, so that she might not lose any morsel of these sweet delights. Finally, she sat back in her seat in a most unfeminine manner and belched behind a hand. Her ministrations had removed the powder from her face and a light caramel brown was visible from under her nose to her chin, giving her face a peculiar piebald look. She lifted her light tan chin and said,

'I am a free woman of colour, but it is better to pass as the poorest white woman, Mr Northrup, and that is something I wish to change, although I know that I cannot.'

'Such things are nothing to me, Miss Shepherd.'

I gave the answer she seemed to expect, for she thanked me and excused herself. I admired her slim figure and wondered at her capacity for patisserie. She returned from the powder room, having used it for that very purpose since she no longer sported a parti-coloured visage. There was a faintly sour smell about her and she proceeded to drink draught after draught of the strong black tea, nodding occasionally at me over the rim of her cup.