Jane and His Lordship's Legacy jam-8 Page 10

  “Henry!” I cried. “You are heartless. How long did you intend to keep this from me?”

  “I had no notion it was a secret.” He smiled ruefully. “You had better change your dress. The dust on the road is fearful in this season. And do not tell Mamma what you are about — she will have endless commissions among the tradesmen; and I must accomplish some of my business before returning to London, or Gray will be finding a new partner.”

  Henry set me down in Alton’s High Street and led his horse to the hackney stables behind Mr. Barlow’s George. I passed an enjoyable interval in strolling towards No. 10 past the various houses and shops, and took the opportunity of purchasing some bread and a couple of chickens newly dressed from the poulterer. Tho’ the town cannot match Canterbury’s ancient charm or rival Southampton’s gentility, it offers a stout and occasionally elegant little clutch of modern buildings. I could not despise it, and felt sure that our proximity to Alton — neither so close as to oppress, nor so far as to inconvenience — was a blessing.

  I found the place known as Baverstocks’ without difficulty: the family has long been in the business of brewing in Alton, and a brief enquiry at the premises as to the location of the Widow Seward soon directed my footsteps towards a side lane known as Church Street. Here the younger Mr. Baverstock, one James, was established with his even younger wife and a baby, while his mother-in-law did the mending in a chair by the door. She was a woman no older than Mrs. Prowting, tho’ of less ample proportions: a frail, angular woman with a greying head and a pinched expression about the mouth. Her dark eyes swept my length as I stood in her doorway, and for an instant after I spoke my name, I was doubtful of admittance. But then she stepped backwards, with a wooden expression on her countenance, and said, “Come in, miss, and very welcome.”

  The hall was narrow and low-ceilinged, giving a clear view of the kitchen at the building’s rear; there was a sitting room at the front, a dining parlour behind, and an abrupt staircase leading from the hall to presumably two cramped rooms above. This Widow Seward had won as her due after years of inhabiting Chawton Cottage — and I cannot say the exchange was a fair one. Had my brother Edward known to what a hovel he was sending his faithful bailiff’s relict, when he disposed of her cottage elsewhere?

  The babe wailed from the direction of the stairs, but Widow Seward affected not to notice. She gestured towards a free chair. “Pray sit down, miss.”

  I did so.

  “I must thank you for the excellent condition in which we found the cottage,” I said. “Everything was in order — the premises most clean and in good repair. It is a delightful place, and we are most happy to be there.”

  “I had heard as you were come to Chawton.”

  “I think the whole of Hampshire is now acquainted with the circumstances of our arrival.”

  She inclined her head, but did not deign to comment.

  “I wonder, Mrs. Seward, whether you can tell me if there is more than one set of keys to the cottage? We collected those left in Mr. Barlow’s keeping, but should like to be assured that all the keys are accounted for. As a matter of housekeeping. I am sure you will understand.”

  Her eyelids flickered and her entire spare body seemed to stiffen. “I shall have to think.”

  “Of course. I do understand. In a matter of keys, so much is attributable to chance. Some may be lost, others simply mislaid in a chest of drawers; or some lent to friends and relations who neglect to return them. I should assume, for example, that your daughter and son-in-law were in possession of a set — merely to accommodate you during periods of absence from the house.”

  “I was never absent,” she said drily. “Chawton has been my home all my life. I was a Gibb before I became Seward, you know — and like the Philmores and Frenches, the Gibbs are everywhere found in this part of Hampshire. It is a very settled place. We do not often have people like yourself, from other parts of the world.”

  “I was born but twelve miles from Chawton,” I observed, “tho’ I suppose to some people, that would seem another country. When you have thought about those keys, Mrs. Seward, I should be greatly obliged if you would see that they find their way to the cottage. Otherwise we shall be put to the trouble of changing all the locks.”

  “You must do as you see fit, I am sure,” she said austerely, and rose to indicate my interview was over.

  I could not congratulate myself that it had been conducted with any success; and I felt certain that one set of keys, at least, was still sitting in this very place — in the keeping of the Baverstocks. As I exited the wretched place, I encountered a young man on the doorstep, and hesitated while he raised his hat in greeting.

  “This is Miss Austen, James,” the Widow Seward said in that same colourless tone. “She has just come from Chawton to visit me. Is not that a very great condescension, from the Squire’s family? My son-in-law, Miss Austen — Mr. James Baverstock.”

  The young man bowed, with a degree of civility I had not expected in a brewer’s son. “I have already heard much of your party, ma’am, from my uncle.”

  “Indeed?” I said. “And have I the pleasure of acquaintance with that gentleman?”

  “I fancy only by reputation,” he replied. “He is Mr. JohnKnight Hinton, of Chawton. My mother was his elder half-sister. If you have not yet been introduced to him, you cannot long escape the acquaintance. Good day.”

  By the time I arrived at the door of Henry’s establishment, and had been ushered within by Mr. Gray, my brother was some minutes ahead of me and happily immersed in his accounts.

  “Ah, there you are, Gray — and I observe you succeeded in having the burglar’s depredations attended to,” Henry said carelessly as his partner entered the room. “You remember my sister, Miss Austen?”

  “Indeed I do.” Mr. Gray bowed deeply, welcome on every feature of his face. He was a short, rotund, and beaming man with high colour in his cheeks; his aspect suggested domestic felicity and an unhappy inclination towards gluttony. The two clerks under his management were similarly bobbing their respect in my direction, and appeared so desperate to return to their work that I felt a surge of pity for so much masculine distraction trapped in a single room. Of Bertie Philmore there was no sign; I must assume he was occupied with a window in another part of the bank.

  “We are most happy to have an addition to the Austen party in Alton,” Gray assured my brother. “Most happy.”

  “Is that fellow nearly done?” Henry demanded, as tho’ much harassed. “One of Dyer’s men, is he not?”

  “I believe there has been some difficulty with the glazier,” his partner returned. “Jorrocks has too many claims upon his talents at present to attend to our little room.”

  “Nothing the price of a tankard of ale won’t answer. I shall speak to the joiner about it. Come along, Jane.” And with breezy assurance, my brother led me into the bank’s inner office — a spare, whitewashed chamber furnished with a desk, several chairs, and a quantity of ledgers. Bertie Philmore stood by the window that gave onto the building’s side aspect, grimacing with concentration. At his feet were several splintered lengths of wood, and I understood of a sudden how Henry’s privacy had been forced. Not the glass alone, but the entire windowsill had been torn out of its place by the intruder’s violence. Had the Rogue’s legacy done all this?

  “Ah, Philmore,” Henry said as he closed the inner door.

  “What’s this I hear about trouble with a glazier?”

  “Jorrocks is that busy, sir, as he don’t rightly think he can get here today.”

  “I cannot run a bank with the windows insecure to the world, Philmore. Is Jorrocks prepared to stand guard on my premises throughout the night, and discourage thieves with the menace of his gun?”

  “I don’t know as he ’as a gun, sir, ’cept what might be used for rabbit-hunting.”

  “All the same — you take my point.”

  The joiner gazed through the bare window, as tho’ in expectation of seeing the gla
zier on the paving beyond; but as he turned back in evident confusion, his eyes fell upon my face. His own was instantly suffused with red.

  “Why, it is the man who gave testimony at the inquest,” I said with spurious surprise. “You were a friend of the Deceased, I believe. Are you happy with the coroner’s result?”

  “It’s not for me to say, ma’am.”

  Henry made for the door. “I must just speak to Gray on a matter of business, Jane. I shall not be a moment.”

  He left me in possession of the room. Bertie Philmore looked as tho’ he should like to follow my brother, but I motioned to him vaguely and murmured, “Pray go on with your work. I should not like to delay you further; my brother is a most awful object when thwarted in his expectations. You were a friend of Shafto French’s from childhood, I believe? His poor widow is very sadly left.”

  “As are all those what gave him blunt, ma’am, and shall never see it again,” Philmore said bitterly as he took up his tools once more.

  “You do not credit his tale of future riches, then?”

  Philmore glanced at me sidelong.

  “Mrs. French came to me this morning, to gaze upon the place where her man died. It is clear that she believes the poor fellow was likely to come into funds — and went to his death in the deluded hope of finding them.”

  I drew off my gloves with a thoughtful air. “It does seem hard that such a young woman should be left without support of any kind. Unfortunate, too, that you have no chance to retrieve your debt, Philmore. If French’s murderer were to be found, however. if one could but put a name to the man he intended to meet. it is possible affairs might be settled more equitably.”

  “You mean to say I might get my own back?” Philmore demanded, his plane dropping to his side.

  “It is, of course, possible. But so long as the person who killed French remains obscured — so long as justice is not done — there can be no hope of amendment.”

  Philmore considered this, his rough hands flexing with his thoughts. “I’m a man of heart, ma’am. I’ve no grudge ’gainst Jemima French, what I’ve known since we was both little ’uns.”

  “... Running through the fair at Robin Hood Butts,” I murmured distantly. “It is sad that she should be left in such distress of circumstances.”

  “You’re a relation of the Squire’s, aren’t ye?” he observed.

  “Be it likely he’ll have heard of this business?”

  “We expect Mr. Austen in Chawton every hour. I only hope he arrives in time to prevent Mr. Prowting from moving under his own authority. The magistrate has not so deep an understanding as my brother; he is likely to act in haste, and commit a regrettable error. He seems convinced French was killed in a matter of fisticuffs. A row between two mates, the magistrate said, will likely account for the business. ”

  Philmore visibly blenched. “I never did it! I left him at my door, same as my wife Rosie’ll tell you.”

  “I am sure you did, Philmore — but I cannot vouch for Mr. Prowting’s good will. He is a magistrate, and magistrates must charge somebody.”

  The joiner stepped towards me, wavering as tho’ ill. “You’ll speak for me, ma’am? You’ll speak to your brother the Squire?

  You’ll tell him as how I couldn’t have done it, being shut of Shafto before ever he left Alton?”

  “But I cannot know that,” I said gently, “having been miles from Alton at the time.”

  He swallowed hard, and appeared to come to a decision.

  “I don’t rightly know what French’s business were, ma’am. He were too far gone in drink to tell me much that night, and cagey with it. But I guessed it had to do with a job of work old Dyer put us onto up Sherborne St. John way. French knew summat as had to do with Stonings — and he was that puffed up about hisself, like a cock o’ the walk come egg-laying day. Blood money, he called it.”

  There it was again — that chilling phrase, so suggestive of both blackmail and murder. Whose blood, after all, had been lost but French’s own?

  “Sherborne St. John,” I mused, familiar with the name of the village from my girlhood, tho’ I had not visited it this age.

  “Mr. Dyer told the coroner his men were wanted there on the Monday. But French, you say, had been at work about the place already some time?”

  “Digging trenches fer walls, Shafto were. Stonings is a grand old pile, but falling to rack and ruin, ma’am. There’s a deal of work to be done — should keep old Dyer in fine feather a year or more.”

  “Stonings? That is the name of the estate in Sherborne St. John? I do not know it. Who might the master of Stonings be?”

  Philmore shrugged. “A military man just back from Spain, and limping with it. Spence is his name. It’s not for me nor Shafto to deal with the likes of they; we take our orders from Dyer. How the poor fool thought to turn a shilling by his knowledge of Stonings, I know not. Maybe the Squire can tell. He’s a rare man for sense, Mr. Austen is.”

  “Thank you, Philmore,” I said as Henry reappeared in the doorway. I drew a few shillings from my reticule and dropped them into the joiner’s hand. “It is not five pounds — but may start you a little on the way to recovering them.”

  • • •

  “Are you at all familiar with a place called Stonings, Henry?” I enquired as my brother escorted me to the street.

  “It is the Earl of Holbrook’s seat in Sherborne St. John,”

  Henry replied, “tho’ I do not think his lordship has lived there in years — he prefers his London house, or the shooting box in Leicestershire, I believe. Why do you ask?”

  “Is the Earl’s family name Spence? Is he an officer who nurses a limp recently earned in the Peninsula?”

  Henry stared. “Not at all! Holbrook never stirs from Carlton House if he can help it. I told you, Jane — he’s the man believed to have sired Julian Thrace. Tho’ there are as many who would insist it was not Holbrook at all, but the Viscount St. Eustace.”

  “Henry — Shafto French was put to work at Stonings with Dyer’s men a few weeks ago. And now we find Julian Thrace is descended upon Hampshire. Is it not a strange coincidence?”

  “Strange — but no less happenstance,” he retorted impatiently. “You might mention it to Thrace when we dine at the Great House tonight. I intend to learn as much as may be about our interesting friends the Middletons and their even more curious guest this evening; the engagement forms one of the chief objects of my Hampshire interest.”

  “You should never have remained in Alton so long, in fact, with only your sister to entertain you.”

  “Indeed I should not. The country is a dead bore, Jane, without violent death to lend it spice.” He bowed me satirically on my way.

  As I quitted the town once more in the direction of Chawton, I was surprised to notice my informant of the morning, Bertie Philmore, on the point of entering the Swan Inn. He was probably intending to spend the shillings I had just given him on a draught of ale — but his path was blocked by a most surprising interrogator: slight of figure, elegant of appearance and sharp in his grasp of Philmore’s sleeve. The Romantick Poet of yesterday’s inquest was unmistakable. But what could Mr. Jack Hinton have to say to Bertie Philmore, that must animate his countenance with distinct anxiety?

  Excerpt from the diary of Lord Harold Trowbridge, dated 17 April 1785, on board the Indiaman Punjab out of Calcutta, bound for Portsmouth.

  Her name is Hélène, third and most lovely daughter of the Comte de Pont-Ravel, of an obscure and little-travelled family locked in the Jura. Her father fled the boyhood domains at a tender age, having a lust for adventure not shared by his fellows; and but for the untimely death of the eldest and heir, might have remained forever in Madras and made a fortune for the Compagnie des Indes. Sadly, the Comte was recalled last year to take up his estates, and show a proper face to the local gentry, and Hélène remained behind. In a convent school run by the nuns of Sacré-Coeur, who rely upon the good will of the French officers brought in to defend the
French traders from the rapine of the British — except that the British have slowly and surely become the masters of the French on the Subcontinent, and the convent school is closing, and Hélène is bound in all irony for England itself, aboard an English ship.

  And how, I asked her lightly, did this betrothal come about?

  She lifted her pretty shoulders, and twirled her parasol. Papa has known the English Viscount’s family for many years; there was a time when they were united by blood; and Papa has found his circumstances much embarrassed since his return to the Jura. The estates are not in good repair, the harvests are bad, the wine-making imbecilic; in short, all Papa’s Madras gold is unequal to the necessities of his domain, and he has sold his youngest daughter to the highest bidder.

  This much I learned from his daughter’s piquant mouth as we strolled about the quarterdeck in the cooling world of the southern hemisphere autumn, while the passage of the Horn and its terrors loomed still ahead of us. I have so far advanced the trust of Captain Dundage that he sees no harm in these young British noblemen entertaining the young lady, as assuredly she must improve her English; and it required only the knowledge of my acquaintance with her espoused husband, tactfully dropped in Dundage’s ear by Freddy Vansittart, to win the right to place the lady’s arm through mine and lead her about the stern. Freddy makes a third in these jaunterings, and unlike myself is fairly well lost to the charms of Hélène. I observe her parted lips — how they swell childishly in the sea air — observe her hair, whipped free of her bonnet by the compelling wind and shining gold in the sunlight; I hear her melodious voice, like lark song in the morning; and I am unmoved. She is but a child, and I no longer find children enchanting. Hélène, be she ever so fair, is doomed like the victim of tubercular fever, like the prisoner of a castle already under siege. I was foolish enough once to believe love could change the terms of one’s very existence, if only one loved hard enough; I was ready to kill or be killed for love’s sake; and I have since learned that the murder of the innocent is the true end of passion. I would not win this chit’s heart now, if I could; I am certain that in working my revenge upon St. Eustace I should only succeed in destroying Hélène’s peace — and should never land a blow upon the Viscount’s impassive façade. If I am weak, so be it. I have the satisfaction of knowing that I am not yet beyond the reach of all human feeling. Freddy, having a more carnal object in view, is no such respecter of the fair Hélène’s predestination. “Bollocks,” he said, when I would have pled St. Eustace’s case. “Don’t tell me you don’t hate the man. I know that you do. He’s a Viscount; well, by God, I’m an Earl now, Harry — and I claim my droit de seigneur. ” I must hope that if Bertie is thrown from his horse one day, and leaves me in possession of the strawberry leaves and Wilborough House, that I do not commit the same follies of arrogance that Freddy has come to, since the receipt of that letter from Hampshire.[12] And so, regardless of whom she may love, Hélène de Pont-Ravel is forever a chattel, the property of one man or another who proposes to claim her. No wonder Mamma saw fit to run off to the Parisian stage. Freedom is worth any amount of scandal.