Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas: Being a Jane Austen Mystery Read online

  Eventually, Mary was compelled to rise from the floor, and in a fainting condition—leaning upon James and effecting to stagger—she was conveyed upstairs. More than one person heaved a sigh of relief when my brother’s wife had disappeared from view.

  I rose and gathered my reticule, conscious of a person hovering near.

  “I wonder, Miss Austen, if you would accompany me to the Chapel,” Mary Gambier said.

  I turned and gazed at her. It was an application from an unexpected quarter.

  “I should like to see … Lieutenant Gage, but cannot bear to go alone. I confess I have not the courage.”

  I suspected that she prevaricated a little, but being anxious myself for a tête-a-tête with Miss Gambier, I acquiesced.

  “I was excessively surprized to learn that you discovered the means by which Jack—Lieutenant Gage—was killed,” she began as we made our way across the Saloon and into the dining parlour. The AnteChapel connected to it, and passing through the rooms was the quickest path to the Chapel itself. I made a mental note of that fact—which I had not consciously considered before. One might reach the Chapel—or leave it—by two different routes through the house. I could not at the moment see any significance in the fact, but stored it away regardless. Mary Gambier was still speaking. “I had been told he was thrown from his horse.”

  “He was,” I replied. We passed the dining table with the sugar sculpture at its centre, the greens and ribbons fading a little. No fire was yet kindled in the hearth in this room, and the air was chill. The gaieties of Christmas night seemed memories of a distant age. “His neck was broken, as no doubt you were informed. But his horse was not brought down by accident.”

  We had reached the AnteChapel. It is a small room that owes its existence entirely to John Chute, Walpole’s friend, and is meant to serve as a sort of vestibule to the more ancient Tudor chapel beyond. There are sacred pictures on the walls and a few wooden chairs bearing the Chute crest. I sat down upon one of these. “Stay a moment, and I will tell you what I found.”

  “Very well.” She sank into a chair beside me.

  “Lieutenant Gage’s horse struck a wire strung between two trees at exactly the height of its knees. The wire was buried in the snow, and thus invisible. I found the ends, tied to the trunks—and later, when the snow had melted, Mr. Chute found the entire length.”

  She frowned slightly. “You walked out to the scene of his death? When?”

  “A few hours after it occurred. I found Mr. West before me. He was sketching the ground, lest evidence of violence melt away in the sunshine. It is his conclusion, from his interpretation of the marks, that the Lieutenant’s neck was broken after he picked himself up from his injured horse—by an attacker who came upon him from behind. I assume that it is to explain his sketch—and its implications—that he is wanted at the inquest.”

  She rose abruptly and paced back and forth across the stone pavings, her hands working at the ends of her shawl. “Why did either of you feel an interest? What can have spurred your concern?”

  It seemed an odd question. I should have expected her to exclaim at the fact of the wire, and wonder whose malice had set such a trap.

  “I suppose,” I said slowly, “that I have felt some mystery surrounded you from the moment we arrived at The Vyne, Miss Gambier. You were embarrassed on Christmas Night by a rude charade you were the first to solve—and appeared to take very much to heart. On another occasion, I heard you arguing with a gentleman outside your bedchamber door—and heard that man threaten you. Lieutenant Gage was the object of your affection. Lieutenant Gage died barely four-and-twenty hours after appearing at The Vyne. I rejected the idea of an accident from the first. Even without the later intelligence that the poor man had been robbed of his dispatches, his death was bound to interest me.”

  She stared at me fixedly, and drew a deep breath. “You blame me. For his death. You think me responsible.”

  “I blame his murderer,” I said calmly. “Can you put a name to that person?”

  Her lips parted, and for an instant I thought she might tell me all her tortured thoughts. But she said only, “I wish to see Jack.”

  14

  GROPING IN THE DARK

  Wednesday, 28th December 1814

  The Vyne, cont’d.

  He looked as the Dead often do: as tho’ he had discarded his body like an old suit of clothes, and had escaped for parts unknown. Those clothes were the same—his Naval uniform—and the soft brown hair waving over the forehead looked real enough to touch. But Lieutenant Gage might have been a wax effigy, for all that remained of his spirit and understanding; it was the utter lack of animation in that still form that must have convinced Mary Gambier of what she already knew. She fell to her knees before the bier—Eliza had thoughtfully provided a prie-dieu for those wishing to pay their respects—and commenced a silent and relentless weeping.

  It was a quiet and restful place, there beneath the vaulted ceiling. Eliza had somehow found a few blooms in her hothouse, and had placed them near the bier—forced lilies, whose scent masked the underlying one of decay. She had placed candles in the Chapel’s iron holders, and these must have been constantly replenished by the maids. They shed a gentle golden light on the Lieutenant’s countenance.

  I stood in sympathy a few feet behind Mary Gambier for some minutes. Then, as her weeping did not ease, I placed my hand gently on her shoulder. She flinched.

  “You may leave me now, Miss Austen,” she whispered. “I am quite all right. This place holds no terrors for me, anymore.”

  I EXITED THE ANTECHAPEL by the East Corridor, which took me swiftly back to the south side of the Staircase Hall. The great Yule log lay on the hearth, its heart still intact but its outer layers scorched and glowing; a quantity of ash had begun to collect at its edges. The hearth, naturally, could not be swept each day. I stared into the flames and allowed my pity for Mary Gambier to touch my heart. I might have pressed her on several points—might have urged her to answer my questions, divulge her suspicions, confide the truth of her connexion with John Gage—but her grief had persuaded me to silence. There would be time enough, after the first flush of sorrow, to learn her secrets. For now, I knew that she had cared for Lieutenant Gage—that he had been brutally taken from her—and that she held herself to blame. She had all but declared as much. The picture of misery was complete.

  My eyes began to blur from the heat and light of the fire. I blinked, and as my vision cleared, saw what my preoccupation with the flames had missed: a scrap of paper, partly-burnt and lying in the collected ash. The oddity of such a thing caused me to bend and pluck the scrap from the hearth.

  It was a sketch—violently done, in angry strokes of charcoal—of a woman, stretched naked upon a cross. I might have called it obscene, had not the bravura of the technique elevated the image beyond such words. There was something of Mary Gambier in the head, turned in profile to the right shoulder.

  “Ah. The lady with the deplorable taste for publicity. And the desire for Justice that is not God-given.”

  Raphael West.

  He was standing in the north vestibule, looking at me. I held out the drawing.

  “Is this yours?”

  He approached me without haste, took the thing from my hand, and studied it impassively. “It is not. These strokes were made by a right-handed person, and I use my left. Where did you find it?”

  “In the ash.” I glanced down at the hearth. “Someone tried to burn it.”

  “Miss Gambier? Or the artist?” He crouched down and poked with his finger through the grey powder. It was a relief to be in the company of a man whose wits moved so quickly that he required few explanations. I had not met with a similar mind in years, and the sudden realisation of my lack brought unexpected tears to my eyes.

  “Nothing else,” he murmured. “Should you like to take a walk, Miss Austen?”

  I glanced out at the South Porch, the white winter light dazzling my eyes. Explanation enough
for tears, if he required one. “Yes,” I said.

  I ran up the stairs and fetched my pelisse. Cassandra was reading a book by the bedchamber fire. She looked up, startled. “Jane! What is this Mr. Chute has been saying about a murder weapon? How can you possibly have encountered one? Mary would have it that you invented the whole, from a desire for notice, but Mamma gave her a decided set-down. I should have done as much myself, only that Mamma was before me.”

  “Thank you, my dear.” I kissed her cheek. “Keep the fire well built-up, and we shall have a comfortable coze when I return from my walk. I shall then tell you all.”

  “Your walk?” she repeated; but I could not stay. I dashed from the room, my sister’s protests following me.

  “TELL ME WHAT YOUR brother meant, when he claimed you involved yourself too often in murder,” West began, as we passed through the great door and out onto the South Porch. The carriageway lay before us like a mud-brown riverbed, its cover of snow melted.

  “It is true that I have had an inordinate amount of experience of the evil men may do,” I returned thoughtfully.

  “Are all murderers male?”

  “Not all.” I glanced at him sidelong. “I have known several women, of various ages, who determined to play God. Murder requires no especial strength or talent, Mr. West, unless it be for deception. It is the most democratic of arts—and it hides in plain view. We are so accustomed to the sudden accident or illness that may snatch away an innocent; we do not think to question Providence, particularly in the deaths of children. That is the vilest form of murder—the one I cannot forgive.”

  He frowned at me. “You have witnessed such a thing?”

  “Discovered it, more properly. An entire family of children poisoned, in order to secure the father and his fortune.6 I have known those who kill from madness; those from the spur of desire; those who kill in cold-blooded anger and calculation; those who kill for fortune; and those, remarkably, who kill for love. I have come to believe that the murderous heart is in some wise the most human.”

  He looked all his astonishment. “But your books! They celebrate so much that is admirable in human nature—gratitude, and generosity, and … the dignity of one who acts always from the best principles.”

  “True.” I lifted my shoulders. “But I write also of human folly. We should not detect the noble qualities in others, were we not smothered with self-interest and arrogance, blindness and vanity, insincere words and ambitious hopes. Say rather that I understand the human heart, Mr. West—both in its evils and its blessings—and you shall be nearer the mark. One has only to find the motive, to find the murderer.”

  “That kind of penetration—I can readily apprehend how it might aid you in exposing a murderer—but how has the opportunity to do so come in your way? Living as you do in the country, retired and—Forgive me,” he said abruptly. “I presume upon our acquaintance.”

  I laughed. “There is sometimes a value in advancing years and all lack of social distinction, Mr. West. We spinsters, sitting in our corners while the handsome and the wealthy dance away their dissipations, are afforded remarkable openings for detection.”

  He flushed, and turned his acute gaze upon me. “That is not what I would mean to suggest—that you have no measurable worth, because you are a woman and unmarried. I should not offend you in such a way for the world. It has been long and long since I have met with such a remarkable intelligence, and I am happy in the chance that brought us together. I merely found it incomprehensible that so much violence could surround a parsonage in a simple Hampshire village like … Steventon, I believe you called it?”

  I could not laugh at him again; he was too serious for mockery. I pressed his sleeve, therefore, and hastened to assure him of my pardon. “You are correct, sir. I have travelled more, perhaps, than my simple life betrays. And for a period, I was honoured with the friendship of an excellent man—somewhat highly placed in Society and Government, whose acquaintance exposed me to a most varied experience. My brother James could not like that acquaintance; and so he chuses to deplore the activities associated with it.”

  “That pursuit of Justice, better left in God’s hands.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Does your friend have a name?”

  “He did. Lord Harold Trowbridge.”

  “Good God!” West cried, then recovered himself. “He has been gone some years, I think. You have my sympathy.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I knew of him; I must believe the whole world did—or at least, that World that centres itself in Pall Mall.”

  I inclined my head.

  “But come.” He glanced at the sky and the westering sun. “It grows cold, and we shall not have light enough, soon, for this walk of ours.”

  “Stay,” I said impulsively. There was something I could not avoid asking him; the intimacy of being alone in his company demanded it. “Where were you, when John Gage was killed?”

  His eyebrows rose. “As to the exact moment, I cannot say precisely. But if you will accept a general period—That is what I wished to show you. Come.”

  He turned to the left and walked the length of the South Front, deviating sharply around the out-thrust end of the kitchens and service wing. Beyond lay the exterior entrance of the Chapel, hard by the Tomb-chamber.

  This was a Gothick addition of the Strawberry Hill Chute, and contained a monument in marble to Chaloner Chute, who was Speaker of the House of Parliament during Cromwell’s time. The cenotaph was erected a hundred years or more after his death; the Speaker’s body lies elsewhere, and so “Tomb-chamber” is at best a misnomer. It all seemed like a bit of stage-craft to me, or a garden folly brought indoors; although impressive enough, there was little but boasting behind it.

  “You wished to show me a marble statue of a man, reclining with his head under his arm?” I asked tartly as we stood by the exterior door.

  “Not really,” West replied. His voice had lowered. “Miss Gambier is in the Chapel, I think?”

  She was; and at his words, I remembered Edward Gambier’s statement that West himself had been there yesterday when Gage was murdered. I opened my mouth to speak, but West’s upraised hand forestalled me.

  “We shall enter only the vestibule, and must not speak or make overmuch noise. She will not be disturbed, and shall assume we are merely servants moving beyond the range of her sight.”

  I nodded to show that I understood, and he pushed open the door.

  The vestibule to the Chapel and the Tomb-Chamber is quite small, offering barely room for two persons. One cannot enter the Tomb-Chamber itself without first walking through the Chapel. West, however, had no intention of doing either. He eased the door closed behind us. If we turned to our left, we should immediately enter the East Corridor, with the kitchens leading off it. As West had observed, Miss Gambier would assume any scuffling from that quarter to be the work of the servants.

  He held his finger to his lips, glanced down the East Corridor—which was empty—and leaned forward. His sensitive artist’s fingers pressed a carved shield in the centre of a section of linenfold panelling immediately opposite. The panelled section swung inwards.

  I stared at the gaping hole in the wall and then at West. He ducked into the opening and motioned for me to follow. I gathered up my skirts and did so with little grace and an unfortunate bit of thumping, pulling the panel nearly closed behind me. “Can we get out at the other end?” I hissed.

  He was standing several feet below me, on a riser of a descending stair. He nodded.

  I closed the door and swayed a little in the sudden fall of darkness.

  “Give your sight a moment to clear,” he whispered. “Then follow me. Careful of your tread on these steps; they are centuries old.”

  I closed my eyes for the space of several heartbeats; and when I opened them, the darkness was lighter. I could perceive shapes in it. West, for example, was a bobbing movement below me, already descending the hidden stair. I reached forward wi
th my toes in trepidation and found the first step. Then another. The descending passage was narrow and low, so that I stooped a little, my shoulder grazing one wall. It was lined with wood, which had decayed to dust in places. I concentrated on the careful footsteps of my companion in front of me, and refused to consider the possibility of vermin.

  “Where does this come out?” I whispered.

  “To tell you would spoil it.”

  I hurried a little—his voice suggested he had moved away from me more than I could like. I did not glance behind me; there were terrors in the dark, in the close air of the sealed passage. Terrors, too, in what might lie ahead. I was seized of a sudden with the conviction that I had been lured to my death by a madman—by the very one who had engineered John Gage’s end, and meant now to silence me for having discovered his wire! What a fool I was! I stopped in my tracks, my heart pounding, and strained to see before me in the darkness. If I turned and ran for the passage door like a heroine of Mrs. Radcliffe’s, should I find it immovable, and die screaming as my fingers clawed at the impassive panels? Should I be cut down with a wire round my neck, my fleshless skeleton to be revealed only years hence?

  “Take my hand,” West said, his voice soothing. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”

  He had turned on noiseless feet and come back to me. I reached out my fingers and felt his, rough but warm.

  Later, I understood that we walked perhaps eight minutes more in that lightless tunnel. But at the time, it might have been an hour or ten. I could not have said. I only knew that I felt immense relief when the blackness turned to grey, and I could perceive Raphael West’s sleek dark head before me. He was ascending a stair. My foot tested a step, and then another. A few seconds more and he raised the latch on a common wood door.