Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas: Being a Jane Austen Mystery Page 16

  IN THE END, ANXIETY proved infectious. The entire breakfast party rose from their seats and hurried with me across the Staircase Hall and along the East Corridor. There is a native stillness to sacred places that dictates one step softly; I pushed open the door to the AnteChapel and crept inside.

  She lay facedown in a silk dressing gown at the foot of Lieutenant Gage’s bier. Her guinea-gold hair was undone and one arm outstretched, its fingers curled in supplication. I could see no obvious wound, and for an instant hoped she slept.

  “Mary!”

  Edward Gambier hurried past me to his sister’s side. He lifted her still form and turned it. And at that moment I knew, beyond all shadow of doubt. Her eyes were staring at the vaulted ceiling, her neck rigid. She had clearly been dead some hours. As Mr. Gambier raised her in his arms, supporting the wretched figure, a small glass bottle rolled across the Flemish tiles.

  I stooped to pick it up.

  Laudanum.

  I handed the thing to Raphael West, who studied it with knitted brows.

  “She is so cold,” Mr. Gambier cried. His looks were wild; he was attempting to chafe his sister’s wrists. “Will no one help me?”

  “We must carry her from this place.” Benedict L’Anglois sprang to Edward Gambier’s aid, and would have helped him lift the dead Mary from the floor, but West’s voice suddenly rang out.

  “No,” he said. “Leave everything as we found it. Miss Jane, would you summon William Chute, and bring him here?”

  I hastened without a word from the Chapel, through the dining parlour and the Saloon. At the far end of the latter I encountered Roark.

  “Mr. Chute,” I said breathlessly, one hand against my stays. “Pray summon him. There has been … another tragedy.”

  The butler turned on his heel and mounted the stairs. I went to stand by the Yule log—its cheerful persistence a mute reproach—and recovered my breath. My fingers were deadly cold, as tho’ Mary Gambier’s chill were somehow catching.

  Booted feet, heavy upon the steps beside me; I glanced up.

  “Miss Jane,” William Chute said. His countenance was flushed and his hazel eyes anxious. “What is it?”

  “Juliet,” I said, “dead beside her Romeo.”

  THAT IS HOW THE scene was intended to be read, of course—that the grieving young woman had taken her own life in the middle of the night, chusing to die rather than exist without her beloved John Gage. The guttered candles, as yet unchanged by Eliza’s careful staff; the scent of the lilies; the bier raised before the altar and the girl sprawled in sorrow beside it—all spoke eloquently of a mortal bargain with despair. That was William Chute’s assumption once he viewed poor Mary Gambier’s body; and when West shewed him the empty laudanum bottle, his conviction was entire.

  “Did your sister quack herself with these drops?” he demanded of Mr. Gambier.

  “I do not know,” the gentleman replied in a bewildered tone. “The contents of Mary’s dressing case were entirely her own affair.”

  “You do not recognise the bottle?”

  Gambier took it with shaking fingers. “It is the usual chemist’s bottle,” he said. “There is nothing to distinguish it as Mary’s. Aunt may tell you more.”

  “Poor child,” Chute said gruffly. “She could not endure her grief, we must suppose. Indeed, she was so sick with it she cannot have known what she was about. Self-murder is a dreadful thing.”

  Gambier closed his eyes tightly.

  “Is it possible she took too much by accident, sir?” Benedict L’Anglois suggested in broken accents. His pallor was dreadful and his fingers shook. He must indeed have felt an attachment to Miss Gambier—and was now reeling from her loss.

  “Naturally that is what occurred, Ben!” Chute snapped, as tho’ his secretary were an imbecile. “You do not think Miss Gambier should have knowingly cut off her own thread? A Christian lady, reared in the strictest principles! We shall inform Lord Bolton just how it was. Distraught—unable to sleep—and perhaps dosing herself overmuch. Now, gentlemen—let us carry her to her bedchamber.”

  Impossible that it should be left this way—a probable case of murder, dismissed as accidental suicide! It was imperative that the two deaths be seen for what they were—destruction in tandem, stemming from the stolen Treaty, Mary Gambier’s past, or both. I opened my mouth to speak, but as he moved past me to help lift the body, Raphael West shook his head ever so slightly in the negative. The gesture proclaimed, for one who was watching, that I should keep my opinions to myself. I stepped back, and allowed the solemn procession to pass.

  “Miss Austen,” Mr. Chute said hurriedly, “pray carry this dreadful news to my wife. Eliza will see that everything proper is done. And Miss Jane—pray summon your brother. It is only right that a blessing be said over the corpse.”

  SOME HOURS LATER, I observed from the upper staircase window the arrival of a tradesman’s cart, presumably from Sherborne St. John. It bore the unmistakable draped form of a coffin—the one ordered for Lieutenant Gage. He would be placed in it and borne away for the Angel in Basingstoke—the principal coaching inn being the usual place for the empanelling of an inquest.8

  As I watched, William Chute emerged onto the carriageway below and remonstrated with the carter, who turned his horses towards the Chapel entrance.

  “Ordering another coffin,” Raphael West said drily. He had crossed the landing so quietly I had not been conscious of his presence. “How exceedingly strange it must appear to the folk of Sherborne St. John!”

  “Are you still convinced these deaths have to do with your French spy?” I asked softly.

  “Are you not?”

  “I find it incomprehensible that France should care whether we make peace with the Americans or not. Why should a French agent concern himself with the Ghent Treaty, when the new Bourbon King owes his throne to Great Britain? France is now our friend.”

  “Think, Jane,” West said. “Not all French are Bourbons.”

  I started a little at his use of my proper name, and the tone that suggested I was the merest child. I glanced at him indignantly.

  “Think how many men of power have been destroyed by Napoleon’s fall,” he continued. “Think how desperately they wish to see Louis XVIII fail. Consider how adept such men are at plotting—and how high the stakes of their success! Louis XVIII does not yet command the hearts or loyalty of the French Army. That remains entirely Napoleon’s. If he chuses to lift his finger to them, from exile … All that stands between the Bourbon throne and humiliation is ourselves. Now. Tell me whether it is important to know if and when Wellington’s crack troops will be returning from across the Atlantic?”

  “You mean that if Napoleon leaves Elba—it behooves him to do so when our forces are still across the Atlantic,” I said slowly. “Therefore, his supporters would delay news of the war’s end—delay our troops’ withdrawal—even by so simple an expedient as killing the messenger.”

  “Exactly. It will take weeks, in any case, for the Treaty to be ratified, and months for the news to travel to America. Add to that the present confusion as to the Treaty’s whereabouts—the loss of the only signed copy—and one might well buy a year.”

  “But what can such surmises have to do with Mary Gambier?”

  “I do not know. It is possible, you know, that she took her own life. She was distraught over Lieutenant Gage’s death.”

  “Because she felt herself responsible for it. She refused to bargain for Gage’s life.”

  West’s eyes narrowed. “What the Devil do you mean?”

  Ought I to share my secret knowledge—the conversation I had overlistened at Mary Gambier’s door?

  But what if it had been Raphael West who threatened and harried her affections?

  I had not ascertained his whereabouts, that last dawn of Lieutenant Gage’s life.

  Nor did I know his movements in Mary Gambier’s final hours.

  He was perfectly capable of drawing that vile sketch, of the lady crucified
. Indeed, no one at The Vyne was as capable.

  And he had dissuaded me, only moments earlier, from voicing my suspicions of murder.

  He stepped towards me, his hands raised as though to grasp my shoulders. “Tell me, Jane.”

  And die for my sins?

  I stepped back, quite deliberately. “There is nothing to tell, Mr. West.”

  8 It was usual during inquests of this period for the jury to view the corpse, which was generally held in a room adjoining the proceeding.—Editor’s note.

  18

  THE BLACKMAILER’S ART

  Thursday, 29th December 1814

  The Vyne, cont’d.

  This time it was I, and not James or Mary, who hovered about the library in anticipation of Lord Bolton. As he advanced with William Chute upon the adjoining book room this afternoon, an expression of concern and dismay upon his countenance, I placed myself indelicately in his path. I could trust none of The Vyne’s intimates—not even those I yearned to trust—with my dangerous knowledge. Speak too hastily, and I might end a corpse on the bedroom floor. In such a case, a Justice of the Peace—however young, rich, and indolent—is as a fresh umbrella offered in a Bath spring: a flimsy but publick witness to the deluge.

  “May I present Miss Austen?” Chute said distractedly.

  “Another of them,” Lord Bolton murmured under his breath. He bowed, however, and said falsely, “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  “I hardly think so,” I returned. “You are come about the murder of Miss Gambier, are you not?”

  Behind me, Thomas-Vere Chute gave a small shriek of dismay; he was turning over the plates of a Gentleman’s Magazine by the library fire. Cassandra and Raphael West were in evidence—Eliza and my mother were with Lady Gambier, in Mary Gambier’s room. James had blessed the corpse under strong protest; in his opinion, Mary Gambier ought to be forgiven from our hearts, but never offered Christian burial. His wife was immediately set to supervise the packing.

  “Murder?” Lord Bolton repeated, and looked uncertainly at William Chute. Poor man, he was hardly older than Benedict L’Anglois, and ought better to serve as Chute’s secretary than his Justice of the Peace.

  “Certainly,” I replied before Chute had a chance to answer. “Should you like me to explain?”

  “Miss Jane—” Chute glanced warily at his lordship. “Pray come into the book room and sit down. We cannot be conducting our business before all the world.”

  Informing all the world had been my object. Once half The Vyne’s guests had seen me importune Lord Bolton, the idea of murder—and my evidence—could no longer prove a danger to me. Raphael West had wished me to keep silent this morning; I was therefore compelled to speak. I bowed my head, the picture of meekness, and preceded William Chute into his tapestry-lined room.

  What heaven to closet oneself in here, with a good fire burning! I seated myself on the edge of a chair and gazed at the gentlemen expectantly.

  Lord Bolton took the settee.

  “Now.” Chute settled himself behind his desk and folded his hands beneath his several chins. “I have informed Lord Bolton of the sad accident that occurred last evening. He is agreed that an error of the kind Miss Gambier committed is all too common, alas, with the unguarded nature of laudanum drops, and the bewildering effect of grief.”

  “That is all very well,” I said, “but it is nonsense to think that she did away with herself. Mary Gambier was a resolute creature—not to be thwarted by threats, and adamant when she believed herself in the right. When you speak of grief, Mr. Chute, I have an idea you refer to an attachment between Miss Gambier and the late John Gage. I am sure the Lieutenant’s death was bitter indeed for Miss Gambier; but bitterness should not have persuaded her to self-murder. Rather, it must have spurred her to seek Justice.”

  “What can you possibly be talking of, Miss Jane?”

  I gazed candidly upon William Chute. “I believe Mary Gambier was being blackmailed, sir, in an effort to wrest from her the Treaty of Ghent, or intelligence of its contents. As Admiral Gambier’s niece and John Gage’s beloved, she was likely to receive news of the Ghent negotiations well before the Government. It remained only to persuade her to disclose what she might know—by twisting the screws of publick disgrace. During the first evening I spent in this household I became convinced that the lady held a secret—one she did not wish disclosed—and that another at The Vyne meant to use that secret against her. Two subsequent occurrences persuaded me that I was right.”

  “But you also believe, ma’am, that blackmail turned to murder?” Lord Bolton enquired. “Why should that be so—if the Treaty, as we suspect, was already stolen when Miss Gambier died? Why should Gage’s killer despatch her, if she served no further purpose?”

  “Because she must suspect him in Lieutenant Gage’s death,” I said reasonably. “Had the Lieutenant’s end been accepted as an accident—had the clever trap that brought down his horse never been discovered, nor the theft of the document he carried—Mary Gambier might still be alive. I bear some guilt in this; it was I who discovered the wire and excited her suspicions. Although I cannot blame myself entirely,” I added. “Murder will out—and for all her composure, Miss Gambier was too inclined to defy Fate.”

  “Pray explain yourself, Miss Austen,” Lord Bolton said.

  William Chute sighed. It is a hard thing, for a simple man who looks forward to hunting his grounds when he should be freed from Parliament, to be forced to contend with a complex matter of murder and state.

  “You will recall, Mr. Chute, our game of charades Christmas Night.”

  “Certainly. Most enjoyable. Miss Austen is a dab hand at composing clever rhymes, Bolton,” he supplied.

  “But I did not compose the riddle that destroyed the cordiality of our evening,” I said.

  Chute shifted in his chair. “I confess I cannot quite recollect—”

  “No one, Lord Bolton, would own to having introduced the charade whose solution was: natural son. The implication of bastardy was evident, and Miss Gambier—who solved the riddle—took it severely to heart. She quitted the drawing-room immediately, and her aunt, Lady Gambier, nearly fainted. She had to be escorted from the room.”

  “Bad ton,” Bolton observed. “Very bad ton—eh, Chute? Even if there is a by-blow somewhere in the Gambier line, it don’t do to be raising the subject before the ladies.”

  “Hear, hear,” Chute said.

  “Nothing further occurred until St. Stephen’s Day, when Lieutenant Gage most unexpectedly arrived. Here was the murderer’s Christmas gift, indeed! With the Ghent messenger under the same roof, Mary Gambier and her secret became even more important—for she was to be persuaded to do the killer’s work for him. I suspect she was urged to wheedle the provisions of the Ghent Treaty from the Lieutenant—for it was obvious from the moment of John Gage’s appearance that he was attached to Miss Gambier, and could deny her nothing. But she was made of sterner stuff than her tormentor understood. She refused to betray her uncle or her Kingdom—and so was forced to fail the man she loved.”

  Chute’s eyes started a little from his head. “Are you suggesting that Mary Gambier was responsible for Gage’s death? Impossible! We know her to have been in the Chapel at the moment of his death.”

  “We know her to have arrived there, at least, by the time Lieutenant Gage’s horse returned to The Vyne. We found her upon her knees, praying—a curious activity for a bright Tuesday morning, do not you think?”

  “But—” Lord Bolton shifted slightly in his chair and regarded me. “If indeed Miss Gambier felt herself somehow responsible—is not guilt reason enough for suicide?”

  “Her murderer would like us to think so.”

  “This murderer …” Lord Bolten lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “It strains credulity, I confess, that you posit his existence from a rude charade. Forgive me for being blunt—but you overcomplicate what appears to be a simple death from grief.”

  “I referred at the outset o
f our conversation to three incidents, Lord Bolton, between Mary Gambier and another. I have only told you of one,” I said reprovingly.

  “Very well.” Chute eased one gouty leg with a grimace. “Go on.”

  “In the early hours of the morning following Lieutenant Gage’s arrival,” I continued, “I awoke to hear an argument conducted in the passage outside my bedchamber door. Miss Gambier’s room is next to mine. Alarmed, I approached the door and made as if to open it, but halted due to the private nature of the tête-à-tête. A man was abjuring Miss Gambier to some action she did not like—I do not know the particulars. I heard her say clearly: ‘Be damned to you.’ And her interlocutor replied, ‘Very well, madam. I will know how to act.’ Should you call that a threat, Lord Bolton?”

  “You have no idea who the man was?”

  I hesitated, then shook my head. “I overlistened the conversation through a heavy wooden door. A voice is much distorted by such a thing. I can say only that the tone and accent were those of a gentleman.”

  Chute said heavily, “Let us be perfectly plain. You heard this speech on the very morning of Gage’s death, Miss Jane?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why did you say nothing before?”

  “Because Mary Gambier was silent.”

  “Ah.” He sighed. “That is a point. One cannot in conscience reveal what another chuses should be private.”

  “Particularly when one was never meant to hear it.”

  There was a slight pause.

  “And the third incident?” Lord Bolton demanded.

  “I found a drawing,” I said slowly, reluctant to introduce the subject of the obscene image; it and the hand that drew it touched me on the quick. “It had been thrown in the fire in the Staircase Hall.”

  “A drawing?—One of West’s?” Chute demanded.

  “I do not think so. Indeed, I gave it into his keeping—in the hope he might be able to discover its author.”

  “May we see it?” Lord Bolton asked.

  One cannot in conscience reveal what another chuses should be private. But such was my unhappy lot. I went to the book room door and opened it. Raphael West looked up from his position by my sister; I thought it very likely he had been waiting for such a summons. I beckoned him silently, then stepped back to allow him to enter.