Jane and His Lordship's Legacy Page 17

  “When I understood, a few hours later, that my father meant to charge poor Bertie Philmore with French’s murder, I knew that I was left no choice but to act, since Mr. Hinton refused to do so.”

  I placed my arm within Catherine Prowting’s as we passed the first of Alton’s shops and houses. “You are possessed of singular courage, my dear. I am determined all the same not to let you out of my sight until I have seen you safely into the care of Mr. Prowting. Let Jack Hinton do his worst—we shall be ready for him!”

  WE DISCOVERED, THROUGH THE SIMPLE EXPEDIENT OF vigourous interrogation at the George Inn, that Mr. Prowting had been observed to enter Mr. John Dyer’s premises at Ivy House—a trim building not without charm, and the attraction of a series of Gothick arched casements. The magistrate was as yet engaged there. I accompanied Catherine to the builder’s door, and tho’ curious as to the nature of Mr. Prowting’s business, declined to intrude. I had an idea of the conversation: the magistrate in his heavy, forthright way demanding to know whether Bertie Philmore could have stolen Dyer’s keys to Chawton Cottage on the Saturday night of French’s murder; and Mr. Dyer—in his succinct, pugnacious style—steadfastly refusing to allow it to be possible. Mr. Prowting was destined to suffer a revolution of opinion, and a disorder of all his ideas, when once his daughter’s story was heard; but I did not like to witness his discomfiture. Let him endure the severest pangs of regret beyond the reach of his neighbours, and collect his faculties during the brief walk home from Alton to Chawton. Prowting would require the full measure of his sense for the coming interview with Mr. John-Knight Hinton, Esquire.

  The murder of Shafto French might well be explained by Catherine Prowting’s confession, but the disappearance of Lord Harold’s chest was not. I made my own way to Normandy Street, and kept a keen lookout for a yard full of laundry.

  Halfway up the lane, on the opposite side of the paving, I detected a quantity of white lawn secured by wooden pegs to a line of rope. A tidy picket preserved the yard from the ravages of dogs and children, and a few flowers bloomed near its palings. No figure moved among the hanging linen, and the door of the nearby cottage was closed. I glanced upwards at the chimney, however, and observed a thin thread of smoke.

  A girl of perhaps ten years answered my knock, and stared at me gravely from the threshold.

  “Is your mother within?”

  She nodded mutely.

  “You may tell her that Miss Jane Austen is come to call.”

  “Bid the lady welcome, Mary,” a voice commanded from the interior.

  The child stepped back, pulling the door wide. I moved into the room, and saw that it was no foyer or front passage, but merely the cottage’s place of all work, with a few benches drawn up to a scrubbed pine table, a hob with a great kettle boiling on the banked embers of the hearth, and several irons warming in the fire. A woman sat rocking an infant at her breast; she gazed at me with neither welcome nor trepidation on her features.

  “Are you Rosie Philmore?”

  “I am.”

  “Miss Jane Austen, at your service. It was at my home in Chawton, Mrs. Philmore, that your husband was …” I glanced at the silent little girl named Mary and hesitated. “… found, last evening.”

  “What of it?”

  The child moved swiftly to her mother’s side and stared at me with wide and frightened eyes.

  “Would it be possible to talk a while,” I attempted, “in private?”

  “Do you go in search of your brothers, Mary,” Mrs. Philmore said. “They’ll be down near the Wey, I’ll be bound, fishing with young Zakariah Gibbs. Tell them their dinner’s waiting. Go on, now.”

  The girl fled out a rear door, two washtubs visible in the grass beyond it. I waited until the door creaked shut behind her before speaking again.

  “Mrs. Philmore, I know that your husband is detained in Alton gaol at this moment. He may be guilty of entering my home—he may even have taken something of great value that belongs to me—but I do not believe he murdered Shafto French.”

  “He was home at midnight Saturday,” she said stoutly, “like he said. I’ll swear to that, to my dying day.”

  “I am sure you will. But Mr. Prowting thinks otherwise, and Mr. Prowting is magistrate for Alton, and determined to hang somebody for French’s murder. I do not think it will concern him much if he hangs the wrong man.”

  In this, I may have done my neighbour an injustice; but my words had the effect I desired. Rosie Philmore closed her eyes, as if surrendering to a sudden shaft of pain, and drew a shuddering breath.

  “It’s all on account of those jewels,” she said.

  I frowned. Had Thrace’s tale of the rubies of Chandernagar reached so far as Alton?

  “—That chest of yours, what the great man from London brought special in his carriage. People will talk of anything, ma’am. You’re a stranger in these parts, so you’re not to know. Scandalous it was, how they talked—about the fortune you’d received from a dead lord, and what the man might have been paying for. I didn’t listen no more than others—but Bert’s ears grew so long with hanging on every word, I thought they’d scrape the floor by week’s end. And then he told me, two nights past, the truth of the tale.”

  “The truth?”

  She opened her eyes, still rocking the infant, and stared straight at me. “That ’tweren’t jewels a’tall, nor gold neither, but a chest full of papers. Papers as somebody’d pay a good bit to see.”

  A thrill of apprehension coursed through me. “Your husband knew what the chest contained?”

  “Of course. Heard it of his uncle, Old Philmore, he did.”

  “Old Philmore? But I am not even acquainted with the man.”

  “Old Philmore knew, all the same.”

  As had Lady Imogen. Was it she who set the joiner’s family on to stealing Lord Harold’s papers?

  “Your husband was engaged by Mr. Dyer to work at my cottage. He was also employed, I understand, at Stonings in Sherborne St. John—the Earl of Holbrook’s estate. Was Old Philmore ever working there?”

  “Of course. It was from Old Philmore my Bert learned his trade. He’s a rare joiner, Old Philmore.”

  “Has your husband’s uncle been to see you? Has he called upon Bertie, in Alton gaol?”

  She appeared to stiffen, like a woods animal grown suddenly wary of a trap.

  “He’ll be along, soon enough.”

  “You do not know where he is at present?”

  “In Chawton. He lives there, same as yerself.”

  “Old Philmore has not been seen since your husband was taken up last night, Mrs. Philmore.”

  She leaned forward in her chair, the babe thrust into her lap. “What do you mean?” she demanded.

  “Old Philmore appears to have fled. Is not that a singular coincidence? —That your husband should be sitting in gaol for a theft that cannot profit him, while his uncle is nowhere to be found?”

  For an instant, I watched Rosie Philmore comprehend the import of my words. Then she laughed with a bitter harshness. “Not if you know Bert’s family, ma’am. If there’s a way to turn a penny from hardship, Old Philmore’ll find it.”

  FROM NORMANDY STREET I MADE MY WAY TOWARDS AUSTEN, Gray & Vincent, feeling exposed to every eye and the subject of every chance conversation. Far more of my business was known than I had understood before, and the knowledge could not help but make me uneasy. Lady Imogen had spoken of the existence of Lord Harold’s papers with easy familiarity; but this I had dismissed as the knowledge of a family friend. I must now assume the contents of the chest were also known to Major Spence and Mr. Thrace, with whom her ladyship was intimate; as clearly they were known to the Philmores and their circle. I could no longer suppose the information to be privileged.

  Last night I had presumed the chest was stolen because of the rumour of fabulous wealth attached to it. I apprehended now that Lord Harold’s legacy had been seized for exactly the reason it has always been so sedulously guarded by the solici
tor Mr. Chizzlewit and his confederates—because of the danger inherent in its communications. The theft had not been made at random: deep in the chest lay a truth that one person at least could not allow to be known. Was he content in having stolen the trunk and the dangerous memories it held? Or did the threat still walk abroad, with an intelligence that lived and breathed?

  Was I even now in peril, by virtue of what I had already read?

  I revolved what little of Lord Harold’s history I had perused. There were anecdotes of Warren Hastings; an old scandal of early love and a hasty duel; the animus between Lord Harold and one man—the Viscount St. Eustace—and his friendship for another, the Earl of Holbrook. A vague suggestion of activity on behalf of noble French émigrés during the Reign of Terror, and Lord Harold’s dedication to the salvation of a few; and the mention of Geoffrey Sidmouth, whom I had known myself in Lyme Regis some years before, and remembered with poignant affection. And then there was the Frenchwoman named Hélène, whom the Rogue first met while en route from India to England in 1785. But I had found no firm indication as to the father of Hélène’s child, to whom he later referred. It was possible, I supposed, that Julian Thrace might claim to be the woman’s son. But as to his paternity? Had Thrace been sired by her affianced husband, the Viscount St. Eustace? Or by wild Freddy Vansittart, smitten on the Punjab? Or Lord Harold himself?

  At that thought, I stopped dead in the middle of the High. And saw again in my mind’s eye the lazy beauty of Thrace’s face. It bore not the slightest resemblance to Lord Harold’s sharp features; but neither did it resemble Lady Imogen Vansittart’s. And the Rogue, I felt sure, was the sort of man who should always know his sons.

  The truth was somewhere in Lord Harold’s papers.

  That the chest was seized on the very night I had dined with the intimates of Stonings, must cause me to believe that one of them—Lady Imogen, or Thrace himself—had long been aware of the danger Lord Harold’s writings posed. One of them had hired Old Philmore and his nephew.

  “Jane,” my brother Henry said with a frown as I entered his rooms at No. 10, “it has been as I predicted. Julian Thrace has had the poor taste to stop here on his way to Sherborne St. John, and require of me a loan.”

  “Lady Imogen’s Devil in the cards?” I enquired. “How much is demanded for the preservation of the Beau’s honour?”

  “All of five hundred pounds! —To be issued in notes backed by gold in my London branch! The effrontery of the fellow, Jane, to presume on such a slight social acquaintance! But what else, after all, has Thrace ever done?”

  “You are a banker, Henry—and I must suppose a gaming debt contracted in a gentleman’s household is a pressing affair, that must be paid with despatch. Particularly when one is living cheek by jowl with the lady demanding payment.”

  “He might have offered her his vowels,” Henry retorted crossly, “and applied to friends in London for the whole.2 I cannot be easy in my mind regarding Thrace’s security for any sum advanced to him, despite the Earl’s apparent regard, and all the frenzy of activity in rebuilding Stonings.”

  “Perhaps you shall be easier once you have visited the place.”

  My brother merely stared.

  “We are all invited to picnic there tomorrow—yourself expressly desired by Major Spence, who should like to interrogate you regarding the Vyne hunt, Henry.”

  “But I had meant to return to London in the morning!”

  “Poor sport, Henry! Consider the heat and stink of Town in such a season; and then, you know, nobody worth your notice is likely to be there.”

  “No more they are,” he replied thoughtfully, “but Eliza is sure to have my head if I desert her in all the packing. We intended our removal for the end of July, you know—in time to join our friends in Scotland for the shooting months.”

  “August is weeks away,” I said equably, “and if you stay in Hampshire, you might assist me in the treasure hunt.”

  “Not the rubies, Jane?”

  “Mamma will have discovered those before the month is out,” I told him dismissively. “No, Henry—it is Lord Harold’s papers I mean to find. I am convinced they are even now well hidden at Stonings.”

  Chapter 16

  If the Boot Fits …

  7 July 1809, cont.

  ~

  IT WAS A PLEASANT THING INDEED TO FIND DINNER ON THE table at my return—a roasted capon, a bit of white fish Sally had got by proxy from Alton, and beans from Libby Cuttle’s garden—“her being that ashamed of herself, ma’am, when I told her how respectable you all were, and how good to me.” I guessed that the inclusion in our household of a Chawton girl born and bred, with all the hundred ties of obligation and habit that knit her close to the surrounding country, must prove a decided advantage. Sally Mitchell was worth ten times the notice of a Mr. Middleton, in being related to the dairy man, the sheep farmer on her mother’s side, and the fellow who mended tools from his cart each Wednesday; and to crown all, we should not be reduced to stratagems and subterfuge in order to buy bread from the baker each morning. Even Cassandra had interrogated the new housemaid and was satisfied—“for she is not unintelligent, and will prove a useful set of hands in the stillroom, Jane—which you must know I intend to establish as soon as Martha Lloyd is arrived from Kintbury. And I find Sally is not at all incommoded by dogs, which is an excellent thing, as Link means to learn all about the stillroom—don’t you, you cunning scamp?”

  The stillroom meant Cassandra’s orange wine; I should have to profit from my association with the Great in the days remaining to me before Martha’s return, and drink deep of the claret they offered.

  Henry sat down with us in the dining parlour, and we had just enough chairs for four disposed around the table. Tonight was our first evening spent entirely en famille since our arrival, and the first in many days that Cassandra had enjoyed in her own abode. For ten months she had been resident at Godmersham—and I had almost despaired of my sister’s ever returning, in the belief that Neddie must grow so dependant upon her as to regard her as another of his innumerable possessions. I had broached the subject only once in Kent, during my visit there the previous month; but Cassandra had averted her eyes, and after a little hesitation observed, “Dear Fanny is quite a woman, now. It cannot be a comfortable thing, to see her aunt sitting always in her mother’s place, and taking precedence. I flatter myself I have been useful among the little children—but with the boys soon to be returned to Winchester, and Fanny grown so capable … I cannot feel I am needed, Jane.”

  That truth must be a sorrow to Cassandra, who has made a kind of life from devoting herself to her brothers, as tho’ the selflessness of her quiet ways must in some wise justify her having remained single when Tom Fowle died. We must each of us in our own way earn the keep we require of our brothers’ pockets.

  “There is this comfort at least,” she concluded now. “Frank’s Mary must be confined at any moment—and I shall be much in demand at Rose Cottage in Lenton Street, once the second child is arrived. How fortunate that we are not above a mile from her door!”

  My sister is exceptionally good, and accepts the cruel injustice of her lot without complaint or reversion to the hopes of former days; but with advancing age, I have observed Cassandra’s tendency to take pride in her very sublimation to the uses of others. I cannot admire it; it is too much like martyrdom. For my part, I have never been one to submit readily to denial.

  “I wish that Mr. Thrace had been more exact in his intelligence regarding the necklace,” my mother mused pensively as she stabbed a chicken thigh with her fork. “I have devoted quite three hours to turning over the earth in the back garden, and have only blisters on my palms to show for it, Jane.”

  “We must beg some cuttings from Miss Beckford’s garden at the Great House, Mamma, and have you plant while you dig,” I suggested. “Only this morning, she promised me a syringa and a plum sapling.”

  “As we are to meet with Mr. Thrace on the morrow, Jane, perha
ps you could ascertain more narrowly where the rubies were hidden,” Henry suggested with devilry in his eye. “I should not like all Mamma’s work to be wasted; and, too, there is the trouble of thieves in the neighbourhood. What if they should come again by night, and profit from our labour?”

  “Mamma may hit them stoutly over the head with her shovel, and so make an end to the business,” I replied.

  Scarcely had these words been spoken than we heard a knock upon the outer door, and having failed to discern the approach of a visitor over the clamour of our own conversation, were at a loss to name the caller. I waited for Sally to answer the summons, while Cassandra said with obvious satisfaction, “That will be Neddie perhaps. He was to dine in Alton with Mr. Middleton, I believe, and will have escorted his tenant home.”

  “Seems a foolish thing to do,” Henry observed, “when he might be comfortable with the port to be found in Barlow’s cellars.”

  Mr. Prowting appeared in the dining-parlour doorway.

  Behind him, hat in hand, stood Mr. Jack Hinton.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Austen. I must beg your sincere pardon for incommoding you at this hour,” the magistrate said, “but I am come on a matter of some urgency. May I beg leave once again to enter your cellar?”

  “Of course, my dear Mr. Prowting. Of course. You have a particular point to ascertain regarding that foul murder, I must suppose.” My mother’s countenance was alive with interest; but Mr. Prowting did not explicate his business, and never should she have conjectured the true object of his urgency. “What a delightful surprise to see you again, Mr. Hinton! Had I known we were to have such a party, I should have invited you all to take pot-luck with us!”