Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor Read online

  “And did your husband betray any sign of indisposition while the ball held sway?”

  The Countess hesitated, and Mr. Bott leaned forward expectantly. “He was in excellent form and spirits for some hours,” Isobel told him, “but was overcome after midnight by severe dyspepsia, having drunk down a glass of claret in toasting my health.” Her voice faltered, and I keenly felt all her distress. “We bore him to his rooms. I bade our guests farewell.”

  Fanny Delahoussaye’s attention was clearly wandering, like a child’s in the midst of the vicar’s lengthy sermon; her blond head drifted around the room, seeking an object worthy of her interest, until recalled to dignity by a pinch from her mother.

  “And did his lordship then request anything further?” Mr. Bott continued.

  “He asked for a milk toddy and sweetmeats, in hopes that it might settle his stomach.”

  The coroner fairly pounced. “Did you partake of either my lady?”

  “I did not, sir.”

  “Did any in the household?”

  “I do not believe so.”

  Fitzroy Payne’s brows were knit in perturbation. As I gazed at the Earl, Tom Hearst leaned towards him and whispered something in his ear. Beyond them sat Mr. George Hearst, so clearly absorbed in his own thoughts that he must have heard little of what passed before him. He might better have escorted restive Fanny back to the Manor, since neither was engaged by the proceedings.

  Mr. Bott’s dry voice demanded my attention. “And who, my lady, assembled the plate of sweetmeats?”

  “The plate and toddy were brought to my husband by my late maid, Marguerite.”

  “Were you within the room at this time, my lady?”

  “I was, sir, attending to my husband’s comfort.”

  “And was anyone else of the household permitted into your presence?”

  “All but the maid had sought their beds.”

  “Indeed. The maid, your ladyship says.” Mr. Bott looked to his jury with a barely perceptible nod. “And did Lord Scargrave consume his sweetmeats and milk, my lady?”

  “He did.”

  “And did his condition improve?”

  Isobel hesitated, and looked for me.

  “Did it improve his condition, Lady Scargrave?”

  “It did not,” Isobel said faintly. “Within a very short time, he progressed from pain to vomiting, and his deterioration was swift.”

  “How short a time?”

  “A quarter-hour, perhaps a half-hour; I could not undertake to say.”

  “And when did you send for Dr. Pettigrew?”

  “The village surgeon we assayed first, believing the Earl’s illness to be of a common nature; but within an hour the man declared himself unfit for the management of his lordship’s case. It was then decided that we should send for Dr. Pettigrew.”

  The memory of that terrible night overcame me—the Earl’s moans banishing sleep from the house, and my own fearful shuddering as I lay alone in the massive mahogany bed, awaiting Isobel’s summons.

  “What hour of the clock would this have been?”

  “I should put it at about half-past one.” Isobel swayed slightly in her chair, and then recovered; but that the strain of public exposure told upon her was evident.

  “And Dr. Pettigrew has testified that he arrived before dawn.”

  “I believe it was nearly five o’clock. By that time I had roused my dear friend, Miss Austen, who kindly sat vigil with me by his lordship’s bedside.”

  At this, the coroner’s sharp eyes fell upon me, and I blushed—cursing my susceptible cheeks all the while.

  “And your husband passed away not long thereafter?”

  Isobel dropped her gaze. “He was dead at sunrise.”

  A shifting among the chairs of the jury; I studied the twelve men’s faces, and read discomfort in their souls. Behind me the assembled townsfolk began to murmur.

  Mr. Bott once more took up his mallet, and achieved a disgruntled peace. “I would ask you, Lady Scargrave, whether you recognise the item I am now presenting to you.” He held out a fine scrap of lawn.

  “I do,” Isobel said steadily.

  “And could you name it for the jury?”

  My friend’s eyelids fluttered and she drew a shaky breath. “It is a handkerchief of Swiss lawn, embroidered with my initials, and forming one of a dozen purchased with my wedding clothes in Bond Street last August.”

  “Thank you, my lady. You may stand down.”

  I saw all too clearly what the pinch-faced man at the long table intended; he had shown the jury as plain as day that the Earl had eaten nothing that others had not consumed as well but for the sweetmeats; and that these were administered in his wife’s presence only—excepting the maid, who was now dead. Further elucidation was hardly necessary.

  Next to be called was Sir William himself; and he described for the jury’s edification the anonymous letters, not neglecting to advise them that it was Lady Scargrave herself who had summoned him with news of the first—a point, I thought, that should be taken in Isobel’s favour; for had she guilt to hide, surely she should have as soon burnt the note as called the magistrate? The townsfolk at my back knew of the letter nailed to the door of the very tavern in which we sat; but the intelligence of two other threatening notes, received by the Countess and held in secret, fell upon them with all the suddenness of a spring storm.

  Mr. Bott made swift work of their startled ejaculations and flurried conversation. His hammer rose and fell. Then he turned to my friend the magistrate, and sniffed audibly. “The first note, Sir William, instructed her ladyship that the second should be sent to you?”

  “It did.”

  “And when the Countess summoned you to Scargrave the very day of her husband’s interment”—how imperious and unfeeling the odious little man made Isobel seem—”she declared herself convinced that the maid was the author of the letters, and entreated your help?”

  “She did.” Sir William sought my eyes, and must have read my indignation in them, for his own dropped to his lap, abashed.

  And so there we had it, courtesy of Mr. Eliahu Bott—the Countess was cunning, indeed. Aware that the second letter with its damning accusations must certainly fall into Sir William’s hands, and unable to anticipate its effect, Isobel had cleverly assumed a guise of sincere bewilderment and named the maid as her accuser. I felt my hopes of any of my friend’s actions being placed in a favourable light, as unlikely of gratification; and suddenly despaired of her future.

  For the first time, Fanny Delahoussaye seemed aware of the cruel drama played out before her; her blond curls were bent to Madame’s ear, plying her with questions. Her mother’s face was grim, and her black eyes snapped. Fitzroy Payne was in an agony of restless dread to judge by his expression; his arms were folded over his chest, his countenance was stormy, and he looked almost as threatening as Beelzebub himself. That he longed to throw the offending coroner the length of the kingdom, I readily discerned, and prayed his better self should master the impulse.

  The next witness caused a sensation in the tavern-room, being a stranger to all present, and bearing with him something of the incensed and sacred; he was declared to be Dr. Percival Grant, and once sworn, he turned a benign and cherubic face upon the assembly, as though invited to join a picnic on the lawn.

  “Dr. Grant, to what university do you belong?”

  “I am a tutor at Cambridge, my good sir, and attached to Christ College.”

  “And what is your field of scholarly interest?”

  “I have made botany my life’s work, with a particular interest in the tropic plants of South America and Africa.”

  A stir of amazement greeted this, and a general puzzlement as to the man’s purpose in these proceedings.

  Mr. Bott produced a folded piece of linen with all the majesty of a conjurer. “Can you name for us the seeds which I now place before you, Dr Grant?”

  The cheerful gentleman leaned forward eagerly. “They are the nut
s of die Barbadoes tree, which is found in the West Indies, in some parts of South America, and in parts of Africa as well.”

  “And have you seen these nuts before?”

  “I assume them to be the same ones presented to me for analysis by Sir William Reynolds.”

  Another wave of sound as the crowd began to heed the direction of Mr. Bott’s questions.

  “And after studying them, what did you conclude?” the coroner enquired, his quill at a rakish angle.

  “That they were indeed Barbadoes nuts.”

  “And what is the effect of Barbadoes nuts on the human body, Dr. Grant?”

  The scholar cherub smiled all around. “They are a severe toxin, my good sir; and when taken even in small quantities, will produce death in very little time.”

  The buzz of conjecture behind my chair was so fierce as to make my cheeks burn with consciousness. I heard Isobel sigh beside me, and felt all the depth of her despair. Fitzroy Payne reached a hand to her elbow, but she leaned away from him, and sought support on my shoulder.

  Mr. Bott’s eyes were on the Countess as he posed his next question. “Is the Barbadoes nut to be found on the island of Barbadoes, Dr. Grant?”

  The professor laughed aloud, as though the coroner had posed a very good joke. “From the name which they bear; my dear fellow, could one doubt it?”

  After this, he was obliged to sit down, and Sir William was recalled.

  “Could you explain to the jury how you came by these Barbadoes nuts?”

  Sir William turned to the twelve men, whose faces grew graver by the hour, and inclined his white head. “I found them among the personal belongings of a member of the Scargrave household.”

  “And how came you to search the belongings of any in that house?”

  “I was requested to do so in the third and final note penned by the maid Marguerite, which bore her signature and was nailed to the door of this tavern,” Sir William replied soberly. “The note having appeared on the same day as her body was discovered, I thought it wise to explore all possible paths.”

  Eliahu Bott’s small eyes gleamed with anticipation. “And where exactly were the nuts disposed, Sir William?”

  “I found them wrapped in a square of velvet in the pistol case belonging to Fitzroy, Lord Scargrave.”

  Mr. Bott was obliged to exert himself with the gavel, an effort to restore order that for several moments must be declared to have been in vain. Isobel leaned heavily against me, all but overcome. I looked for Tom Hearst, and saw him again on his feet, his mouth open in a cry of protest that went unheard in the general melee. At last the coroner rose from his chair and threw all the strength of his small frame into a demand for silence, his eyes on Fitzroy Payne. The eighth Earl of Scargrave retained a remarkable composure throughout, though from knowing him a little, I could guess at the painful tumult of his thoughts.

  Mr. Bott turned avidly to Sir William. “And what did you then, sir?”

  “I ordered the body of the late Earl exhumed from its tomb.”

  This was no news to the jury or the assembled townsfolk; they had seen the grim business in Scargrave Close churchyard but a few days before, and doubtless tossed it among themselves over countless tankards of ale. The coroner dismissed Sir William and recalled Dr. Pettigrew.

  “Now, sir,” Mr. Bott said, running a pink tongue over dry lips, “will you describe for us the further examination of the deceased?”

  “I removed the stomach and examined the contents,” Dr. Pettigrew said, impervious to a feminine shriek sent up by Fanny Delahoussaye.

  “And what did they tell you?”

  “They retained still the evidence of the Earl’s having ingested a large quantity of Barbadoes nuts,” the doctor said evenly.

  “And would the effects of such nuts be similar to those you observed in the Earl at his death?”

  “I should now judge his lordship’s entire illness to have been produced by the poisonous seeds themselves.”

  MR. BOTT PERMITTED US A GRUDGING RESPITE BEFORE THE jury’s consideration of the maid’s poor case. And so Sir William conducted the Scargrave party to the privacy of a small room at the tavern’s rear, where we might take temporary shelter from the townsfolk’s spite. His attitude lacked its customary warmth, and I felt all the force of my old friend’s suspicion; I must confess to a weariness that was consuming, and a depression of spirits no less profound.

  Fanny Delahoussaye declared herself to feel faint, citing the heat of the room, the vulgarity of the crowd pressing about her; the horrid nature of the proceedings—etc., etc. Madame hovered over her anxiously, a phial of smelling salts in hand, and pronounced her daughter unfit to remain in the tavern. That Fanny merely played upon us all, the better to win attention to herself, I little doubted; but her principal object, Lieutenant Hearst, seemed indifferent to her distress, and stood in an attitude of abstracted dejection by the room’s sole window. The drama ended only when Sir William called for his carriage, which had conveyed the Delahoussayes hither; and a subdued Fanny was carried home in the company of her watchful mother. That the former had hoped to be escorted by the Lieutenant, and regretted the folly of her display, I read in her peevish looks.

  Isobel sat with closed eyes and deathly countenance on a chair in the corner, never speaking and hardly stirring; a silent Fitzroy Payne stood by her chair, his tortured thoughts etched upon his countenance. Mr. George Hearst bestirred himself, with surprising good will, and procured a little wine for Isobel, which had a restorative effect; but the mortifications my dear friend had endured were hardly at an end, and might be expected to worsen as the day progressed. I foresaw how it should go; and in very little time, the wine consumed, we were returned to our chairs to my surprise, llzzy scratch was first called and sworn.

  She was a rough, broad woman in a worn wool dress that might once have been of a rosy hue, but was faded now with dirt and age to a dull maroon. Black mitts partly covered chilblained fingers, and on her feet she wore the stout boots of a field labourer—her late husband’s, perhaps, for that she was a widow we quickly learned. She reached from time to time to adjust a ridiculous straw hat—which swept up from her frowzy brow like the masthead of a schooner, arrayed with turnips and cabbage leaves and what I judged to be a rooster’s wattle. She stood before her fellow townsfolk in all the glory of notice; she knew the power of having a tale to tell.

  “You are a resident of this village?” Mr. Bott’s tone lacked something of the warmth with which he had addressed the magistrate.

  “That I am, sir, born and bred, wed and bed, as the saying goes.” Lizzy Scratch had profited by the proceeding’s several hours to consume a quantity of warm gin, that much was certain.

  “And what is your occupation?”

  “It’s a laundress as I am, ‘aving learned the trade from my good mother; and taken it up once more when my pore Joe passed from this life.”

  “And were you acquainted with the maid, Marguerite Dumas? “

  “I ‘ad ‘er ladyship’s washing off ‘er every ‘alf-week,” Lizzy Scratch said, staring balefully at Isobel; “and such a lot of shameful finery as the woman wore, I should not like to say. It was enough to turn the stomach of any decent woman, it was.”

  “That is quite enough, Mrs. Scratch,” the coroner said peremptorily. “Please confine yourself to the questions put. Were you on intimate terms with the maid?”

  “Well, I knew Margie weren’t ‘appy, same as everybody else. What with being far from ‘er ferrin’ parts, and ‘ating the cold, and being that shamed by ‘er ladyship’s goings-on with the Viscount that was—”

  A shocked murmur ran through the ranks, and Fitzroy Payne, seated to my right, put his head in his hands.

  “Mrs. Scratch, I must insist,” Mr. Bott said, with a sharp eye for the Earl. “Confine yourself to the question.”

  “We was friends good enough,” the laundress said sulkily.

  “Although the maid was resident in these parts less than a month
?”

  “Margie ‘ad taking ways, and was fond of talk, and I saw no ‘arm in ‘er.”

  “And when did you last see Marguerite Dumas?”

  “She come to me the day after the old Earl passed on, she did, beggin’ for some food and a roof against the cold. Said she couldn’t stay in no ‘ouse where murder was done, and she’d be off as soon as she’d got ‘er story to the Justice.”

  The outcry in the room now verged on the clamourous, and Lizzy Scratch smiled broadly, bobbing her head to her neighbours and kinsfolk.

  “That’s the truth, by God, and the pore thing was killed for it,” she added.

  “Mrs. Scratch,” Mr. Bott said menacingly, “if you cannot control your tongue, I shall dismiss you from this room.” He removed his spectacles, wiped them briefly with a pocket linen, and resumed his train of thought. “How long was Marguerite Dumas in your home?”

  “Until the day they found ‘er pore mangled body in the ‘ay-shed at Scargrave,” the laundress avowed, and dabbed at her eyes with a fingerless mitt.

  “Do you know when she might have left your house that day?”

  “A’course I knows. Right after milking ‘twas, which I’d given ‘er the doing of. Margie come in and took a bit o’ bread from the fire and said she was off to see ‘er man, and I shouldn’t look for ‘er before dinner.”

  “Her man, Mrs. Scratch?”

  “Some feller as she was sweet on.”

  “Are you familiar with the identity of this person?”

  “That I’m not. Margie could be close-mouthed enough, when she wanted.” This Mrs. Scratch said with satisfaction.

  “Had this fellow communicated with her in any way that you were aware?”

  Lizzy Scratch shrugged. “Met up with ‘er ‘ere in the Cock and Bull, more’n likely, when I weren’t to see. ‘E must’ve done, else ‘ow’d she come by those scraps of paper she was forever tucking in ‘er bodice? Love letters, I called ‘em, right to ‘er face, and she’d just smile.”

  At that, Mrs. Scratch was torn from her moment of glory and forced back among the common folk, but she sailed towards her place like Nelson’s flagship, fully conscious of her majesty and the power of her guns. Beside me, Isobel had closed her eyes, and the blue veins on their lids throbbed with a feverish intensity. I placed my gloved hand over her own, and felt some small pressure in return. I looked then for the remainder of the Scargrave party; but the three gentlemen were locked in a stony silence, their features fixed and grim. The time for anger was past; what was required of them now was fortitude. Fitzroy Payne had ever been possessed of a remarkable command of countenance; but I was touched to observe that the Hearst brothers—one so commonly hot-blooded, and the other so commonly cold—were united in dignity.