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

  “James ought to keep a carriage of his own,” she persisted. “But he will buy hunters, instead! I am sure he does it with the design of vexing me. He would insist I am too material in my concerns, I daresay.”

  “One hunter cannot run to the same expence as a team, a carriage, and a coachman to drive it,” Cassandra observed gently.

  “What can you possibly know of domestic economy, Cassandra?” Mary lifted her eyes expressively towards Heaven. “You have never been required to manage your own establishment. You have been a dependent all your life.”

  “I beg your pardon,” my sister returned stiffly. “Mamma and Jane and I live in the strictest economy as a result of Papa’s death. Your sister, Martha, contrives on even less. If that is not domestic management, I cannot conceive what is.”

  “Girls,” Mamma interjected. “Pray do not be scolding each other! We are fortunate both in the manner of our conveyance to Ashe Park and of being bidden to dine there at all. Only think what a delightful occasion this is! A gaiety at Christmas, and without the least opportunity for murder, from beginning to end!”

  Mary sighed, as tho’ already regretting her decision to abandon her sopha. “One always knows what will be served at Ashe, and who will be there. There is nothing in the way of novelty in the country.”

  “But people themselves change so much,” my mother objected, “that there is always something new to be learnt of their characters.”

  “You possess the happy talent of contentment in your narrow quarter,” Mary retorted. “But my understanding demands greater scope for enjoyment—finer sensibilities in my acquaintance. A broader world in which to be known.”

  I remembered Caroline’s unhappy looks this morning. Pray God she had not inherited too much of her mother’s temperament. The little fever of envy, once caught, is the ruin of all happiness.

  Mary mastered her petulance well enough, however, to appear gracious when once we were arrived at Ashe Park; and the company being increased by a few strangers she had not expected, was moved to behave better than among her friends. Her desire to be well-regarded lent something like animation to her behaviour at dinner.

  “Have you heard the excellent news, Austen?” John Portal cried as he handed my brother a glass of Madeira. “Chute means to take out his pack tomorrow.”

  “But the snow!” James exclaimed.

  Portal shrugged and set down his decanter. He is a hearty, handsome fellow with an open countenance and few airs about him. “I had a note from Chute this morning. He says a thaw is already set in around The Vyne, and that his hounds are ready to eat one another alive, so little exercise have they seen. A good casting and a better gallop will be the saving of us all, whether we draw blank or not.”

  “With this wet, the scent should be breast-high,” James mused. “Where is the meet?”

  “Sherborne St. John. I’ve told Lucy she must come and raise a stirrup cup, to see us off.”

  “Should you like to join me, Mrs. Austen?” Lucy Portal enquired, leaning towards Mary. “I should be happy to offer you a seat in my carriage.”

  Mary does not think highly of Mrs. Portal, who does not find another’s ills so interesting as Mary should like. “I am afraid the effort is far beyond my powers at present,” she said weakly. “I was most unwell at The Vyne, as no doubt you have heard.”

  This was intended as a trailing remark—the sort that elicits vast impatience to learn the whole—but Lucy merely turned to me. “Are you an aficionado of the hunt, Miss Austen?”

  “I do not ride—but I should be very happy to watch the Hunt go off,” I said. “I will accept a seat in your carriage with alacrity. It is very kind of you to offer it.”

  “What fun we shall have! I confess I am wild to set foot out-of-doors; the weather has been too confining of late.”

  At this, my sister-in-law looked positively disgruntled, and left her seat by Lucy Portal in search of more sympathetic ears.

  “You must join us, Austen!” Portal cried. “Bring that lad of yours—he’ll have an enviable seat and hands, if you’ve schooled him.”

  Amidst all James’s pomposities I had forgot he was an excellent horseman. He and my brother Henry learnt to ride with The Vyne; when my father could not mount them, William Chute did. They are both hunting-mad to this day.

  “My Trooper is not so fit as I should like,” James said.

  “Let your son sit him,” Portal returned impatiently. “The boy’s a feather-weight, I daresay.”

  “True enough—but I haven’t another mount so good in my stable.”

  “I’ll lend you Aristo. He’s heavy enough for a man of your stone.”

  “Done,” James said, and raised his glass. The two gentlemen moved off in search of others of their fellows lounging about the drawing-room, who might be persuaded to join the Hunt. I glanced about the well-lit and richly-panelled walls, and reflected that my mother was right: how fortunate we were to enjoy a gaiety without the least chance for murder!

  Ashe Park is the principal estate in Steventon. I must believe Lucy Portal happy in the command of its numerous elegancies, its comfortable, well-proportioned rooms, its excellent fires, and its expansive park. There were nearly twenty people gathered about her for tea after our excellent dinner, and to review their names and faces was to recall scenes from more than half my life. The Digweeds were there: James, a clergyman who is of an age with myself, and his wife, whom he met in Tonbridge Wells. Maria is generally reported an heiress, and from her dress I may well believe it—she was arrayed as for a ball, and tho’ older than James by several years and the mother of five hopeful children, displayed an expanse of bosom that was as startling as it was naked.

  I shall have to recommend the stile to Mary, if she persists in contemplation of her own mortality; for with so little in the way of clothes, she might contract a chill, and be carried off within a se’ennight.

  Mr. John Harwood of Deane House was also there, along with one of his sisters. Another clergyman—how Hampshire does abound in them, to be sure!—he is a tragic figure, and of especial interest to me, for he was meant to marry my good friend Elizabeth Bigg when at last he came into his inheritance. But on his father’s death last year, what should be discovered but that the gentleman had been living far beyond his means—and that his heir was ruined! John Harwood has determined never to marry, but to exert his efforts to clearing Deane of debt, and supporting his widowed mother. His sisters’ marriage-portions went with all the rest of his fortune, and the blighting of the Harwoods’ hopes has been the talk of the neighbourhood this past year. We must believe that 1815 will see an improvement in them.

  “May I assure you, Miss Austen,” John Harwood told me at the dinner table, “how very much I enjoyed Mansfield Park? The naturalness of all the characters—the sentiments of Edward and Fanny, so admirable in every respect—it is a lesson in the virtues of novel-reading, rather than its ills.”

  Of course I must feel regard for the tragic fellow; what he lacks in funds, he more than makes up for in taste.

  There were also numerous Terrys from Dummer in the room, the ladies quick to praise my mother’s reticule. Standing alone, I observed Mr. Michael Terry, who was engaged to James’s Anna before she lost her heart to Ben Lefroy this year. Near him were the Wither Bramstons, from Oakley Hall.

  I had glimpsed the Bramstons at the far end of the dinner table, and wished them exchanged for their sister, Augusta, who is an eccentric and sharp-tongued lady; she was seated directly opposite myself. At Mr. Harwood’s praise of my most recent novel, she uttered a derisive snort. “Sense and Sensibility was nonsense, of course, and Pride and Prejudice downright vulgar. I expect to like Mansfield Park better, Miss Austen; and having finished the first volume, flatter myself I have got through the worst.”

  Augusta Bramston is happy in being quite deaf. I enjoyed a few choice retorts at her expence, and consoled myself with Mr. Portal’s excellent claret.

  I had not long been free of the din
ing parlour and in possession of a settee in the drawing-room, however, before Mary Bramston settled herself beside me with a conspiratorial air. Mrs. Bramston is sister to Thomas-Vere and William Chute; her entire girlhood was passed at The Vyne. She is a dark, lively, stout little lady with strenuous ringlets and blackcurrant eyes, who lives to talk of her neighbours. Of all those dining at Ashe Park, she must be most aware of the nature of our Christmas.

  “Miss Austen,” she said, pressing my hand with her heavily-ringed one. “Augusta has been insulting you about your books. I am mortified! Pray do not hold her opinions against all of us at Oakley Hall. I thought Pride and Prejudice beyond everything great; but your Fanny is too good for me. I prefer Mary Crawford and her rake of a brother. Now tell me everything you can of this unpleasantness at The Vyne. Do you agree with our Eliza, and think Lady Gambier a murderer?”

  “Lady Gambier! Not at all!” I returned.

  “She quitted Hampshire in her carriage yesterday morning, with that poor creature’s body conveyed behind on a hired cart. Her nephew rode beside, Eliza tells me, on his own mount—and only conceive how it snowed! He will contract an inflammation of the lung, I daresay, and then her ladyship will be doubly sorry.”

  “They were bound for Bath?”

  Mrs. Bramston nodded significantly. “To restore Miss Gambier to her grieving mother. Lady Gambier was most insistent that they reach Bath today, for she wished the corpse laid out in the Abbey. She cannot believe, therefore, that the death was self-murder. She would not be seeking Christian burial otherwise. Much less the Abbey!”

  It is the most venerable of Bath’s many churches.

  “Is that not like remorse?” Mrs. Bramston insisted. “Do you not think it certain Lady Gambier cut off the girl’s life—and is haunted by guilt?”

  “What possible reason can you have for believing so?”

  “Why, the laudanum bottle!” Mary Bramston cried. She lifted her pretty hands. “The one discovered near Mary Gambier’s body. You must know that it was found to belong to her aunt.”

  “I did not,” I said slowly. “When was this told?”

  “Friday evening,” Mary Bramston said, “Lady Gambier’s last in the house, and one she spent entirely in packing, if Eliza is to be believed. What must her ladyship do, but accuse her maid of having lost her laudanum drops, and turn the whole place on its ear? Louisa Gambier cannot abide a carriage journey, it seems, without she doses herself. Now. What do you make of that?”

  I thought it very likely that Lady Gambier’s spent laudanum bottle was presently in William Chute’s book room. I could not imagine that elderly woman, however, carrying her niece’s insensate form through the nursery wing and down the back Chapel stairs.

  I said only, “Lady Gambier was very fond of her niece, I believe. She would wish to do everything proper, in respect of the dead. Mr. Chute had no objection to the Gambiers’ quitting The Vyne?”

  “He could not keep them from a Christian burial, in good conscience, particularly when Mr. West had already gone.”

  “Mr. West?”

  “Did you not know? He took his leave directly the inquest was over.”

  I was astounded by this piece of intelligence; for the past several days I had been wishing for news of Mr. West’s investigations, and had consoled myself in the hope that tomorrow, perhaps, might bring word of them. “He returned to London?”

  “I cannot say. Eliza made sure he should send his adieux to Miss Austen, if no one else. She declares he has a tendre for you, Jane.”

  “She is quite mistaken.” So little did he regard me, in fact, that he had left Hampshire without offering a word of his plans. Did he find no reason now to pursue the murderer of John Gage and Mary Gambier? Had he given up the Treaty as lost to our enemies? Or did he follow a trail in London, of which I knew nothing?

  I was suddenly wild to find William Chute and press him for answers.

  “Only my brother Thomas-Vere remains at The Vyne,” Mrs. Bramston continued. “The three of them must be very dull, rattling around that draughty old place. I believe Mr. West is expected to return, however, when once his business is done—so perhaps I may be invited to meet him after all. I collect Eliza means to go forward with her plans for a Children’s Ball on Twelfth Night—and we are all to be invited!”

  “I suppose there can be nothing wrong in such a gaiety,” I mused, “regardless of the deaths that have occurred. Miss Gambier’s family is no longer in residence, and Lieutenant Gage was a stranger to the Chutes. Eliza will be wishing to throw off the pall of The Vyne’s recent unpleasantness, and open 1815 in a lighter mood.”

  “I look forward to making Mr. West’s acquaintance. I long to watch him sketch!” Mary Bramston exclaimed. “Is it not marvellous to think of my brother William, enshrined in a Parliamentary portrait? Thomas-Vere and I should never have credited it when we were children together in the nursery, I declare. William was always so slow at his lessons!”

  Mr. Wither Bramston then approached, to save me from the necessity of a response, and asked after my brother Henry. I was able to assure him that the new lodgings in Henrietta Street were exactly to a single gentleman’s liking, and that Henry’s latest horse looked very promising at Newmarket. But I confess my mind was far from the trivialities of the conversation; I was pursuing in thought the elusive figure of Mr. Raphael West, and his guarded movements.

  Our party broke up soon after. Lucy Portal was pressing in her invitation to all the Austen ladies, to ride out in the Portal carriage and watch The Vyne Hunt go off; and this second opportunity was not lost on Mary. She had been consulting with her husband, and saw the wisdom of acquiescing in general enjoyment. To be spending an entire day alone, with only her daughter about her, was to be foregoing an ideal stage for her powers.

  THE NINTH DAY

  23

  HUNTING WITH THE VYNE

  Monday, 2nd January 1815

  Steventon Parsonage

  “Aunt Jane!”

  The whisper was urgent enough to penetrate even my brain, clouded with sleep. I lifted myself from the pillow and looked confusedly to the door. A small figure shivered there, in a dressing gown too short in sleeves and hem.

  “What is it, Caroline?”

  She took this for an invitation, and bounded across the room to my bed. “Neither of the faeries came as usual this morning. I awoke early, and waited; and when it seemed as tho’ Jemima and I must be forgot, I came to see if my aunts were already at breakfast. But only think! It is past seven o’clock, and you are both still abed!”

  “We were out rather late last evening.”

  “At the Portals’, I know,” she said wisely. “I do not like Ashe Park so well as The Vyne. I regard The Vyne as the finest place I have yet seen.”

  “Nonetheless, one must have variety,” I said sleepily. “Only think if it were always The Vyne, and only The Vyne. Are you here for your present? Aunt Cassandra was to deliver it today.” It was a jonquil-coloured carriage dress intended for the very airing in Hyde Park Caroline had recently despaired of.

  “I am not only come about Jemima,” she said, and tugged at my arm urgently. I lifted the bedclothes and admitted her to the warmth; she was like a small bundle of frozen twigs, huddled against me. “James-Edward says he is to hunt today with Papa. And that you and Mamma are all going to see them off, in Mrs. Portal’s carriage. Is it true that I am to be left entirely alone?”

  I had not considered of this. No doubt Mary had ignored Caroline’s abandonment as well.

  “There is Cook,” I said doubtfully. “And Sarah.”

  “Tosh,” Caroline said firmly. “You would console me with servants, when you are all gone to Sherborne St. John to be happy? It is most unkind. And at Christmas.”

  I sighed. “I shall speak to Mamma.”

  “You are good to me, Aunt.” She snuggled down in the covers. “I had been wondering when Jemima might wear her handsome riding habit. To lift a stirrup cup with The Vyne is to be wearin
g it to some purpose!”

  JAMES PORTAL’S STABLES ARE among the finest in North Hampshire, and it was gratifying to set out behind a neat pair of steppers in the bright winter sunshine this morning. Lucy Portal was all that was cheerful and welcoming; we Austens were in spirits; and if Mary was not, she had the good sense to disguise it from her hostess. We made sure to place her beside Lucy, on the seat facing forward, conveniently close to the squabs and the window, so that she might doze or seek fresh air if she fancied herself sick. Cass, Mamma, and I sacrificed our comfort and sat with our backs to the coachman—we had barely enough room between us to accommodate our stays—and tho’ this gesture was ignored by Mary, for whom it was chiefly intended, we were nonetheless conscious of virtue.

  Caroline, upon arriving at Ashe Park, was invited to spend the day with the daughters of the house in the nursery wing; and this answered so well her desire to exhibit Jemima, that she jumped down without a backwards glance. I felt a twinge of relief; Mary was fractious child enough to manage, for one pleasure outing.

  It is ten miles from Ashe Park to Sherborne St. John. The gentlemen rode beside our carriage, James-Edward sitting his father’s hunter and looking austere, in his effort not to look sick with excitement. My brother was astride the aptly-named Aristo, a beautiful chestnut gelding with powerful flanks and shoulders; it was a mark of John Portal’s trust and affection that he had lent such a mount to James. Being lighter than my brother, he rode a showy dappled grey mare with a mouth so sensitive her head was constantly on the twitch.

  “What a fine day for a gallop,” Lucy Portal observed.

  “Do you hunt, ma’am?” my mother enquired.

  She coloured faintly. “In the general way. But I am at present … indisposed. I hope to return to the field next winter.”