Jane and His Lordship's Legacy Page 20

  The groom walked determinedly towards Charles Spence. “You’re accustomed to cavalry, Major. You know what it should be like, with a great sharp thorn such as this beneath the saddle, as soon as her ladyship leaned into her race.”

  Spence reached out as if in a dream, and grasped the thorn between his fingers.

  “Pressing down on it she was, without even knowing, and the thorn stabbing Nutmeg all the while. It’s no wonder as the horse bolted and threw my lady; wanted to get the saddle off her back, she did.”

  “But how—”

  “That thorn weren’t there when I unsaddled the mare yestiddy,” Robley persisted obstinately: “The mare was clean. A thorn like that don’t just happen to find itself under a saddle. You take my meaning, sir?”

  “You are saying that it must have been placed there,” Mr. Prowting declared, as Charles Spence remained silent. The steward was turning the thorn between his thumb and forefinger, fascinated, but at the magistrate’s words a terrible look of understanding burgeoned on his face.

  “You saddled the mare, Robley.”

  “But I did not fetch the saddle for the race. It was Mr. Thrace as did that,” the groom returned meaningfully. “—Mr. Thrace, who allus rides out alone of a morning, and is in and out of the stable yard at all hours, and dislikes my lady with a passion to equal her own. Thought to put a noose around my neck, he did. Me, what has served her ladyship near twenty year!”

  As we stood in horrified silence, aware of what the groom’s words must mean, Spence wheeled to stare at the Beau, who still stood by the great windows.

  “Julian,” he whispered. “Can it be possible?”

  Thrace did not reply. His handsome countenance had gone white—with fear or guilt, I know not—and all his easy manner was fled.

  “Will you not speak, man? Defend yourself—explain yourself—but for God’s sake, speak!”

  Thrace’s gaze moved from one of our faces to another. “I can no more say what has occurred than you, Charles.”

  I believe Spence might have thrown himself at the man in fury then had my brother not stepped forward, quick as a flash, and restrained him. Catherine Prowting cried out as the two struggled; but Henry’s strength proved greater than Spence’s weak leg. The steward gasped, then sank to the floor near Lady Imogen’s still form.

  “She was so joyous this morning—so proud of her home and her horse!” he muttered. “All of life, all happiness before her. A life snuffed out—”

  It was then Julian Thrace made his mistake.

  With a look of panic on his countenance, he dived without warning through the open window.

  “Hi!” Henry shouted, and rushed to the casement. “He’s making for the stables! He shall bolt, and we do not take care!”

  Robley turned with the swiftness of the monkey he so resembled and cried to Charles Spence, “Your gun, sir, if you take my meaning. I’ll fetch Rangle and the others and head ’im off at the gate!”

  In an instant he was gone from the saloon.

  Henry looked as tho’ he might follow Thrace through the open window, but John Middleton was before him.

  “It is for the magistrate to act now, I think, Mr. Austen. Else we shall have a second murder done.”

  Mr. Prowting was already standing before Charles Spence, his aspect the picture of painful dignity. “No gun, Major. No swift and untimely justice. The man shall be seized, and his guilt weighed in a court of Law.”

  Spence turned his head towards the yawning casement, listening for a sound perhaps only he expected; and at that moment, I heard it too. The rapid patter of the great grey hunter’s hooves as they galloped, far beyond the reach of Robley and his baying pack, down the length of Stonings’ sweep.

  “AND SO THE GENTLEMEN COULD NOT CATCH UP WITH HIM,” my mother said that night, “tho’ they rode out directly in pursuit of the scoundrel?”

  “Mr. Thrace’s horse was too swift,” Henry replied. “My hired hack was as nothing to his grey. Spence’s mount—an old cavalry charger—might have done the trick, but for the man’s delay in reaching the stables. Spence is a brave fellow, and I admire him exceedingly; but he could not at present be described as a great walker. I believe the Major would be as yet abroad in the countryside, combing hill and dale for Julian Thrace, had Mr. Prowting not recalled him to his duty.”

  “—Funeral rites for that unfortunate girl,” my mother agreed mournfully. “And to think how we all admired her, only two nights since at the Great House! Such charm! So much conversation! Such an air of fashion! She cannot have been more than twenty!”

  “She was two-and-twenty.” As my mother had previously declared Lady Imogen to be a sad romp, with a deplorable want of conduct, I ought to have found this encomium amusing. But my spirits were decidedly oppressed. I could not throw off the memory of Catherine Prowting, standing by the window through which Julian Thrace had disappeared, with an expression of the acutest misery on her countenance. I had understood then why the magistrate’s daughter had been sleepless of late, and why her contempt for her sister’s artless flirtation with the Bond Street Beau was so pronounced. Her affections seemed to be entirely bound up with men who figured as murderers.

  “What has Prowting caused to be done?” my brother Edward demanded as he paced our small sitting room with an air of irritation. He had been too much pent up in the heat of the day in the back parlour at the George, hearing every manner of complaint from the surrounding countryside. “Has he alerted all the toll keepers between here and London?”

  Neddie is a magistrate in his own county, and as such is disposed to be officious in other people’s.

  “I believe so,” Henry told him, “but as Thrace is on horseback, not in an equipage, it is probable he will spurn the travelled roads. Then, too, he may make for one of the Channel ports rather than London, and take ship for the Continent. It was Middleton who suggested we alert the dockmasters at Southampton and Deal—but you know the ports are never very secure against gentlemen with the means to buy passage at three times the usual sum.”

  “But does he possess such means?” I objected. “I had thought his pockets were entirely to let.”

  Henry had the grace to look conscious. “Not entirely, Jane. He may be carrying some five hundred pounds in notes issued against the reserves held by Austen, Gray & Vincent.”

  “Oh, Henry.” I sighed.

  Edward looked perplexed.

  “I could not within reason deny him the loan!” my brother protested. “Thrace looked to be the heir to an earldom!”

  “But of a certainty he was not,” I mused, “else why undertake to murder Lady Imogen?”

  “That is what I cannot make out at all,” Cassandra said wearily from her corner. She had retreated to our bedchamber upon the return to Chawton, overcome by the apprehensions and terrors to which we had been exposed. “You say that he was her ladyship’s rival to inherit Stonings—her rival, indeed, for the Earl’s favour—but how should Thrace’s chances be improved by killing Holbrook’s daughter? It does not follow that his lordship must accept an imposter, simply because his daughter is dead!”

  “Perhaps Thrace thought to buy a little time, and forestall disaster,” I suggested.

  “—By tying a noose around his own neck?”

  “No, Cassandra. By preventing Lady Imogen from revealing the truth: that he was wholly unrelated to the Earl, which she must certainly have believed. I thought her looks this morning were not only easy—they were triumphant. She had learned somewhat to her advantage. She knew herself in the ascendant.”

  “From your papers, Jane?” Henry demanded.

  “I must believe it to be so. Lady Imogen let slip her knowledge of the nature of Lord Harold’s bequest while we dined together at the Great House. She went so far as to say that her own father the Earl would give a good deal to know their secrets. I believe it was she who arranged for the burglary at this cottage, and that it was to Stonings the documents were carried.”

  “—D
yer’s men having worked at Stonings,” Neddie said thoughtfully, “and thus being in a way to encounter her ladyship. We must tax Bertie Philmore at the Alton gaol with our supposition, now that his mistress is dead, and cannot be in a way to help his cause. But do you believe the papers are as yet at Stonings, Jane, along with their deadly knowledge? I do not like to think of such a burden left untended.”

  “Nor do I. A letter, I think, must be sent to Charles Spence—with a request for the privilege of searching her ladyship’s effects. But how is such a note to be penned? To a man involved in such misery! It is a delicate business—accusing the Deceased of pilfering my belongings.”

  “Poor child,” my mother murmured. “How that smiling beast could have coldly plotted her end—”

  “Thrace acted as he did from the direst necessity,” Henry threw in. “He deliberately goaded her ladyship into a display of temper over her horse, knowing that the fatal gaming habit in the Vansittart blood must encourage her to demand a contest—to submit to a wager. Then he relied upon our several witnesses to sustain the impression of a dreadful accident—a mishap beyond all our imaginings, or ability to control.”

  “And it might have worked,” I agreed. “But for Robley, Thrace should be at Stonings even now, putting on black clothes for her ladyship—instead of racing over the countryside in a desperate bid for freedom.”

  “Prowting tells me there is to be no inquest, as he witnessed himself both the murder and the flight of the accused,” Neddie supplied. “His chief concern now must be to spare the Earl any further exposure, and conclude the capture of Thrace as soon as possible.”

  “Poor Mr. Prowting is most distressed,” Cassandra observed. “In all my days as magistrate, he told me, I have never presided over a matter of murder; and yet, in the past week, I find two men of my acquaintance under the most severe suspicion of their lives. I cannot explain it, Miss Austen.”

  Edward laughed brusquely, and threw himself into a chair near Cassandra’s. “The people of Alton and surrounding parts can account for the problem. I was forced to listen to the direst hints in the course of nearly every interview. Want of a proper squire, they said; and misfortunes brought from afar. You were correct, Jane, in your admonition to me—the tide of public sentiment has turned against the Kentish landlord. I must consider what it is best I should do. Perhaps I may find a place near Godmersham for all of you after all.”

  “What!” my mother exclaimed. “When there is a priceless fortune buried in the soil somewhere about this cottage? I would not be parted from it for any amount of gain, my dear Neddie; indeed I should not.”

  He stared at her in surprise.

  “I think a sudden removal of our household will hardly aid your cause,” I agreed. “We must be seen as steadfast—and impervious to the weight of our neighbours’ opinion. And we have this to look forward to: the fall of Mr. John-Knight Hinton’s star. A thorough drubbing at the hands of the Law, as Mr. Prowting so proudly terms it, should do much for our standing in Chawton. Hinton is not universally liked.”

  “And his sister is a dreadful woman,” my mother added. “No countenance, and most insipid in her manner. Having listened to her presumptions on the matter of the Rogue, I should dearly love to twit her on the rakehell nursed in the bosom of the parsonage.”

  “AND SO YOU RIDE TO BRIGHTON AT DAWN, HENRY?”

  My brother was to take the sad news of Lady Imogen’s death to the Earl of Holbrook. So much had been decided before we parted from Charles Spence; the steward’s place must be at Stonings, where he should hold vigil over the body and do what he could to organise the hunt for Julian Thrace. It was unthinkable that a mere Express Messenger should carry such tidings to Brighton— Better a gentleman, even one as yet unknown to the Earl, who should break the news in person. On an errand of such delicacy, there was no one to be desired above Henry.

  “I wish you will take care, Jane,” my brother said as he retired for the night. “In your brain and heart you hold the key to Julian Thrace’s past—and we know him for a desperate character. His very flight confirms his guilt; and having lost an earldom, he must hold freedom cheap. Remember that the papers are still at large—and that even were they not, you already know too many of their secrets. I should not like to think of you as Thrace’s next victim.”

  Chapter 20

  The Effect of Blue Ruin

  Sunday, 9 July 1809

  ~

  “TO ME, AVARICE SEEMS NOT SO MUCH A VICE, AS A DEPLORABLE PIECE of madness. So said one Thomas Browne, in his work of nearly two hundred years ago, the Religio Medici,” observed Mr. Papillon from his pulpit; “and what may serve to describe the benighted followers of the Popish faith then, may also serve to instruct us in Chawton today.”

  He gazed out over his congregation: the gentlemen ranged in the box pews on the north side of the aisle, the ladies—including my mother and sister and myself—on the south side. Behind us in the galleries were assembled the common folk of Chawton, most of them Edward’s tenants. I do not know whether the Religio Medici had ever come in their way before—it certainly had not come in mine, as I am no Latin scholar—but Mr. Papillon was swift to instruct.

  “Who among us—what man or woman, whether born high or low—is a stranger to avarice? In its gentlest form we know it as thrift; in its worst, as miserliness; at its most evil, we recognise the kind of jealous hoarding that may inspire all manner of violence. It is avarice that walks among us now, the kind of madness that brings theft and injury and even death among men. I see all about me the desire for riches or honours not won by merit or birth—but taken at the sword’s point, like the rapine of a pagan horde. This is the Devil’s work, not the Lord’s. I must urge all of you most earnestly to throw off the chains of sin, and turn your backs upon immodest desires; for assuredly the road to ruin lies in pursuing what does not come from the grace of God.”

  We bent our heads, and prayed most earnestly for the peace of acceptance—for the good will of others—for contentment with our lot. But I could not help glancing about me, to observe how the rest received the rector’s admonition. The Prowting girls stood subdued and pale beside their mother. Jane Hinton was attired in black, her gloved hands clasped tightly on her prayer book, her thin lips moving as she prayed. Miss Benn smiled serenely at Mr. Papillon, with what was almost a transcendent look; she could not be pierced by his words, who had never regarded any soul in the world with the kind of envy that was native to the rest of us. Across the aisle, my brother Edward looked self-conscious, as tho’ he felt the sermon might be offered in defence of his interests—and yet perhaps it was he the rector would warn off from rights and riches not rightly his. Poor Neddie should feel no anxiety, I thought; Mr. Papillon’s loyalty was all for the Kentish Knights, and his distress at the crimes of the neighbourhood—calumny, burglary, murder—was perhaps the more acute, for having offended his belief in the natural order of things.

  Mr. Papillon stood down, and led us in prayer; a hymn was sung, and the sacrament offered. Catherine Prowting, I noticed, did not take the Host—but remained in her pew, head bowed over folded hands. It is no very great thing to stay the sacrament—I have done so myself, when conscious of being in a state of Sin—but I must regard Catherine’s attitude of penitence as singular. Was all this for Julian Thrace? I suspected she had lost her heart to the renegade Beau, and must repent of it bitterly—but was that, in truth, a sin?

  Or did some other cause keep her rooted in the posture of prayer?

  I could not interrogate her on so delicate a matter as the state of her own soul; but I resolved to watch Catherine closely in future. I did not like the look of her heavy eyes, or the pallor of her face. They were too suggestive of despair.

  IT IS NOT OUR HABIT TO ENGAGE IN SUNDAY TRAVEL. A LONG, sober morning of contemplation and reflexion stretched before us; even my mother must forbear to excavate in her garden on such a day. Edward seemed disposed to remain in Chawton rather than return to his lodgings in Alton, bu
t a restlessness pervaded all his movements that could not be satisfied with opening a book, or strolling the length of the Street under the notice of all his people.

  “When do you intend to desert us for Godmersham?” I enquired at last, after he had inspected several articles of china on my mother’s mantelpiece without the appearance of enjoyment. “I am sure you feel some anxiety for the children in your absence.”

  “I am always concerned for the children,” he replied, “but I know them to be well looked-after. Fanny is so capable—and then there is Caky. What would become of us without her—”1

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Caky is wonderfully suited to the comfort of little ones. But having settled your affairs at Quarter Day—I cannot wonder that you wish to be gone.”

  “I did not intend to stay in Alton above a few days. But matters are so miserably left at present—I cannot feel it wise to bolt to Kent, Jane, however much I should wish to do so. Thrace is still at large; Hinton sits in the Alton gaol, accused of murdering the man he cuckolded; and your papers have not been found. Have you written to Major Spence?”

  “I am still composing the letter.” I studied my brother from my seat at the Pembroke table. “I understand your discomfort, Neddie—but the unpleasantness of the past week is not only yours to resolve.”

  “No—because I have not chosen to make it so! But if I would call myself Squire, Jane—if I would assert my authority over Chawton’s rents and freeholds—have not I an obligation to manage my tenants’ affairs?”

  “You cannot live their lives for them. You cannot serve as conscience to an entire village.”

  He sighed in exasperation. “Do you not see—that in my bereavement—my loss of my excellent wife—I have read a warning, Jane?”

  “What kind of warning?”

  “I have been shown, in the most dreadful manner possible, that life and its comforts are not a surety! One may be taken off at any moment. To live therefore in the frivolity of self-indulgence is to waste what must be precious. I want to be doing something, Jane, to win the respect of the people in my charge. I want to be the kind of landlord and master that is remembered when I am gone, for the soundness and worth of my actions.”