Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor Page 20

  I surveyed them hastily. Though of a decidedly comfortable appearance, the Hearsts’ furnishings were of a sort in which a lady should quickly lose herself. I shook my head in the negative. “I merely wished to have a word with Lieutenant Hearst.”

  “My brother is not within. But perhaps I may be of service?”

  “I fear not,” I said abruptly.

  Mr. Hearst hesitated, and studied my countenance with anxious penetration. “I hope to God he has not so far forgot himself—” he began, and then broke off, biting his lip.

  “Mr Hearst,” I said quickly, “do not give way unduly to fearful speculation. I know my coming here, in this manner; cannot but seem strange; but you must rest easy in the knowledge that no impropriety on the part of your brother has occasioned it.” On a sudden inspiration, I added, “I come on behalf of the Countess, with a message for the Lieutenant, that is all. You know that she is barred from coming herself. Perhaps I ought to speak to the Lieutenant’s batman?”

  “Certainly. Certainly. I should have thought of it myself.” The ecclesiastic’s brow cleared. “I shall have him for you presently.” He threw down his volume and crossed to the parlour door, but I could not suffer him to leave unmolested.

  “Mr Hearst,” I called after him, “I understand that congratulations are due. The Lieutenant tells me that you are to have a living after all. And so it but remains to take Holy Orders.”

  He appeared first thunderstruck and then uneasy, his eyes dropping to the floor. “I would that it were so simple, Miss Austen,” he said. “But not all those who are called are worthy to serve.”

  And so he left me. As the Lieutenant observed, Mr. Hearst parts only grudgingly with his grievances. Or perhaps my awareness of a matter he has chosen to keep dark, has stirred a guilty conscience. But why? I was not allowed to ponder the matter long, however for a jocular Cockney voice soon rang out from the doorway.

  “So you’re the cheeky bit as ‘as turned my master’s ‘ead.”

  I looked over my shoulder in astonishment, to find a dapper fellow in his shirtsleeves still applying a rag to one of Lieutenant Hearst’s boots. “Never done talkin’ about you, he is. Miss Austen this, and Miss Austen that! If I didn’t know the gent’s way with the ladies, I’d swear he was a goner. What’ll it be, love?”

  I swallowed and maintained my composure with difficulty; never had I been addressed in such intimate terms by one of his station. “You are Lieutenant Hearst’s batman, I take it?”

  “Jack Lewis’s the name, and war’s the game,” he rejoined, scraping an affable low bow, “but I ‘aven’t got all day, and that’s a fact. The old sod’ll be ‘ellbent for leather, soon’s he gets back from ridin’ that nag, and I’ll be jumpin’ two steps ahead o’ his lash all the way to Londontown.”

  “Lewis!” A curly head peered around the sitting-room door, eyebrows drawn down and scowling. “Don’t stand here nattering with Joan, for God’s sake—get my damn bags packed.”

  “As you like, guv,” the batman tossed over his shoulder imperturbably. He turned back to me with a wink. “Doesn’t like me movin’ in on ‘is territory.” For one fearful instant I thought the fellow might actually seize my hand for a kiss, but he satisfied himself with a grin and a broad nod, encompassing me in some scheme of which I knew nothing, but greatly misgave the outcome. “I leave you to it, sir.”

  “Miss Austen!” Lieutenant Hearst exclaimed, upon entering the room, all consternation and discomfiture; “I had no idea you were within. Pray, let me call for some tea and make you comfortable! I fear Private Lewis has incommoded you dreadfully.” This last, with a scowl for his batman, and a gesture of the head towards the door. Jack Lewis heaved a sigh, ran his insolent eyes the length of my figure, and turned upon his heel; but his air of disgruntlement was entirely for his own amusement, I judged, since he was whistling as he moved down the corridor.

  “What an extraordinary man,” I said, in a tone of wonderment, uncertain as yet if I had imagined him. “His impertinence is beyond belief, Lieutenant.”

  “I fear you are right,” Tom Hearst replied, gesturing to the one straight-backed chair in the room, and standing until I had seated myself. “I should have dismissed the rascal long ago, but for the obligation I owe him.”

  “And what can you possibly owe such a man?”

  He hesitated, and then shrugged. “My life, Miss Austen.”

  Whatever I had expected, it was hardly this; I felt myself overcome by a surprising humility, and looked to my clasped hands.

  “But you did not come to Scargrave Cottage to discuss Private Lewis, however extraordinary you may find him.” Tom Hearst threw himself into an armchair by the fire. “To what do I owe this honour, Miss Austen, and in the midst of all our packing?”

  “In truth, Lieutenant, it is because of your batman that I am come. I understand him to be in possession of the belongings of the late Marguerite Dumas, which you so thoughtfully sent him to retrieve of the washer-woman, Lizzy Scratch.” I spoke the words as though they were nothing out of the ordinary way, but narrowly observed his response.

  “How came you to think of this?” he said, his handsome aspect puzzled.

  “Isobel has charged me with returning the maid’s things to her family in the Barbadoes,” I said. That this was, in fact, an untruth, I forced myself to put from my mind.

  “But she has—” he began, and then stopped, as if considering. “It was my very same thought, and had the trip to London not put it out of my mind, the girl’s few belongings should already be on their way.”

  “I must say that I wondered at your thinking of it.”

  The Lieutenant forced a smile. “I am accustomed, from years of army service, to disposing of the belongings of the men in my company when they happen to be killed,” he told me. “It is as second nature to me, to consider the family left behind, and their solicitude for the fate of their loved ones. Often the belongings are precious to them, however little value they might have for us.”

  “But—forgive me, Lieutenant—the maid was not of your company, exactly. She was rather of Isobel’s. How did you come to know where her things were to be found? For surely none of the household knew that she had sought shelter from Lizzy Scratch.”

  He coloured at this, and was silent a moment. “I might ask the same of you, Miss Austen,” he said, “for assuredly you know more of my movements than I should have thought usual for a young lady of discretion. But it is of no matter—my greater knowledge of the maid is due only to a greater tendency to dissipation. “At this, he grinned ruefully. “When I can abide my brother’s silences no longer I hie me to the Cock and Bull; and at the Cock and Bull, Marguerite’s new lodgings were commonly known.”

  I looked my surprise. “Yet you told Isobel nothing of this?”

  “You must recollect that I had no reason to do so,” he protested. “When the maid first disappeared from the Manor, Isobel said nothing that suggested she should be found; and I thought Marguerite’s departure nothing more than a falling-out between herself and her mistress. Of the letters, and the threats they contained, I learned only with the rest of the household; and by that time, the poor girl was dead.”

  The story was plausible enough. “But you have not sent the things to the Barbadoes?”

  “I had only to request the address of Isobel, and the deed was done; but events have intervened. It was well for me that I did not, for Sir William Reynolds would view the maid’s belongings after the inquest yesterday, and came to me much as you have done. But he learned nothing of use to him, by all appearances, and bade me send them on to the girl’s family.” Tom Hearst paused, and studied me closely. “It is exceedingly good of the Countess to consider the affairs of her maid when her own are in such a state.”

  Particularly when the maid has been the cause of her own ruin. The thought, though unspoken, hung in the air between us.

  “That is ever Isobel’s way,” I said lamely, “and perhaps concerning herself with such small
matters relieves her of her cares.”

  “Perhaps.” The Lieutenant attempted to resurrect his usual good humour. “I shall have Joan fetch the things directly.”

  I HAVE MUCH TIME TO CONSIDER LIEUTENANT HEARST’S words as the Scargrave carriage rattles on to London, and have drawn out my journal in an effort to write my way towards a better understanding of what they may mean. The journey will last several hours, unrelieved of the tedium of conversing with Fanny Delahoussaye and her mother; Isobel and Fitzroy Payne are conveyed separately, under armed guard, in a discomfort and shame I shudder to contemplate. That this is only the beginning of the indignities they shall endure, I fully understand, and quail at the responsibility with which Isobel has charged me.

  The Scargrave tangle becomes more tenebrous with the passing hours, and were I a creature prone to violent emotion, I should despair of ever making sense of it. That the lives of Isobel and die Earl hang in the balance only heightens my impatience with my own understanding. Where I seek for intelligence, in hopes of throwing light upon the puzzle, I find only greater obscurity; and my visit to the Hearst brothers’ cottage is no exception.

  For though Lizzy Scratch avowed that she had placed the maid’s locket in the batman’s keeping, it was not among Marguerite’s possessions when Tom Hearst turned them over to me. In the cloth bag I received from the cottage housemaid were a few items of worn clothing; a packet of letters in French from Marguerite’s relations in the Indies; and a miniature of a woman who might have been her mother. That was all—no books, no trinkets, no keepsakes of any kind; a melancholy collection for the summing up of a life.

  And so a hard choice is before me. As plausible as his story might be, Lieutenant Hearst neglected to apprise me of one fact—did he remove the gold locket from among Marguerite’s possessions, or did his batman, Private Lewis, see fit to do so? And what heavy burden of guilt lay on master or servant, to move either to such an act?

  1. The dower house traditionally became the home of a widowed lady when her son acceded to his father’s tide, and took possession of his ancestral seat. The son’s wife would then accede to his mother’s title. For example, had Frederick Payne’s mother still lived when he became the Earl, she would have been addressed as the Dowager Countess of Scargrave, while Isobel was addressed as Countess.—Editor’s note.

  31 December 1802

  Scargrave House, Portman Square

  ˜

  NEW YEAR’S EVE, AND THE REVELS IN THE STREET BELOW have raised such a tumult that sleep is banished. I am sitting up by the light of my taper in the rich room I have been given at Scargrave House. A greater contrast to the Manor’s genteel shabbiness cannot be imagined—here, all is done up in the latest fashion, with vines and vases plastered on pale blue walls. It is clear that the late Earl was a man whose spirits took flight in London rather than in the country, and that this was to be his principal residence; everything possible has been done to make it a comfortable home for his new bride, whose apartments tonight—never before visited by her—are shuttered and dark, with drop cloths against the dust. The special session of the Assizes having remanded their case to the House of Lords, Isobel and Fitzroy Payne are banished to the horrors of Newgate prison, there to live as best they might until their arraignment; though their stay shall be short—the trial is to be scheduled early in the next session, some ten days hence—it cannot hope to be marked by comfort or cheer. Sir William shall be special prosecutor for the Crown, Mr. Perceval being indisposed;1 and a Mr. Cranley, a barrister of good repute and rising in his profession, shall serve for the defence, though the duties of such are so circumscribed,2 I wonder he bothers to take the case at all. Mr. Cranley must see an advantage in notoriety—for it is rare that a peer is brought to trial in the House of Lords—and hopes it shall improve his prospects—

  (Here the handwriting trails off.)

  —a great boom, as though a cannon had gone off near the house—I rush into the hallway in my shift, taper held aloft and pulse quickened, like Banquo ready to cry, Murder! murder! And find that all is quiet in a moonlit slumber, and I am alone with the fancies of midnight and a sharp sense of my own silliness.

  Not quite alone, however; as I turn back to my room, I see the quiet form of Lieutenant Hearst, leaning against his doorway, but two removed from mine. He should have sought his own lodgings at St. James, but was pressed by his brother and Fanny Delahoussaye to stay to dinner; and so here he is, bedded down too near me, and watching in the dark.

  “You are shivering, Miss Austen,” he said, and thrust himself away from the door frame. He walked towards me, his blue eyes glittering in my candle flame, the swathe of moonlight dappling the shoulder of his silken dressing gown; altogether an apparition torn from one of my dreams, scented with a whiff of danger.

  “I heard an explosion, and feared for the house,” I replied, lowering the candle; and I should have turned to go, but something about him fascinated me—the gliding movement of his form, completely graceful in die darkened hall, and with the trick of moonlight, as weightless as an apparition. I thought of the ghostly First Earl, and felt as though turned to stone.

  “It is the gunpowder; set off in Southwark at midnight to welcome the New Year,” the Lieutenant said. “Pay it no mind.” He stopped a bare foot from me, and held my eyes steadily with a sort of wonder, as though he, too, felt himself in a dream.

  “What extraordinary hair;” he murmured, “all tumbled like that about your face; it’s a sight I could not have imagined, and so beautiful in the moonlight. Do you realise what a crime it is, that a woman’s husband is the only man ever to see her hair like this? To deny the world such beauty is pure folly. And you have no husband, Jane.”

  At his use of my Christian name, I became too aware of the impropriety of my position—of how it should appear, should anyone encounter us; and, indeed, of how intimate a scene I had allowed myself to play. My colour rose, my breath quickened, and I made a small movement as if to go. But die Lieutenant raised a finger and laid it against my lips. “Don’t,” he whispered, “I’ve caught you in the witching hour, and I must exact my price.”

  And with that, he bent swiftly and kissed me full upon the mouth, until I tore from his grasp in mortification, rushed headlong into my room, and slammed the door in his face. An echo of derisive laughter was my reward, and the sound of his retreat; and a little later, sharp in the regained quiet, a small click, as of a door being closed. That it came from the room to my right—Fanny Delahoussaye’s room—and not from the Lieutenant’s, I had not the smallest doubt. I shall have her wrath to contend with, on the morrow, for it is certain she overheard us—a scene so little to my advantage, either in its initial passivity or ultimate flight.

  My cheeks are burning with shame and remembered mortification; never have I been subjected to such a liberty at the hands of a man. Yet worse is the feeling of sweet elixir that courses through my veins. I am dizzy with wonder and a want I cannot admit, even to myself; and so I admit it here, on the pages of my journal. That he should kiss me is beyond belief—and entirely without sense or purpose. Tom Hearst cannot be in love with me; for I have never possessed a fortune and am beginning to lose my beauty, and both are what a man of his straitened means and handsome looks would think his due. It is in every way incredible; and so I must ascribe his kiss to the power of moonlight, and the effect of wanton hair.

  I touch a stray lock now, and must declare it nothing out of the ordinary way, however transformed by moonlight. But I feel a small thrill of gratification nonetheless, rare for a woman whose wits have always been celebrated before her person. We all of us have our failings; and mine is vanity. It shall be my last flag flying on the Day of Judgment.

  How to face Tom Hearst, on the morrow? I shall die of consciousness.

  And so the old year is done to death.

  I January 1803

  ˜

  I WAS SPARED THE NECESSITY OF FACING THE LIEUTENANT at breakfast; he and his batman, Jack Lewis, had
arisen early and returned to the Horse Guards at St. James. Not a word has been let fall regarding the affair of the duel, or its outcome; I begin to believe it a figment of Miss Delahoussaye’s overheated imagination. The breakfast room being quite deserted, I was afforded the leisure of weighing the heavy charge Isobel had placed upon my shoulders, and determining my course of action.

  If Isobel and Fitzroy Payne were innocent of the murders, as I certainly believed Isobel to be, then someone had gone to great pains to convince us of their guilt. Firstly, the Earl had died as a result of sweetmeats eaten in the presence of his wife and her maid. Marguerite’s dreadful death suggested to Sir William that she had been silenced for having observed Isobel place the Barbadoes nuts in the Earl’s dish; but I considered it equally plausible that the maid had been convinced by another to put the poisonous seeds there herself. She had then been deployed in accusing her mistress through plaintive letters, and, her purpose fulfilled, was chiefly of use in being murdered—in order to incriminate Fitzroy Payne.

  That Marguerite had formed a relationship of some trust with the murderer was implied by her readiness to await her killer in the isolated hay-shed at dawn. But which of the intimates of Scargrave might that be? If my theory were correct, the maid’s partner must be one who gained material advantage by the removal of both the Earl’s wife and his heir. George Hearst, who won a living under his uncle’s will and stood to inherit the estate if Fitzroy were to die, should gain the most; and he had argued with the Earl the evening of his death, stating aloud that UI know how it is that I must act.” Mr. Hearst’s character was morose and brooding enough to suggest him capable of violence; and he had fled the house by horseback in some haste and perturbation the very morning of the maid’s murder. But was money alone the cause of such anger as I had overheard?

  I must needs find Rosie Ketch.

  Another who gained from Isobel’s misfortune was Lord Harold Trowbridge. But he had vacated Scargrave a week before the maid’s death. That he might have done this expressly to distance himself from that event, seemed entirely of a piece with his cunning. Having wooed the maid—perhaps in London, when he first attempted to purchase Crosswinds, prior to Isobel’s marriage—had Trowbridge convinced her to dispatch the Earl with the poison native to her country, then left once his object—Crosswinds—was secured? It was as nothing for such a man to send the maid a few words torn from a business letter written to him by Fitzroy Payne, then return by cover of darkness to Scargrave Close, walk to the field at dawn, drop Isobel’s handkerchief, slit the maid’s throat, and hie back to London with no one the wiser.