Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron jam-10 Page 22

  Having received this confidence, we prepared to follow Young Bob into the black depths of the tunnel—which was, at the outset, a winding staircase fashioned of stone. I swept my skirts close about my legs, thanked Heaven I had seen fit to wear stout boots against the morning’s rain, and lit my taper at Young Bob’s candle.

  Tolliver bowed his way to the door and left us, no doubt relieved to be rid of so persistent a charge.

  “I say, Jane,” Henry put in as we hunched our backs and squeezed after Young Bob through the opening in the panel, “you don’t think this ends in the Regent’s bedchamber, or … anywhere else, actually, inside the Pavilion?”

  “I cannot think it likely. Recollect that Tolliver and his brother, Sam, were wont to don sheets and chains, and startle the unfortunate guests—and they cannot have done so if the far entrance to the tunnel was within the Regent’s dwelling,” I said with more confidence than I felt. Given the Regent’s predilection for constant renovation of his residence—the expansion of the original farmhouse, and the repeated pulling down and setting up of new walls—Tolliver’s tunnel might have undergone a decided change; but I had no wish to further alarm my companions. “I am sure this debouches within the grounds—but in a manner that must preclude its being obvious to the general eye.”

  Henry appeared mollified, but Young Bob merely grunted. This may have been because he had stepped without warning from the last stair to hard-packed earth; but in any case he said, “Never thought to live this day.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “—When I should see the Prince’s tunnel with my own eyes! Fair pother of rumours there was, year out of mind, but none as paid no real heed to ’em—thought it was the wine-fed tales of maids no better than they should be. There was Sal Norton, who claimed she was carried off to the Pavilion by night and ravished there three days; and old Jenny Feather bright, who put on such airs when Sir John Lade gave her a bauble as a token of esteem—not but what she came to a bad end on the streets of Lunnon not long after. Ended in Covent Garden, she did, walking the lobby of an evening.”

  “Ah,” Henry said wisely. “Many’s the girl as has found her ruin in the lobbies of Covent Garden.”[22]

  “I daresay, sir, but never having been to foreign parts, I couldn’t speak to it.”

  We were walking steadily along a hardened passage, quite sandy underfoot and lined in stone, that was remarkably fresh in its air tho’ not free of damp. So close to the sea, moisture is constant; and I reminded myself that above ground, it must still be raining.

  “This tunnel’s existence, then, is generally known?” I persisted. “Mr. Tolliver seemed to think it was a great secret, shared only among his family.”

  “Not known, if you’re meaning known,” Young Bob said. “My old grandfer recollected the digging of it, years since; but most folk thought as it was just a bit o’ nonsense. So much ill was said of the Prince, ye ken, in his salad days—it were just another faradiddle, him spiriting away the maids with a passage underground. But Lord! Here am I, a-pacing of it!”

  The passage had commenced with a gradual descent, then leveled off—somewhere, I should judge, beneath the Steyne—and had now begun to steadily incline. Our tapers were almost burnt down; and their flames began to flicker in a gentle air that came from above.

  “Presently we shall see where it ends, Jane,” Henry said with barely suppressed excitement.

  The combined light of our dying flames revealed, of a sudden, a blank wall—made not of stone, but of wood planking. I glanced about, hoping to espy another staircase, twin to the one at the King’s Arms—but there was none to be seen. And at that instant, my taper went out.

  Henry’s suffered a similar death within seconds.

  The unfortunate thought of rats sprang unbidden to my mind, and I found that I had wrapped my skirts quite narrowly round my ankles once more, as a paltry defence against rodent teeth.

  Fortunately, however, Young Bob’s candle—being made of good, honest, smoking tallow—was as yet in strength; and his spirits remained phlegmatic despite the featureless height of plank wall.

  “This’ll be back of the New Stables, I’m thinking,” he said with confidence. “The Regent’ll have ordered the tunnel end walled up, when the Riding School and stalls was built; a few years ago the workings was done, and that’s why Tolliver was so sure as the tunnel was filled in.”

  “But that cannot serve at all,” I replied in consternation.

  Henry reached for my hand through the darkness and squeezed it in warning. There was no need, in truth, to share our suspicion that Miss Twining’s body had been carried into the Arms from the Pavilion. We were but visitors from London, after all, with a passion for publick-house oddities.

  “You were not treated to Mr. Tolliver’s demonstration at the Arms,” I said, as conversationally as my fear of rats would allow, “and so did not witness the cunning shift in the panelling. There was a device—a carved dolphin—and when Mr. Tolliver pressed it, the tunnel opening sprang back. Perhaps there is a similar door here. If you would be so good as to raise your candle—”

  Young Bob did so without demur.

  Henry and I stepped forward, to push and press at every wormhole and whorl in the panelling; the publican’s man obligingly moved his candlelight some five feet one way, and a yard the other; our fingertips grew sore with excited vigour; and still the wall remained immoveable.

  “You do not think, ma’am, as that track in the dirt bespeaks a sliding door?” Young Bob at length suggested doubtfully.

  I glanced down. The candlelight, being raised almost to ceiling height, had left our feet in welling darkness. But it was as Young Bob said: when one studied the ground, one espied a grooved board laid beneath the panelled wall—as tho’ the entire thing was meant to slide back. Suppressing a most unladylike oath, I turned to Henry.

  “Shine the light on the far corner,” he instructed.

  Young Bob did so.

  Henry ran his gloved fingers along the seam where planking met the perpendicular stone wall. “There is a peg, Jane—almost indistinguishable.”

  He pulled it back; and the panel slid away from us, into a recess.

  “Coo,” Young Bob observed with respect.

  We were faced with row upon row of bottles, laid on racks a bare two feet from our noses. The tunnel came out into the Regent’s wine cellar.

  “YOU APPREHEND,” I SAID TO MY BROTHER ONCE WE HAD returned the way we’d come, pressed a shilling into Young Bob’s work-hardened palm, and thanked the harassed Tolliver most prettily for our treat, “that only an intimate of the Regent’s could have used that passage Tuesday morning. Someone who knew that the tunnel existed—where it commenced, and where it led. There cannot be above five people in the Kingdom with such knowledge, and only two or three at present installed at the Pavilion.”

  “Do not be hasty, Jane,” my brother said. “Consider of the fact that the Regent is a great talker—one who delights in conducting tours of the oddities of his home—and that there are any number of guests in years past—ladies as well as gentlemen—whom His Royal Highness might have made aware of the novelty of his secret sliding door.”

  “George Hanger certainly knows of it,” I said grimly.

  “But so, too, might Lord Moira, or Colonel McMahon—he has served the Prince for years, and as a trusted secretary, must be intimate with every corner of the Pavilion. A lifelong friend such as the Countess of Bessborough—Lady Caroline’s mother—who has been staying here forever, might well have glimpsed it. And then there are the servants—particularly the footmen charged with fetching the wine. For a fellow of the Regent’s appetites, and his vast generosity as a host, there cannot be too constant a replenishment of the wine stores. I should imagine those shelves are emptied once a month, at the very least—however immense the wine cellars may prove—and that in the course of stacking new bottles, the panel has been shifted.”

  “Very well, Henry,” I said dubiously, “yo
u have succeeded in turning me from the idea of exclusivity. The tunnel alone cannot entirely narrow our hunt for the murderer. But do admit that it goes a long way. We may suggest how Catherine Twining’s body was conveyed into the Arms, despite its doors being barred; and we may suggest, as well, that an intimate of the Pavilion—whether servant or guest—was vital to that body’s conveyance. Surely you will not quarrel with me there?”

  Henry considered of my logic for a moment. “I fear I cannot, Jane. But what is to be done?”

  “You,” I said firmly, “must pay a call upon the magistrate—Sir Harding Cross—and inform him of what you know. From what I have observed of the gentleman, he is likely to take the word of a reputable banker—and an intimate of the Earl of Swithin—far more seriously than he should a mere spinster Jane Austen.”

  Henry sighed. “There are moments when I find myself wishing for a solitary ramble along the Cobb at Lyme, Jane, as balm to a widower’s grief. Whatever made you so mad for Brighton this Season?”

  Chapter 24 Ode to a Drowned Girl

  THURSDAY, 13 MAY 1813

  BRIGHTON, CONT.

  THE RAIN HAD TAPERED TO A MIZZLE BY THE TIME WE quitted the King’s Arms. Henry and I were agreed upon the necessity of paying a call at No. 21, Marine Parade—he to solicit an introduction to Sir Harding Cross from the Earl of Swithin, and I to beg Desdemona for her intercession that evening with Brighton’s Master of Ceremonies, Mr. Forth. We hastened along the damp paving beneath Henry’s fortuitous umbrella, and were gratified in discovering the Swithins at home.

  It was a fine family party that presented itself to our eyes: the Earl in his book room, surrounded by mellow bindings of calf, and a good fire against the chill; Desdemona at her tambour work, with her children—a son of five, and a daughter of seven—playing at spillikins on the drawing-room rug. Lady Oxford was seated at a writing desk, embarked on correspondence; and I was sorry to see all five rise up, and set aside their several pursuits, at our unexpected arrival. The children, indeed, were swept away by their nurse for hot milk and bread in their quarters; and I should imagine them fulminating darkly at the tiresomeness of unwanted callers, on a rainy afternoon.

  Desdemona, however, was charming; declared that Henry and I had saved them all from insufferable boredom; and confided, in a whisper, as Lady Oxford tidied her writing things, that her friend had been longing to see me—had sent round to the Castle begging for just such a visit, only to discover we were gone out.

  “Such an adventure as we have had!” Henry declared, as the Earl offered him a glass of sherry. “But Jane had better relate the whole; it is her story, in truth.”

  In as brief a fashion as possible, I related the particulars of the Regent’s tunnel, to the astonished exclamations of the other three.

  “I cannot pretend to shock,” Lady Oxford declared, “for Prinny was always very wild as a boy. Maria Fitzherbert did a great deal to settle him, I believe—but of course, I was the merest child when that alliance was established.”

  “But you apprehend what this signifies,” Swithin said with a troubled look. “If the Regent’s undergroom last saw the girl alive, and her body was carried to the Arms through the Regent’s tunnel …”

  “It would appear more than likely that somebody at the Pavilion killed her,” I concluded baldly. “Henry and I have been canvassing the same point. While there are some, wholly unconnected with the place, who may have known of the tunnel’s existence—”

  “The man Tolliver!” Desdemona broke in excitedly.

  “—it must be extraordinary for murder to be done at such an hour, and the Regent’s wine cellar penetrated, by a total stranger.”

  “As is true of Miss Twining, a stranger should have been remarked,” the Earl agreed. “What do you intend to do with your dangerous information, Henry?”

  “Set it before the magistrate, of course!”

  “Are you sure that is wise?”

  “What has wisdom to do with it, when a murderer is to be found?”

  Swithin merely shrugged, his gaze drifting quizzically to his wife’s. “You are correct, naturally. But I fear a frontal assault upon the Law may achieve more harm than good.”

  “I cannot very well suppress the intelligence,” Henry said in perplexity.

  “As you say.” Swithin bowed. “You are acquainted with Sir Harding Cross?”

  My brother flushed. “I regret that I have not that pleasure.”

  “Then I shall carry you off to Raggett’s Club. Old HardCross is certain to be established at the betting tables of a rainy afternoon, and I have a yearning to play at whist myself—the boredom of a grey sky in Brighton being insupportable.”

  “You are very good,” Henry said haltingly. An impression of the Earl’s vast condescension, in lending his name to an effort he found both unwise and distasteful, had clearly struck my insouciant brother. But not even Swithin was immune to gratitude; he unbent enough to clap Henry on the back.

  “Do not neglect to throw me a line,” he murmured as the two quitted the drawing-room for the front hall, “should you sink up to your neck in this.”

  “NOW, MISS AUSTEN,” MONA BEGAN WITH A FORMALITY I must believe was due to the oddity of having two Janes in the room—“tell us what else you have learnt from your researches.”

  What ought I to disclose?—That Scrope Davies, upon whose friendship Byron had always presumed, was in love with the object of Byron’s obsession—and might at last have grown tired of sacrificing for his friend? That General Twining was a brutal husband and a jealous father? Two such Fashionables as the Countess of Swithin and the Countess of Oxford might enjoy turning over the sad misfortunes of the late Lydia Montescue—might even, indeed, have been acquainted with the lady in her youth—but I lacked sufficient time to indulge in a comfortable coze of gossip.

  I settled on the one fact sure to afford Lady Oxford some comfort: “It is now quite certain that the doors of the King’s Arms were barred against all comers, once Lord Byron had quitted the place about half-past one o’clock on Tuesday morning. According to the publican Tolliver’s own information, nobody—including his lordship—could have reentered the place before five o’clock that morning.”

  “And Davies shall certainly swear that George was asleep at the hour, breakfasting by seven, and mounted for London by eight,” Lady Oxford mused absently. I noted that she did not say whether she believed these things, or that they were indisputable facts; merely that Davies should swear to them.

  “But, Lady Swithin,” I said briskly, “having penetrated so much of the King’s Arms—I should like to know more of Catherine’s enjoyment of the Assembly. I mean to approach the Master of Ceremonies, and learn whether he observed her dancing partners.”

  “There is nothing Mr. Forth does not observe, my dear—or comment upon, should the spirit move him. A most fastidious and exacting fellow, hideously high in the instep—which comes, of course, from a dearth of breeding. Only those unaccustomed to the most excellent Society from birth, should chuse to ape its snobbery rather than its easiness.”

  If I winced inwardly for poor Mr. Forth’s sake, I did not betray it. “I had heard that he should not look with favour on a lady in mourning attending tonight’s Assembly,” I said calmly, “but I should like to brave Mr. Forth’s displeasure—with your support, of course. Would you consent to carry me into the Old Ship, Lady Swithin, in defiance of all propriety, and make me known to the redoubtable Master?”

  “With pleasure,” she answered, a glint in her eye.

  “And with so notorious a lady as the Countess of Oxford on your other arm,” her friend interjected, “our dear Miss Austen is unlikely to arouse comment.”

  “Exactly!” Mona cried in gay amusement; but I do not think Lady Oxford meant it for a joke. There was a bleakness to her looks that suggested some dire reckoning had commenced in her brain and heart. I wondered very much how the previous night’s dinner had gone off—whether his lordship had indeed put in his promised
appearance, and how the lovers had met or parted—but could not find the courage to enquire. Even my boldness must find its limit.

  Lady Swithin sprang to her feet. “I must pay a visit to the nursery, for a report on little Charles’s cold; and then I believe I shall recruit my strength with a nap in my boudoir, before dressing for dinner. Miss Austen, I shall not bore you with a tedious dinner when your day has already been so full of incident—but if you and your brother would be good enough to join us for coffee, we may then set out in a grand complement to the Old Ship. Shall we say—nine o’clock?”

  I gratefully accepted the Countess’s invitation, as well as her dispensation from the necessity of dining—for one so stricken in years as myself, a period of repose is vital before any attendance at a ball—and gathered my reticule in preparation for leaving. But as I rose from my chair, Lady Oxford astonished me by saying, “I should be grateful, Miss Austen, if you might spare me the benefit of your excellent understanding a few moments—if there is no other claim upon your time, naturally.”

  Mona being already out of the room, it was evident she had contrived to leave the two Janes in possession of it; and so I resumed my seat. Lady Oxford, however, paced a little restlessly before the fire, as tho’ in an effort to order her thoughts.

  “I need not inform you, I know, of the nature of my sentiments towards Lord Byron,” she began. “Nor must I beg you to hold anything I might say in complete confidence. Mona assures me that I may trust in your discretion—and tho’ Mona may act the goosecap at times, she owns an excellent heart, and should never betray a friend.”