Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor Read online

  “It is not beyond belief, you know, that Trowbridge dispatched a cutthroat in his employ,” Eliza mused, smoothing her shawl as the coachman shut the carriage door behind us. “A man of his power and means could do so from anywhere in the realm, at any moment.”

  “Possible, but unlikely,” I said thoughtfully. “He should then have to trust to the man’s secrecy until his own return from Paris, and trust is a quality quite foreign to Lord Harold’s nature. I think 1 must consider others as more likely.” I turned to her with renewed concern. “Eliza, does the memory of France pain you so much?”

  “I shall never cease thanking Fate for throwing France my way,” she said, as the carriage wheels began to roll. “By going to the guillotine, the Comte did more for my future than he can possibly have appreciated. He has saved me from many a bore in recent years, and so his death was not entirely without purpose.”

  I RETURNED TO SCARGRAVE HOUSE TO FIND FANNY DELA-houssaye and her mother entertaining a young gentleman by the name of Cranley—a barrister, no less, but suffered to pollute Fanny’s presence in deference to his new duties, they being the defence of Isobel and Fitzroy Payne. He rose with alacrity at my appearance, and bowed low over my hand; a fellow possessed of a cheerful and open countenance, and the aspect of a gentleman.

  “I understand you are intimate these many years with my honoured opponent,” he said to me.

  “Sir William Reynolds? He has long been a friend to the Austen family.”

  “And an enemy to every hapless criminal before the Bar,” Cranley rejoined with spirit. “Though Miss Delahoussaye offers it as her opinion that he is, perhaps, now past his best efforts.”

  I saw with impatience the sheep-like look of admiration he cast Fanny’s way; she had wasted no time in enslaving the poor man to her charms. She was dressed this afternoon in a gown I confess I coveted—black and white striped silk, with braided frogs. When I had expressed my admiration, however, she had declared it to be hopelessly out of fashion and suitable only for wearing before the family. I did not dare think what her opinion of my own attire might be, and forbore to praise her finery the more.

  “I should never underestimate Sir William,” I told the barrister, as Fanny coloured and looked conscious; “even at less than his best, he is decidedly very good. But that is not what you would hear, Mr. Cranley, and I should speak more to the purpose. Tell me what you would know.”

  “Does Sir William believe himself secure in her ladyship’s guilt?”

  I settled myself in a chair by the hearth—the carriage ride from Wilborough House had been quite cold—and removed my gloves and bonnet, handing them to the maid who waited by my side. “As secure as he need be,” I told the barrister. “You know that he must only prove a case in the minds of the assembled peerage, to see the Countess hang.”

  “Indeed,” he replied, commencing to pace before the fire; a well-made young man, with the quickness of his wits readily upon his face. “Her ladyship is damned by the evidence. Only the maid might have saved her—by admitting guilt, or throwing it upon another—and the maid is dead.”

  “This would seem to be Sir William’s happiest point,” I observed. “For he would have it that the Countess dispatched Fitzroy Payne to slit Marguerite’s throat, precisely because she could incriminate her mistress.”

  “I have been to see the Countess in her cell,” Cranley told me.

  Fanny shuddered audibly, and her mother cast her an anxious look.

  “Mr Cranley,” Madame said reprovingly, “should not you conduct your business with a gentleman of the family? Such words are not for the ears of young ladies gently bred.”

  The barrister immediately looked his remorse, and allowed as it was true; but I intervened with decided purpose.

  “Being both less gently bred, and less youthful, than Miss Delahoussaye,” I said, “I should dearly love to discuss the Countess’s case.” Madame looked her outrage, and summoned her daughter with a gesture; and so the ladies departed, and left me in command of the room.

  “How was she?” I asked Cranley, when the doors had closed upon them.

  “As might be expected,” he replied, with becoming solicitude. “Her ladyship is in the lowest of spirits and possessed of little hope; and nearly driven mad by the disreputable conditions in which she is lodged. The Earl bears it somewhat better; but he is a gentleman in any case, and would face any misfortune with as much equanimity as he might the greatest blessing.”

  “A more accurate description of Fitzroy Payne I should not have managed myself. You have captured his essence.”

  The young barrister regarded me sombrely. “You are convinced of his good faith in denying these charges?”

  “I am.

  “I would that the Countess were equally sanguine.”

  “I know that she doubts the Earl,” I began, in a faltering accent.

  “Doubt’ is hardly the word to describe her feelings. I should say the Countess is convinced of his lordship’s guilt.”

  “That is Trowbridge’s doing,” I replied, with discomposure. “He has worked to divide them at the moment they most require support, for the mere pleasure of seeing their ruin.”

  “Trowbridge? Lord Harold Trowbridge?” Cranley was all amazement. “How can he be involved in this?”

  “Wherever evil is done, he appears like a sort of mascot.”

  “But how has he worked upon the Countess?”

  I began to tick off the scoundrel’s methods upon my fingers for Cranley’s edification. “He has informed the Countess of the new Earl’s insolvency, and of his dissipation—in ways that to her have been convincing. Fitzroy Payne is in want of money, and she now sees his indebtedness as a motive for murder; worse still, she believes him to have deliberately incriminated herself in both the killings. She had hoped the Earl would use the power of his considerable fortune to defend her Barbadoes estates against the predatory intent of Trowbridge himself—but in this she has been bitterly disappointed. Fitzroy Payne has no fortune to lend. And finally, Mr. Cranley, Lord Harold has revealed to her the existence of Payne’s mistress.”

  Cranley’s countenance was puzzled. “And why should such a woman concern the Countess?”

  I hesitated. “My dear sir,” I said, “as an intimate to all our affairs, you cannot be kept in the dark. And you shall hear it soon enough in London’s drawing-rooms, I fear. The Countess believed herself the beloved of Fitzroy Payne, while still her husband’s wife; and though she assures me that no impropriety of action occurred between them, the impropriety of such sensibility shall convince the public of it in very little time.”

  “This is a bad business,” Cranley groaned, his hands on the mantel and his head hung towards the fire; “as bad as ever it could be. Neither of them has a witness to their actions at the time of the maid’s death; the Countess was alone in her rooms, while the Earl was walking about the Park, as he freely said. Neither can explain how the handkerchief came to be near the body or the scrap of paper on it. And now Lady Scargrave is so mistrustful as to cast suspicion on every one of the present Earl’s actions.”

  “My poor Isobel,” I said slowly; “all her faith is blasted.”

  “Certainly not her faith in you,” the barrister replied, brightening somewhat. “She charged me to share my counsel with Miss Austen, in the belief that I should benefit from the same.”

  “I wonder at her confidence,” I replied. “But for me—had I destroyed the note and secreted the handkerchief—the Countess and Fitzroy Payne might yet be at liberty. She has every reason to hate me.”

  “I doubt she should have escaped suspicion in any case,” he rejoined, “when Sir William is so fiercely opposed to her cause.”

  Indeed, Isobel’s life seemed destined for misery. “What do you intend to do?” I asked Mr. Cranley.

  “I hope to find the murderer before the day of the trial,” he answered with determination, “and present the case for his guilt as my charges’ best defence. For you know I shall
have no opportunity to attack the edifice Sir William shall build. He shall do his best to make the walls of guilt seem thick and high.”

  “I shall bend my best efforts in a similar vein,” I assured him, “and share with you any discoveries I might make. But if I might offer a word—”

  “Anything, Miss Austen.” He drew a chair forward, the better to attend to my words.

  “Sir William is sure to urge the notion that Fitzroy Payne was desperate for funds, and that his circumstances left no recourse but the murder of his uncle. Can not you find some facts to the contrary? Others in the family must have had equally pressing motivation; and yet they did not fall under suspicion. And then there is the matter of Lord Harold Trowbridge.” I told him briefly how that man had benefited by Isobel’s misfortune.

  At that, the dinner bell rang; time had flown, and I had not even dressed.

  “God bless you, Mr. Cranley,” I said, rising and extending my hand. “I shall do everything in my power to aid you. But I would ask of you a favour.”

  “You have but to name it, Miss Austen.”

  “Convey me tomorrow to the Countess’s cell. I would know better, by my own eyes, how she fares; and Fitzroy Payne as well.”

  “Newgate is no place for a lady,” the barrister said, his doubt in his voice.

  “Fiddlesticks!” I cried. “You know very well, Mr. Cranley, that visiting the condemned has become a sport for the best society. If Newgate is fit enough to lodge a Countess, it is fit enough for me to call. I shall expect you after breakfast.”

  1. Wilborough House has since been torn down.—Editor’s note.

  2. Though Jane is clearly Eliza’s sister-in-law, it was the custom in Austen’s time to refer to one’s relations by marriage as though they were of birth.—Editor’s note.

  3. Britain’s roughly twenty years of war with France—from about 1795 to 1815—had a brief hiatus from 1801 to 1803, though the entire island lived in fear of Napoleonic invasion.—Editor’s note.

  2 January 1803

  ˜

  LONDON’S AFTERNOON FOG CURLS NOW BEYOND SCAR-grave House’s many windows, blotting out the forms of carriage and horse as they pass in the street below. There is a like obscurity in my soul, a darkness bred of too much sadness; I have spent the better part of the morning enshrouded in perpetual night, in the depths of Newgate prison. That I rejoice in my deliverance from that place, I need hardly add, but for my heartache at leaving Isobel a prisoner within its walls. But I carry something of Newgate with me still, in the grime and odour of its interior, which sits heavily upon my person.

  I have ordered a hot bath, the better to rid myself of the unwholesome stench. Part refuse, part excrement, part human despair, it is noisome, indeed; and I was driven so wild by the foetidness during my return in Mr. Cranley’s coach, that I barely stopped at Scargrave House’s door to shed my pelisse and bonnet before hastening upstairs to my room. That the Earl’s smart Town butler, Simmons—as unlike poor Cobblestone in his youth and vigour as Scargrave House is to the Manor—detected a certain ripeness in my scent, I little doubt, from the curling of his nostrils as I entered; he held my outer garments with the tips of his exquisitely gloved fingers, and hastened to pass them to a housemaid, with a frosty injunction that they should be “brushed.” Brushed, indeed! A se’nnight’s immersion in hot lye and ashes would be unlikely to rid them of Newgate’s pollution. But I had dressed in my oldest things, foreseeing how it should be; and could hardly lament the loss of so small a part of my wardrobe in such a cause.

  And now the maids have come, with steaming coppers held high, and pronounced the water as yet too hot for my liking. So I have drawn out my journal, and put pen to paper, in the hope of fixing indelibly my impression of that hellish place in which I spent but a few hours. The horror shall pass from my mind with time; but I would retain something of it here, to harden my resolve when despair at Isobel’s fate threatens to overcome me. I know her to be innocent, and will not suffer her to spend a minute more than she must in so terrible a hole.

  Mr. Cranley was as good as his word, and arrived not long after the breakfast hour—half-past eight, by the great clock that relentlessly chimes the quarters in Scargrave House’s entry. His face wore a dubious aspect, and he would have dissuaded me from my visit; but that firmness of purpose, where I know myself to be right, overruled all objection.

  I wore my most serviceable gown, a warm wool worsted of dark blue, and my stoutest boots, as though intending a walk over country stiles; and of these I read the barrister’s approval as he surveyed my form.

  “A clergyman’s daughter, you say?” He smiled despite the sombre nature of our errand. “I should almost have thought your father a Colonel, Miss Austen, and yourself well hardened to the privations of campaign.”

  “Parish work may be as arduous, and its contests as bitter, as the mounting of a siege,” I replied, pulling on my gloves. “Have you never been forced, Mr. Cranley, to parcel out the parts in a Christmas pageant, and suffer calumny and abuse for the neglect of some worthy’s darling child? But enough. The Countess awaits us.”

  “Her ladyship cannot do much else,” he replied grimly, assisting me into his carriage, “more’s the pity. Had she occupation for her thoughts, she might bear her circumstances better.”

  I stopped, half in the carriage, half out, and stared at him in consternation. “You mean she has nothing of an amusing nature by her?”

  “Amusing? I should think not.”

  I turned abruptly and stepped down, my feet as swift as my thoughts. “Do you wait a moment, Mr. Cranley,” I declared. “I know the very article to cheer her.”

  WE WERE NOT LONG ON OUR WAY TO NEWGATE, IT BEING situated to the east of Portman Square, near the old walls of the City. In a different time, the Earl and the Countess might have been conveyed to the Tower, there to be lodged in chilly dignity appropriate to their station, though offering no more comfort than the prison thrown up in its shadow. As we approached Newgate, I quailed to think of the scaffold that might be erected before its doors, should Isobel be condemned to die. A public execution, with all the humiliation and popular carousing that habitually attends a Hanging Day, was too horrible to contemplate. I turned to Mr. Cranley. “Is it likely, my good sir—if it be that we fail in our efforts to prove the Countess’s innocence—must she certainly hang?”

  For the space of several heartbeats, the barrister offered no answer, his eyes upon the gloomy walls of the approaching prison. At last he turned to me with sober mien. “The courts are loath to impose such a sentence upon a woman,” he replied, “but the deliberate murder of one’s husband—particularly a gentleman of the Earl’s station—is not a clergyable offence.1 I fear, Miss Austen, that we have no alternative but to prove the Countess’s innocence. And the Earl’s as well.”

  The carriage Raited before Newgate’s stone gate, and Mr. Cranley jumped out, with a hand for me as I descended. We stopped an instant in silence before those dreadful walls, overlaid with writhing gargoyles and hung with chains; and then a wicket was slid back in the massive oak itself. We were treated to a beefy visage, with a patch over one eye, and a mouth possessed of very few teeth.

  “Do you wait a moment, Miss Austen, while I speak to the porter,” Mr. Cranley told me, and approached the prison gate. His conversation was swiftly conducted—through the passage of coin from his hand to the other’s—and the heavy gate swung open. We were led within the courtyard, cobbled and streaming from the residue of London’s fogs; I suffered to think of Isobel’s arrival here, a lonely object of contempt, without much of hope to sustain her. It was but another moment before we gained admittance from a trusty at the prison door, and were inside.”

  How to relate the scene that greeted us?

  A narrow, windowless, low-ceilinged place, lit only by torchlight, the better to obscure years of grime and a scurrying at our feet—undoubtedly from rats. An air so thick with smoke and odour as to be suffocating. A repeated clanging about the ea
rs, from bolts drawn back or driven home—Kr, worse yet, from manacles shaken in despair. I looked about me furtively, not wishing to appear shocked, but Mr. Cranley divined my emotion.

  “There is time yet to go back,” he said gently. “I would not think less of you, Miss Austen, did you call for my carriage.”

  “Nonsense,” I replied, and affected an air of greater strength than I assuredly felt.

  We were placed in the safekeeping of a man Mr. Cranley addressed as Crow, a peculiar person of stunted appearance, with an enormous nose and a heavy growth of dark hair, much matted. He wore on his person an astonishing number of garments, of varying stuffs and sizes—a veritable rag-picker’s fortune, to my untrained eye. I learned later from Mr. Cranley that it was Crow’s custom to buy the clothes of condemned men, piece by piece, in the days before their execution; the poor souls being desperate for some last sustenance, they were willing to barter all that they owned for the promise of good ale and maggotless bread. I am relieved I knew nothing of the origin of our guide’s motley wardrobe, while still in his presence; for I fear I could not have repressed my disgust.

  Crow conducted us through a passage so dark and narrow, it barely permitted the span of Mr. Cranley’s shoulders, and as the walls were damp with mould, I feared for the barrister’s good wool coat. Our guide’s taper cast flickering shadows as he progressed before us, as comfortable with his lot as one of the Duchess of Wilborough’s footmen. We mounted stairs, and followed still more endless corridors, and glimpsed leering faces from occasional barred doors; a fearful babble assailed our ears, part moan, part feverish talk, part muttered curse.

  Our guide stopped short before a door, the taper making a grotesquerie of his bulbous nose and thatch of greasy hair. He fumbled at the waists of his many pairs of breeches, and came up with a large key; which, fitted into the lock, succeeded in turning the bolt. I peered timidly about me. Could Isobel really be lodged within?