Jane and the Barque of Frailty Page 23

  “When we come to Berkeley Square,” Clayton said, “I turned in at the mews and pulled up before No. 43.

  The sidelamps were burning, naturally, and the party asked as if I’d douse ’em—the lady being yet ill, and him being wishful to rest her a bit, before attempting to escort her to the house.”

  “I see. You did so?”

  “Aye. We sat there in the dark maybe half an hour, maybe more, until the bells rang four; and him talking low to the lady all the time, in that soft foreign voice of his, as tho’ he were talking to a child.”

  “You heard him speak from within the carriage?” Surprised, I studied the jarvey’s countenance. “Did the lady reply?”

  “She might have groaned, like. Being foxed out of all reason.”

  “And what did you then?”

  “The Frenchie asked me to stand lookout, as he was worried for the lady’s reputation—didn’t want her seen, while he got her to the door. I climbed down from the box, and went right out into the square, but there weren’t nobody about—not even the charley.”

  “Old Bends, on his quest for ale and bread,” I murmured. “That would be the moment to effect it.”

  “When I got back to the cab, they were gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Aye. The Frenchie left a guinea on the box for my trouble. He took her the back way, I reckon—but how she ended on the street with her throat slit, I cannot say, and that’s the truth. I never saw no murder done, miss—nor self-murder, neither, as God is my witness.”

  It was possible that what the jarvey saw as inebriation, had been nothing less than the nervelessness of death; the Princess might well have been extinct from the moment she was carried from Russell Square. D’Entraigues would have chosen the mews behind No. 43 for its proximity to Castlereagh’s residence—the scandal of the published correspondence, perhaps, providing him with inspiration. But I said nothing of my speculation to Clayton. “May I glance within your hackney?”

  Upon his throwing open the door, I observed the springs to be negligible, and the squabs dirty; but the jarvey had taken pains to provide a lap-robe for his passengers’ use. This was folded neatly on the facing seat.

  “You have employed this equipage for your trade in the week since Princess Tscholikova’s death?” I enquired.

  “All but Sunday—the horse and I always have our bit o’ rest, tho’ there’s some as work even on the Lord’s day.”

  “You carry how many fares each day, Clayton?”

  “Upwards of thirty, miss. London’s a rackety enough place.”

  “And have you found occasion to clean the interior in recent days?”

  “Clean?”he repeated, staring.

  We were unlikely to discover anything of value, but I leaned within and sniffed expectantly. The odour of old leather, dust, and mould from yesterday’s rain met my nostrils—but no lingering note of an animal nature, the curdling smell of blood.

  “Mr. Chizzlewit, have you a lantern?”

  While he went in search of one, I unfolded the lap-robe and surveyed it narrowly. The faded wool exhibited a quantity of brownish stains, but these I adjudged to be dried mud—hardly capable of exciting interest.

  “Here you are, Miss Austen,” Mr. Chizzlewit said behind me, and handed over a square-paned lantern. “Allow me to help you inside.”

  I took his proffered hand and mounted the single step. The light shone brightly on the smudged and raddled interior, illuminating a score of years’ adventures in traversing the streets of London—with bandboxes, giggling girls, foxed gentlemen and women of the streets all packed within—but I could not discern a blood-stain anywhere.

  It must be impossible that a throat so torn as the Princess’s—which the watchman, old Bends, had declared to be still wet with blood when discovered at five o’clock—should fail to daub everything it encountered. I was forced to conclude that Princess Tscholikova had entered the hackney alive.

  “What do you make of it, Miss Austen?” Mr. Chizzlewit enquired.

  “Very little,” I admitted. I set down the lantern on the floor of the chariot, drew off my gloves, and felt with bare hands between the cushions of the seat.

  My fingertips encountered a scrap of paper. I snatched at it eagerly, and drew it forth.

  “A fragment of correspondence,” I said. “The sheet has been torn in pieces.”

  “Princess Tscholikova’s?” Mr. Chizzlewit thrust his head into the coach.

  “No,” I admitted. “This hand is strange to me. I have read the Princess’s words before, you know, in the private journal I spoke of—”

  “Stay,” Sylvester Chizzlewit ordered, his voice taut with excitement. “I may name the author. I saw his hand almost daily, during my years at Oxford.”

  “Charles Malverley,” I concluded. “It was, I suppose, to be expected. But I confess, Mr. Chizzlewit, that having spoken with your jarvey, I understand this affair even less than before. Why should this scrap, alone among its fellows, be thrust down into the seat cushions? Why should d’Entraigues have carried the Princess to Berkeley Square? And most puzzling of all—why did she exit the coach alive, only to be found dead by the watchman?”

  “Because d’Entraigues chose to do murder?”

  I shook my head in perplexity. “We shall have to confront the gentleman.”

  “Which gentleman? D’Entraigues—or Malverley?”

  “I cannot tell. The former was in possession of the Princess’s jewels, and her person; the latter, merely of her heart.”

  “Perhaps it is Miss Radcliffe we should interrogate.” He spoke the words unhappily; I recollected too late that there was an interest there—Mr. Chizzlewit was susceptible, as I own myself to have been, to the Barque’s charm.

  “Are you willing to play escort?” I enquired. “I should feel less of a traitor to the poor child, did I have you to bear me company.”

  “I should be most happy.” He reached into his smart coat, and drew forth a purse of coins. Handing the jarvey a guinea, he said, “Thank you, Clayton. That will be all for now. I may find you, I suppose, in Portman Square?”

  “At any hour, any day but Sunday,” the hackney driver said cheerfully, and bobbing his head in my direction, took himself off.

  “We shall have need of that fellow, to give evidence,” Mr. Chizzlewit said thoughtfully. “I ought, perhaps, to have invited Bill Skroggs to listen to the man—but that I was desirous you should be before him, Miss Austen. I wished to learn the construction you should place upon his information; tho’ Skroggs is cunning, he lacks your subtlety of mind.”

  “You have spoken with him?”

  “Indeed. I sought him where one must always seek the Bow Street Runners—in his cups, at the Brown Bear.” Mr. Chizzlewit smiled, and I reflected that despite his youth, he had a remarkable gift for inspiring trust.

  “Mr. Skroggs admitted that he was, indeed, in Hans Town observing No. 64 when Mrs. Henry Austen was struck from behind with a cobblestone. Her attacker fled, with Skroggs in pursuit; but the Runner was at a distance, and the lady escaped his clutches, by hastening down Cadogan Street and mounting into a carriage kept waiting there for the purpose. He never saw her face.”

  “A lady,” I mused. “That might be anyone—but at a guess, I should call her Anne de St.-Huberti, Comtesse d’Entraigues. Julia Radcliffe should have attempted to murder me, not my sister.”

  “I am happy to hear it. That is one less painful episode we must address in Russell Square.”

  “Shall we go there immediately? We ought to have retained Clayton—and had the jarvey drive us to the door!”

  Mr. Chizzlewit hesitated. “I should not advise it. The hour is already advanced—nearly two o’clock— and the day is hardly auspicious for paying calls.”

  I stared at him. “Whatever can you mean?”

  The solicitor’s smile deepened becomingly. “I collect that for all your worldliness, you are yet in ignorance of the significance of the First of May, my dear Miss Aus
ten. Among certain circles, it is most notable for being the annual date of a glittering event never patronised by the most elegant ladies of the ton, but to which every male member of Society is sure to be invited. We refer to it as the anti-Almack’s.”

  “Anti-Almack’s?” I repeated, bewildered. “But Almack’s is the most exclusive private assembly in London! Would you mean that this is a publick rout?”

  “Hardly. But just as Almack’s is called, by the knowledgeable, The Marriage Mart, so the Cyprians Ball must be acknowledged as Almack’s opposite—the very death of respectability, in fact!”

  “The Cyprians Ball … An assembly presided over by … ”

  “ … The Muslin Company,” he returned cordially. “They will have engaged the publick rooms of Limmer’s; it is the dirtiest hotel in London, to be sure, but also the most sporting—and the Demireps shall feel entirely at home there. Among the members of White’s and Watier’s, Brooks’s and Boodle’s, no other event is anticipated with such enjoyment as the Cyprians Ball. Miss Wilson and her sisters, Mrs. Johnstone and Moll Raffles, Julia Radcliffe and Desirée Moore—all shall be in attendance. I must believe Julia Radcliffe to be recruiting her strength, before such an evening—she will certainly not be at home to visitors. We must endeavour to call upon her tomorrow, Miss Austen—well after one o’clock.”

  “The Cyprians Ball,” I murmured. “The Comte d’Entraigues shall certainly be at Limmer’s this evening.”

  “—And firmly under my eye. I hold a card of invitation, and shall certainly dance.”

  “Will Charles Malverley be there?”

  “I should be greatly surprised, were he not. Castlereagh must certainly be in attendance, and George Canning—there is not a gentleman who would risk offending the Patronesses, any more than they should snub Lady Jersey at Almack’s.”

  “But Malverley, Mr. Chizzlewit—that buck of the first stare, who is up to every rig, the greatest go in the ton— Have you ever chanced to meet him in Russell Square?”

  “Never,” he replied.

  “And yet … and yet … we presume Princess Tscholikova to have sought him at Julia Radcliffe’s on the night of her death. Why, Mr. Chizzlewit?”

  “He was undoubtedly absent. The Princess certainly did not meet him there, no matter how long she waited.”

  “And if Malverley alone, of all his set, neglects to pay court to Julia Radcliffe,” I said slowly, “that fact in itself must be considered significant. I shall take my leave of you, sir—and must thank you for putting me in the way of considering this tangled business in an entirely new light.”

  I RETURNED TO SLOANE STREET, AND FOUND ELIZA gone out—our Chawton neighbour, Miss Maria Beckford, having called with her Middleton niece to take my sister for an airing in the Park. I had an idea of the petulant Miss Middleton, forced to sit opposite two elderly ladies, in a hired barouche that must be accounted insufferably dowdy; and sighed for the lost ambitions of girlhood.

  I whiled away an hour in perusing a guide to the peerage I discovered among Henry’s books, paying especial attention to those lateral branches and degrees of cousinage obtaining among the most elevated families in the land; and then I penned a firm note of my intentions to Sylvester Chizzlewit. Manon was so good as to carry it to Lincoln’s Inn Fields—but my second letter, to William Skroggs, she refused to accept. She regarded Bow Street and all its kind as the worst of London’s evils; and so, in the end, I was forced to run that errand myself.

  Chapter 29

  At Limmer’s Hotel

  Wednesday, 1 May 1811, cont.

  ∼

  AS IT HAPPENS, I WAS FORCED TO PLACE ALL MY confidence in Eliza—as is so often the case. Who else should know better how a Fashionable Impure must look, in order to gain admittance to the Cyprians Ball?

  “Ring for Manon,” my sister instructed briskly, “and Madame Bigeon as well. We shall have to alter one of my gowns on the instant! I am not so tall as you, Jane, but I daresay we may contrive a lace flounce to make up the difference—and it will do very well if your ankles are exposed, and your stays rather tighter than not, as display must be the order of the evening.”

  “Must it, indeed?” I faltered. “But Julia Radcliffe always appears so elegant!”

  “Be assured that rather more of her elegance will be visible tonight. A ball-dress, off the shoulder, with considerable décolleté—and your hair dressed with diamonds!”

  “But I have no diamonds!”

  “Then let them be paste! I am sure quite half the Snug Armfuls will be wearing nothing but such trumpery—and will be clad in the most shocking peacock colours! I can do nothing about that, I am afraid; you will have to go in straw-coloured silk, for it is just the gown to suit the purpose—and quite eighteen months old, so I shall not mind a bit if we must cut it to shreds.”

  Manon and her mother appeared in the doorway of Eliza’s boudoir. Manon, as should not be surprising, had begun to look a trifle weary.

  “Mademoiselle is attending a fancy dress party this evening,” my sister said, in a voice that brooked no argument, “and will require a little contrivance in her gown. Manon, have you time to step round to the Pantheon Bazaar?”

  “Naturally, if madame wishes it.”

  “We require quantities of false diamonds for the dressing of our hair, and loo masks—as we shall have to go disguised.”

  “We?”I repeated, thunderstruck.

  “I adore masquerades,” she said comfortably, as she lifted the straw-coloured silk over my head. “It puts me quite in mind of the old days, at Versailles. I should not submit to being left behind for anything, Jane—and I daresay I shall give some of those Demireps a run for their money.”

  She stepped back to survey my appearance; I felt both naked and foolish, and could not meet her scrutiny.

  “Sandals, I think—and we shall paint your toe-nails with gold leaf, as it is considered very fast. Madame Bigeon, a quantity of wadding, if you please—we must endeavour to provide mademoiselle with a bit more décolleté … ”

  If it was the dirtiest hotel in London, the quantity of candles, and the magnificence of the scene within the assembly rooms, contrived to dazzle the eye so thoroughly that every hint of grime was obscured. Eliza and I alighted from our carriage a few minutes past ten o’clock, and were admitted without much more than a cursory perusal of our figures and dress; two such bold pieces as we presented, the better part of our faces obscured by black loo masks and our hair dressed with gems, should never be turned from the Cyprians Ball.

  I am not sure what I feared more: to have my bottom slapped in a familiar way as I attempted with dignity to negotiate the stairs; to find that my arm had been pinched, or my skirts snapped above my heels; but the attitudes of the horde of gentlemen lounging along the banisters were refreshingly circumspect. If their eyes roved over the frank presentation of my charms, they kept their opinions to themselves; all but one foxed fellow, who studied Eliza with protuberant eyes and snorted, “Damme! If it ain’t mutton dressed as lamb!”

  I grasped my sister by the wrist, the better to prevent an unseemly fracas as she rounded on the jackanapes indignantly, and whispered, “Never mind! You are not here to make a conquest, recollect—but to preserve your innocence and reputation!”

  “Then I fear we are the only ladies likely to do so,” my sister returned grimly.

  The assembly rooms were in fact two dining parlours thrown together, by the elimination of certain doors, and the contiguity of a passage, with a small anteroom at its far end—Limmer’s being not the sort of place to run to dancing, in the ordinary way, and thus failing to possess a ballroom. Indeed, I had heard my brother Henry refer to the place as akin to Tattersall’s, where gentlemen of the turf laid bets of an evening in the smoke-filled coffee room. But the Patronesses, as Mr. Chizzlewit had called them in unconscious mimicry of Almack’s, had worked their magic in transforming the dingy place, with yards of striped silk suspended from the ceiling to suggest an Oriental tent, and quanti
ties of blooming lilies in tubs, grouped round a dais, on which the musicians played.

  “Well, my dear, if the quality of the refreshments is any indication,” Eliza observed, as she sipped at a glass of champagne, “this is most certainly the anti-Almack’s. All one ever receives there is tepid lemonade. I do believe the Demireps have hired Gunter’s! Only observe the lobster patties!” 1

  “Pray pardon the intrusion,” said a gravelly voice

  behind us, “but I could not help noticing how ravish

  ing you appear this evening, my sprite! Such a be

  witching colour! So entirely suited to one of mature

  years, and experience. ”

  I turned, and found to my astonishment that no less a personage than Francis Rawdon, Earl Moira, hovered on the fringe of our charmed circle. The core of my being was seized with apprehension, as tho’ with a vise; I could no more speak than I could trust myself to glance at Eliza. She had been acquainted with Lord Moira these ten years at least; and her husband was the man’s banker! Had the Earl detected us in our scandalous subterfuge? Should we be disgraced, and exposed?

  He bowed to both of us, but extended his hand to my sister—who might certainly be declared ravishing, by one several years her senior, as she stood ample-bosomed in her claret-coloured gown. Moira, it appeared, followed the Prince Regent in his tastes—that Royal personage being known to favour well-endowed ladies of a certain age.

  Eliza uttered an hysterickal giggle that could not be suppressed—put her champagne glass into my hand with trembling fingers—and dropped the curtsey that had graced Versailles itself. As I watched her sweep into the waltz on Lord Moira’s arm, I reflected that so game a pullet as the Comtesse de Feuillide should never betray my schemes.

  BY ELEVEN O’CLOCK, THE ROOMS HAD FILLED TO such an extent that the Cyprians Ball should certainly be declared a frightful squeeze, and thus, an unqualified success. Everywhere one looked, the bright plumage of the Birds of Paradise—who ranged in age from fifteen to fifty—twirled about the floor, or dangled indolently from the shoulders of various gentlemen, or held pride of place at a supper table. I will confess that I witnessed scenes that should be adjudged a trifle warm—the habits of some of the ladies, and the inebriation of some of the gentlemen, passing the bounds of what must be acceptable. I will also say, however, that the chief difference between the venue in which I found myself, and those which fell within the realm of the ton, is that such incidents were allowed to occur within full view of all assembled—for certainly as many proceed behind the cover of shrubbery, when such balls are sponsored by the Quality. I applauded the Cyprians for their lack of hypocrisy, and accepted the offer of a quadrille, and a country dance, from a dashing man in his thirties whom Eliza later assured me was no less than Freddy Ponsonby.