Jane and the Canterbury Tale Read online

  —Or should have said so, before the advent of the dangerous Julian Thane. I fear Fanny has noted his inattention since that final encounter over the body of the maid—and that her spirits, so ready to soar at a clandestine note or unexpected posy, a stolen gallop of a Sunday afternoon—are sadly fallen in the absence of Thane’s tributes. I wish it were otherwise; I cannot like a fellow who dallies with his servants; and tho’ I have only Jupiter’s suspicions in the case, I must suspect Mr. Thane’s too-ready address and persistent proximity to danger. He seems the sort of reckless young man who was born to be hanged—a rueful encomium, when applied to a rogue one half-admires, but terrifyingly apt in the present instance. I could wave him heartily from the neighbourhood, for the sake of Fanny’s tranquility; time alone shall restore her to peace.

  Jupiter, in the end, took himself off with a langourous bow. Once this last of our male companions was sped down the sweep, I afforded Fanny an interval to attend to household matters. There were all the orders to be given to Mrs. Driver and Johncock, regarding the airing of beds and the inventory of the stores, the neat dinner she wished for and the number of places to be laid—no more than Fanny, Edward, and myself, unless our peace is to be entirely cut up by the unexpected arrival of some one of the Knights’ acquaintance. Muttering a quick prayer against such a tedious event, I ascended the stairs to put on my carriage dress whilst Fanny should be occupied. The cold in my head raged unabated, and as I surveyed my countenance in the gilt mirror that adorned one wall of the Yellow Room, I saw with resignation that I should present a wilted appearance at Chilham, with reddened nose and streaming eyes, the very picture of spinsterly decrepitude.

  It was full one o’clock before we were tooling along the road at last.

  “How glad I am for this airing!” Fanny exclaimed as she snapped the reins over Rowan’s back. “You cannot conceive, Aunt, how tied to Godmersham I am when the house is full of visitors—my very rambles through the gardens are constrained, from a fear of neglecting some duty. I should feel myself delightfully at liberty now, were it not that a certain dread must accompany this visit. Circumstances are so awkward.”

  “Meaning,” I said delicately, “that tho’ you are disinclined to encounter Mrs. Thane, in view of the gaoling of her daughter, you look forward to meeting once more with her son, and testing how adversity has tried his admiration of your excellent looks?”

  “Aunt Jane!” Fanny cried; and her ready colour rose in her cheeks. I left her to pursue the subject, if she chose; she elected to hone her attention on managing her horse’s ribbons. I had other concerns to occupy my mind as we bowled towards Chilham, and left her in peace.

  Tho’ I had as yet said nothing to my brother Edward, I detected a fatal flaw in the net he had spun for his killers of preference, Sir Davie Myrrh and Mr. Burbage—namely, that they could not be presumed to both flee the Kingdom by way of the nearest port, and linger in the neighbourhood to murder the unfortunate maid Martha. To entertain such conflicting purposes, as Edward plainly did, was to force the crimes to fit his interesting solution. I admired the entire fabric of Sir Davie’s history—the motives for revenge it argued—the indignation of the unfortunate Mr. Burbage, at his father’s ruin and demise—the very natural impulses that must bring both men into collusion with the late Curzon Fiske, and indeed, to Canterbury, where the final scene of Fiske’s long pilgrimage was played. To destroy Old Wildman by employing his son’s pistol, in the hope of placing James on the scaffold, should have been a stroke of genius only Lucifer might fully enjoy. Edward’s theory was neat; it was ingenious; it was seductive in the extreme. But my doubts lingered. They swirled about the dead figure of Martha. I found my brother’s confidence in Sir Davie’s guilt, arising as it had in total ignorance of this second murder, to be lacking. Perhaps Edward should reconsider, once he looked upon Martha’s cold form.

  “You are very silent, Aunt,” Fanny observed as she took the left turning in the northern road towards Chilham and its castle.

  “I am considering of motive,” I replied, “which must be a consuming subject for any woman. Our hearts so often work in subtle ways, towards complex ends, that the placidity of our outward appearance will invariably mislead the observer.”

  Fanny glanced at me sidelong. “Is this meant for me, Aunt?”

  “I think rather of that unfortunate creature in Canterbury gaol—whose heart remains obscure, perhaps even to those who love her best. I should wish you to study all the ladies of Chilham, Fanny, while we pay our call. I should dearly value your opinion.”

  “And what will you be about, Aunt?”

  “I shall study the men,” I replied, and subsided into silence for the remainder of the journey.

  WE WERE MET IN THE GREAT HALL BY THE BUTLER TWITCH. His countenance was grave, and he wore a black riband tied about his arm—in respect of the maid Martha, no doubt. I murmured a few words of condolence as I drew off my bonnet, and he inclined his head.

  “I believe you discovered her, ma’am?”

  “Miss Knight saw her first—but I was of the walking party, as was Mr. Finch-Hatton.”

  “—And you met Mr. Thane, as was riding in the direction of Godmersham.” Twitch’s gaze fixed on my own; he was no fool, and would not wish to appear to gossip, but neither was he insensible to the murderous construction that might be placed upon the presence of that young gentleman so near a corpse. “Mr. Thane is not at home, being obliged to attend the crowner’s panel, but my mistress shall be happy to receive you, I am sure. If you will follow me, ma’am—”

  “What do you mean, sirrah, by making free with my son’s private concerns?” a harsh voice demanded. “You ought to be horsewhipped. And if you were in my employ, that is exactly how you should be served. I should place the whip in my son’s hands, and have the satisfaction of seeing him exact revenge himself. Insolent scum!”

  It was Mrs. Thane, of course, poised on the stairs descending to the Great Hall. Her eyes blazed in her haggard face, and her hands gripped the baluster so fiercely that the frail bones showed through the mottled skin. She appeared to have aged several years in the days since her daughter’s arrest; and she made no pretence of noticing Fanny or me, as we stood beside the butler. In the fog of her present torment, we must be invisible.

  Or perhaps we were merely beneath her notice.

  The butler did not reply—indeed, he did not even spare Mrs. Thane a look—but led us in stately fashion towards the gallery. “Mrs. Wildman will receive you in the drawing-room,” he intoned.

  “Thank you, Twitch,” I managed unsteadily, aware of the crazed figure to my back. Even Fanny hurried a little in her pace, so as not to be left hindmost. We both of us dreaded to be the next object of attack; Mrs. Thane’s vituperation could chill the blood.

  “Poor creature,” Fanny murmured low; “she has undoubtedly suffered in recent days! To see her daughter publickly shamed—to fear the worst of the scaffold—one cannot be amazed at her agony. It is a wonder she is capable of quitting her bed!”

  “She doesn’t care that for Miss Addie.” Twitch angrily snapped his fingers, to our considerable surprize. “There’s only room enough in that shrivelled heart for Mr. Julian—he’s sun and moon both to Mrs. Thane, aye, and Prince of Wold Hall into the bargain! Much joy may that young devil bring her!”

  Fanny raised her brows in wonder, but there was no time for conjecture or comment; we had achieved the drawing-room, and from the comfort of her sopha Mrs. Wildman was lifting a languid hand in greeting.

  “SUCH PALPITATIONS AS YOU MUST HAVE SUFFERED! I WONDER you did not swoon! Was there a great deal of gore spread all about?”

  “Mother!” Charlotte cried reprovingly.

  Any plan I might have harboured, of surveying the gentlemen of Chilham on their home ground, was defeated at the start. The men of the house—Old Mr. Wildman, his son James, Captain MacCallister, and Julian Thane—were gone to the inquest in the village two miles distant. As Dr. Bredloe had convened his panel
at noon, however, and the hour was now half-past one, we might reasonably expect to see the men soon returned; it was for this reason, no doubt, that Mrs. Thane had remained fixed on the staircase in the Great Hall, in hopes of greeting her son. It was for Fanny and me to entertain the ladies of Chilham during the tedious interval; we might have been delivered to their avid questioning expressly for that purpose; and the mistress of the Castle, at least, was determined to milk every drop of excitement from our threadbare phrases.

  “Poor Miss Knight! How you must have felt it!” Mrs. Wildman exclaimed with ready sympathy.

  “But she had Jupiter to support her,” Louisa observed with a sidelong glance, “and I am sure there can be nothing so romantickal as for a lady to find herself in such an interesting situation, with such a gentleman!”

  “I declare I should swoon regardless, merely for the pleasure of having Mr. Finch-Hatton catch me!” Charlotte added with a tinkle of laughter, as tho’ the small matter of a seventeen-year-old girl with a severed throat was not worth consideration. “Is Jupiter yet at Godmersham, Fanny?”

  “He departed for Eastwell this morning,” my niece answered. “My brothers having quitted the house for Oxford, there was nothing to keep Mr. Finch-Hatton longer.”

  “Such modesty,” Louisa murmured, with a look for her sister that spoke volumes to my jaundiced eye. The Wildman girls were disposed to see in Fanny a rival. On account of Finch-Hatton, who had been staying at the Castle nearly a week before coming to us—or Julian Thane?

  “And what do you think of this shocking business of Adelaide’s?” Mrs. Wildman said in a half-whisper, leaning towards me from her couch as tho’ to shield the ears of the younger girls. “I should not be saying so, when Mr. Knight is our magistrate, and our dearest neighbour these many years—but I confess I believe he must be mistaken! That our Addie should take James’s pistol and shoot her husband—impossible! But Mr. Knight will not believe her! And now this second distressing death—”

  I might have seized the opportunity to assure Mrs. Wildman that her cousin should soon be released; I might have pressed her on the interesting question of which among her acquaintance might rejoice in seeing her son James accused of murder; but as I parted my lips to speak, I sneezed.

  It was a small sound, discreetly suppressed, but fell upon Mrs. Wildman’s ears as a thunderclap. She surveyed my reddened eyes and nose with keen attention, and started upright as I sneezed again.

  “Miss Austen! You are unwell!”

  “I was some hours exposed to the rain,” I muttered from behind a square of linen, “the day of Martha’s discovery.”

  “But of course! You should not be raised from your bed!”

  I sighed lugubriously, and closed my eyes as tho’ deprived of all strength. “I was most unwell yesterday, to be sure, but I could not consider of myself when so much trouble has descended upon this household, ma’am. I insisted that dear Fanny convey me to you as soon as I felt restored enough to rise, for I should never wish to be backwards in any attention to so close a neighbour of my brother’s. I confess, however, that I feel most unwell. Perhaps the drive has proved a danger.”

  “You must certainly lie down in one of my bedchambers, Miss Austen, and if you feel equal to it—have a mustard bath to the feet.”

  With an energy unexpected in so indolent a creature, Mrs. Wildman hastened to pull the drawing-room bell, and at the ready appearance of a footman, required him to summon her housekeeper.

  This excellent woman being already about the task of providing refreshment for the party in the drawing-room, in the form of pears from the Castle’s own garden, a Stilton cheese, and various sweetmeats, the footman did not have far to look—and in a little while I found myself conveyed by Mrs. Twitch (for she was the butler’s wife) to a comfortable bedchamber. There was no sign of the baleful Mrs. Thane on the stairs; perhaps she had given up her vigil, and retired to her rooms. I had an idea of her being lodged in a suite in the Castle’s tower: a remote fastness, where she might prowl by midnight and fret over the fates of her children. None of Chilham’s intimates seemed disposed to seek out her company—nor she, theirs.

  I took off my pelisse and bonnet while Mrs. Twitch kindled a fire.

  “Indisposed are you, ma’am?”

  “A dreadful cold, taken while I waited for the doctor at the scene of the maidservant’s murder,” I said with calm precision.

  Mrs. Twitch stared at me penetratingly. “You could not have took ill in better cause, if I may be so bold—for a sweeter girl never lived than Martha Kean, and how the Lord saw fit to serve her as he did—cut down like a lamb to the butcher—” She broke off, and stabbed viciously at the fire, which needed no encouragement to burn.

  “How well did you know her?”

  “Not so as to say well—she only come to us with Miss Addie, near a month ago. Mrs. MacCallister, I should say. But she was a taking little thing, and a day was as good as a month for knowing Martha. Not for her the high-in-the-instep airs of a lady’s maid—which she was, and learning to be a Dresser. No task was too mean for her to undertake, for she’d grown up in service. Saw the lot of us as in some wise family. ‘Can I carry the linen for you, Mrs. Twitch?’ she’d say, and whisk it out of my hands before I could so much as answer; and was nothing but kindness to Scullery Nan, what hasn’t enough wits for a baby, tho’ she’s full forty year old.”

  “Did the other maids befriend her?”

  Mrs. Twitch sniffed. “Not they. Jealous. All four of ’em are Kentish born and bred, ma’am, and don’t take easy to foreigners. Talked scandalous about Martha, they did, as having aims above her station—which’ll be due to the letters, no doubt.”

  “Letters?” I had a sudden swift thought of Sir Davie Myrrh, summoning the girl to her lonely death with a missive sent by post. Edward’s conjectures might prove correct after all.

  “Aye. Martha knew her letters,” Mrs. Twitch said simply. “Martha could read. And write. That’s a rare talent below-stairs, let me tell you. Fair turned the other girls’ noses, the way she was always tucking a bit of paper in her pocket.”

  Good Lord. A maidservant who could read. I had been thinking Martha was brought to the Downs in expectation of meeting Julian Thane—an assignation established in a whisper, by a turning in the stairs. But a summons in a note might have been left her by anyone.

  “I understand Martha belonged to Wold Hall. The Thanes must be terribly distressed.”

  “He is,” Mrs. Twitch replied succinctly, “Martha having been a playmate of Miss Addie and Mr. Julian when a child, as will happen on a great estate—which is why Miss Addie chose to take the girl with her, as lady’s maid, when she left to marry the Captain. Mr. Julian rode into Canterbury yesterday to break the news to his sister; and that Miss Addie should be forced to shoulder another grief is more than the good Lord ought to allow! But if Mrs. Thane turned a hair at Martha’s loss I’d be fair amazed. That care-for-nobody!”

  “She cares for her son, I gather.”

  “Near enough as to fall down and worship him,” Mrs. Twitch returned with obvious contempt. “Aye, and in the teeth of his dislike—for it’s my belief Mr. Julian can’t abide sight nor sound of his mother. Never forgiven her, if you ask me, for her Turkish treatment of Miss Addie when she run off with Mr. Fiske. Thought to make a great match for her daughter, Mrs. Thane did—on account of the fortune she wanted, to save Wold Hall. Ready to sell Miss Addie to the highest bidder, she was. No wonder the poor mite fled across the Channel with the first rakehell that offered. I’ll send up the mustard bath directly, ma’am.”

  The housekeeper curtseyed and pulled closed the bedchamber door.

  I had no great wish to plunge my feet into a steaming kettle of nostril-curling bath, but it seemed a small price to pay for verisimilitude. Feigning illness had won me the wisdom of Mrs. Twitch; and in the murder of a maid, one could do far worse than interrogate the housekeeper.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Maid’s Cl
utches

  “I place your soul in his hands, my little child,

  Obliged by your mother’s sins, so soon to die.”

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER, “THE CLERIC’S TALE”

  28 OCTOBER 1813, CONT.

  I WAITED UNTIL THE MUSTARD BATH APPEARED IN THE hands of an upper housemaid, and allowed the girl to fuss over me, and arrange my skirts that I might set my feet in the steaming water without staining the fabric of my best—I may say my only—carriage gown before I attempted further researches. This particular maid I judged to be in her twenties, plain-featured and without the slightest suggestion of frivolity about her person; she wore no armband, and her visage did not bear the marks of weeping.

  “I am sorry to cause so much trouble,” I attempted. “I was so stupid as to stand in the rain some hours, a few days since, and caught cold as a result.”

  The maid’s glance shifted towards me, then glided away; but her lips compressed. She was not the sort to be tempted by an oblique approach; I should be forced to confront her headlong.

  “Were you at all acquainted with the unfortunate girl who met her death on the Downs?” I persisted.

  “That Martha?” The maid shrugged. “I shared my room with her; but as for being acquainted, I don’t hold with encouraging foreigners. She was no Kentishwoman. Of Leicestershire stock, was Martha—and terrible free in their ways, such folk be.”

  “In their ways?” I repeated as tho’ perplexed. “What do you mean?”

  A shuttered look came over the maid’s face. “Don’t mean nothing at’all, ma’am. Is the water hot enough for your liking?”

  “It is very well, thank you. By free, would you suggest that Martha was friendly?”

  “Aye, and to all the world—both above and below. No proper sense of place, had Martha—and look what it got her.”

  “You believe that she was murdered by a friend—and one not of her station?”