Jane and the Canterbury Tale Read online

  “No friend would cut a girl’s throat,” the housemaid returned drily. “If you’ve nothing further, ma’am, I’m wanted downstairs.”

  “Of course—thank you. You have been very kind. And I don’t even know your name.”

  “Susan, ma’am.” She bobbed a curtsey, her face wooden.

  “Susan,” I repeated brightly, and reached for the reticule dangling from my wrist. I pressed a shilling into her palm; she thanked me with a nod; and the door closed behind her.

  I waited until the sound of brisk footsteps on drugget had died away. Then, pulling my dripping feet from the mustard bath, I hurriedly donned my stockings and boots.

  THE SERVANTS’ QUARTERS AT CHILHAM WERE IN THE SECOND attic two flights above. I chose to travel as silently as I might by the back service stair, and met no one at that hour, the staff being employed in meeting the wants and demands of the Wildman family and their guests. The stairs wound first past the main attic level, where the old day and night nurseries were housed, and the schoolrooms, where governesses had once attempted to teach Louisa and Charlotte to read Italian; but all were silent now, with the stale sensibility of disused rooms, and I did not chuse to linger.

  A greater sense of life animated the servants’ level, tho’ no creature stirred. The ceiling was lower here, and numerous doorways gave onto the narrow passage, which curved with the hexagonal shape of the Castle. Light came only dimly through slits of windows intended to affect a medieval stile. I guessed that just the female staff were lodged in this aerie; in observation of the proprieties, the men would be housed below-stairs, near the kitchens and offices. Mr. and Mrs. Twitch, being senior staff and a married couple, probably merited a suite of rooms in that part of the house. It should not be too difficult, therefore, to discover the bedchamber Susan and Martha had shared. It should be the only one with a stripped cot and bare shelf on one side of the room.

  What was it I hoped to discover, two days after the murder—two days that ought to have afforded anybody with a guilty conscience and mortal purpose time enough to ransack the maid’s room? A scrap of paper, perhaps. A journal. If Martha could write, who knew what damning facts she might have set down? The girl had been murdered for a reason—and it must be because of something she knew, regarding the death of Curzon Fiske.

  But I was fated never to find the maid’s room. As I moved noiselessly around a curve in the hexagonal passage, a sinister figure loomed—silhouetted against the faint light seeping through the Castle’s false battlements. Tall, thin, and severely coiffed, with a profile as handsome as an eagle’s, and just as merciless. Mrs. Thane.

  “What do you think you are doing here?” she demanded harshly, as I came to an abrupt halt.

  “I might ask the same of you—were I so presumptuous.”

  She was standing, I observed, near one of the doors, which was firmly closed. On the point of exiting—or entering?

  “My maid did not answer my bell,” she said austerely. “So I came in search of her. What possible reason can you profess, Miss Austen, for invading these quarters?”

  “The gentlemen are returned from the village, Mrs. Thane. I thought you must certainly wish to know.”

  It was a commendable lie; and it succeeded in its object. For the woman brushed past me imperiously in a rustle of silk, without vouchsafing another word.

  TO MY SURPRIZE AND SECRET GRATIFICATION—FEW LIARS are so lucky as to be shielded by Fate in a cloak of seeming honesty—the gentlemen had returned from the inquest. Or rather, three of the gentlemen had returned. Julian Thane was not among them.

  The absence was immediately perceived by his mother at her entrance into the drawing-room. She halted abruptly, and following too close behind, I nearly trod upon her heel.

  “Where is he? Where is my son?”

  Captain MacCallister turned from some activity among the decanters and crossed to Mrs. Thane, a glass of brandy in his hand. “Pray be seated, ma’am, and try a little of this cordial.”

  “I do not wish for brandy!” she exclaimed imperiously. “Where is Julian?”

  “He has been taken up by Mr. Knight,” said Old Mr. Wildman quietly from his position by the fire, “for the murder of Martha Kean. I am sorry for it.”

  A cry broke from the woman, and she wavered where she stood. I stepped forward to support her, but the Captain was before me, and led her towards a chair. She shook him off, however, with an expression of contempt, and remained upright, her blazing eyes fixed on poor Fanny’s face. “Mr. Knight is the greatest fool! Julian—murder that girl? Calumny! Nonsense! An outrage! Her throat was cut; and had my son wished to kill her, his pistol should have sufficed. I am sure I do not know a keener shot than Julian.”

  The indifferent practicality of her words was such as must astonish. I observed Mr. Wildman close his eyes briefly in forbearance; his wife pressed a handkerchief to her lips in mute horror.

  Fanny rose. There was a queer look of shock on her countenance that was painful to behold. “We have trespassed too long on your privacy. We must take our leave.”

  James Wildman moved towards her, one hand outstretched appealingly. “Pray do not regard it, Fanny; your father has done only what duty required, and cannot be blamed for having acted in a manner I am sure he found most distasteful. I expect it was the very last outcome he expected, to this morning’s events. But the proofs against my cousin were such that Bredloe’s panel could hardly ignore them. It was they who forced the Magistrate’s hand, in bringing in a verdict of murder against Thane.”

  “What proofs?” Mrs. Thane demanded harshly. “What possible proofs could those unlettered men of the village weigh?”

  James Wildman turned and regarded her steadily. “When Bredloe examined the maid’s body yesterday at the publick house, he discovered a button of Julian’s—for you may be sure that Julian identified it, it bore his vowels and was torn from his shooting coat of drab—clutched in the girl’s fingers. She must have fought him as she died, and lying as she did, with her hands beneath her, the thing went undiscovered at the scene.”

  “Anyone might have worn that coat!” Mrs. Thane declared. “I am sure I have seen it lying discarded in the gun room any number of times in recent weeks.”

  “Indeed, ma’am,” James rejoined mildly. “But there was also the note, written in Julian’s hand—to which he swore.”

  “What note?”

  For the first time, Mrs. Thane’s voice quavered. Her countenance paled.

  “A brief missive, establishing a time and place of meeting—Six o’clock, by the lone coppice. Bredloe found it in the maid’s apron pocket. He conjectures that it was to retrieve the note—which my cousin may have forgot in the heat of violence—that Julian rode back up to the Downs later that morning. He was so misfortunate as to encounter the Godmersham party—and all was discovered.”

  “That jade!” Mrs. Thane ejaculated. Her countenance was now twisted with a terrifying fury, and her hands worked like a demon’s. “That meddlesome, designing, whorish girl—raised in the bosom of Wold, and bent upon its destruction! I should have throttled her in her cradle, by all that’s holy!”

  “Ma’am!” Captain MacCallister cried, in a tone of shock. “The maid is dead!”

  “Aye, and good riddance to her. I thought to send her away with Adelaide, and be free of her wiles forever—I thought to preserve my son’s future happiness—but he would come with us, as must be natural for the wedding, and nothing I could do or say was sufficient to guard him against her. Serpent! Succubus of the Devil!”

  “Succubus,” Charlotte repeated in a hollow tone. “What in Heaven’s name can you mean, Cousin?”

  Mrs. Thane’s eyes narrowed. “She was carrying his child, you little fool! A fine thing for Mr. Thane of Wold Hall—to be saddled with a serving-girl’s bastard!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Where There’s a Will

  “Let God on high drive me insane, and dead,

  If I’m not good and true as any
wife wed.…”

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER, “THE WIFE OF BATH’S TALE”

  28 OCTOBER 1813, CONT.

  AS FANNY AND I TOOLED FOR HOME BEHIND A ROWAN longing to be once more in his stall, we espied a horseman galloping towards us along the Canterbury road—a rider revealed in a few moments as none other than the reviled Magistrate.

  “Papa!” Fanny cried. “How glad I am to see you!”

  “You have been to Chilham?” he enquired, reining in his mount. “You will have learnt the news?”

  “Indeed—and most distressing we found it,” I said.

  “I am even now on my way to consult with Mr. Wildman. Do not wait dinner for my return, Fanny—you and your aunt might enjoy a comfortable coze by the fire in the absence of visitors. I shall take a cold collation once I am at home.”

  A comfortable coze. With a girl of twenty whose most romantickal notions had been brutally overthrown. My heart sank.

  “Papa!”

  Edward checked his horse and glanced down at his daughter. Her gloved hands were working at Rowan’s reins. “Is it certain? There can be no mistake?”

  Edward’s lips compressed at the desperate entreaty in her voice. “I am sorry, Fanny. Thane denies it all—but the evidence is black against him. We must allow the Assizes to weigh the case; we must allow Justice to run its course.”

  “Do you not ask yourself,” I interjected as my brother’s horse danced impatience beneath him, “why any man should be fool enough to commit a second murder in the very teeth of your investigation? —A murder, moreover, done from personal motives that may be entirely unconnected to the Curzon Fiske case?”

  “I imagine he did not intend to kill the girl. It was an act no doubt committed in a fit of passion.”

  “Nonsense! Nobody lures a maid to that lonely coppice with the note found in her pocket, and slits her neck with a knife he then prudently carries away—without premeditation. But to plan a murder, when the neighbouring magistrate has already incarcerated one’s sister, is utter madness! I cannot believe Thane fool enough to do it.”

  “What would you say, Jane?” Edward demanded wearily. “Do not speak in riddles, pray.”

  I sighed. There is so much that must be explained to men. “Merely that had Thane wished to end the life of his mistress and bastard child, he might have done so at any time—preferably a month from now, in another locale entirely, when he was no longer so blatantly beneath your scrutiny. In short, the evidence may be black against him—but the evidence does not make sense.”

  “Am I then to ignore the button and note—both Thane’s—that were found on Martha’s person?”

  I shrugged as Edward’s horse tossed its head and neighed. “Martha’s killer clearly wore Thane’s drab shooting coat. But Thane himself was not wearing it when Fanny and I met with him on the Downs.”

  “That is true!” Fanny cried eagerly. “He wore his black coat and leather breeches, with top boots—I particularly remarked the white cuff, so like that which Mr. Beau Brummell is supposed to wear. I thought it excessively dashing.”

  “The gush of blood from a slit throat should seriously stain the white tops of those boots,” I murmured, “but perhaps Thane exchanged his murderous attire in the interval between killing the girl and returning to search her pockets some hours later. One imagines, however, that his bloodied clothes—including the interesting coat of drab—should then have been found in his bedchamber. Do you not see, Edward, that anyone at the Castle might have taken Thane’s shooting coat from the gun room, as Thane’s mother told us only an hour since? And disposed of it when the deed was done? As for the note—I have it on the authority of the Chilham housekeeper that Martha was forever tucking letters into her apron pocket. Thane might have pressed that summons upon her at any time—it might indeed refer to an altogether different meeting, some days past. There was no date on the paper, I collect?”

  “There was not.” Edward gazed at me with an arrested expression. “Must you always complicate matters, Jane, with questions that are entirely unanswerable?”

  “Two people have died, Edward, and died in pain and violence. I should like the proper person to hang for it.”

  He frowned. “You are persuaded the murders were done by the same hand. Whose, then? Sir Davie Myrrh’s? Burbage’s? Explain, if you may, how either man should have come by the shooting coat of drab. Neither has been seen in the neighbourhood of Chilham, much less the Castle’s gun room, of late.”

  “Have you had any word of them?”

  “Burbage was taken this morning in Deal,” Edward said abruptly, “attempting to hire a private vessel for the crossing to France. He should be conveyed to Canterbury gaol by nightfall. Sir Davie, I regret, is still at large.”

  “Then you may pursue your researches yet a few hours,” I assured him affably. “We have delayed you already too long, with our vexing questions. May I suggest, Edward—when you speak to Old Wildman—that you enquire most narrowly into the terms of his Will, and the disposition of his estate, in the sad event of his death?”

  “Naturally the whole shall go to his son,” he retorted impatiently.

  “I meant, rather, in default of heirs male.”

  My brother stared at me, brows knit, then wheeled his horse towards Chilham without another word.

  WE WERE NOT VERY GAY THAT EVENING, I CONFESS, DESPITE the luxury of a house emptied of visitors and sporting-mad young gentlemen. We invited Miss Clewes to make a third at table, and toyed with the excellent fowl presented by Cook; in my lowered health and Fanny’s lowered spirits, the cream soup was more to our liking. Miss Clewes shared her stories of the little girls, and the morning spent in the schoolroom, and the droll thing that Marianne had said, and how she had been obliged to deny Marianne her custard in consequence; but neither Fanny nor I were properly attending. Before the governess, who knew nothing of the day’s events, we could not speak of murder or Julian Thane; but Miss Clewes’s prattle allowed each of us to pursue our own unsettling thoughts: Fanny’s, on the subtleties of handsome young men, about whose true proclivities no gently-reared female could presume to know anything; and I, on the hidden and deadly purposes of the human heart. We were so much abstracted that we did not devour above a fraction of the delicacies set before us, I am sure; but I comforted myself, and dosed the cold threatening to o’erwhelm my head, with Edward’s delicious claret. I shall be sadly spoilt by the time I return home, and disdain the fruits of Cassandra’s stillroom as not worth drinking.

  “And is your papa expected this evening, Miss Knight?” Miss Clewes enquired brightly. “If you mean to wait up for him, I shall be happy to fetch my work-box, and sit with you a little in the drawing-room. Only I must first assure myself that the young ones are comfortable in the night-nursery. They will be wanting their warm milk.”

  Fanny coloured slightly, and looked down at her hands. “I fear that I have the head-ache, Miss Clewes. I should like to retire early. And my aunt is most unwell.”

  “Of course you have the head-ache!” Miss Clewes said archly. “For Mr. Finch-Hatton has left us, has he not? And it is a wonder that even little Lizzy is not drooping apace! How dull we shall be this week, to be sure, until some other of your beaux, Miss Knight, appear to cheer our solitude!”

  The colour in Fanny’s cheeks deepened. “I have no beaux, Miss Clewes, and indeed I can find little to enjoy in the society of young men,” she retorted crisply. “There is a want of … of … openness, and much of calculated deceit, in the general run of that sex. Goodnight.”

  Miss Clewes looked bewildered, and curtseyed her adieux; I pressed her hand and shook my head warningly. Then I caught up to Fanny as she ascended the stairs with more haste than grace.

  “Take care, my dear,” I murmured as I kissed her cheek. “That was a speech that smacked strongly of disappointment. You should not wish to expose yourself to the ridicule of the world, for ruined hopes.”

  WHETHER FANNY FOUND SLEEP READILY ENOUGH, OR TOSSED and turned on h
er unhappy bed, I was determined to wait for Edward—and having built up my fire, and exchanged my carriage dress for a warm wrapper, I sat at the writing desk in the Yellow Room and recorded the day’s events in this journal. The clock in the Great Hall had not long chimed the quarter-hour past nine, when I was rewarded by the sound of approaching hooves; Edward, gone round to the stables. He would gain the house in a few moments’ time by the back way, and no doubt summon Johncock to require his supper; and if I knew my brother at all, he would take it in his book room, rather than the awful majesty of the empty dining parlour.

  I waited until the clock had chimed the half-hour, then opened my door as noiselessly as possible. A glance along the corridor revealed Fanny’s white face, peeping from the doorway of her own bedchamber; she, too, was clad in a dressing gown and slippers, and looked absurdly youthful beneath her night cap. She hesitated an instant, then stepped into the passage and joined me, the candle she held trembling slightly in her hand. “You intend to speak to Papa? May I come with you?”

  I might have spared her one sleepless night out of two, by shielding her a little longer from the evils of the world; but she was twenty, after all, and could hardly be urged back to bed, like a child recovering from nightmare.

  “Of course. I told you I valued your opinion.”

  We found the Magistrate devouring a plate of cold fowl and cheese, washed down with a tankard of ale. The fire in the book room was blazing, and he had lit several branches of candles, as tho’ he intended to work long into the night. But there were no papers or books before him; the work, I collected, should be done entirely in his brain.

  “Jane. Fanny. You ought both of you to be in bed.”

  “Pshaw,” I returned briskly. “It is not yet ten o’clock.” But the weariness in Edward’s voice reminded me that he had been travelling on the London road until nearly dawn, and what little sleep he had snatched before our shared breakfast—days ago, it seemed—had long since been spent in hard riding between Chilham, Canterbury, and home.

  “I am relieved to know that you were not met with pikes and broadswords at the Castle; and that they have let you go again, without demanding an exchange of hostages.”