Jane and the Stillroom Maid jam-5 Page 27

  “Highly poisonous, Miss Austen. A single draught should be unremarkable, though vomiting might result; but when the application is repeated, and the doses increased, it is probable that the effect over time should be death.”

  “But Tess could have possessed no notion of the pernicious effect!” Danforth objected. “She learned her stillcraft at her mother’s feet. Her remedies were the stuff of incantation, passed down through generations of healing women; she merely did as she had observed others to have done. If she killed Emma and Julia with the intention of healing them, surely we may absolve her of guilt!”

  Dr. Bascomb merely lifted his shoulders. “I cannot profess to know the girl’s mind,” he said. “I only know that I had instructed her myself, most strenuously, never to give a draught in the common bitter waters to children. And yet, Miss Austen has found repeated references in the stillroom book to the employment of these very waters.”

  A silence settled over the room, broken only by the crackling of a log upon the fire.

  “But why?”

  Lady Harriot’s deep and penetrating voice carried across the room.

  “Why kill those children Charles loved so well?”

  I looked at Lord Harold and raised an enquiring brow.

  “It is possible,” he answered slowly, “that she did so at Charles’s bidding.”

  “Ridiculous!” Andrew Danforth cried.

  “Is it? He stood to inherit a fortune if his heirs predeceased his wife; and you will observe that they did. He was warned by Bascomb that the illnesses looked like poison; and so he contrived never to have Bascomb in attendance again. Two of his children died, moreover, when Charles was himself away — so that he might never be suspected of guilt, should questions arise. And finally, he silenced Tess Arnold — the only party to his crimes.”

  “He had no need of such a fortune,” Lady Harriot protested. “Charles was a wealthy man!”

  “But he may, my dear Hary-O, have felt desperately in need of you,” Lord Harold said harshly, “and his wife and children stood in the way.”

  She drew a sharp breath; her beautiful eyes blazed. “That is an unpardonable thing to say.”

  Lord Harold inclined his head, but failed to apologise.

  “I will never believe it!” Danforth exclaimed.

  “Naturally you will not.” I summoned courage for what must come. “For it was to your benefit that the children died, and not your brother’s. Emma and Julia and little John d’Arcy — they stood between you and your inheritance, Mr. Danforth. And Tess Arnold had great ambition for you. Or should I say — for you both?”

  Andrew Danforth went white. “Think well before you utter another word, Miss Austen, lest your speech disgrace you! A familiarity with Lord Harold may have taught you to forget what is due to civility; but a moment will suffice to recall it.”

  “The spectre of disgrace has no power over me, Mr. Danforth,” I replied calmly. “Your brother’s sacrifice has absolved us all. You will recall what he said in his final letter? Her reasons for so doing I will not name, lest they embroil the innocent. Charles Danforth suspected that Tess would murder his heirs and place you in his stead. In the interval provided after his wife’s death, he had time enough for reflection; it was not the maid’s habit to act precipitately. Tess had allowed months between the children’s passing away. And so your brother was suffered to remain in health throughout the first part of the summer. And then, two days before the maid was killed, he endured a bout of vomiting himself.”

  “That was the day he despatched a letter to me,” Dr. Bascomb explained, “and informed me that he had looked into the stillroom book. He described the remedies the maid had administered; he described the solution she gave at his wife’s labour, well before I arrived. His wife, I did not scruple to advise him by return of post, should never have gone into labour, but for the draught against histericks that Tess administered when young John d’Arcy died. It contained a quantity of rye, in addition to its healing effects; rye that had spoiled from the action of ergot. It is the most powerful spur to labour that is known.”

  “Your brother knew, then, how his children had died,” I told Andrew Danforth. “He knew that Tess Arnold was your friend of old; you had played together as children, when Charles was banished to the south. She should naturally have your interests at heart. He may even have observed the two of you meeting in an abandoned ice-house at the estate’s extent, and wondered at the nature of your connexion.”

  “This is abominable,” Danforth muttered between his teeth. “I would that Charles could hear you! What indignation you should arouse!”

  “He never suspected, however, that Tess acted at your behest,” I concluded softly. “Charles believed you innocent of the worst. And in that, Mr. Danforth, I fear your brother was a nobler soul than you yourself have proved.”

  “Are you suggesting—” Lady Harriot cried, in an accent of shock.

  “—that Andrew Danforth encouraged the maid to murder his nieces and nephew? Naturally. He taught Tess Arnold to hope for everything. And when she had played her part, he killed her.”

  “I killed her?” Danforth stared about the room as one amazed.

  “In the interval between the ladies withdrawing from the Chatsworth dining parlour Monday evening, and the gentlemen rejoining them over an hour later.”

  Lord Harold tore his eyes from Andrew Danforth’s face and stared at me. “Good God,” he said. “So that was how it was done.”

  “Sir James chanced to mention to me the entire program of that evening,” I said. “It was only later, in conversation with Lord Harold, that I detected the discrepancy. You left Penfolds, Mr. Danforth, for Chatsworth at about five o’clock, on a swift horse that might gallop the distance in half an hour. You dined at seven, and the ladies withdrew at half-past ten, much as we did the night of Lady Harriot’s birthday. Sir James was told that the gentlemen quitted the dining parlour at a quarter to twelve, having been much engrossed in a discussion of politics, and the prospects of Charles James Fox — a discussion that you, as a man ambitious in politics, might have been expected to join. But you did not.”

  “Andrew?” Lady Harriot gasped.

  “I thought you had gone after her,” Lord Harold muttered, his eyes on Andrew Danforth, “to dance attendance. You excused yourself not five minutes after the ladies retired. It never occurred to me that you quitted the house entirely—”

  “This story is absurd!” Danforth burst out. “If you will credit the notion that a man might race across open country, under a fitful moon, in order to shoot a girl he had no notion should be walking the hills at such an hour—”

  “But you did know, Mr. Danforth,” I persisted. “Because you supplied Tess Arnold with your brother’s clothes in the ice-house that very morning. She told you where she would be, and all that she intended, as a very good joke. You had often engaged in playacting together, as children. You are playacting now, I think.”

  Andrew Danforth emitted a choking sound.

  “You quitted the dining parlour perhaps five minutes after the ladies. You went swiftly out the West Entrance to the stableyard, and saddled your horse. The stable lads should never have been disturbed; Lord Harrington was much given to coming and going about the loose boxes at all hours of the night. You galloped hard across the country to the hills above Miller’s Dale, and tethered your horse beneath the same tree you chose for your brother’s mount today. We found your hoofprints there on Friday. You waited in a pile of rock for the maid to appear; and when you had shot her, you rode at great speed back to Chatsworth, and joined the ladies a few minutes in advance of the other gentlemen.”

  “Deuced cheek!” ejaculated His Grace the Duke.

  “You took a considerable risk, to be sure; but one that very nearly succeeded,” I went on. “An enquiry among the stable lads, however, will suffice. One at least must have remarked the curious fact that your horse was already damp with sweat, when you called for it at one o’clock, an
d quitted Chatsworth for your road home.”

  Danforth turned his head wildly, as though in search of a friend. The Duke stared with bulging eyes; Lady Harriot had buried her face in Lady Swithin’s gown; and a cruel smile played about Lord Harold’s lips.

  Danforth’s eyes came to rest on the amiable countenance of Sir James Villiers.

  “But Charles — You read the letter yourself—”

  “Charles confessed to a crime he did not commit,” I said implacably. “He did so from the same motives that have placed your solicitor, Mr. George Hemming, in the Bakewell gaol. Your brother took your guilt upon himself, Andrew Danforth, because he believed too much in your goodness.”

  His lips began to work, but no sound came.

  “Charles believed that you discovered the maid’s hideous work, and cut off her life like a poisonous snake’s. Why else should she have been killed so soon after her attempt on his life? He regarded you with gratitude; he thought you a man of honour. To kill from such a motive is no different in a gentleman’s mind, I suspect, than death should be in a duel. And having exposed your neck to the noose on behalf of his children, Charles determined that you should receive a similar testament of loyalty. He suspected the reasons for George Hemming’s sacrifice — the solicitor was devoted to you. He saw that Lady Harriot looked upon you with favour. His own prospects of happiness had gone forward into the grave. Why not end such misery with a snatch at honour, and take upon himself your guilt? And so he wrote his letter.

  “Did he show it to you, in the hills above Miller’s Dale?”

  Danforth sank into a vacant chair, as though his legs would no longer support him.

  “I wonder if he understood what you really were, in that last moment before you killed him?”

  To Prevent Nightmare

  Eat nothing after three o’clock, and no nightmare will ever assert its suffocating presence.

  — From the Stillroom Book

  of Tess Arnold,

  Penfolds Hall, Derbyshire, 1802–1806

  Chapter 28

  Cage We Cannot Help

  Monday

  1 September 1806

  “MICHAEL TIVEY HAS CONFESSED,” SIR JAMES VILLIERS informed me, “to having anatomised the body of the stillroom maid. It is as you suspected — having gone in search of Tess Arnold when she failed to appear for their midnight appointment, Tivey discovered her dead body, and made use of it for his own despicable purposes. He thought to throw suspicion for the girl’s death upon the Freemasons, whom he cordially disliked for having rejected him; and thus endeavoured, as soon as her body was found, to put about the story of ritual murder. Being denied the full knowledge of Masonic rites himself, however, he could effect the wounds of a traitor’s execution only imperfectly. And so we suspected the tale’s veracity from the first.”

  Sir James sat in one of the hard-backed chairs of our parlour at The Rutland Arms this morning as the trunks were brought out. My cousin Mr. Cooper had carried his point; and but for this brief visit from the Law, I should have quitted Bakewell without learning how matters were disposed.

  “Mr. Hemming is at liberty?”

  “He is — and will soon leave the district with the intention of seeking a holiday. I am sure he will have returned for the Derby Assizes, however.”

  Where Andrew Danforth should be tried for the murders of Tess Arnold and Charles Danforth. I could no longer consider the latter his brother; for indeed, they had not the slightest particle of blood in common.

  Sir James peered at me narrowly. “I cannot entirely reconcile George Hemming’s willingness to shoulder Andrew Danforth’s guilt. Such dedication in a solicitor for one of his clients is beyond the bounds of my experience.”

  “But you may have known a similar loyalty in a father for his son,” I observed gently. “Mr. Hemming’s feeling for Andrew Danforth, I should judge, was just that strong in degree and kind.”

  “I see,” Sir James returned thoughtfully. From the rapid change in his countenance, I discerned that he would consider new sources of information, that must invert the nature of the problem. But no word of that lovely old miniature, borne by both father and son, did I offer. Andrew Danforth might have sacrificed every consideration of civility, by his vicious conduct; but George Hemming yet deserved my protection and silence. I suspected that he had paid already for his indiscretions, in years of blackmail to Betty Arnold, who had known the truth of Andrew’s origins. Her daughter Tess had undoubtedly shared them with Andrew himself — and in fear that his illegitimacy should be proclaimed, and his eventual right to inherit Penfolds disputed, he had been moved to murder.

  George Hemming would continue to pay for that single great love, that rash act of youth, until he found his own grave; I had no wish to add to his burdens by publishing his past before all of Bakewell. I had already won Hemming’s enmity, by stilling the hand of the executioner and placing the noose around his son’s neck. Far from expressing gratitude at his deliverance, and a proper sense of respect for the working of justice, he had taken no leave of the Austen family.

  My cousin Mr. Cooper was greatly surprised by this rude parting; but reflected with satisfaction that he had behaved blamelessly himself throughout the entire affair, and might expect a glowing commendation from so great a personage as Sir George Mumps, when that gentleman knew the whole. He would continue, he informed me, to pray for his sad friend.

  Sir James stood up and held out his hand. “I hope, Miss Austen, that if you ever find it possible to take Bakewell in your way, that you will not hesitate to call at Villiers Hall. I should have engaged you for dinner at Monyash, had your visit been prolonged; but the duties of justice—”

  “—and the claims of a friend with a Scottish manor,” I added, “should never go neglected. I am honoured by your invitation, Sir James, and shall avail myself of the opportunity of accepting it, whenever the occasion may offer.”

  He bowed — begged to be remembered to my mother and sister, already established in the carriage below — and took himself off.

  I tarried for a last look from the parlour window, as if in expectation of observing a glossy equipage, in the First Stare of Fashion, emblazoned with the serpent and the stag — but Matlock Street was empty of life, but for our own post chaise bulging with baggage and a quantity of dried trout.

  I turned away from the window, and found him standing in the door.

  “Lord Harold!”

  “My dearest Jane.”

  He crossed swiftly and seized my hand; held it to his lips, and closed his eyes. The ravaged looks of the previous few days were gone; he might rest now in the certainty that his duty to Georgiana’s children had been discharged. But I detected no joy in his countenance — only resignation and the hollowness of loss.

  “You have asked for her hand,” I said, “and she has refused you.”

  His grey eyes flew open and gazed into my own. I was pleased to observe no tragedy in their depths; the hint of self-mockery prevailed. “It is ridiculous for a man of eight-and-forty to expect such a creature to return his affection. She must regard me as almost a father.”

  “Do not sell yourself so cheap, my lord. Fathers, in Lady Harriot’s estimation, cannot be accounted highly.”

  He released my hand. “No matter. I should not have taught myself to hope. It is the effect of old love, you know — unrequited love for her mother; and the sensation of seeing the woman reborn once more in Hary-O. Such a union must have ended in folly.”

  “You may find that with time, the lady’s sentiments may undergo a revolution. She is very young, and has suffered much in recent months; perhaps when another twelvemonth has passed away—”

  “—I shall be merely another year older. No, Jane — however much I may esteem her — however much I regard her as exactly the sort of woman to suit me — we should not have gone on well together. She is at the very beginning of her powers, while I approach their end.”

  “Fiddlesticks!” I cried. “You are worth
ten young men put together — in understanding, knowledge of the world, brilliance. There is charm and flattery enough, my lord — but nobody is brilliant any more.”

  “Thank you, my dear,” he replied with a trace of amusement. “I know you well enough to value your frankness. But truth to tell, I should have been tempted to put Hary-O in a gilded cage; and she has spent most of her life in one already. What she desires now is flight — and a man who might give her wings.”

  His expression, as he uttered the words, became fixed and closed to me; and in this I sensed the depth of his regret. There was nothing more to be said. He had resigned all pretension to the woman he loved.

  The Gentleman Rogue, however, was not yet done. In a tone of some briskness he declared, “I must congratulate myself, Jane, in having discharged this last service to Georgiana — in having saved her beloved Harriot from a most unsuitable marriage. Who knows where Andrew Danforth’s rapacity might have led?”

  “To the murder of his wife, perhaps, against the vastness of her fortune?”

  “I have you to thank for Hary-O’s present safety. I shall always think of you with gratitude and fondness, Jane — for this, as for so many past examples of your goodness.”

  “As I shall think of you,” I managed. And stifled all other words that might have come. I reached for a small packet that yet stood upon the parlour table, and presented it to him. “Pray extend my thanks to the Countess for the use of her combs.”

  “I believe she intended to make a present of them to you.”

  “Lady Swithin is very good — but I could never accept anything so fine.”

  He gave me a long look, then slipped the jeweller’s box into his coat. “Shall I escort you below? The dissipation of a giddy watering-place, and a thousand gallant sailors, await you in Southampton.”

  He offered his arm; I tucked my hand between the folds of sleeve and coat; and so was carried off quite handsomely to the waiting chaise. He handed me in, and lifted his hat; and as the carriage creaked to life, I summoned resources enough to wave.