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  I bowed. “Miss Conyngham? Will you relieve their ignorance?”

  “The word is hemlock,” she said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

  “Of course. Suicide, that happiest of releases from tasks both onerous and unmentionable,” Lord Harold observed.

  “Excellent! Excellent, indeed, my dear Jane,” my uncle cried merrily. “I must exert myself to another. Unless, that is, someone else on our side—” He looked about.

  “I believe I may offer a small diversion,” said Colonel Easton. He stood, and would have posed for oratory, his hands clasped behind his back, but for the impediment of his sling.

  “My first has the making of honey to charm,

  My second brings breakfast to bed on your arm.

  My third bores a hole in leather so fine,

  while united the whole breaks a heart most kind!”

  “Well, I know for a fact that the third is an awl,” Henry said with satisfaction. “It cannot be otherwise.”

  “And the first is a bee,” Hugh Conyngham said.

  “So the whole must be betrayal” I concluded briskly. “You are no match for us, Colonel. We have routed you entirely.”

  “Well played,” Lord Harold observed with a nod. “Now let us have our revenge. I am quite a man for revenge, you know — though I cannot quite decide against whom I must direct it. All of you present such tempting objects.” He moved towards the drawing-room fireplace as he spoke, fingering the eye portrait absently; and I instantly felt the tension in Hugh Conyngham.

  His sister rose unsteadily to her feet. “I do not think I like your manner of playing, my lord. It resembles too closely a cat with a cornered mouse.”

  “Maria!” her brother said abruptly. “Sit down!”

  “—What? Hey?” enquired my Uncle Perrot in confusion. “It is only a game, after all.”

  And at that moment, Lord Harold reached for one of the massive porcelain vases that stood regally at either end of the mantel, hefted it in his arms, and tossed it at Colonel Easton.

  Miss Wren screamed; Lady Desdemona shied; and without an instant’s hesitation, the Colonel caught the priceless object — employing for the purpose his injured right hand.

  There was an instant of shocked silence; and then, with a rustle of muslin, Maria Conyngham slid to the floor in a faint.

  “Appearances, you will remember, are everything, Miss Austen,” Lord Harold observed drily. “We had taken for granted that Colonel Easton could never have stabbed a man; for his arm was assuredly useless. That was excellently caught, Colonel — or should I say, Pierrot?’

  Easton seized a fire tong and leapt at Lord Harold with frightening savagery, amidst the horrified screams of the ladies. But in a moment, the Earl of Swithin had thrown himself into the fray, thrusting Lord Harold aside and battering Easton with his fists. The two toppled a delicate little table, pitched headlong into the anteroom, and came to rest in a heap before the opening panel door.

  “Gentlemen! Gentlemen! I beg of you — have a care for Her Grace’s furnishings!”

  Mr. Wilberforce Elliot, looming in the cunning little passage.

  Chapter 17

  God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

  19 December 1804, cont.

  “I SEE HOW IT IS, YOU BLACKGUARD,” HUGH CONYNGHAM told the Colonel bitterly. He was bent over his insensible sister, the Dowager’s vinaigrette in his hand. “These riddles are easy enough to comprehend. You have betrayed us to the agent of our ruin, and all attempt at prevarication must be as so much hemlock — a release, perhaps, but hardly happy!”

  Easton struggled to his feet, but was quickly overpowered by the Earl and Mr. Elliot. “I, betray you?” the Colonel cried. “That is a fanciful tale, when your jade of a sister has already divulged the whole to Trowbridge! She has been parading about on his arm this week or more. Enquire how much he pays for her charms, I beg — for I am beyond all caring!”

  “Perhaps you will explain how the same man came by that curst portrait,” Conyngham retorted hotly, “if not at your hand! For it was you who had the keeping of the eye, not Maria. I gave it to you the night of the Dowager’s rout!”

  “That is a lie!”

  “A lie? You would deny the whole? Reprehensible coward!”

  Mr. Conyngham might have continued in recrimination, had his sister not come to her senses at that moment; and so it was Lord Harold who satisfied the curious.

  “The pendant was found by my nephew, Lord Kinsfell, and hidden within his clothes at the moment he was seized for Portal’s murder,” he coolly said. “I must congratulate Simon on his perspicacity; for this single act has proved the undoing of those who would have seen him hang.”

  “But, Uncle,” Lady Desdemona said faintly, “how could you possibly have known the murderer was Easton?”

  “I did not know, my dear Mona,” he replied, “but the suspicion has been growing upon me. I told Miss Austen only this morning that appearances are everything; and she replied, even, perhaps, when they are meant to deceive. I must credit my excellent friend with starting the notion of Easton’s guilt, for he was the sole person among us whose appearance had greatly altered in recent weeks, and I found that fact intriguing. Once started upon the trail, I proceeded rapidly to its end — for one aspect of this murder has puzzled me from the start, and Easton answered the purpose admirably.” He wheeled about and faced us as implacably as a judge. “Why was the murder committed in Her Graces household?”

  “Why, indeed?” the Duchess echoed.

  “To throw blame and ruin upon Easton’s enemies. Mr. Portal — or Mr. Thomas Lawrence, the intended victim — might have been killed as readily elsewhere. But the murder was designed to despatch several birds at a single stone. To implicate Swithin — whose attentions to my niece had threatened the murderer’s suit — and possibly Lord Kinsfell, whose interest in the murderer’s mistress had outraged his reason.”

  “Miss Conyngham? Easton’s mistress?” I cried; and remembered, of a sudden, the figure I had glimpsed on Pulteney Bridge, in conversation with the colonel’s phaeton. Mrs. Grimsby, he had called her — but the familiar grace of her carriage and form had been entirely Maria Conyngham’s.

  Lord Harold looked to the lady. “Well, my dear?”

  Maria’s wonderful head came up, as regal as Cleopatra’s. “I will not deny it.”

  He bowed. “You retain one claim to honour, at least. I suspected Easton only lately, Mona. I fear that for the better part of this sad affair, my suspicions were turned against Lord Swithin — as they were intended to do. For it was Swithin’s device that was found in the anteroom passage — found, most curiously, after the night of the murder, when Mr. Elliot had summarily searched it. I reflected on that point at length, and thought it too curious for plausibility. Colonel Easton had visited Mona on Friday, just before I searched the passage myself; and it was Colonel Easton who dropped the tiger behind the door.”

  I started up at this. “But the tiger belongs in the Fortescue family!”

  “So it does — and was lost by the present Earl, I think, in a game of cards or some other wager. Am I correct, Swithin?”

  “You are, my lord. At Carlton House, a twelvemonth ago at least.”

  “And did you lose it to Easton?”

  “No — but I would imagine the man who won it, did not possess it long. He is notoriously unlucky at games of chance, and must soon have given up the brooch to another.”

  “The Colonel was certainly in possession of it a few months back, when a man calling himself Mr. Smith — a bearded fellow of some bearing — pawned the object in Cheapside. Easton redeemed it only a few weeks ago — just after the affair of honour, in which you injured his right arm. We may conclude that his desire for revenge, and his incipient plan, dates from that unhappy event. It was fought in respect of Miss Conyngham, was it not?”

  Swithin inclined his head. “Easton believed me to have designs upon the lady — but I assured him that whatever my past attentions might hav
e been, my heart was now engaged by another. He called me a blackguard and a liar. I could not allow such accusations to rest.”

  “Your sisters thought they had seen the Colonel in Bath Street on Thursday, but were later confused by his clean-shaven appearance.” Lord Harold looked to me. “Did Pierrot sport whiskers, Miss Austen?”

  The image of a burly, bearded figure of motley in converse with a scarlet Medusa rose before my eyes.

  “Easton!” Lady Desdemona cried. “It was you!”

  Throughout this explanation, Colonel Easton had stood mute and white-faced in the magistrate’s grip; but now he burst out with venom, “You shall never prove it, Trowbridge!”

  “I do not have to,” Lord Harold replied easily. “For that is Mr. Elliot’s task.”

  AND SO OUR MISBEGOTTEN PARLOUR GAME WAS AT LAST come to an end.

  “Despicable man,” Maria Conyngham whispered, as she passed before Lord Harold’s gaze. “I shall damn you from my grave.”

  He inclined his head with exquisite grace; and at Mr. Elliot’s behest, the lady quitted the room. But I observed Lord Harold’s eyelids to flicker as he watched her go, and his countenance become even more inscrutable; and read in these the extent of his self-loathing.

  His mother observed as well, and understood; but the Duchess said nothing — merely reached for his hand.

  “Well, my dear Jane — here’s a to-do,” my Uncle Perrot mused in a whisper. “It will be all over Bath on the morrow; and what I shall say to your aunt, I cannot think!”

  “Lay the whole at my feet, my dear,” I advised him, “for she has quite despaired of my character these three years at least.”

  Monday,

  24 December 1804

  Christmas Eve

  TIME PASSED; LORD KINSFELL WAS RELEASED, AND RETURNED to the bosom of his family. The spectacular fall of the interesting Conynghams was a three-days’ wonder, and Eliza’s account of it much solicited in the Pump Room. My mother soon forgot her younger daughter’s scandalous taste for blood in a more consuming anxiety for her son’s financial well-being — and grew seriously vexed when no commissions for Henry materialised from my intimacy with the Wilborough family. I cast about for solace — and found it in the unlikely form of the Leigh-Perrots. For, as I told my mother, the very evening of the infamous Rauzzini concert my uncle had excessively valued Henry’s sage advice regarding the ‘Change.

  “Then it is fortunate, indeed, Jane, that you took him up on the concert scheme, for I am sure he should not have thought of Henry and Eliza otherwise — and I know it was a sacrifice for yourself, disliking music of that kind. You were always a good sort of open-hearted girl. Cassandra is nothing to you.” She busied herself about her work a moment, humming fitfully in snatches of disconnected song, and presently warmed once more to her subject.

  “Perhaps now your uncle may place some funds at Henry’s disposal — for Lord knows he has enough lying about at Scarlets, and even here at Paragon, to keep your brother in commissions a twelvemonth. I cannot think what he contrives to do with it all — for my sister Perrot hardly spends a farthing. She is of a saving nature, is sister Perrot — very saving indeed, and the housekeeping is the worse for it. The soused pig tasted decidedly ill the evening of her card party, and I could not find that she had even so trifling a confection as a seed-cake about her. The claret was tolerable, however — but I suppose that Mr. Perrot is vigilant about the laying-down of his cellar. No, Jane, you did not suffer at all in your sacrifice of the card party — and your willingness to oblige your uncle did you credit in his eyes, I am sure. Perhaps there may be a legacy in it, by and by.”

  I left her happy in scheming how the various Austens might best contrive to exploit their more comfortably situated relations, and trusted that the patronage of the ducal family might never be mentioned again.

  ONE SENSATION WAS SWIFTLY SUCCEEDED BY ANOTHER, AND the murder of Richard Portal gave way to news of far happier moment, with the announcement of Lady Desdemona Trowbridge’s betrothal to the Earl of Swithin. The gossips of the Pump Room would have it the redoubtable Earl had once fought a murderer at pistol-point in defense of the lady’s honour — but in support of so broad a claim, even Eliza very wisely said nothing.

  “Jane,” my sister Cassandra said, as I lingered over the notice in the Bath Chronicle, “the post is come. You have a great letter from James. Is it not singular, indeed? For he never writes to you, if he can help it. I cannot think what he has found to say — and at considerable length, too.”

  I jumped up from the sitting-room table and turned eagerly to the packet she held in her hands. “This is despatch, indeed! I must admire my brother the more, when that spirit of industry and rectitude — so generally tedious in his person — may contribute at last to satisfying my concerns. I expect this to contain news of Ashe.”

  Cassandra stood very still, and a change came over her countenance. “Jane, there is a something you have not disclosed, that is troubling you deeply. I am certain of it. You have been comporting yourself in the strangest manner — most unlike yourself, indeed — from the moment we learned of Madam Lefroy’s death.”

  I settled myself once more at the table, James’s letter slack in my hands. “And should you expect me to behave as myself, in the midst of so dreadful a grief?”

  “As yourself in mourning, perhaps. But instead you go about like a lady of the ton, embarked upon her first Season! Madam Lefroy is all but forgot — and then, this?”

  “Poor brother James! He would be no end offended to hear you speak so of his letters!”

  “Do not sport with me, Jane.” Dear Cassandra’s voice held an unaccustomed ferocity. “I have always been privileged to share your smallest cares, as you have shared mine; but of late I must feel that you are entirely closed to me.” She sat down beside me and reached for my hand. “Your behaviour pains me, I will not deny. I esteemed Madam Lefroy as much as did you, and her death has quite destroyed my peace. You are not alone in your melancholy. Or perhaps you have not observed the torment of our dearest father? It galled him so to be unfitted by poor health for the journey to Ashe. But he was told that all travel must be impossible, with the delicate state of the lungs — Mr. Bowen feared an imflammation, it seems — and so Father was frustrated in his desire to show some small respect of friends cherished the better part of a lifetime. It is not fair in you, Jane — it is most unkind — to exclude your family from your counsels, and turn instead to strangers.”

  “And is James, then, become a stranger?”

  Cassandra sighed. “You know that I do not speak of James.”

  I took up the letter and broke open the seal. There were two full sheets, quite written through and crossed.

  22 December 1804

  Steventon Rectory

  My dear Jane—

  I was gratified to receive your letter of Wednesday last, and found it most proper in every expression of condolence and respect for the Deceased, though perhaps a trifle wanting in the form of its composition. You shall never be a truly accomplished writer, dear Sister, until you have studied the art of orthography and attempted consistency in its employ. In point of length your missive was not deficient, but in the organisation of your ideas—! The postscript alone was a mere jot, and entirely unconnected to the previous subject of your thesis. A sad muddle altogether. But of this, it is perhaps wiser not to speak. I may credit the fullness of your heart — that becoming depth of feeling so natural in the Female — for the unfortunate flow of your words, and the lack of stops to your sentences. I recollect that our excellent Father did not see fit to have you tutored in either Latin or Greek — quite rightly, too, for it should have burdened a mind remarkable for the weaknesses of its Sex! — and that you must be regarded, accordingly, as only half-educated.

  I was so fortunate as to accompany my esteemed colleague, the Reverend Isaac Peter George Lefroy, to the carpenter’s last week, about the ordering of the coffin. I had offered this little service, of attending him
in the arrangements for the burial of the Deceased, and I may assure you that he was excessively quick in his acceptance. The Reverend Lefroy was gratified, I daresay, by my expression of respect and willingness to act in the guise of Son, to one who has always behaved with Paternal Affection. His own boys, I may report, behave abominably; young Ben has not left off crying since the Unhappy Event; and even Mr. Rice, whose assumption of Orders should have taught him delicacy and advised him to stand in a Son’s place, to the father of his Chosen Companion, has failed utterly to lend support. He has taken, in fact, to Spirits, and spends the better part of every evening in throwing dice among the stable-boys.[80] But I was enabled by your letter, my dear Jane, to convey the Austen family’s warmest sentiments of regard and feeling to the Reverend Lefroy, and can extend to you in turn the melancholy gratitude of a Man reduced to nothing by Grief.

  The carpenter resided in Broad Street, in the neighbouring village of Overton; and as we progressed thither, our hearts could not fail to be oppressed by the dreadful memory of the Unhappy Event, in being forced to review again the site of the tragedy itself. You will recall that Madam Lefroy was in the act of quitting Overton, and had attained the top of Overton Hill, when her horse bolted and precipitated her injury. As we drew near the Fatal spot, Reverend Lefroy would not be gainsaid by the most earnest entreaty — he drew up his horse at the hedgerow itself — and holding aloft his whip, he pronounced the awful words.

  “Here, my dear Austen, is the very ground of her unmaking. Here did the poacher sit, under cover of winter’s early dusk; here, he aimed his gun, and fired upon the partridge, that should have gone to Sir Walter’s bag”—for you know, fane, that Sir Walter Martin has always held that hedgerow in fief, and is sadly plagued by poachers—“and here the horse took fright, and ran away with my Beloved, to her tragic ruin.” At this juncture he dismounted, and tore at the hedgerow’s branches, and commenced a fearful weeping; and I must believe that had he proceeded alone, the carpenter should never have received him at all.