Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas: Being a Jane Austen Mystery Page 4

  John Coachman pulled up his horses before the south porch and immediately two liveried footmen helped us from the carriage. In the interval required for our journey, the weak Christmas sun had vanished, and tho’ the hour was not much past two o’clock, a determined dusk appeared to be falling. The temperature had also plummeted. I placed an arm around Caroline’s shoulders and hurried her inside.

  The entrance hall of The Vyne is one of the most remarkable sights in Hampshire, being deeper than it is wide, and almost entirely filled with an Adamesque staircase designed in the last century by the late John Chute—an aesthete, world traveller, sometime-architect, and bosom friend of Horace Walpole. As a member of the Strawberry Hill Set (named for Walpole’s Gothick home), the vanished Chute placed Taste above everything—even the continuation of his family line. He spent his hours collecting antiquities and designing monuments for The Vyne’s famous chapel; and tho’ his fanciful fretwork of white-panelled steps still rises triumphantly at the centre of the house, the estate passed to a secondary line at John Chute’s death.

  Caroline was staring open-mouthed at the staircase; the pillars and railings that defined it were wrapt with heavy garlands of holly and bay, tied up with gold silk ribbon. The scent of greens mingled with the smell of beeswax and clove. Having been treated to the delights of The Vyne these twenty years at least, I occupied myself in drawing off my gloves while the child stared.

  “Is that a Yule log, Aunt Jane?” she enquired, pointing at the great oak trunk, twice Caroline’s girth, smouldering on the hearth.

  “It is, my sweet. They will have lighted it last evening, I daresay. You may watch it burn down slowly whilst you are here.”

  “Too slowly.” Beside me, Cassandra shivered; the heat provided by the log was prevented from reaching us by the quantity of architecture filling the middle of the room.

  “Mrs. Austen! And all the Austens, exactly as I had hoped and desired! It is too good of you to travel across the country like this. I hope you find that our Christmas cheer is equal to expectation.” Elizabeth Chute is a handsome lady some five years older than I, whose snapping dark eyes and carefully arranged toilette proclaim the lady of Fashion. Today she wore cherry-red sarcenet, with a braided trim of chocolate, and a figured turban becomingly set in her dark hair. I first dined with the Chutes, some fifteen years since, and have danced in Eliza’s drawing-room—and I may say that on this occasion she appeared in as admirable looks, and as high a flow of spirits, as she had when a young bride in the full bloom of youth.

  “Mrs. Chute,” I said warmly as she grasped my hands in both of hers. “A very happy Christmas.”

  “Jane,” she murmured. “Do not affect formality with me, I beg, tho’ it has been an age since we met! Caroline, my dear, is that beautiful creature your very own? She is so cunningly turned out, I declare she shall throw all the other ladies into the shade! And now let us repair to a better fire—for the chill in this hall is impossible to dispel!”

  We gave up our wraps to the footmen and followed our hostess down a panelled passage. The Vyne’s remarkable reception rooms are very little altered from Tudor times, however much the Strawberry Hill Set might have wished otherwise. As I made my way through the large drawing-room, however, I saw it was filled with a colourful array of strangers—something our Steventon family could not have anticipated from Eliza’s missive. But there could be no turning back now; I must endure the gauntlet of critical eyes, with chin raised high.

  My brother James, who led our parade, halted before William Chute, Eliza’s husband, and bowed; the two are old cronies these many years, their friendship having to do entirely with dogs, horses, and guns. Mr. Chute married his Eliza when she was three-and-twenty, a lady reared in comfortable circumstances and considerable elegance; he was four-and thirty, a trifling disparity at the time, and only lately come into his inheritance. Twenty years on, Elizabeth still appears to considerable advantage, enjoying all the blessings of health, prosperity, and high spirits—while William looks the full weight of his years, being much weathered from his persistent exposure to the out-of-doors. Tho’ he has spent the better part of the past two decades in Parliament, his acquaintance with London has given him no town bronze; he remains the affable and unaffected country gentleman he ever was.

  The Chutes make an enviable picture: the lady so charming and gay, the master so mild and easy; it is a pity that they have no houseful of children to support them. But for all their good fortune, they were denied this single material blessing, and chose instead to adopt a distant relation—much as my own brother Edward was adopted by Sir Thomas Knight and his lady.2 In the Chutes’ case, however, the choice fell upon a girl—one Caroline Wiggett, who came to The Vyne at the age of four. She is now a shy, blushing miss of fifteen, who retires with relief from her elders to the schoolroom whenever possible. She stepped forward on this occasion, however, and bobbed a curtsey to our Caroline in welcome. James-Edward hovered near the two, uncertain whether to treat Miss Wiggett as child or young lady.

  “Let me make you known to each other,” Eliza declared in a ringing tone. “How ever am I to accomplish such a task, Mr. Chute, when we are so bewildered by numbers?”

  “Leave ’em to present themselves,” he suggested.

  She scowled at him in mock annoyance. “That should never do. Pray attend, dear friends! You have before you Mr. James Austen, rector of Steventon and vicar, I might add, of our own Sherborne St. John—we hope very much, Mr. Austen, that you will favour us with a short service of Evensong tonight, in the Chapel, in respect of the season.”

  “I should be delighted, ma’am,” James said.

  “Next to him is his excellent wife, Mrs. James Austen; his mother, Mrs. George Austen; and his sisters, Miss Austen and Miss Jane Austen. The young people are Master James-Edward and Miss Caroline Austen.” Eliza drew breath. “I am afraid, Caroline, that I cannot present your doll.”

  “Jemima,” she piped, and held up her treasure.

  “Jemima,” Eliza repeated. “Allow me to make Lady Gambier known to your acquaintance—”

  An aging woman, of considerable magnificence in dress, who inclined her head coldly at little Caroline.

  “Her niece, Miss Gambier—”

  A Fashionable miss in her late twenties, I should judge, and approaching the years of Danger. Tho’ fair-haired and blue-eyed, she was possessed of a something forbidding in her countenance.

  “—and her nephew, Mr. Edward Gambier.”

  The gentleman was just enough James-Edward’s senior, to figure as a possible hero: his curling locks guinea-gold, and his address assured.

  “Gambier!” my mother cried. “But surely you must be connexions of our dear Admiral?”

  “I am his wife,” Lady Gambier replied.

  Admiral Gambier is known far beyond the Service, for he is called upon, from time to time, to intercede on such delicate matters as the Government has in train. Even now he is absent from England about the business of the American War—in parley at Ghent over the cessation of hostilities between the Crown and that upstart nation. But we have nearer reasons to regard him: my brother Frank has twice served under the Admiral’s flag, and Gambier’s favour has advanced Frank’s career. Indeed, all the Gambiers must be of consuming interest to our party, for Lady Gambier was born a Mathew—first cousin to poor Anne, James’s late lamented wife.

  Beside me, James’s second wife was all alertness, quivering like a tightly-strung bow.

  “I have two sons, both Post Captains, in the Royal Navy,” my mother said warmly, “and the elder has excellent cause to be grateful to the Admiral.”

  “So kind,” Lady Gambier murmured indifferently.

  Mrs. Chute had turned already to a handsome gentleman of perhaps thirty, whose dress and looks proclaimed him a prosperous man of Town. A gentleman of independent fortune—perhaps a political crony of William Chute’s, I thought; and was thus surprized to learn that “Mr. L’Anglois is my husband’s confidential
secretary.”

  Eliza pronounced the name Langles, but I guessed it was properly Langwah, in the French stile—which explained the man’s air of elegance. The French carry refinement in their veins.

  “Mr. Raphael West,” Eliza said, “I know you have already met.”

  Raphael West? I performed my curtsey to the gentleman, who had hung back throughout the introductions. His right hand clasped a book, its place marked with one finger; his expression was all wearied tolerance. I noticed that he was dressed in deepest mourning. A near loss, then, and a recent one.

  “We are entirely indebted to Mr. West, indeed,” my mother said. “You will know, Lady Gambier, that we suffered an accident in our equipage yesterday—and Mr. West sacrificed his own comfort, that we might be conveyed safely to the parsonage.”

  “I beg your pardon, Mamma,” I broke in. “Mr. West we may have encountered—but to meet Mr. Raphael West is something else entirely! Am I correct, sir, that you an artist—and the son of Mr. Benjamin West?”

  “You have found me out, Miss Austen,” he replied with a bow.

  “I was privileged to see your father’s Christ Rejected by the Elders while in Town this past September. It is the only representation of our Saviour that has ever contented me.”

  “My father shall be honoured to hear it.” Again I was conscious of that too-close scrutiny from Mr. West’s eyes; I understood, now, the discipline that authorised it. He was trained to look past one’s countenance, and take the measure of muscle and bone.

  “Raphael West?” Mary edged forward, her right hand dramatically at her throat. She slipped her left arm around young Caroline’s shoulders, a tender gesture I had never witnessed before, and pulled the child close in a melting maternal pose. “It is an honour to meet you, sir. I have long admired your father’s portrait of you as an infant—held in the arms of your mother! Can there be anything more eternal than the bond between a woman and her child?”

  “If so, ma’am, I have yet to encounter it,” he said; but I detected a satiric glint in his eye. Who knew, indeed, the nature of his relations with his parents? The assumptions of the world are rife with hypocrisy.

  “Pish!” The voice was high-pitched and verging on the hysteric; the comment was accompanied by a snapping of the fingers. “If we are to talk of fame, West, we have to look no further than Miss Austen herself! Dear Lady, where have you been hiding yourself this age? In a garret, the better to scribble your outrageous nonsense?”

  It must, it could only be, Mr. Thomas-Vere Chute, William’s brother. I had but to revolve the thought, and the creature was upon me. He availed himself of my hand and bent low, his lips almost grazing my skin.

  A vanished age might have called Thomas-Vere a Macaroni. Ours contents itself with the term dandy. Tho’ a recipient of Holy Orders and ostensibly dedicated to the Church, Thomas-Vere is more properly known as an Aesthete. He is an enthusiast of opera, an ardent follower of Kean and Siddons, and a devotée of Dress in all its extremes of Fashion. When he bows, a quantity of fobs and seals jingle at his waistcoat; the shoulders of his jacket are padded with buckram; and it is whispered that he even pads his hose—the better to fill out his spindly shanks. The most severe of his afflictions is a quizzing-glass, which he thinks to employ to devastating effect, putting all his acquaintance out of countenance. Add to this a penchant for wigs, and a valet who delights in arranging them, and you have a picture of the man.

  As he murmured over my hand, I observed Cassandra to roll her eyes; Mr. West’s lips quirked ironically.

  “Look to your secrets, West,” Thomas-Vere declared in an exaggerated whisper as he straightened from his caresses. “We have admitted a Celebrated Authoress into our midst, and before her penetrating eye all is revealed. We owe the very novel you hold to Miss Austen’s pen. Set it down immediately, I beg! The lady’s wit is more dangerous than a basketful of adders!”

  My eyes strayed to the book in Mr. West’s hand and the gold lettering on its spine. It was the second volume of Mansfield Park—and he had read fully half of it. I flushed. If the Chutes’ guests were formerly ignorant of my secret, they were now all alive to its possibilities. A novelist, scrutinising their every word and gesture, in order to ape them! It was not to be borne. No one should dare to come near me for the remainder of the holiday.

  “I look forward to discussing literature with you, Miss Austen,” Mr. West said with equanimity.

  I was released from his probing gaze and commanded to accept a glass of punch, William Chute being just the sort of man to welcome his neighbours with a steaming bowl of brandy and lemon. We seated ourselves in little groups about the room as a parlour maid appeared with sweetmeats and cakes, a swell of incidental chatter rising now the introductions were done. The adventure of the carriage accident must be canvassed again, for the eager amusement of The Vyne party; the prospect of hunting on the morrow debated, as well as the general trend in the weather; and intelligence of family events shared to the full.

  Mary, I observed, was still attempting to pose with Caroline for the benefit of Mr. West. No doubt she hoped that he might immortalise her in his sketchbook—or capture her in oils for the next Academy exhibition! Caroline was fidgeting under the iron hold of her mother’s hand, and James-Edward took care to go nowhere near the parental end of the room.

  Neither, I observed, did Raphael West. He had resumed the perusal of his book.

  “Condolences are due to you, I understand, Mrs. Austen,” Eliza said in a lowered tone as she settled herself beside us. Mamma and I were seated next to one another on a comfortable settee, and Eliza had crossed the room in her desire to convey her sympathy.

  “If you would speak of the lost hamper of brawn,” Mamma replied, “I assure you I do not think of it above once a day.”

  Eliza’s brow furrowed in bewilderment and she glanced at me. “I meant to refer to Captain Charles Austen’s wife. I am correct in thinking she passed away this autumn? She was quite young, was she not?”

  “Sadly so,” I supplied. We had never loved Fanny Palmer as well as we ought, because we had so little known her—being a child of Bermuda, she married my younger brother Charles while he served on the Atlantic station, when she was but eighteen. Seven years later, she was dead—of the birth of her fourth daughter, who survived her only a fortnight.

  “How does the Captain bear it? He was very much attached to her, I believe?”

  “I have rarely known any man more sincerely grieved,” I said. “He has lately quitted us for active service on the Mediterranean Station; it is to be hoped that duty and command will recover him, in time.”

  Of the little girls, the eldest barely six, who had been left to the care of their grandmamma Palmer in Keppel Street, I said nothing. Tho’ we were fond of these nieces, we knew them hardly at all—the bulk of their young lives having been spent abroad or at sea. Fanny herself had died aboard Charles’s ship, the Namur, as it lay off Sheerness. Indeed, I suspect that Charles blamed himself for keeping her too long aboard, as tho’ the ship had proved pestilential. He resigned his command almost immediately after his wife’s death, and sought a posting into the Phoenix.

  My brother Edward, who lost his Elizabeth a few years since in similar circumstances, posted to Sheerness to comfort his brother; but Charles was not to be consoled. He could not quit England soon enough. I believe that all our thoughts have turned to him, alone upon the seas at Christmastide. My mother’s countenance was troubled; she held a scrap of lace to her lips.

  “How do you come to be acquainted with Mr. West?” I enquired of Eliza, in an effort to turn the conversation. “Are you intimate with his family when in London?”

  “Not at all.” She adjusted the ruby bracelet at her wrist. “He is come to The Vyne in support of his father, who is to attempt a large historical painting, I believe, on the subject of Parliament. Something to do with the end to our European wars, and the exile of Napoleon; I do not pretend to know what it is.”

  The Monster
who had so determined our nation’s fears, for the better part of my adult life—whose military adventures on land and sea had shaped the destinies of my brothers—whose intrigues against the Kingdom had required the subtle employment of such men of parts as my late esteemed Rogue, Lord Harold Trowbridge—Napoleon—was defeated. His fall was declared complete but six months ago, and his exile to Elba engineered by the British government. Henceforth his guard was to be kept by officers of our Army appointed to the task. The celebrations in London that greeted this monumental coup, and the return to the Throne of France of the Bourbon kings, occupied most of the summer. Publick fêtes and displays of fireworks, publick parties in the streets, appearances by the Prince Regent, and a gala party at White’s Club—which our own brother Henry was privileged to attend—had helped to relieve the high spirits and exultation all England must feel.

  I wondered, from time to time, how Lord Harold should have greeted such a spectacle; and heard his wry voice in my mind. Exclaim over your sudden access of safety if you must, Jane—but do not believe in it, until Buonaparte is dead.

  “I can easily credit that the Regent would commission a great work on such a subject,” I said—for the Prince is nothing if not a squanderer of coin and a promoter of Self. “I am relieved that he chose Mr. West to accomplish it. The commission might have gone to Sir Thomas Lawrence—and tho’ he is a fine painter of faces, he lacks Mr. West’s sweeping grandeur.”

  “If Parliament were filled with women,” Eliza returned, “Lawrence should be our man.”