Jane and the Genius of the Place Read online

  The curate gasped, and attempted to shake him off; but he succeeded only in securing both of Mr. Collingforth’s hands firmly about his lapels. The gallant Captain Woodford attempted to intervene—and was thrust heavily to one side.

  “LizzyI” I half-rose from my seat. “What can Mr. Collingforth mean by such behaviour?”

  Her elegant head came swiftly round, and caught the scene at a glance. “Contemptible blackguard,” she spat out, “he will draw Edward’s cork in a moment.”

  Not only the children had proved susceptible to Henry’s fighting cant.

  And draw Mr. Bridges’s cork, Collingforth did. A wide, swinging arc of his fist, and the curate fell backwards, blood spurting from his nose. Captain Woodford fell on his adversary immediately, and the three disappeared in a whirling knot of flailing limbs and brightly-coloured breeches. In a moment, however, Neddie had perceived the difficulty—he and Henry raced to the aid of their friends, along with half a dozen others who had no cause to love Collingforth; and the bully was deftly wrenched from the melee.

  Muttering an oath, he retired to nurse his wounds. A man I did not recognise—I suppose I may call him a gendeman—threw an arm about his shoulders and said something sofdy into his ear. The newcomer was dressed all in black, and wore an expression of contempt on his countenance; but his words seemed to calm his friend.

  “There’ll be the Devil to pay,” Collingforth shouted at Mr. Bridges’s dusty back; and then shaking his fist, he moved off through the crowd towards his shabby black chaise.

  If his wife was within, she did not dare to show her face.

  “Well, Lizzy,” my brother said as he pulled himself into the barouche, “I believe it is time we turned towards home. This meeting is become almost a brawl, and I will not have Fanny treated to such scenes.”

  Lizzy’s answer, did she contemplate one, was forestalled by a fearful cry. It was a man’s voice, torn with suffering and revulsion, as though he looked upon the face of evil and knew it for his own. It came from somewhere behind us.

  I turned, aghast, to enquire of Neddie, and saw my own confusion mirrored in my brother’s countenance. And then our entire party was on its feet, and the gentlemen had sprung from the barouche, all fatigue and acrimony forgotten. A crowd had gathered at the open door of Collingforth’s chaise. I looked, and then turned swiftly to gather Fanny to my breast. Death is not a sight for the young, however sporting-minded.

  For spilling from the carriage doorway, arms outflung in supplication, was the figure of a woman. Her streaming hair was dark, her eyes were staring, and tho’ the veil and scarlet habit had been torn from her body, leaving her pale and child-like in a simple cotton shift, I knew her instantly for Mrs. Grey.

  And knew, with a chill at my heart, that she would never ride again.

  1 Edward Austen (1767-1852) was third among the eight Austen children. In 1783, at the age of sixteen, he was adopted by a wealthy cousin, Thomas Knight II, from whom he inherited three estates—Godmersham in Kent, and Steventon and Chawton in Hampshire. Edward lived a life of privilege and ease quite beyond the reach of his siblings. In 1812, he took the surname of Knight.—Editor’s note.

  2 In the late Georgian period, horses of different ages and both sexes commonly raced one another and were handicapped with varying weights designed to level the field. A stone equaled roughly fourteen pounds; from the considerable weight of the Commodore’s handicap, we may assume he was being brought down to a pack of less fleet or older horses.—Editor’s note.

  3 Miss Sharp—whose surname Jane was in the habit of spelling variously with or without a final “e”—refers here to a popular work of young lady’s instruction, Letters from Mrs. Palmerstone to her Daughters, inculcating Morality by Entertaining Narratives (1803), by Mrs. Rachel Hunter.

  4 Richard Tattersall (1724-1795) was the foremost horse trader of London. Although deceased by Jane’s writing of this account in 1805, the institutions he fostered endure in part to this day. By 1775, Tattersall was providing the newly formed Jockey Club with a room (and his famous claret) for its meetings, and in 1780 he opened a Subscription Room, a club with an annual paid membership, for the laying and settling of bets. The committee that adjudicated betting disputes was known as Tattersall’s Committee—the governing body of bookmaking.—Editor’s note.

  5 Frances, Countess Jersey, was finally deceased by August 1805; but not before her ruthless methods had once enslaved the much younger Prince of Wales.—Editor’s note.

  6 Eclipse, a chestnut horse with a white blaze and one white leg, was foaled for the Duke of Cumberland in Windsor Park in the year of the great eclipse: 1764. He was one of the greatest racehorses of all time, and his bloodline is arguably the most important male line in the world of horse racing.—Editor’s note.

  7 It was customary in Austen ‘s time for spectators to gallop alongside the competing horses in the final lengths of a race. Though commonplace, the practise was highly dangerous and often led to mishap—either for the mounted spectator or the racehorses themselves, more than one of whom was denied a victory by the interference of an overzealous fan.—Editor’s note.

  8 Edward refers to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft, first published in 1792. Elizabeth Austen was educated at an excellent finishing school in London, known as “the Ladies’ Eton.” It may be there that she fostered her interest in women’s issues. In 1808, she signed her name in a work written by the radical London feminist Mary Hays.—Editor’s note.

  19 August 1805, cont’d.

  “GOOD GOD! MRS. GREY, IN COLLINGFORTH’S CHAISE.” Neddie threw his elegant top hat into our barouche, and hastened towards the gruesome scene. Henry was hard on his heels.

  “Mamma!” Fanny slipped from my grasp. “What has happened to Mrs. Grey? And why is she lying so, in her shift? Does she suffer from a fit?”

  Mrs. Grey’s face was contorted, her lips thrust apart, and her tongue protuberant; around her neck was a length of red ribbon, such as once must have bound up her long black hair. She had certainly been strangled with it. To gaze upon her was terrible—so much beauty turned horrible in an instant, and utterly beyond salvation.

  With a choked cry from the seat opposite, Anne Sharpe fainted dead away.

  “Sit dawn, Fanny.” Lizzy clutched at her daughter’s sash and tugged on it firmly. “If anyone is suffering from a fit, it is your governess, child—and who can wonder, with a charge so troublesome as yourself? Endeavour to behave with a litde decorum, while Aunt Jane secures Miss Sharpe’s vinaigrette.”

  I had already scrambled about the carriage in search of such an item, and found it at last in a litde travelling case of Fanny’s, tricked out with such necessaries as a lady might require. Extra handkerchiefs, a roll of sticking plaster, tiny scissors, and a packet of threaded needles— and, joy of joys, the crystal flacon filled with smelling salts. I waved it under the governess’s nose, and watched her snort like Henry’s champion.

  Fanny was all concern in a moment, and hovered over Miss Sharpe like a little mother; the governess looked quite ill, indeed, but protested that she was entirely well, and struggled to sit upright with something like her usual composure. She accepted a glass of tepid cordial, but kept her face studiously averted from the Collingforth chaise.

  For my part, I felt no compunction in regarding the interesting scene unfolding to the rear. My brother had not leapt to the dead woman’s side merely from an excess of chivalry—no, in the present instance, such a mark of active concern was absolutely required. The Lord Lieutenant of Kent himself had appointed my brother Justice of the Peace—a capacity in which Neddie had served barely six months. It was an honour without recompense (for gendemen are never offered the insult of remuneration, as a more common magistrate in Town might be), and tedious in its general description, but quite suited to a man of Neddie’s talents and inclination. For tho’ my brother has assumed the polish of Fashion—tho’ he has moved in the best circles from the age of sixteen
, made the Grand Tour with unimpeachable grace, and imbibed all the follies, indulgences, and vices of Society as mother’s milk—he was nonetheless reared in a country parsonage, by a father whose chief values lay in application and industry. Possessed now of great estates—and stewards to manage them; of numerous children—and phalanxes of servants, Neddie should decline into peevishness and indolence, without the care of public office as diversion.

  And watching him as he knelt over the body of Mrs. Grey, I felt a familiar chill at my heart. I had witnessed such scenes too many times before. For a moment, I might have joined Miss Sharpe, in averting my eyes; but another instant’s reflection steeled my resolve. However unpleasant the evil might be, it should encompass all our family; and I could not refuse to help my brother, whom so many occasions had proved so generous to myself. Neddie’s superior knowledge of the world, and easy passage among the Great, had used to comfort his shy litde sisters; now, it was he who should enter a strange and bewildering land, and /who must walk along familiar paths.

  The varied experiences of the past several years have opened a new world entire to my understanding; I have endured and survived encounters with a most unscrupulous body of men, without loss of dignity or a very great diminution of reputation; and I could not but be aware now that Neddie’s role in the present drama must afford me a greater knowledge of the particulars, than I had heretofore been able to command. It is not that I am prone to a morbid curiosity, or find enchantment and delight in the manifestation of evil, but rather that the power of laying plain a convoluted puzzle—to the greater good of some unfortunate, and the generalised comfort of Society—must have its very great satisfaction. I have not yet learned to despise my curiosity, for all my mother’s anxious urging, or the perils of dubious association it brings inevitably in its train. It has been my privilege (tho’ some would call it misfortune) to have the unravelling of a few very tiresome knots in the recent past; and in the present instance of Neddie’s need, my talents might prove of use.

  “What are we to do, Jane?” Lizzy whispered, “for we should not prolong Fanny’s exposure to such a dreadful scene. And yet Neddie—”

  “—must remain,” I agreed. “A Justice is required to think of others before his family.”

  “But, Mamma, how very odd she looks, to be sure!” Fanny stared fascinated at the spectacle near the coach, now virtually obscured by a crowd of the curious. Another instant, and she had mounted to her favourite perch on the box next to Pratt, with the object of gaining a better view.

  “Come down at once, Miss Fanny!” Anne Sharpe exclaimed, and took a decided grip on her charge’s ankles.

  “Perhaps Miss Sharpe and Fanny might pay a visit to the stables,” I murmured to Lizzy. “It is not above five minutes’ walk, and they could enquire after the Commodore. That should divert Fanny’s interest.”

  Lizzy shook her head decisively. “An admirable notion, Jane, but for the murderer we have loose in the grounds!”

  “Murderer?” Fanny slid abruptly back into her seat. “But is Mrs. Grey murdered then, Mamma?”

  Lizzy gathered her eldest into her arms. “I fear that the lady is dead, my Fanny, but how she came to be so, I cannot say. I should not have spoken until Papa had come to us. Depend upon it, your father shall very soon apprehend the whole.”

  Fanny’s eyes might widen at this speech, and her breath come short; but to her credit, the child evinced a tolerable composure. She neither shrieked, nor fell insensible, nor shuddered as with a dreadful presentiment (as might betray an enthusiast of horrid novels), but turned her soft blue eyes upon her governess and said, “Poor Sharpie. I know you have not the stomach for such things—you were taken quite ill when Caky killed a rat once in the nursery.1 But then, it did squeal most horribly under the poker and tongs, and you are a litde goose, are you not?” She patted Miss Sharpe’s hand. “I cannot think that Mrs. Grey, however dead, was the sort to squeal. And do consider, Sharpie, that my father must presendy relieve our fears.”

  Miss Sharpe kissed Fanny’s flushed cheek, and very sensibly produced her chapbook, a serviceable volume in which she has been collecting riddles throughout the summer. The scheme was devised entirely for Fanny’s amusement; and in a very litde while the two were lost in a familiar exchange, and the danger of hysterics was safely past.

  A cicada’s trill burst wildly from the copse at the meeting-grounds’ fringe—a sudden, sharp keening— and the heat, at the moment, was as oppressive as a lap robe.

  “Pray look after the child, Miss Sharpe,” Lizzy said abrupdy. “Jane and I must speak to Mr. Austen.” And with a word to one of the liveried footmen, who had been staring impassively into the middle distance all this while, she was assisted out of the barouche. Immediately I followed.

  A knot of men, high-born and low, had gathered tighdy around my brothers and the Collingforth chaise. With a tap of her parasol on a broad shoulder, Lizzy won her way to the centre, where Denys Collingforth was held firmly in the grip of two of his neighbours.

  “I tell you, I know nothing!” he spat out. “The jade would no more speak to me this morning than she’d look at a cur in the mud. Too fine for Denys Collingforth, and not above saying it to the world. I never came near her, nor she near me!”

  “Then how do you explain, Mr. Collingforth, that she entered your chaise just prior to the final heat?” Lizzy broke in smoothly. “My sister and I observed it ourselves.”

  The gentleman’s mouth fell open, and the colour drained from his face. “Impossible!” he cried. “I was absent from the blasted carriage the better part of the day! Everett will vouch for me—and an hundred others!”

  “Where is Mr. Everett?” Neddie cried, with a look of interest for his wife.

  The stranger dressed in black, who had supported Collingforth in his dispute with Mr. Bridges, shouldered his way through the crowd. “I am Joshua Everett.”

  “Are you acquainted with this man?”

  “I am. He is Denys Collingforth, of Prior’s Farm.”

  “And did you bear him company at any time this morning?”

  “For the entirety of it, sir. We breakfasted at eight, drove out to the meeting-grounds and secured our place, and left a boy to look after the horses.”

  “That would have been at what hour?” Neddie pressed.

  Mr. Everett shrugged, and looked to Collingforth for corroboration. “Ten, perhaps?”

  “Half-past. You forget the tankard of ale we drank along the road.”

  “Half-past,” Neddie said, as tho’ he possessed a mental ledger of Collingforth’s doings. “And then, Mr. Everett?”

  “Then we walked about the grounds, gave a look to the horses, placed some bets with a few gentlemen among our acquaintance—and took up a position near the cocking ring.”

  “I saw them there,” a voice called from the crowd.

  “And I,” said another.

  Neddie nodded swiftiy at my brother Henry, who went in search of Collingforth’s acquaintance.

  “All that would have been prior to the heats themselves, Collingforth.”

  ‘Yes. I watched those at the rail.”

  “Your wife did not accompany you this morning?”

  “Mrs. Collingforth is indisposed. And with Everett up from Town—”

  “I see. And so you insist that there was no one within the chaise when this lady observed Mrs. Grey to enter it?”

  “I tell you, Austen, I never returned to the coach until the moment I pulled open this door!” The desperate man glanced with revulsion at Mrs. Grey’s rigid countenance. She lay, partiy covered with a borrowed shawl, a few feet from my brother, as tho’ resting under his protection. “Can not you fetch a surgeon, and close the woman’s eyes? How she stares at us all! ‘Tis hardly decent!”

  “Is there a surgeon present?” Neddie called harshly over the ring of faces.

  Muttering, and a jostling to the rear; then a short, round-faced man with a bald pate appeared, bowing to left and right. “Tobias Wood
,” he said, “at your service, Mr. Justice, sir.”

  “Very well, Mr. Wood. We shall require your assistance by and by, in removing the corpse to Canterbury. Perhaps for the present, it would suffice to close her eyes.”

  This Mr. Wood did, with a gendeness of purpose that must relieve the hearts of many.

  “Madam,” my brother said to his wife with punctilious courtesy, “you have said that you observed Mrs. Grey to enter Mr. Collingforth’s chaise just before the final heat. That would be—” He consulted his watch, and glanced at Henry.

  “—sometime before two o’clock,” Henry supplied. “I recollect the hour, because it was the Commodore’s last race.”

  “I should put Mrs. Grey’s approach to the carriage rather closer to half-past one,” Lizzy said clearly. “But you know it makes no odds, Neddie, because Mrs. Grey was certainly alive when the heat was run. We all saw her riding her black at the head of the pack, and afterwards she drove her phaeton out of the grounds. I merely raised the point because Mr. Collingforth seems to have forgot the earlier visit.”

  “I know nothing of any visit!” he shouted; and a vein in his neck pulsed dangerously. One of his captors lost his grip on the man, and Lizzy stepped backwards as the right arm swung free.

  “I perfecdy apprehend your reasons for raising the point,” Neddie said politely to his wife, as tho’ he presided over a ruling in a parlour game. “Did Mrs. Grey knock upon the chaise’s door?”

  “She did. It opened immediately to admit her.”

  “So there was someone within?”

  “I must assume so. I did not glimpse the face.”

  “Miss Austen?” Neddie enquired formally of me.

  I shook my head in the negative.

  “Mr. Collingforth,” he continued, “what of the boy you engaged to stand watch over the carriage?”

  “Ran off to spend his coin, I must suppose. Such things have occurred before.”