Jane and the Canterbury Tale Page 5

  “You had no notion he survived the fever that was reported to have killed him?” my brother asked mildly.

  “None whatsoever! Do you sincerely believe I should have countenanced Mrs. Fiske’s marriage yesterday to Captain MacCallister, had I doubted the veracity of those reports?”

  “I do not.”

  “Very well.” Mr. Moore looked slightly relieved. “Then I suppose it is for us, now, to determine what is to be done.”

  My brother knit his brows. “I propose to await Dr. Bredloe, as I have stated already. There must be an inquest, and it is for the coroner to decide when and where that shall be conducted. Once Bredloe has seen enough of the remains, I propose to remove Mr. Fiske to a more suitable location in Canterbury—whichever publick house Bredloe chuses for the empanelment of his jury.”

  “But there is Mrs. MacCallister to consider,” I interjected. “Surely she must be told?”

  “On no account would I have us commit such needless folly!” Mr. Moore’s words burst from his mouth with a ferocity I had never witnessed in him—and he was a man whose ill-temper was notorious. “No possible good may be served by cutting up that unfortunate woman’s peace; she is happy in her present union; let her remain so! It should be the final insult her late husband might deliver, to destroy Mrs. MacCallister’s reputation—having already destroyed so much.”

  “You forget yourself, Moore,” Edward said bluntly. “The man was foully murdered. Would you deny even Curzon Fiske his measure of English justice?”

  “I would deny such a man anything he had so palpably failed to earn,” Mr. Moore returned with heat.

  “Gentlemen!” I cried. “I beg of you—a quarrel between yourselves cannot hope to serve our ends. Pray consider what you are about.”

  Edward smiled grimly, and Mr. Moore bowed—more in respect of a lady, than of any sense I might have uttered.

  “There is but one honourable course of action before us,” the clergyman insisted. “Convey to that unhappy pair the intelligence of Fiske’s discovery if you must—but preserve an absolute silence regarding the nature and time of his death. The man was murdered, so you say—but we cannot possibly apprehend the circumstances; he might have done away with himself, after all; and the principal point, as I see it, is that Fiske is no more—as he was believed, long since, not to be!”

  “But—” Edward objected.

  “That Fiske is dead,” Mr. Moore blundered on, “preserves the respectability of his wife’s late marriage; and I cannot see that canvassing the exact hour or agent of that death will achieve any greater purpose! The blackguard may have died two days ago, as easily as half an hour since; and therefore, no discussion of the subject ought to be allowed further than this room. Will you both swear to that?”

  He glared defiantly first at my brother, and then at me, as tho’ suspecting I should be the sort of woman determined to spoil sport. I could not find it in my heart to disappoint him.

  “But surely the time of Mr. Fiske’s murder must tell us a good deal about the identity of the one who killed him?” I observed, with all apparent innocence. “It appears to me a vital point. When he was merely a faceless pilgrim, anyone might have done the deed; a mere footpad or chance miscreant. But as a gentleman formerly well-known in the neighbourhood—one returned from distant climes at almost the very hour of his wife’s marriage to another!—Fiske becomes a sinister presence, one of peculiar interest. The very elements of scandal you would suppress, Mr. Moore, are exactly those that must be probed, if the murderer is to be named.”

  “Trust a woman to entirely misapprehend the facts,” he retorted impatiently.

  “I would argue that my sister has grasped them more clearly than yourself, Moore,” Edward said, with a speaking look for me. “Captain and Mrs. MacCallister were to set out from Chilham Castle on their wedding trip this very morning, were they not? A tour of Cornwall, I collect, where the Captain possesses some acquaintance?”

  “He has the loan of a country house in the neighbourhood of Penzance,” Mr. Moore supplied. He ran his fingers through his greying locks distractedly. “But they intended to reach no further than London today, and were to spend an interval in Town, I believe. All the more reason to hold the inquest quietly in their absence.”

  “You cannot be serious, Moore,” Edward retorted in exasperation. “It will not fadge, and you know it. I am First Magistrate for this neighbourhood; I regard my charge as a sacred one; I should never shut my eyes to certain truths, merely because they invite scandal for one or another of my acquaintance. Curzon Fiske was once a respectable member of Kentish society—and you would hush up his death as tho’ he were a convict, shot while escaping from Newgate! You must be mad to think I should agree to such terms, merely from considerations of Mrs. MacCallister’s reputation! If she married MacCallister while Fiske yet lived, she undoubtedly did so in error—and the ill may be immediately remedied, with a quiet service performed this very evening at Chilham. You must see the sense of that—and I am persuaded you will regret your scheme, once your mind has grown cool.”

  “And I am persuaded that you will long regret this morning’s work, Edward, when events have destroyed much more than Curzon Fiske!” The clergyman struggled for mastery of his temper; appeared on the point of speaking further; then wheeled and strode in fury from the room.

  My brother and I stared at one another in consternation.

  “Well, well.” Edward sighed. “I cannot think that marrying George Moore was the wisest thing poor Harriot has ever done.”

  “We must not judge him by this morning’s events.”

  “I beg your pardon, Jane, but I judge the fellow on a host of events, witnessed over a period of some years,” my brother retorted bitterly. He paused in contemplation a moment, and I was reminded of nothing so much as my late father, when wrestling with a spiritual question of no small doctrinal importance. I had never thought Edward very like dear Papa before—Henry has more of my father’s humour in him; but there is as much Religion, I must suppose, in the conduct of Law as there is in the salvation of men’s souls.

  Edward’s eyes met mine. “Tho’ I hate to do it, I suppose I must send an Express after the MacCallisters, Jane—and tear them from their happy dream as soon as may be.”

  “Ought not the message to come from Mr. James Wildman’s hand?” I suggested gently. “He is, after all, Mrs. MacCallister’s cousin. Better that he should break the unhappy truth, than that she should learn it from a complete stranger.”

  “You have the right of it, Jane, as always,” Edward said gratefully. “I shall roust Wildman from the billiard room straight away, and set him down with pen and paper.”

  “I wonder that Mr. Wildman himself did not recognise Curzon Fiske,” I said thoughtfully. “For surely he must have known him well, in better days.”

  “Nobody thinks to recognise a dead man,” my brother said simply, and quitted the room.

  There was a bustle above-stairs; I suspected the coroner was arrived. And so, with one last glance for the silent figure laid out on the trestle table, I closed the scullery door behind me and ascended to the Great Hall.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Uses of Gossip

  “Now let the woman speak her tale this day.

  You act as if you’re drinking too much ale.”

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

  21 OCTOBER 1813, CONT.

  DR. HAMISH BREDLOE IS A SCOTSMAN, WHO LEARNT HIS profession in Edinburgh—a very knowledgeable centre of learning, I believe, in matters of natural philosophy. Having established an excellent practice as a physician in London some decades since, he had lately retired to the wealthy environs of Canterbury, and had been burdened with the office of coroner at his own request. At a time in life when a man might be expected to cultivate peace, and bask in the glow of honours accumulated through long years’ acquaintance with the Great, Dr. Bredloe had discovered a restlessness and boredom that might soon have killed him, ha
d he not devoted his energies to the determination of Manners of Death, and the inveighing against Misadventure, Malice Aforethought, and Person or Persons Unknown. An interest in the sordid and the low may not have won him numerous invitations to dine among the great houses of Kent; but it had rendered him invaluable to gentlemen like Edward—who were charged with the maintenance of justice, and took that charge in all seriousness. Edward regarded Dr. Bredloe as a man possessed of the keenest understanding, and one whose good opinion he would not lightly foreswear. Hence his utter abhorrence of Mr. Moore’s proposals, regarding a conspiracy of silence; Edward should never attempt to suborn the coroner, as he must undoubtedly have done had he acceded to the clergyman’s scheme.

  Mr. Moore was not to be discovered above-stairs, and had perhaps sought reflection in his wife’s company, or in guiding his young son through a lesson in Greek, as I had observed he was wont to do when the desire for mastery was firmly upon him. Edward was able, therefore, to conduct Dr. Bredloe to the body at once—explaining, as he did so, the curious circumstance of the gentleman’s identity.

  Beyond curtseying at Dr. Bredloe’s observance, and bridling a little under his sharp glance, I did not hover in the coroner’s vicinity. He would undoubtedly wish to disrobe the corpse, and there could be no cause for my observance of such an examination; I was content to learn the doctor’s conclusions once he had regained Edward’s book room, and was established over a glass of Madeira.

  In the meantime, I sought out my niece Fanny.

  I found her standing distractedly in the little saloon at the rear of the house, arranging a posy of late summer flowers that must have come from a succession-house, for none of Godmersham’s blooms had survived the relentless chill rains.

  “Aren’t they lovely, Aunt?” she murmured, her cheeks aflame. “Mr. Thane has been so kind as to send them from Chilham. He knows nothing of our sad business here—reflects only on the gaieties of last evening, poor fellow! What a shock it shall be to him, when he hears!”

  Mr. Thane, offering a tribute of flowers to a lady, the morning after a ball. The Regency Buck was up to every trick, and should never be backwards in any attention—my dear Fanny’s head was certain to be turned. She could not leave off admiring her flowers, though a nuncheon had been thoughtfully laid out upon a sideboard: sliced apples, a large cheese, cold ham and tongue, and a platter of sausages with the special mustard for which Mrs. Driver is famous.

  Of the gentlemen, my nephew George, Jupiter Finch-Hatton, and Mr. Lushington—I had forgot to mention Mr. Lushington, but shall explain him presently—were to be seen; the rest of the shooting-party, Fanny informed me, were hanging over Mr. James Wildman as he attempted to craft his delicate missive to his cousin Adelaide.

  “Tho’ ten to one they are merely disturbing his train of thought, and causing him to blot his copy,” Finch-Hatton observed with a yawn. “I declined to make another of such a great passel of boobies.”

  “Mr. Plumptre might be of signal assistance,” Fanny retorted, her eyes flashing, “for he is a very learned young man, I believe, and devotes considerable hours to questions of philosophy.”

  “—Sure to drive poor Mrs. MacCallister into strong hysterics, then,” Finch-Hatton rejoined, “and make a vile situation entirely desperate. Plumptre was never such a dead bore when he was living in Kent—I declare that Oxford has much to answer for, when unexceptionable young men are turned prosy and prudish, and all from reading too much in books. Ought to be outlawed, in my opinion.”

  Mr. Lushington burst out in laughter at this sally, and speared a sausage with a convenient knife. “Good God, George,” he said—meaning Mr. Finch-Hatton, not my young nephew; there are no less than four Georges at Godmersham at present. “A few more books might render your conversation bearable—to me as well as to the ladies. Any more of it, I warn you, and I’ll pack you off to Oxford myself—tho’ you are several years past your scholarly prime.”

  Mr. Stephen Rumbold Lushington is an excellent man, all smiling, wide teeth, and good address; he is our Member of Parliament for Canterbury, and is, I daresay, ambitious and insincere—your short men often are—but he speaks so well of Milton, when he has a volume of the master in his hands, that I am a little in love with him, despite his being a year younger than myself and already married these fifteen years at least. And why is Mr. Lushington staying the night at Godmersham, one may ask? Because in this house there is a constant succession of small events; somebody is always going or coming. The world entire walks in and out of my brother Edward’s doors and heartily consents to remain for dinner. Mr. Lushington, besides being our MP, is also Manager of the Lodge Hounds; he came to talk of fox hunting with young Edward, and shall be leaving us one day or another. I shall make good use of him before he goes, however, for I mean to get a frank for my letter to Cassandra—if ever I find a moment to sit down and write it.1

  “Is it true, Aunt, that the dead pilgrim is really Curzon Fiske?” George demanded breathlessly. He was, after all, but seventeen—and tho’ much inclined to ape Jupiter’s affectations, and in awe of Mr. Lushington, he could not mask avidity with studied indifference.

  “So it would seem. Your father, I am sure, shall tell you all about it.”

  “Dashed smoky affair,” Mr. Lushington remarked briskly. “But Mr. Knight shall sort it all out for the rest of us, I am sure.”

  “Were you at all acquainted with Mr. Fiske in former years, sir?” I asked.

  He appeared to hesitate, tho’ perhaps he was merely digesting his sausage. “I suppose I knew him a little, but very long ago, I’m afraid. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I learnt he had been found but a stone’s throw from this door—and dead yet again!”

  “Poor Mrs. MacCallister,” murmured Fanny in my ear. “To think that she was married to the Captain in all innocence—and that the union is now thrown under a cloud! How unkind is Fate! I have been turning it over in my mind all morning—and am so troubled in spirit I declare I have not been able to swallow a mouthful! Every feeling revolts at the sight of food, when such tragedy oppresses the soul!”

  “Then I am certain I possess not the slightest sensibility at all,” I told her mildly, “for I have never sat down to breakfast—and am utterly famished! I shall certainly carve myself a slice of ham, and perhaps some cheese, and if Mrs. Driver can discover one of Cook’s apple tarts hiding in the larder, I may be so bold as to request a slice, with a strong pot of tea. If events continue as they have begun, my dear Fanny, we are all of us likely to miss dinner, as well—so pray force yourself to whatever you find least disgusting, lest you faint dead away upon a sopha.”

  “The sausages are excellent,” Mr. Lushington observed.

  “Made of pheasant,” Jupiter Finch-Hatton added with a roguish look, “tho’ not the ones we bagged this morning.”

  “Pheasant,” Fanny whispered with revulsion, the circumstances of Mr. Fiske’s discovery no doubt rising in her mind. “How can you speak so, Mr. Finch-Hatton, when a man lies dead but one floor below?”

  “Now, don’t go all missish on me, Fanny.” He pierced a slice of apple with an idle fork, and offered it to her with a bow. “Man’s been dead for years, after all—or as good as.”

  “But only consider of the anxieties that must attend this dreadful news among all those who remain at Chilham Castle,” she returned in a trembling accent. “Mrs. Thane, for instance, and … and … young Mr. Thane, both of whom must feel so deeply for Mrs. MacCallister in the present case—do you not think, Aunt, that it is our duty to accompany Mr. Wildman when he returns home, to condole with all his relations? We might be able to assure them, from our hearts, that every proper observance is being accorded to the unfortunate Mr. Fiske’s remains.”

  As I wished very much to observe the effect of the unfortunate Mr. Fiske’s second death upon those most nearly related to him, I was on the point of adopting Fanny’s scheme; but I required rather more of the late gentleman’s history first.


  “My dear girl,” I suggested, “you are looking decidedly unwell. Let us send the gentlemen back to their billiards, until such time as the coroner is able to hear their story of the morning’s events—while you and I repair to your boudoir. We might have our tea and apple tart brought up at once, and consume them there in peace.”

  “I assure you, I could not swallow a mouthful!”

  “Fanny, I should like to have a word with you in private.”

  As one of my speaking looks attended these words, her indignant expression faded. “Very well, Aunt. I do admit to wanting my tea.” She ignored Mr. Finch-Hatton’s speared apple, sweeping by that cosseted gentleman with a scornful look that quite astonished him. “George, do pray challenge Mr. Finch-Hatton and Mr. Lushington to a game—and mind,” she added in a lowered tone as she passed her brother, “that you trounce Jupiter soundly.”

  “Now,” I said once we were settled by a brisk fire in the comfortable sitting room Edward had made over for his eldest daughter’s comfort, and which had been freshened with paint and hung with gaily-flowered paper during her absence that summer, “tell me everything you know of Curzon Fiske and Adelaide Thane.”

  Fanny’s generally placid countenance was suffused in an instant with a wary aspect. “I did not take you for a common gossip, Aunt Jane.”

  “Nonsense! You have been in receipt of my letters your whole life—and they are never filled with anything else! Very amusing, too, I daresay you find them. Do not be a hypocrite, Fanny. I cannot admire Jupiter Finch-Hatton, but I confess in this we are in agreement—missishness does not suit you.”

  My niece flushed. “It is because of such creatures as Finch-Hatton and the rest that I was determined never to canvass all that old business—when Mrs. MacCallister is so happy, and so blessed, in her present choice. If you knew the avid looks and whispered slander that have followed her, even in the weeks preceding her wedding-party … I should never willingly add to so vile a chorus.”