Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House jam-6 Page 8

  “You are very interested in a fellow who was no better than a fool, and who is now feeding sharks off Corunna, Miss Austen.”

  His voice — formerly so weak and gentle in its expression — fell like a lash upon my ears. I looked up, and dripped hot tallow across my fingertips.

  “I listen to the talk of the Marines outside, from time to time,” he said slowly, his half-lidded eyes never leaving my face. “They say that the captain of the Stella Marts has been charged with murder. I thought I imagined their words — in the rages of fever, you understand, much may be distorted — but now I am no longer certain. Is that man accused of the death of Porthiault?”

  I nodded. “Captain Seagrave is charged with having killed Captain Porthiault after the Manon struck. He is to go before a court-martial on Thursday. The outcome is … uncertain.”

  LaForge pursed his lips. “A pity. Seagrave is a gallant fellow — a Heart of Oak, as you English say. Clever in his tactics and fearless in their execution — he fought like a tiger, as though all the hounds of hell were at his back. Are you in love with him?”

  I gasped incredulously. “You mistake me, sir! Captain Seagrave has long been a married man!”

  LaForge lifted his shoulders dismissively. “There must be some reason you concern yourself.”

  “The Captain is my brother's fellow officer. I am acquainted with his wife.”

  “Ah.” The surgeon's voice was now faintly mocking. “The bosom friend of the wife. I understand. But you do not believe this Seagrave killed le capitaine. And neither do I, Miss Austen.”

  I studied the amusement at his mouth, the strong chin, and knew that the man was sporting with me. He was, after all, the French ship's surgeon; if any had examined Porthiault's body before it was sent over the side, it should be LaForge.

  “How do they say that Porthiault died?” he asked.

  “That is a point under dispute. Captain Seagrave would have it the man was already dead when the colours were struck. Others insist that Porthiault died by Seagrave's hand, after the Marion's surrender. Seagrave's dirk was buried in Porthiault's heart, but Seagrave will have it that he never touched the man! It is a difficult tale to credit—”

  With effort, LaForge leaned towards me. He spoke very low. “Porthiault did not die from the knife to his heart. He died from the wound to his head.”

  “His head?” I repeated. “But the dirk—”

  “A small hole at the base of the skull,” the surgeon continued, “oozing blood as the chest wound could not The chest wound was given after death. I tell you, I examined the body before it was delivered into the sea.”

  “A musket shot, then? Fired during the battle?”

  There was a glint of something in LaForge's narrowed gaze. Then his shoulders lifted again in that most Gallic of gestures. “There is nothing very wonderful in this. Your own Nelson — the Hero of Trafalgar-died in much the same way.”

  It was true. A French marksman had aimed for the jewelled star pinned at the Admiral's breast, and wounded him mortally.

  “Seagrave said the Frenchman lay as though dead when discovered on the quarterdeck. He thought the man had been stunned by a falling spar. Why, then, thrust a dirk into his heart?” I mused.

  “For vengeance? Or … the desire to make it appear as such? This Seagrave was not alone,????”

  “He was not. His first lieutenant stood with him.”

  The man held my gaze. Despite the fever, despite his weakness and the lazy arrangement of his limbs, Etienne LaForge was taut as a bowstring. He knew the end to which I must be brought; but he preferred that I reach it under my own power.

  “You saw him!” I declared. “You saw Eustace Chessyre near Seagrave on the quarterdeck. You were not below throughout the battle, as you claim.”

  “I do not know the man's name.” He glanced over my shoulder warily and lowered his voice to the faintest of murmurs. “There was a great deal of sea in the cockpit deck, you understand. The pumps could not keep up with it. Those British guns — how they love to kiss the waterline! I was forced to pile my patients at the foot of the gangway, and to plead for help in shifting them; otherwise, I feared they should drown. And I am not in the habit of saving a life, to lose it to the sea.”

  “You went up the gangway to beg assistance.”

  “The waist of the ship was a chaos of men,” LaForge said faintly. “I turned and glanced up at the quarterdeck, where the Captain already lay dead. It was then that I saw him.”

  “Seagrave?” I whispered.

  “The British captain was being set upon, by our second lieutenant, Favrol; the two were fighting du corps a corps.”

  “So the ship had not yet struck.”

  The surgeon shook his head.

  “Seagrave was alone?”

  “For all the good his support did him — he ought to have been. But no, mademoiselle, the Captain had an officer at his back. I did not, at the time, observe the rank — but I recognised him later. He was master of the ship that carried me prisoner into this British port.”

  “Lieutenant Chessyre,” I breathed.

  “Very well. I observed him, bent over le capitaine Porthiault, while Seagrave and Favrol were at each other's throat; he knelt there a moment — his arm rose — and when he stood, Porthiault's sword was in his hand.”

  “What of the colours?”

  LaForge shook his head. “At such a time — who can say when the Manon struck? All was confusion. But know this, mademoiselle,” — his voice became almost indistinct—“when the officer rose from Porthiault's side, the dirk was in my captain's breast. I would swear on my mother's grave that it was not there before.”

  My breath came in with a hiss. LaForge's eyes widened in alarm; he raised a feverish hand to his lips.

  “Mademoiselle — do not betray us both. More than one man's life may hang upon your discretion.”

  His fingers dropped heavily to his side.

  “But why thrust a blade into the breast of a dead man?” I murmured, with a swift glance around the shadowy chamber.

  “Must I always translate for you, mademoiselle? The word is not why, but who. Who among all the men of the British Navy would wish your Seagrave to hang? For that was certainly Chessyre's object. He did not strike for vengeance against the French, but from motives none may penetrate. This was no act of war, Miss Austen. Your Seagrave was betrayed from within.”

  Chapter 7

  Messenger to Portsmouth

  24 February 1807, cont.

  I RACED HOME THROUGH THE DARKENING STREETS, intent upon finding Frank and relating all that LaForge had told me. I must have looked a trifle mad among the sedate ladies and aging sailors that made their careful way along the High; in the darkness and stench of Wool House I had become like one of Mrs. Radcliffe's desperate heroines, with Etienne LaForge my cryptic prisoner of the keep. I do not think that I would have accorded the Frenchman's words the same horrific weight, had he not presented a failing aspect. There is something chilling about the word betrayal when uttered by a sinking man, particularly against the backdrop of ancient stone walls. LaForge had chosen his moment — and his auditor — well.

  My brother was established with Mary before the fire in Mrs. Davies's sitting-room; at the sight of my flushed face and heaving breast, he rose at once in alarm.

  “Jane! You are unwell!”

  “Nothing I regard. A trifle fagged from haste.”

  “But where have you been, my dear?” Mary enquired.

  “At Wool House. Tending the French prisoners laid low with gaol fever.”

  “Gaol fever!” Frank's countenance darkened. “Have you lost your reason, Jane? To expose yourself to such a scourge, when Mary's health — and the health of our child — is certainly at stake? I forbid you to go so close to my wife as twenty yards, madam, until we may be certain that you have not contracted the disease! No, nor so close as fifty yards to our mother, given her delicate state of health! I am in half a mind to procure you a room at the
Dolphin until we may be sure that you are clear!”

  “Banish her to London; Fly, and permit me to serve as chaperone,” said my dear friend Martha Lloyd as she sailed into the room. “I might recommend any number of places in Town, and Jane and I could enjoy the Season at a safe distance from little Mary — provided, of course, that gaol fever does not carry Jane off. But I confess to a sanguine temper on that head. I have little fear of seeing any of us come out in spots. It has always been a man's complaint.”

  I embraced Martha with joy, and enquired as to the safety and comfort of her descent upon the south; declared her in excellent looks after her visit to her sister— a compliment she turned aside with asperity — and took her bonnet into my own hands for safekeeping.

  But the niceties of welcome had eluded my brother. Frank took one furious stride across Mrs. Davies's small parlour and turned in frustration at the far wall. He appeared to be itching to draw someone's cork; his hands were clenching and unclenching in a fine demonstration of the pugilist's art. I was not to be forgiven my improbable charity. In such a mood, he was unlikely to credit anything I might say.

  “Oh, my dearest,” Mary cried, “do not be thinking of sending Jane away! I confess that I cannot do without her!”

  Her plump hands were pressed against her mouth; she stared at Frank in dismay. I do not think she had ever witnessed a display of her husband's temper; but I have an idea it is very well known among Frank's colleagues in the Navy. He did not survive the mutinies at Spithead in '97, nor yet a gruelling chase across the Atlantic and back again in pursuit of the French, without driving his men and himself to the point of collapse.

  “Damned foolish!” he returned, with fine disregard for our landlady's peace. “And why? Because Celia Braggen — that lantern-jawed, jumped-up busybody whose husband is the worst sort of scrub — required it!”

  “Jane only went to that dreadful place to spare me the trouble, Frank,” Mary stammered. “I thought it very kind in her to oblige Mrs. Braggen, and save me from giving offence!”

  “I shall call upon that Harpy in the morning, and offer my opinion of her presumption,” he muttered.

  “Then pray let us dine on the strength of your conviction, Frank — it does not do to meet a Harpy on an empty stomach.” Martha's attention was given entirely to drawing off her gloves. “Jane may sit at the farthest remove from Mary and the fire both, as punishment, and your mother have her meal on a tray. They do not offer much in the way of sustenance, in your southern coaching inns; and the smell of that joint makes me ready to weep with vexation.”

  “Frank,” I interjected, “however angry you may be, I must have a word with you at once. It is a matter of the utmost urgency.”

  My brother's brows were lowered over his frigid grey eyes. He glanced at Mary; she threw me a frightened look, but gathered up her sewing without a word. Martha placed a hand at her elbow, and was just saying comfortably as the door clicked behind them, “I hear that the talk in Southampton is all of short sleeves for the summer—” when I sank down into a chair.

  Frank listened this time without interruption. I told him of Etienne LaForge, and the scene the French surgeon had witnessed on the Manon's quarterdeck; I told him of the blood from the head wound, and the lack of same from Porthiault's chest. I told him, moreover, of LaForge's final charge: This was no act of war. … Your Seagrave was betrayed from within; and then I waited for some reaction from my hot-headed brother.

  He was silent for the length of several heartbeats. He thrust his hands into his pockets and stood before the fire, his gaze fixed unseeing on the print of Weymouth that hung over Mrs. Davies's mantel.

  “This French dog — this surgeon—would have it that Chessyre deliberately made Tom look a murderer. To what purpose, Jane?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “The notion of skullduggery is common enough, I grant you, among the French. But I hesitate to credit it.”

  “Do you prefer to believe that Tom Seagrave lies?” I protested. “One or the other — Seagrave or Chessyre — must be acknowledged as duplicitous. You require a witness who may speak without prejudice; I have found you one. Why will you not consider all that he has said?”

  “Because what LaForge would claim is utterly beyond reason. Why should Chessyre thrust Seagrave's dirk into the French captain's breast? — And well after the man was dead?”

  “To ensure that his charge against Seagrave would be amply supported by evidence — evidence observed by Englishmen and French alike. Can you think of any reason, Frank, why Tom Seagrave should be the object of such a plot?”

  But Frank did not immediately reply. He bent and stared into the fire, though the heat from the faggots he had procured was considerable. “On Chessyre's part, I might put it to the account of envy — the desire to see a successful man ruined, and repay trust with betrayal.”

  “It seems such an awful act,” I murmured, “for one man to effect from spite alone. There ought to be another hand behind it — another force, that bent Chessyre to his will.”

  Frank stared at me. “A plot, you said. You used the word as a politician might. You think it possible, Jane, that someone unknown has deliberately worked through Tom's subordinates to ruin his career?”

  I smiled thinly. “Believe me, Frank, when I assure you that similar outrage has been known to occur. How well acquainted are you with the details of Seagrave's service?”

  “No more than what every man may know. Tom was at the Nile, where he commanded a ship of the line. He was also at Trafalgar — and distinguished himself among all others on that glorious day. Since then he has been posted to the Channel station, having a rare old time ruffling Boney's feathers and seizing ships off the coast of Spain. He's worth twenty thousand pounds, at least.”

  “You do not ruin a man's reputation within the Navy for twenty thousand pounds. You ruin him for the satisfaction of seeing him disgraced before those he values beyond everything in the world.”

  Frank nodded in assent. “The history of this whole affair must argue an intimate enemy.”

  “Has he family? Connexions? Some force for Influence that might work on his behalf?”

  “An elder brother employed by the Honourable East India Company out in Bombay. I met Alistair Seagrave in India once — a fair-spoken, intelligent man who cuts something of a dash. But the family were never very Great, Jane. The father was a clergyman. That was an early bond between Tom and myself — the likeness in our childhoods.”

  Of course. The constant hours of learning Greek at the knee of a stern and kindly man, when one had much rather be gone to sea.

  “And does Alistair Seagrave know aught of his brother's trouble?”

  “No letter could reach him in time. The voyage round the Horn is uncertain in winter; several months at best. I should not like to predict when he might learn of it. After all is … decided, perhaps.”

  “But you think Tom Seagrave would request his brother's help?”

  “I cannot say. Even did Tom hope to prevent Alistair learning of it — from diffidence, or shame, or pride — they possess common acquaintance enough that his brother cannot remain in ignorance. The Navy and the Honourable Company are forever in one another's pockets.”

  “Is it at all likely, Frank, that Mrs. Seagrave's family is behind the project? For you know they have considerable standing in Town, and cut her off when she married to disoblige them.”

  “Why attempt to scuttle Tom Seagrave now, when the marriage is fifteen years old? They had better have despatched assassins on the night of elopement.”

  “True. It does not seem likely. But whom, then? Has he enemies you could name?”

  Frank threw up his hands. “Are you certain in your mind that we must credit this Frenchman?”

  “Monsieur LaForge is no friend to Eustace Chessyre. That must be accounted an advantage.”

  “He's managed to complicate matters considerably.”

  I laughed. “Then his work is disinterested at le
ast. What possible advantage could LaForge find in destroying Chessyre's reputation? Even the Lieutenant's name was unknown to him. LaForge was cautious enough in his manner, as befits a man who has witnessed what is strange among his enemies; but I detected nothing of deceit. He offered the evidence of his own eyes.”

  “Eustace Chessyre professed the same,” Frank observed.

  I was resolutely silent.

  My brother sighed. “I suppose I must disclose the whole to Tom Seagrave. He deserves to face the court on Thursday with as much intelligence as he may; he deserves to know that his subordinate betrayed him. A letter despatched express is in order, I think.”

  “It is possible that Seagrave may supply the reasoning behind Chessyre's act, and resolve the affair entirely.”

  Frank hesitated. “Would your Frenchman consent to testify before an English court-martial?”

  “We can but enquire.”

  “And he refuses, we shall take a sounding of his deceit The man may merely be raving, after all, and when pressed on the morrow, deny all knowledge of his tale. But I shall petition Admiral Bertie for LaForge's release, and carry him with me down the Solent on Thursday.”

  “Let us hope he will survive so long.”

  “If you are nursing him, he can do nothing else.” Frank's tone was much softened from the abuse of a quarter-hour previous. I suppressed a smile, and rose to join the others in the dining parlour.

  “Jane—”

  I turned at the door.

  “I regret what I said regarding your activity at Wool House. I know you undertook the effort solely with a view to aiding Seagrave's case. I am deeply grateful for all that you have done. But—”

  “Never fear, my dear,” I said. “I shall sit in the chair farthest from your bride.”

  MY MOTHER FELT WELL ENOUGH, ON THE STRENGTH OF Martha's return, to rise from her bed and descend — in all the fuss and state of vinaigrettes, wool shawls, and needlework — to the dining parlour.