Jane and the Man of the Cloth

by Stephanie Barron

  “You may stand down, madam,” the coroner replied distantly. “Mr. Geoffrey Sidmouth!”

  Miss Crawford spluttered, and looked all her outrage; but she was conducted from her place nonetheless, and suffered a momentary quailing of her courage, in being forced to pass quite close to the very Mr. Sidmouth she had just maligned, as he approached the coroner’s table. He gave her neither a look nor a word, being intent, it appeared, on the maintenance of his gravity, amidst the tide of chatter his passage engendered. I could not detect in the noise, however, any evidence of ill-will towards the gendeman, despite his damning appearance of guilt; and it struck me forcibly that Geoffrey Sidmouth retained his reputation among the folk of Lyme, and a measure of gratitude, however heinous his offences. A curious community, indeed, that could treat a Maggie Tibbit with such contempt, and a Geoffrey Sidmouth with unrelenting tolerance.

  Mr. Carpenter gave the gendeman at his right hand a cursory glance, neither severe nor benign. “You are Mr. Geoffrey Sidmouth, of High Down Grange, are you not?”

  I am.

  “And what answer can you give, Mr. Sidmouth, to the conjectures so lately put forward by Miss Augusta Crawford?”

  “I would suggest that the lady pay greater heed to her own affairs, and less to those of her neighbours, or she shall utterly lack for dinner partners,” he rejoined mildly, to some laughter; but from knowing Sidmouth a little, I judged him to be checking his temper only with the greatest difficulty. A muscle at his temple had commenced to pulse, in a distractingly involuntary fashion.

  “And did you, sir, bear a grudge towards Captain Fielding?”

  “I certainly bore him little affection.”

  “That is frankness indeed, from a man so imperilled by circumstance as yourself,” Mr. Carpenter said, in some surprise.

  “I make it a practise, sir, to offer honesty when such is possible.”

  “When it is possible—but not, you would have us understand, on every occasion?”

  “Can any man assert such consistency?”

  “It is a common-enough profession.”

  “But to profess honesty, and to practise it without fail, are entirely different talents. Rare is the gendeman who allies them both.”

  My father leaned towards me and winked. “One for my philosopher,” he observed sofdy.

  “So we may take it as setded that you harboured towards the Captain a healthy dislike. On what was it predicated?”

  “Upon matters of a personal nature.”

  “Having to do with Mademoiselle—”

  “—LeFevre.”

  “LeFevre. And would you care to elucidate, Mr. Sidmouth?”

  “As I have stated, these are personal matters. It should be a violation of every conception of honour, did I canvass such things before the common crowd.”

  “I see.” From his expression, Mr. Carpenter clearly did not see. “And will you state your movements during the course of Sunday evening last?”

  “I was away from home.”

  “This panel is aware of that. And were you riding your black stallion”—at this, the coroner peered narrowly at his papers—“the unfortunately-named Satan?”

  “I was.” From Mr. Sidmouth’s expression, it pained him to let slip even so small a sentence.

  “In the company of the surgeon’s assistant, Mr. William Dagliesh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Sidmouth,” the coroner ejaculated, in evident exasperation, “if we are to have any hope of placing your guilt in doubt, you must give us some means of proving your innocence! Will you not tell us your movements on the night in question?”

  There was an instant’s silence, and Sidmouth’s eyes met mine with a sudden flaring of intensity, so that I felt my heart lurch; then his gaze moved beyond me, to the back of the room. I knew whose face he sought; and turned, despite myself, to look for it.

  Seraphine had risen, as slow as a spectre rising from the grave. “Tell them, Geoffrey,” she said—though her voice was so caught in her throat, the sense of it may not have reached him. “Tell them,” she cried, in a firmer accent, and clutched at a chair for support.

  “You know that I cannot,” he rejoined. His voice was infinitely gende—the very quiet of despair, I thought. “Sit down, my dear, before you fall.”

  “Is there something you wish to say to this panel, madam?” the coroner asked, rising to gaze at the mademoiselle. She nodded briefly, unable to look at her cousin.

  “Say nothing, Seraphine!” Sidmouth interposed with sudden fierceness. “There can be no cause for such sacrifice. I will not allow it! Say nothing—? beg of you—that you will not recall years hence, with vast regret!”

  “Oh, Geoffrey—” she said, in a breaking wail, and swayed as I watched. In an instant, Sidmouth had sprung from his place, and coursed down the aisle to her aid; but Dobbin’s men were before him, and barred his path, in evident alarm that he meant to flee. He was seized, and maddened by the seizure, as Seraphine crumpled to the ground in a faint; and the room was in an uproar in an instant. Between Sidmouth’s efforts to fight loose of his captors, and the shouts of those around him, even Mr. Carpenter’s gavel rang out unheeded in the tumult.

  At last the gentleman was subdued, and the lady borne from the room into the street, the better to revive her; and the jury dismissed, for the consideration of the case. In but a few minutes they had returned, with hanging heads, and avowed their belief that Captain Fielding had died at Geoffrey Sidmouth’s hands. And so the master of High Down was taken away, half-mad with anxiety for his cousin’s state, and thrown once more into the foetidness of Lyme’s small gaol.

  Miss CRAWFORD AIONE CXHJID LOOK TRIUMPHANT, AS THE assembled crowd filed away. She was afforded no congratulations; and indeed, most of Lyme’s worthies avoided her like a manifestation of the plague; but she had seen enough to confirm her wildest conjectures. From Seraphine’s behaviour, could anyone doubt that she was the cause of all the Captain’s grief? Or that her cousin bore her such love, as would counsel killing to preserve it?

  1 The Assizes are preliminary sessions held locally throughout the United Kingdom, in which a suspect is charged, indicted, and remanded for trial. In Austen’s time they were held quarterly. —Editor’s note.

  21 September 1804, cont

  ∼

  SUCH EVIDENCE OF SIDMOUTH’S GUILT COULD NOT BUT BE convincing. I should have felt the merit of its claims more forcibly, however, had I not perceived that some other consideration had silenced his friends and himself, and that the better part of Sidmouth’s struggle throughout the proceedings, had been to prevent a matter coming to light, that should assuredly have cleared him of the murder, but at a personal cost he was mysteriously unwilling to endure. Proof of innocence through revelation, was an avenue closed to us; proof of another’s guilt must, therefore, be the avenue pursued. I did not stop to ask why I felt myself to be the chosen pursuer; it was a matter that did not admit of choice. Someone had murdered Percival Fielding, for reasons that remained obscure to me; and someone wished the world to believe Sidmouth had done it in his stead. In such a case, could any stand by, and observe injustice triumph? Jane assuredly would not. But what, in fact, was to be done? A bewildering array of paths branched from the ground at my feet, like the turnings of a wilderness maze; how to embark upon the proper way?

  “Well,” my father declared, as he stared about the rapidly emptying room; “well, indeed. It might be advisable—do not you agree, my dear Jane—to offer the mademoiselle what assistance we may, for she is decidedly bereft of friends at the moment, and some Christian solicitude should be as balm to her distress.”

  “You are all goodness, Father,” I said, somewhat ab-sentmindedly; for my thoughts were employed in the consideration of other matters, against which Mademoiselle LeFevre’s indisposition must be weighed as slight. It was imperative not to set a foot wrong at so critical a juncture, when every hour might have bearing on Sidmouth’s fate. I bent my thoughts accordingly to a review of
the facts, and set aside for the moment all extraneous conjecture.

  Geoffrey Sidmouth was assuredly abroad on the night in question, and that he rode his stallion Satan, we knew from the statements of both the surgeon’s assistant Dagliesh and Toby the stable boy. The marks of hoofprints bearing his initials were clearly stamped in the mud by Fielding’s body. Therefore, if it were conceivable that Sidmouth was not Fielding’s murderer, then I must find that another had stolen the horse on the night in question, while Sidmouth was otherwise engaged; or that someone else from the Grange had ridden forth that night, despite the stable boy’s words to the contrary; or that a different animal altogether had been similarly shod, and ridden to its fatal errand. Mr. Dobbin would have it that the blacksmiths in town were above reproach, and that their negatives of having forged such shoes for any but Sidmouth might be taken as truth; but I was not so sanguine. Regardless of the motivations in the case—the mysterious business between the Captain and Seraphine, the presence of white flowers by the corpses, and the matter of the Reverend’s identity—the horseshoes were the crux of the affair.

  “Will you accompany us, Jane?”

  I looked up to find my father already on his feet, my mother by his side, and both serene in the certainty of doing good. Their purposeful faces reminded me that Seraphine had very nearly revealed the nature of her trouble, before fainting away, and that all might be speedily concluded, were she now persuaded to speak. I rose from my seat without a word, and followed hastily in my father’s train.

  POOR SERAPHINE LAY PROSTRATE IN A CHAMBER ON THE LION’S FIRST floor, her wild mane of hair flung out on the straw mattress, a compress to her head. One of the inn’s maids-of-all-work leaned mistrustfully in the doorway, torn between the claims of gossip-mongering and those of legitimate work; but the subject of her baleful study might almost have been turned to stone, so oblivious was Mademoiselle LeFevre of anyone’s presence. She stared fixedly at the ceiling above her head, her lips moving continuously in what might pass for a prayer—but knowing a little of Seraphine, I rather imagined it to be a curse. Her hatred for Sidmouth’s enemies, and her driving need for vengeance, should be fearful to behold; and I respected as well as feared her for it. I would not care to find myself on the wrong side of her will.

  “Forgive me, mademoiselle,” my father said gendy, as he approached her doorway, “but we would wish to offer some consolation in your distress. Is there aught that any might do, to ease the discomposure of your mind? Some sustenance, perhaps, or a conveyance home to the Grange?”

  “Mr. Austen!” my mother cried. “The poor thing cannot be left to her own devices in such a house! So lonely as it finds itself, in the very midst of the downs, and so melancholy in its current atmosphere! Such reflections, as must overwhelm her! I am sure, Mademoiselle, that you should better come to us. We might send our Jenny to the Grange for your things, and make you as comfortable as can be.” My mother appeared well satisfied with her speech, until a moment’s reflection brought the inevitable cloud.

  “—Providing, that is,” she added, “you do not mind making shift to room with Jane. For, you will understand, we have but two bedchambers. It would be some return,” she concluded, brightening, “for your kindness in taking our family in, not a few weeks ago, after our own dreadful misfortunes—though I should not like to suggest that being overturned, and being charged with murder, are at all the same thing.”

  “You are very good, Madame Austen,” Seraphine replied, her gaze steadfast upon the pale plaster above, “but it is not in my power to accept your invitation.”

  “Not in your power? But, my dear—how can it not?”

  “Mother—” I said, in an attempt to intervene, “Mademoiselle LeFevre may wish for the reflection so necessary at such a time, and so dependent upon solitude.”

  “Indeed, madame, I have obligations that must be met—the needs of a farm being unrelenting—and though I value your kindness and consideration”—at this, the angel’s eyes slid downwards to meet our own—“I must decline your entreaty to remove from the Grange.”

  “Well!” my mother declared, dumbfounded.

  I recollected, then, the midnight landing from the smugglers’ cutter, and the muffled burden borne up the cliffs at Seraphine’s direction. Was an unknown fellow even now recovering from his wounds beneath the Grange’s roof? Was this why Seraphine could not desert her post in Sidmouth’s absence?

  “As you wish, my dear,” my father said, with a mild nod, “but may we offer you some other relief?”

  “Pray for me, my good sir,” Seraphine replied, “and for my cousin, Mr. Sidmouth. I fear that neither of us shall be long for this world.”

  I glanced at my father, and motioned the maid from the doorway. “Fetch a pot of tea for the mademoiselle, and be quick about it,” I said. “How long should the lady have lain here, without a drop of restorative by her? I cannot believe you did not think of it before.”

  “There’s no tea to be had,” the maid replied, without shifting from her place. “Stores’uv been low these three days past, and what wit’ the ‘quest today, tea’uv been all drunk up.”

  “Then do you run to a shojp and purchase some, you stupid girl,” I said briskly, and handed her a few shillings. “Be off with you.”

  The slattern dropped a curtsey, and scurried away, her expression turned sour. I seized the opportunity of her absence to close the chamber door as firmly as I might. I did not choose for the entirety of Lyme to overlisten my conversation with the mademoiselle.

  “Your cousin’s circumstances are so very bad,” I observed, as I turned back towards the bed with an effort at complaisance—for I was curious how my apparent indifference might provoke the lady, and what turn of conversation it should bring. “I wonder that he bothered to deny his guilt at all, considering how many are the proofs against him.” Without waiting for a reply, I looked to my father. “When, sir, did you declare to be the next sitting of the Assizes?”

  “I did not, that I can recall,” the poor man replied, in some surprise, “but I believe I heard them to be held in Dorchester, in but ten days’ time.”

  “So Sidmouth must endure another ten days in the Lyme gaol,” I said thoughtfully. “Unless it be, of course,that some other comes forward, and admits a part in the Captain’s murder. But who else can have had so much reason to kill the man? It does not seem very likely. We may take it, then, that Sidmouth has but a few weeks more to live; for the Assizes once concluded, his trial and execution shall be speedily achieved. You know that they are in the habit, at Newgate, of hanging the convicted only a day or two following their condemnation.”

  “Jane!” my mother cried. “Remember where you are, my girl! Have you lost all sense?”

  But Seraphine’s attention was gained—her expression more pained, and less remote—and so my cruel object was won. Her face, always pale, was almost translucent, and her eyes were gone glassy from shock.

  “Get out,” she said, her fingers clenched upon the bedsheet. “Get out, before I serve you with violence.”

  “As you did Captain Fielding?” I replied, drawing forward a chair, and seating myself companionably by her side, to my parents” consternation. “Was that the thought of the moment as well—or did you plan your assault upon his person?”

  Seraphine’s beautiful face was working, lost between outrage and confusion, and I hastened to profit from the moment.

  “I have the idea of it well,” I continued. “Yourself on a horse, perhaps in pursuit of a surgeon for one of the smuggling men kept hidden in your attic—you will recall that I could not help but hear their movements, the day I visited you at the Grange, the very day your cousin was seized by Mr. Dobbin.” At this, a redoubled expression of shock seized her features, and something very like fear. (I saw no reason to mention the wounded man borne from the beach the night of Sidmouth’s arrest, for his appearance was well after Fielding’s death, and my knowledge of him must be explained. It was enough to alert her that
I knew of the attic’s use.)

  “You are coursing down the Charmouth road, intent upon your purpose, but with one ear cocked for sounds in the underbrush—for you, a woman alone in a lonely place, should not like to encounter a brigand. It was in consideration of this that you carried with you one of the Grange’s pistols, and kept it hidden beneath your cloak. Imagine it,” I said dreamily, my eyes fixed upon Seraphine’s countenance. ‘The moonlight—on the wane, but strong enough for a general glow, as the night before, when we all dined together at Darby—and the sudden appearance of Fielding’s horse, from the entrance to his drive. It is a white horse, is it not? He rode it to call upon us at Wings cottage one day, and looked every inch le Chevalier. At this, Seraphine could not contain a shudder. “The horse and rider must have shone in the moonlight like an apparition.

  “Did he hail you, eager for the conversation you had denied him the night before? Did you pull up in alarm? And at what moment did you fire the ball, so clear into his heart? When he leaned close to kiss you?”

  “This is madness,” Seraphine hissed. “You know it is madness.”

  “Do I?” I replied, with a look for my father. “I know only that Geoffrey Sidmouth would rather die than reveal what might clear his name—and I can think of no one for whom he might offer such a sacrifice but you, mademoiselle. Who better than yourself, to have taken a horse from the Grange’s stables, and counted on the stable boy’s silence—for that Toby adores you, is readily apparent. He might even now believe that you simply went for the surgeon, as you had intended—and as you undoubtedly did, once the Captain lay dead upon the road, and his horse fled for home. And so Toby said nothing to the justice, Mr. Dobbin, regarding your midnight errand—for the fact of the men’s existence in your attic is something to keep hidden. Is it not?”

  “I see that you know altogether too much about our affairs, Miss Austen,” Seraphine rejoined. She had pushed herself upwards on the pillows, and looked at me direcdy, without animus or anger. “But I think you do not know quite enough. You make leaps before you know the distance to be covered, and so you fall into the abyss, yes?”