Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

by Stephanie Barron

  “When does Mary lay the fires?”

  “Around eight o’clock, on the mornings after Assemblies—the patrons preferring a bit of a lie-in, from being out so late.”

  And Lord Byron, at eight o’clock, had been waving farewell to Scrope Davies in Church Street. It was probable, however, that Catherine’s body had arrived at its resting place hours earlier. There were still five hours, between Byron’s seeking his bed and mounting his horse, when his lordship might have been anywhere—but was the publick house open to his use all that time?

  “After his lordship quitted the place, with his dunnage, I am sure nothing would do for Mrs. Tolliver but to bar all the doors!” I told the landlord in amusement. “I should never risk a second disturbance to my sleep, having the considerable cares of a publick house to manage on the morrow.”

  “That she did, ma’am, and was that full of wrath she even cleared the Ordinary—tho’ there was some as were disposed to give her lip about it. But, there, we’ve been and owned the Arms for donkey’s years—and nothing no officer of the 10th can say will ever discompose Mrs. Tolliver. She’s turned the Regent himself out of the premises, when he was but a stripling prince, and if Royalty must give way to Mrs. Tolliver, there’s not much else that shan’t.”

  “Very proper,” Henry opined. “I admire her pluck. And so the doors were barred from the moment his lordship left—around half-past one, I think it was said at the Inquest. And you opened the house … at what hour?”

  “Cock-crow,” Tolliver said promptly, “which is round about five o’clock in May; tho’ nobody’d come knocking at the back door—meaning such of the servants as sleeps out of the house, which is most of ’em—until six o’clock. I’m a fair man, for all I’m so pressed with custom, and don’t ask even them as works for me to be abroad afore daylight.”

  “And yet,” I persisted, with an air of feminine bewilderment, “poor Miss Twining’s body materialised upstairs sometime between the hours of two and … let us say eight, despite the fact that the outer doors were barred!—For she was certainly seen alive in the grounds of the Pavilion at a quarter to two, and cannot have met her death any earlier. You did not detect a forcing of your doors, Mr. Tolliver, I presume?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  If my questions were beginning to appear too pointed, the good publican failed to take umbrage. He appeared as genuinely puzzled as I, regarding the murdered body in the bed.

  “Might the kitchen doors have been left ajar?” I wondered. “A very daring and reckless murderer might be moved to take his chance—and carry Miss Twining’s shrouded form up the servants’ back stairs.”

  “But Nance, the scullery maid, sleeps on a pallet next to the hearth,” Tolliver countered, “and the rogue should be forced to step over the girl to reach the stairs, even if she did neglect to bar the back door, which I doubt. Nobody could’ve mounted those stairs, without Nance screaming fit to bust, of ghosts and demons in the night. No, I’m afraid there’s only one way possible that corpse found its way into Lord Byron’s bed—and that’s from the use of the tunnel, what my old dad, God rest his soul, swore was filled in when the Prince established Mrs. Fitzherbert in her villa, and left off his rakehell ways.”

  I stood rooted to the spot, unable even to risk a glance at my brother Henry. A tunnel? Good God!

  “A tunnel,” Henry said flatly. “There is a tunnel leading into the Arms?”

  “Long since filled in, as I thought, and never used in thirty year or more,” Tolliver rejoined. “It was Miss Austen’s word as made me think on it—materialised, she said, as if that unfortunate young lady’s remains jest floated up like a ghost! Many’s the time my brother and me used to frighten the folk upstairs, when we were young, with a clanging bit o’ chain and a sheet over our heads—jumping through the panel in the dead of night and howling so’s to turn the blood cold. Our dad had our hides for it, of course, but that never stopped Sam—he’s my brother, and saw worse every day in the Peninsula. A rifleman he is, now.”

  “A panel,” I repeated, as tho’ possessed of a weak understanding.

  Tolliver nodded. “Comes right out beside the chimney stack in the middle bedchamber, as is unused at present. You are welcome to look at it, if you like—having an interest in old publick houses, as you do, ma’am.”

  He led my stupefied brother and myself immediately upstairs, Henry ducking to avoid collision with the low ceiling of the staircase. At the far end of the upper passage was a closed door—which must give on to Lord Byron’s old bedchamber. I should dearly love to have a look round it; but Tolliver turned immediately into a doorway on our left: one of the middle bedchambers, its fellow being across the hall.

  A pleasant-enough room, low-ceilinged like the rest, coated in plain white plaster with two small windows offering a view of the Marine Pavilion. The wainscoting was oak, and reached halfway up the walls, with a frieze of sporting dolphins carved along its upper edge. In the middle of the wall to our left sat the hearth—which was narrower than those in the publick rooms below; the stack, however, must serve both storeys, and run from the cellars to the attics.

  Tolliver winked at us, crossed to the panelling on the right-hand side of the chimney, and pressed one of the carved dolphins. An entire section of panelling swung outwards, like a servant’s door; narrow and not above four and a half feet in height—but an opening nonetheless.

  “There,” he said. “The Regent’d never fit through it, now.”

  “It was made for him?” Henry said.

  “Aye, so he could come and go without the world observing him, whenever the need for a lightskirt or a dozen bottles of claret should take him and his disreputable friends. There was never anything like ’em for raking the night away—those Barrys—Cripplegate, Hellgate, and Newgate as they called ’em! And Sir John Lade, what married a Covent Garden doxy! And that George Hanger!—He’s the only one the Regent will keep by him, now.”

  I stepped forward and gazed down; a winding stair descended into darkness.

  “Is the whole of the publick house familiar with its existence?”

  Tolliver slapped his thigh. “Not even my wife is aware! Have a fit of hysterics on the subject of burglars, Mrs. Tolliver would, if she knew there was a secret way inside the Arms. And as I said—my old dad insisted it’d been filled in long since. I haven’t given it a thought since I was a boy, and Sam ran off to take the King’s shilling.”

  “You made no mention of it at the inquest,” I observed.

  “Nobody asked,” Tolliver said simply.

  It was true; not a word had been said about the means of placing a dead girl in a bed at the Arms. Both coroner and magistrate appeared indifferent to the matter.

  Henry met my gaze. “Where does the tunnel lead, Tolliver?”

  “Why, to the Pavilion, of course!” He beamed.21

  21 In 1822, the Regent had a tunnel dug from the Pavilion to his riding school and stables, which is still in existence today. He had long been rumored, however, to possess a similar tunnel leading to Mrs. Fitzherbert’s villa, as well as this one leading to the King’s Arms. As the original pub no longer exists, the existence of a tunnel leading from it to the Pavilion is impossible to verify.—Editor’s note.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Where the Tunnel Led

  THURSDAY, 13 MAY 1813

  BRIGHTON, CONT.

  “TOLLIVER,” MY BROTHER SAID, “YOU HAVE BEEN MOST generous with your time already, and I am loath to demand any more of it; but I do believe, in the interests of justice, that we ought to explore this tunnel—to ascertain, if nothing else, that it is indeed as yet unblocked for its entire length. The magistrate’s pursuit of Miss Twining’s murderer may depend upon it.”

  I could have wished Henry had left Sir Harding Cross well out of our prospective adventure, for at the mention of the magistrate, the publican’s countenance underwent a change.

  “I don’t know as the Regent will like to have all his little arrangem
ents laid before the publick, like,” he said doubtfully. “It should not be seemly, to publish all that old business to the world.”

  “Then say nothing of His Royal Highness’s use of the tunnel,” I suggested, “and make out that it was for the purpose of providing the publick house with access to the shingle … for … the ready unloading of goods brought round by the sea. Fish or …” I did not like to say smuggled brandy and claret, although that is what I was certainly thinking, having encountered such tunnels in coastal villages before. “The Pavilion was once a simple farmhouse, was it not?”

  “Aye—belonged to Mr. Thomas Kemp, as is a great landowner hereabouts. But the tunnel was built well after his time.”

  “That is a point that need not arise.”

  “I don’t know,” Tolliver temporised. “I’m all of a flutter—the gentleman and lady having taken me by surprize, as it were, and caught me up in the spirit of the hunt; but I did ought to consult with Mrs. Tolliver, perhaps, and consider what should be done.”

  The result, I little doubted, should be the suppression of all evidence, from a desire to avoid any dispute with the Regent. Very well—if I must pay a call upon Sir Harding Cross and lay the information before him myself, I should do so—but nothing could induce me to turn my back on that tunnel, unexplored, while it yawned so tantalisingly before me now.

  There was a quantity of tapers standing ready in a spill box on the mantel; I reached for several, and said to the publican, in as commanding a tone as I could muster, “Pray fetch a light, Mr. Tolliver, if you would be so good. I must and shall explore the cunning little tunnel—it shall add immeasurably to my collection of ancient publick houses!”

  “To be sure!” Henry cried, all decided animation; and before two such ardent hearts, Tolliver’s better sense gave way. He fetched a candle from the hall, lit our tapers, and then took a step backwards. “I’ll ask you to wait for Young Bob,” he said firmly. “Dear as I’d love to trot down those steps along of you both, I hear the missus calling, and we’re that full to the gills with custom, on account of the race-meeting and the murder, that I’m wanted in the Ordinary. Bob’ll see you come to no harm; he’s a good fellow, and a rare one for rats.”

  With which obscure and daunting remark, he went to the head of the main stairs and halloed, “You there! Young Bob! Up with ye this instant! Aye, Polly, I’m just coming—”

  Young Bob appeared within moments, and having received his duty, glanced at the pair of us doubtfully, as if to say that there was no end to the oddities of London folk. He was anything but the boy I had expected—being grizzled and bent with years of labour in the publick house, hauling barrels and cans of hot water to the bath; he was called Young Bob, he explained, “on account of my grandfer, Old Bob, who’s that spritely at ninety-two, and may be found having his pint on the Steyne any morning in fair weather or foul.”

  Having received this confidence, we prepared to follow Young Bob into the black depths of the tunnel—which was, at the outset, a winding staircase fashioned of stone. I swept my skirts close about my legs, thanked Heaven I had seen fit to wear stout boots against the morning’s rain, and lit my taper at Young Bob’s candle.

  Tolliver bowed his way to the door and left us, no doubt relieved to be rid of so persistent a charge.

  “I say, Jane,” Henry put in as we hunched our backs and squeezed after Young Bob through the opening in the panel, “you don’t think this ends in the Regent’s bedchamber, or … anywhere else, actually, inside the Pavilion?”

  “I cannot think it likely. Recollect that Tolliver and his brother, Sam, were wont to don sheets and chains, and startle the unfortunate guests—and they cannot have done so if the far entrance to the tunnel was within the Regent’s dwelling,” I said with more confidence than I felt. Given the Regent’s predilection for constant renovation of his residence—the expansion of the original farmhouse, and the repeated pulling down and setting up of new walls—Tolliver’s tunnel might have undergone a decided change; but I had no wish to further alarm my companions. “I am sure this debouches within the grounds—but in a manner that must preclude its being obvious to the general eye.”

  Henry appeared mollified, but Young Bob merely grunted. This may have been because he had stepped without warning from the last stair to hard-packed earth; but in any case he said, “Never thought to live this day.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “—When I should see the Prince’s tunnel with my own eyes! Fair pother of rumours there was, year out of mind, but none as paid no real heed to ’em—thought it was the wine-fed tales of maids no better than they should be. There was Sal Norton, who claimed she was carried off to the Pavilion by night and ravished there three days; and old Jenny Feather bright, who put on such airs when Sir John Lade gave her a bauble as a token of esteem—not but what she came to a bad end on the streets of Lunnon not long after. Ended in Covent Garden, she did, walking the lobby of an evening.”

  “Ah,” Henry said wisely. “Many’s the girl as has found her ruin in the lobbies of Covent Garden.”22

  “I daresay, sir, but never having been to foreign parts, I couldn’t speak to it.”

  We were walking steadily along a hardened passage, quite sandy underfoot and lined in stone, that was remarkably fresh in its air tho’ not free of damp. So close to the sea, moisture is constant; and I reminded myself that above ground, it must still be raining.

  “This tunnel’s existence, then, is generally known?” I persisted. “Mr. Tolliver seemed to think it was a great secret, shared only among his family.”

  “Not known, if you’re meaning known,” Young Bob said. “My old grandfer recollected the digging of it, years since; but most folk thought as it was just a bit o’ nonsense. So much ill was said of the Prince, ye ken, in his salad days—it were just another faradiddle, him spiriting away the maids with a passage underground. But Lord! Here am I, apacing of it!”

  The passage had commenced with a gradual descent, then leveled off—somewhere, I should judge, beneath the Steyne—and had now begun to steadily incline. Our tapers were almost burnt down; and their flames began to flicker in a gentle air that came from above.

  “Presently we shall see where it ends, Jane,” Henry said with barely suppressed excitement.

  The combined light of our dying flames revealed, of a sudden, a blank wall—made not of stone, but of wood planking. I glanced about, hoping to espy another staircase, twin to the one at the King’s Arms—but there was none to be seen. And at that instant, my taper went out.

  Henry’s suffered a similar death within seconds.

  The unfortunate thought of rats sprang unbidden to my mind, and I found that I had wrapped my skirts quite narrowly round my ankles once more, as a paltry defence against rodent teeth.

  Fortunately, however, Young Bob’s candle—being made of good, honest, smoking tallow—was as yet in strength; and his spirits remained phlegmatic despite the featureless height of plank wall.

  “This’ll be back of the New Stables, I’m thinking,” he said with confidence. “The Regent’ll have ordered the tunnel end walled up, when the Riding School and stalls was built; a few years ago the workings was done, and that’s why Tolliver was so sure as the tunnel was filled in.”

  “But that cannot serve at all,” I replied in consternation.

  Henry reached for my hand through the darkness and squeezed it in warning. There was no need, in truth, to share our suspicion that Miss Twining’s body had been carried into the Arms from the Pavilion. We were but visitors from London, after all, with a passion for publick-house oddities.

  “You were not treated to Mr. Tolliver’s demonstration at the Arms,” I said, as conversationally as my fear of rats would allow, “and so did not witness the cunning shift in the panelling. There was a device—a carved dolphin—and when Mr. Tolliver pressed it, the tunnel opening sprang back. Perhaps there is a similar door here. If you would be so good as to raise your candle—”

  Yo
ung Bob did so without demur.

  Henry and I stepped forward, to push and press at every wormhole and whorl in the panelling; the publican’s man obligingly moved his candlelight some five feet one way, and a yard the other; our fingertips grew sore with excited vigour; and still the wall remained immoveable.

  “You do not think, ma’am, as that track in the dirt bespeaks a sliding door?” Young Bob at length suggested doubtfully.

  I glanced down. The candlelight, being raised almost to ceiling height, had left our feet in welling darkness. But it was as Young Bob said: when one studied the ground, one espied a grooved board laid beneath the panelled wall—as tho’ the entire thing was meant to slide back. Suppressing a most unladylike oath, I turned to Henry.

  “Shine the light on the far corner,” he instructed.

  Young Bob did so.

  Henry ran his gloved fingers along the seam where planking met the perpendicular stone wall. “There is a peg, Jane—almost indistinguishable.”

  He pulled it back; and the panel slid away from us, into a recess.

  “Coo,” Young Bob observed with respect.

  We were faced with row upon row of bottles, laid on racks a bare two feet from our noses. The tunnel came out into the Regent’s wine cellar.

  “YOU APPREHEND,” I SAID TO MY BROTHER ONCE WE HAD returned the way we’d come, pressed a shilling into Young Bob’s work-hardened palm, and thanked the harassed Tolliver most prettily for our treat, “that only an intimate of the Regent’s could have used that passage Tuesday morning. Someone who knew that the tunnel existed—where it commenced, and where it led. There cannot be above five people in the Kingdom with such knowledge, and only two or three at present installed at the Pavilion.”