“He sold her to the highest bidder,” Neddie said harshly.
“And I was pleased to buy,” Mr. Grey returned, without a flicker of emotion. “I counted the purchase cheap, so mad was I to claim Francoise.”
But what, I thought, had been the currency of exchange? How much of his own financial house had Valentine Grey consigned to his enemy's bankers?
“The letter that was discovered in your wife's novel, Mr. Grey,” my brother broke in. “It was written by the Comte, I presume.”
“Of course.” Grey dismissed this abruptly. “I knew his hand the moment you showed it me. I merely denied the fact, from a desire to keep everything that was painful at bay. That letter can have nothing to do with my wife's death.”
“It may have everything to do with it.”
Grey turned. “What can you mean? Even did the Comte intend to meet my wife by night on the shingle at Pegwell, he cannot have been at the Canterbury Races the very same morning. Every sort of caution would inform against it. And why should he kill her, if he loved her enough to plead for flight? It is beyond all understanding.”
“Perhaps she refused him.”
“Refused him?” Grey's voice was incredulous. “She could refuse Hippolyte nothing, Mr. Austen, from the time she was a girl.”
“Perhaps she had learned to love her husband. Perhaps she thought to remain in Kent, and wrote to the Comte informing him of as much. In a jealous rage, he waited upon the Wingham road, and waylaid her coach…”
“… only to lay the blame upon a complete unknown, the absent Mr. Collingforth? It will not do, Mr. Austen; it decidedly will not do. A man of the Comte's cunning would certainly engage for his rival to hang; he should place the blame squarely upon my shoulders, and laugh the length of my road to Hell. Unless—”
There was a troubling stillness, an interval filled with thought. Then Grey said, “Is that what he told you last evening? That I had strangled Francoise, because she had determined to elope?”
“The Comte de Penfleur said very little to your detriment, sir.” Neddie's attitude was easy. “He may have intimated a good deal — that you had neglected your wife, that you bore her litde affection, and, indeed, had perhaps allowed her to expose herself to the ridicule of the neighbourhood, from a desire to be rid of her through some deplorable scandal—”
“You call this very little?” Mr. Grey burst out. “Upon my word, Austen, I should tremble to learn what you consider a great deal!”
“—but he fell short of charging you with the lady's murder. A man of the Comte's subtlety, you may be sure, would never so completely show his hand. We may expect him to work upon me by degrees, until my mind is shaped to his liking.”
“You begin to understand him.”
“I think I begin to understand you both. Or at the very least — what each of you wishes me to understand.”
Here was the steel beneath the velvet glove. My brother would have the gentleman comprehend that he was hardly a fool, to be played with as a shuttlecock between two battledores. He would reserve his judgement until all the facts were fully in his possession, and only then would he act. Neither Mr. Grey, nor the Comte de Penfleur, would be privy to his counsel.
“I do not quite take your meaning, sir. I have been completely open.”
“You have presented a very painful picture, sir, of your private affairs — and one that must have cost you something to divulge. I respect and pity you — for the fortitude which allows such a sacrifice of your natural reserve, and for the calculation that has urged it. But as to openness — there, Mr. Grey, our opinions must part company. I regret to say that you have not been entirely open.”
“Very well.” Grey's accent held an intolerable strain. “Endeavour to show, Mr. Justice of Canterbury, how I have deceived you.”
“The very morning after your wife's death, you were at pains to discover Mr. Collingforth die culprit; and quite ingeniously, the gentleman's flight and various circumstances conspired to prove you right. The inquest delivered him, in absentia, to the Assizes' mercy; and all of Canterbury condemned him as the very worst of men. Leave aside for the moment that his guilt is hardly proved; what is accepted opinion has all the weight of fact in a country neighbourhood, and the Law will always bow to the weight of fact.”
“Why should Collingforth flee the country, if he is innocent?” Grey cried.
My brother chose to ignore him.
“Now that the Comte de Penfleur has appeared to mar the scene, and has had the temerity to speak to the local Justice, you have come in haste to my door. For the first time I learn from your own lips, that the interesting letter written in French was not from your wife's courier, but from her lover — as I was always convinced. You speak feelingly of your marriage; of the hatred the Comte bears you; and to what purpose? — For if Collingforth is yet the man who strangled your wife, the Comte's intentions regarding yourself can be of no further interest to me.”
Grey was silent. I had an idea of the scene: Neddie at ease in his wing-backed chair, fingers bridged before his nose as he regarded the other man; and Grey, stiff and enraged, brought to a halt on the Aubusson carpet.
“You are desperate for a serious diversion, Mr. Grey,” Neddie persisted, “but for the life of me, I cannot think why. What would you protect? — Your own neck? It is hardly at hazard. — Your wife's reputation? She never possessed any. — Your banking concerns? Your position in the estimation of the 'Great'? Perhaps; for it is this that the Comte may yet destroy. I should be deeply gratified, Mr. Grey, if you could be as frank with regard to your business as you have been regarding your wife.”
Mr. Grey must have determined at this point upon quitting the room; there was the slightest rustle from beyond the window, and the sound of my brother rising to his feet.
“I will take what you have said under consideration, Austen,” Mr. Grey said sharply, “but I can offer you nothing further today.”
“Very well. I hope I may always be of service.” A bell rang distantly in the house; poor Russell would be running, I knew, to show the gentleman to the door.
“And Mr. Grey—”
“Yes?” The voice came indistinctly, from the far end of the room.
“I may assure you of one thing. I will find your wife's murderer — and so help me God, I will see him hang.”
The assurance may have been of less comfort than Neddie supposed.
WHEN GREY HAD GONE, I PUT DOWN MY GARDEN TRUG — now overflowing with posies already wilting in the late-morning heat — and stepped through the French windows.
“Is he gone?”
“Safely down the sweep.” Neddie was engaged in the filling of his pipe, an indulgence he never practised before a lady; but I had an idea of his internal disquiet, and forbore to chide him. Tobacco, I believe, may be a spur to thought as much as a comfort to the nerves, and I saw no reason to deny him the remedy at such an hour.
He settled himself in his favourite armchair and studied me with amusement. “How much of our conversation did you overlisten?”
“Nearly all of it. You were aware of my presence?”
“For the last half-hour. Grey may not have perceived you in his pacing about the room, but in following his figure to the garden prospect, I could not fail of detecting yours.” The amusement deepened. “And what is your considered opinion of the fellow, Jane?”
“As you said of the Comte — I quite liked him.”
“Yes,” Neddie mused. “It is a great failing in this line of work, to undertake to admire or pity anyone. He is made of stern stuff, Mr. Valentine Grey, and might be capable of anything.”
“—Of steady industry; of sacrifice in the name of principle; of ruthless calculation in matters of business or state — but is he capable of passion? I cannot believe it.”
“He was eloquent on the subject of his wife.”
“He spoke well,” I conceded, “but more as a man whose passion is dead.”
Neddie shrugged. “So, too, is
the object of it.”
“Real love endures beyond the grave, Neddie, as you very well know. Men may remarry; they may cherish a second wife, and a third — but their feelings remain tender in respect of the departed. Mr. Grey's passion did not survive the first few months of his marriage, I suspect. He spoke as a man who has learned a part by rote.”
“You are severe upon him.”
“And yet, I cannot believe him capable of deception in an evil cause. He is the sort of man one instinctively trusts, and expects to perform with integrity. He will return again, I am sure of it — and tell you all you wish to know. His conscience will not allow him to rest, until he has done so.”
“I hope you are not proved credulous, Jane” — Neddie sighed — “for I have gambled a good deal on a single throw. Grey may as readily determine that silence is his truest friend, and deny me the knowledge that must unlock this puzzle.”
The great clock in the hallway began to toll the hour, and Neddie withdrew his watch from a waistcoat pocket. “Behind again,” he muttered, and commenced to wind it. “The Finch-Hattons are expected to dinner, and the sainfoin harvest has yet to be fired.”
“Bother the Finch-Hattons,” I cried petulantly. “What do you make of Grey's portrait of the Comte? There, at least, you must admit he was entirely frank. He went so far as to admit the letter.”
“We may judge, then, that the admission suited his purpose — whatever that purpose may be.”
“I quite long to meet the interesting Comte,” I persisted, as Neddie made for the library door. “Can not you conspire, Neddie, to invite him to take coffee with us some evening after dinner?”
“I shall do better, Jane,” he said with a roguish look. “I shall persuade my elegant wife to set the neighbourhood an example, and pay a call of condolence at The Larches. The funeral is tomorrow, at eleven o'clock; but a Saturday visit on the part of the Godmersham ladies would be admirably in keeping with what is due to Mr. Grey.”
“And so it should!” I exclaimed. “Dearest Neddie, for considering of it!”
“I am always happy to oblige you, Jane, even in the matter of your morbid taste for bones. I confess myself most impatient to learn your opinion of the devious Comte de Penfleur.”
Chapter 11
The Improvement of the Estate
22 August 1805, cont'd.
THE FINCH-HATTONS CAME, IN ALL THE HASTE AND splendour native to the possessors of an elegant green barouche. They came — tho' not, as commonly expected, for the dinner hour, but a bare three minutes after the household had sought our separate rooms to dress. A tremendous scurrying in the lower passages, an anxious banging of Elizabeth's door, and the sudden catapult of Fanny into my bedchamber, alerted me to my doom.
“Aunt Jane!” Fanny burst out in an ill-managed whisper, “you will never guess what has happened! Mamma's guests are arrived, and a full hour before their time— and Mamma not even dressed! She begs that if you are more beforehand, that you might go down and do the civil for a while. Sayce is only just begun on Mamma's hair — and you cannot think how droll Mamma looks, with curls all bunched on one side, and nothing at all on the other! I thought I should die of laughter, until she sent me away in a fury.”
A fury, for Lizzy, must encompass nothing more than a penetrating look, and a suggestion that her husband should show Fanny the dressing-room door; but I apprehended the gravity of her condition in an instant. Lizzy with her hair undone is not to be contemplated.
“Help me with these buttons, Fanny.” I shrugged myself into a passable dinner gown and presented my back to my niece. “If you can but find my pale blue slippers — I believe your mother's pug has dragged one under the bed — I am at your service directly.”
When I entered the drawing-room moments later, the Finch-Hattons stood aloof from one another, in attitudes of flight — for all the world like strangers at a ship's embarkation. There was Lady Elizabeth, her driving shawl still pinned about her shoulders, and an enormous straw hat balanced like a charger upon her head. She had taken up a position near the front windows, which gave out on the entry and sweep, and seemed engaged in a study of her own conveyance. Her husband, Mr. George Finch-Hatton, stood scowling over his pocket-watch, as though the expected ship had failed to make the tide; while Miss Louisa, the eldest daughter, was perched on the edge of one of Lizzy's litde gilt chairs, tapping her foot impatiently.
“What good fortune!” I cried, rushing in with extended hands, the very picture of effusive welcome. “We had not hoped for a glimpse of you until the dinner hour! I am charged with offering a most hearty welcome, in default of my brother and sister, who will no doubt be with us directly. And how did you find the road, Mr. Finch-Hatton? Your horses endured this heat tolerably well?”
“Tolerably, thank you, Miss Austen,” he said, and returned to his watch with studied indifference.
“Allow me to take your wrap, Lady Elizabeth.”
“Thank you, Miss Austen, but I so detest the duty of wrapping myself up again — particularly when travelling without my maid — that I believe I shall retain it yet a while. Your sister is indisposed?”
“Not at all — and most anxious to see you. She is merely dressing for dinner. I expect her every moment.”
“I see. A pity, George, that we have so little time.”
“But I thought…”
“It is quite impossible for us to stay above a quarter-hour. We are expected at Eastwell tonight. An engagement of Mr. Finch-Hatton's—”
Expected at Eastwell! When they had been expected here for dinner! It was quite extraordinary behaviour— almost indicative of a desire to snub my brother. But no — in that case, they should simply have sent a note, filled with regret at the necessity of despising his hospitality. Perhaps it was a family matter, too private for explanation; or perhaps our embroilment in the affairs of Mrs. Grey … I dismissed the last notion as absurd.
“I see,” I said with an effort, and crossed to the bell-pull. “Perhaps I should summon Mrs. Austen, so that you do not escape her altogether. She would never forgive me.”
“If you would be so good—”
It was fully eight minutes by Mr. Finch-Hatton's pocket-watch, I am sure, before my brother and his wife hurried through the door. I endured the interval as gamely as I might — but with little pleasure, I confess. The Finch-Hattons are never a talkative family; in such circumstances, each seemingly lost in a private reverie, they were as mute as sybils. It was impossible to introduce the subject that must be uppermost in all our minds — Mrs. Grey's death; delicacy forbade it. But each of my forays into conversation proved disappointing. Neither the subject of Race Week, nor last evening's Assembly, nor even the prospect of long sleeves for winter dress, could animate the ladies; and as for Finch-Hatton himself— he was preoccupied with pacing off the length of the drawing-room, a habit acquired, I suppose, from his intimacy with architects.
For if the Finch-Hattons are impoverished in speech, they are rich in the passion for improvement. Their estate at Eastwell is never suffered to remain long in one condition — a team of builders must be permanently installed somewhere in the deer park, I believe, as feudal lords once commanded a host of vassals; and there a legion of gardeners is perennially in pursuit of the last word in landscape fashion. The present house — the third to be built on its site — is a fantastical thing, half riding-school and half-Parthenon.[28] Mr. Joseph Bonomi had the designing of it, and managed it in so outlandish a taste — which he persuaded the Finch-Hattons to believe was at once classical and modern—that it is quite the talk of the neighbourhood, though perhaps not in the manner his patrons intended.
Conceive, if you are able, a largish white block of a building, divided along its front with pilasters and capitals set into the facade; exactly three great windows on one side of the entry and three on the other, and an immense arched portico, nearly three storeys in height, dominating the whole. Cumbersome, inelegant, unlovely, and awkward — but classical and modern eno
ugh in its expression, that Lady Elizabeth might believe herself a citizen of Rome. I have visited the family at Eastwell several times, and can never find that the place has grown in my estimation. It is peculiarly suited to the humours of its inhabitants, however, who are in general as awkward and inexpressive as their walls. The Finch-Hatton ladies never speak if they can help it, and then only in plaintive tones; the Finch-Hatton men, when not looking at their pocket-watches, prefer to be out-of-doors.
“Lady Elizabeth!” my sister Lizzy cried from the doorway. “What is this I hear of your not intending dinner? Is it possible? And I have had white soup enough for an army simmering in the kitchens!”
“It may yet serve, dear madam, if Buonaparte has his way,” Mr. Finch-Hatton observed drily, and thrust his watch at last into his pocket. Perhaps he had placed an idle bet or two as to the time required for Lizzy's preparation. “You look well, Austen,” he said to my brother with a bow; “surprisingly well, under the circumstances.”
“You mean the evacuation orders?” Neddie enquired smoothly, as though Mrs. Grey had never lived, much less died. “I cannot take them in earnest, however diligently I set the servants to packing.”
“Then I pray the Monster may land on my doorstep rather than yours,” Finch-Hatton returned. “I hope I shall know how to receive the renegade! I have been drilling my tenants these two months at least; and there is powder and shot enough in the stores to hold off an entire brigade of cavalry!”
“I applaud your foresight, sir,” Neddie said, “but I cannot expect so little of our gallant Navy. With an Austen and a Nelson scouring the Channel, the Monster shall not pass beyond a nautical mile from Boulogne.”
“But tell me, Lady Elizabeth,” my sister broke in, “must you certainly go on to Eastwell tonight? If it is the lateness of the hour that concerns you, I am sure there are bedchambers enough.”
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