Murder at Mansfield Park

by Lynn Shepherd

  ‘I can never be free of it—never erase it—never blot it out—that face, those eyes—cannot bear it—pretend I never saw, pretend I never heard—no, no, do not look upon me—I will not tell! I will not tell!’

  The precise import of these words forced itself slowly but inexorably upon Mary’s consciousness. It was not Julia who had killed Fanny, but someone else. Julia’s previous burst of feeling did not signify her own guilt, but her horror at having seen her own cousin being brutally done to death, and by someone she herself knew. It was no wonder the girl was distraught—no wonder she was in terror—

  Mary’s heart leapt in hope—and as soon froze, as the girl sprang up suddenly in the bed, her lips white, and her eyes staring sightlessly across the room. ‘Do not look upon me!—I will not tell—a secret—always, always a secret!— Edmund—Edmund!’

  CHAPTER XVII

  Charles Maddox was, at that moment, standing in silence on the garden terrace. He was not a man who required many hours of repose, and it had become his habit to spend much of the night watching, taking the advantage of peace and serenity to marshal his thoughts. Living as he did in the smoke and dirt of town, he could but rarely, as now, enjoy a moonlit landscape, and the contrast of a clear dark sky with the deep shade of woods. He gazed for a while at the constellations, picking out Arcturus and the Bear, as he had been taught as a boy, while reflecting that moonlight had practical as well as picturesque qualities: a messenger could ride all night in such conditions as this, and that being so, Maddox might, with luck, receive the information he required in the course of the following day. He had sent Fraser to London, to enquire at Portman-square as to the exact state of affairs between Mr and Mrs Crawford during their brief honeymoon; the husband had claimed they were happy, but every circumstance argued against it. Maddox had seen the clenched fist, the contracted brow, and the barely suppressed anger writ across his face. He would not be the first man Maddox had known, to conceal violent inclinations beneath a debonair and amiable demeanour, and this one had a motive as good as any of them: not love, or revenge, but money, and a great deal of it.

  Maddox could not have told, precisely, how long he had been standing there, meditating the histories of his past cases, when he heard the sound of an approaching horse, the echo magnified unduly in the stillness of the air. He abandoned his reverie at once, and proceeded to the front of the house, to find a man dismounting in some haste. He was a medical gentleman, to judge by his bag, but he was not the physician Maddox had seen at Mansfield before.

  ‘Do I take it Mr Gilbert is unavailable?’ he asked.

  The man looked at him with suspicion, as if wondering at his impertinence. ‘I am sorry, sir. I do not recollect that we have been introduced.’

  ‘My apologies. My name is Charles Maddox. The family have requested my assistance in resolving the unfortunate business of Mrs—that is—Miss Price’s death.’

  The man nodded. ‘I had heard as much in the village; indeed, they are talking of little else. I am Phillips, the apothecary. Mr Gilbert has been detained at a lying-in at Locking Hall. He sent word to me to attend here in his stead.’

  ‘The patient is worse, I apprehend?’ said Maddox.

  ‘Indeed so, sir,’ said Phillips. ‘I must hasten to examine her. A great deal of time has already been lost.’

  He handed his mount to the stable-boy, and began to hurry towards the house, but Maddox kept pace with him.

  ‘Have you been informed as to the symptoms?’

  ‘Of course. The message was most precise, though I do not see that it is any concern of yours.’

  ‘Nonetheless, if you would.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Phillips, stopping for a moment before the door, his gloves in one hand. ‘The pupils are contracted, the patient flushed about the face, the respiration raucous, and the pulse slow. Now if you will excuse me, I am expected.’

  Maddox caught his arm; his face had assumed a sudden and uncharacteristic gravity. ‘Will you permit me to accompany you, Mr Phillips?’ he said, quickly. ‘It may prove to be of the utmost importance.’

  The apothecary hesitated a moment, and Maddox made a shrewd guess that he was only too conscious of his subordinate and substitutionary status at the Park, and would, in consequence, lack the confidence to refuse such a request, or to question the authority of a man who appeared to enjoy the full confidence of Sir Thomas, and to be residing in his house.

  ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘Follow me.’

  Had Maddox known no better, he might have presumed that it was Mrs Baddeley Mr Phillips had been summoned to attend. She it was, at first sight, who appeared to be most in need of medicinal assistance; her face was pale, and she had sunk breathless into a chair, one hand at her side, and her aromatic vinegar in the other. Miss Crawford, he could see, was divided between her desire to alleviate the housekeeper’s immediate distress, and a more painful concern for Julia Bertram, who seemed to be in a state of profound stupor. More alarming still, the young girl’s countenance was dark with suffused blood, and her features utterly still and seemingly lifeless.

  ‘How long has this present condition persisted?’ asked Phillips, forestalling Maddox’s own enquiry.

  ‘An hour—perhaps two,’ replied Miss Crawford. ‘Immediately prior to that she became suddenly agitated and distressed—she began to talk for the first time in days. But,’ she faltered, her cheeks flushed, ‘there was no sense in the words. Since that time I have watched her sink into the pitiful state in which you now see her. I have given her two further doses of the cordial Mr Gilbert prescribed, but it seems only to make her worse.’

  Maddox noted her countenance as she spoke these words, just as he had noted her start back with a frown at his approach; he wondered at it, but he had not then the time to ponder its meaning. To his eyes, it was evident, only too evident, what afflicted the patient, and he watched Phillips commence a prolonged physical examination with increasing impatience, succeeding in checking his anger only by reminding himself that the symptoms were, indeed, easily mistaken for those of common fever, and the alternative was hardly likely to have formed part of the experience of a country apothecary.

  ‘She has been poisoned, man,’ he cried at last. ‘Can you not see that? She shews all the signs of having ingested an excessive—indeed fatal—dose of laudanum. The initial excitement under the effects of the stimulant, and then the slow lethargy—the strident breathing—the dreadful colour of the face.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Maddox,’ said Phillips. ‘I did not know you included a medical proficiency among your many other accomplishments.’

  ‘I do not, sir. But I have had considerable experience of unnatural death, and the means by which it may be brought about. I have, alas, seen cases like this before. If I am right, we will soon see her succumb to an even deeper lassitude, and her breath and pulse will slow to the point of absolute torpor. If we do not act at once, this deadly listlessness will become irreversible; she will sink lower and lower, and we will not be able to bring her back.’

  All the time he was speaking he had kept his eyes fixed on Mary Crawford’s face, and had seen the grief and horror his words occasioned; he saw, too, that if she did not like him, she did, at least, believe him, and her first action, when he had concluded, was to turn at once to Phillips, and beg him with passionate ardour to comply with whatever he suggested. Mr Phillips, however, was extremely reluctant to cede the right to determine the correct mode of treatment to someone completely unqualified to pronounce in such cases. Nor, it seemed, did he agree with the diagnosis.

  ‘I cannot concur with you, sir,’ he said, coldly. ‘I attended the young lady some days ago, at the onset of her present indisposition. I am of the decided opinion that this is merely a particularly virulent case of putrid fever. I propose to bleed her, in order to suppress the fever in its forming state, and relieve the vascular congestion. I have complete confidence in the efficacy of this method of proceeding, as I do of Mr Gilbert’s ag
reement with what I propose.’

  ‘It seems to me, sir,’ retorted Maddox, ‘that you are more afraid of deviating from Mr Gilbert’s opinion, than you are of losing your patient. Bleeding will not help her now— indeed, it is very like to kill her, in the weakened state to which she is now reduced.We must apply a purge, and hope to expel the poison from the gut before it can be absorbed into the body. There is no time to lose—we do not even know when the fatal dose was administered. It may already be too late.’

  He had hoped to shock the man out of his timid complacency, and his words had their effect—though not, at first, on the apothecary.

  ‘What do you mean, sir?’ cried Mrs Baddeley in terror, rising unsteadily from her chair. ‘Do you talk of poison? And in this house? The poor girl has had nothing but Mr Gilbert’s cordial, administered with my own hands.’

  ‘That may very well be the case,’ said Maddox, striding to the table of medicines, and beginning to examine them. ‘But are you in a position to swear that there was never a moment—never a single moment—in the last two days, when Miss Julia has been left alone?’

  Mrs Baddeley flushed, and the two women exchanged a glance.

  ‘I see you cannot,’ continued Maddox. ‘And here, I believe, is the result. This bottle breathes faintly of laudanum. Mr Phillips—your opinion, if you please.’

  The apothecary came forward, and lifted the bottle to his nose, before looking up with an expression of horror. ‘This is most alarming—someone has clearly tampered with the cordial. Heaven knows what Mr Gilbert will have to say to this—’

  ‘Your efforts would be better directed to assisting your patient, Mr Phillips. Mrs Baddeley, do you happen to have a supply of ipecacuanha in the house? It may serve, as an emetic.’

  ‘I believe so, sir. It is long since I have had need of that evil physic, but there may still be a small quantity in the chest in my room. I will need to fetch the key.’

  ‘Then if you feel strong enough, I would ask you to make haste there with Mr Phillips, so that he may make up a tincture.’

  ‘Mrs Baddeley is not well, sir,’ intervened Miss Crawford, as the door closed behind them. ‘I know the chest to which she refers, and could just as easily have gone in her place.’

  ‘I wished to speak to you alone, Miss Crawford,’ said Maddox, ‘and prepare you for what is to come. Once the emetic has taken effect, we must try to get Miss Julia from her bed, and revive her a little by moving her about the room. With luck, we may prevent the onset of the final stupor. But it will not be an easy task, and may tax even your strength and fortitude. If you do not feel yourself equal to it, I will send for one of the servants, but, for reasons that will no doubt become clear to you when you have had time to reflect, I would prefer to keep the matter between our four selves, at least for the moment.’

  She did not answer at once, and when he turned his eyes towards her white and horrified face, he perceived that she was already blaming herself. She had administered the last doses of the cordial; she—all unwitting—had therefore been the purveyor of the poison; how she might feel if the girl were to die, he had not, then, the energy to contemplate.

  He did not think it likely that either of them would forget the night they endured together, at Julia Bertram’s bedside. The darkness without was nothing to the grim work they undertook within. The ipecacuanha brought upon such violent reachings as seemed to tear the girl’s frail constitution in pieces, and more than once he wondered whether the cure might not be more deadly than the malady, and he would prove, at the last, to be a murderer, not a saviour. He saw, too, that Mary Crawford was beset by doubts of a similar melancholy order, but she never uttered a word of doubt or misgiving, and directed her efforts to assisting Mr Phillips, and accomplishing the charge before them. And it was a soul-harrowing task; the reachings were soon followed by a foul-smelling vomit, and a sudden gush of liquid smelling strongly of laudanum, and even when the basins had been removed, and the patient cleansed, there was no possibility of rest. Knowing the state of prostration which would necessarily follow, and the stimulant measures necessary to counter it, if death were to be averted, Maddox had them take her bodily from the bed, and toil hour after hour by turns, half-carrying, half-dragging her cold and insensible body about the room.

  As the dawn rose behind Sir Thomas’s woods, the two women began to fancy there was some slight improvement in the girl’s pulse: they waited, watched, and examined it again and again, and when the first rays of sunlight revealed a lightening of the venous darkness that had flooded her face, they dared at last to hope that she might be out of danger. Even Mr Phillips acknowledged a temporary revival, and ventured to give encouraging assurances, but Maddox was not so sanguine; he had seen this flattering symptom before, and knew that all too often it proved to be but the harbinger of a final and more fatal crisis; he did his best to keep the women from indulging the expectation of an amendment that might never come, but he could not dissuade them. Within the hour the girl’s breathing began to slow, until there was a considerable interval between the successive inspirations, and a cold sweat had broken out over her body; and then the pulse that had shewn such a decided improvement began to diminish gradually in fullness and strength. Mrs Baddeley could not be shaken from the hopes that had been so cruelly raised, but Maddox knew that they had laboured in vain, and he saw that Mary Crawford knew it too.

  Julia Bertram died at exactly fifteen minutes after five o’clock, as by her watch on the table.

  Mrs Baddeley burst at once into a torrent of grief, kissing the girl’s hands, and raising them to her own face, and sighing as if her heart would burst. ‘I never thought to see her depart this world before me—I used to dance her on my knee when she was a tiny child, and I thought one day I would do the same with her own babes, when she became a wife. But that will never be. Oh my sweet, sweet lady!’ she sobbed, murmuring some other words, which her tears made inarticulate. And then, as if recollecting herself, ‘Forgive me, sir. I am quite overcome, as you would be yourself if you had known the poor dear young lady as I did, and as Miss Crawford did. And after all the other terrible things to have befallen this family—what will her ladyship and Mr Bertram have to say? And poor Sir Thomas, when he returns?’

  ‘As to that, I will answer,’ said Maddox gently, raising her to her feet. ‘You would do best to take some rest and endeavour to restore your enfeebled spirits. I will have them send up chocolate and some thing nourishing to eat, but I charge you to speak to no-one—not even your husband— of what has occurred here this night, and remain in your room until I send for you.’

  Mr Phillips was not long in following the housekeeper from the room, and as he prepared to depart, Maddox laid upon him the same injunction with which he had dismissed Mrs Baddeley.

  ‘You will appreciate that I must demand absolute secrecy as to the true cause of this piteous event. As far as the family are concerned, for the moment, this was merely the sad culmination of many weeks of previous indisposition.When the time is right, and only then, I will divulge the truth.You know, as well as I do, Mr Phillips, that the contamination of that cordial was calculated and deliberate, and that being so, I now have another murder to resolve at Mansfield Park, and by the same hand as the first. I must condition for the broadest possible freedom of movement and decision if I am to find the man responsible, and bring him to justice. I trust we understand one another?’

  Mr Phillips nodded, and with a curt bow, took his leave. Maddox turned to Mary Crawford, who was sitting silently in the window-seat.

  ‘And you, Miss Crawford? Do you agree to the same terms?’

  She said nothing, and fixed her eyes instead on the sunlight now streaming across the lawns, and touching the woods with gold. It occurred to him that the repugnance he had seen in her countenance the evening before, when he had first entered the room, and which had vanished in the face of the far more pressing need to sink their differences for the sake of her friend, had now returned with renewed vigo
ur. There was some thing else, too, beyond her immediate and understandable anguish, to which he could not yet put a name; but whatever had occasioned it, there were questions he would have to ask, and they could not wait.

  ‘I need to speak to you, Miss Crawford, and in private, but perhaps it would be best if we were both to take some repose and refreshment. With your permission, I will call at the parsonage this afternoon.’

  And with that, he was gone.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  It was as much as Mary could do to summon the strength to walk back across the park to the parsonage. The ordeals of a day and night passed in such exertion were nothing to her grief and exhaustion of mind; her limbs were trembling, and she was faint and giddy from a want of proper rest and food. It was too early to expect her sister or Dr Grant to be up, and she was glad to be spared the necessity of lengthy explanations, in which she would be obliged to conceal as much as she revealed, trusting that the Mansfield gossips would supply her sister with the sober facts of the case as well as she could do. But if she wished to avoid society in general, she most earnestly sought the company of her brother. He alone would understand some thing of what she was suffering, and he alone would have the words with which to console her; but a search of the house revealed only that his bed was empty, and his horse gone.

  She asked the cook for a dish of tea, and made her way slowly to the privacy of her own room, where she finally gave way to a violent outburst of tears. It was some time before this excess of suffering had spent itself, and even longer before she could trust herself to appear before the Grants in a tolerable ease of mind, so she sent word that she was indisposed and lying down. And lie down she did, though with such a headache as precluded all hope of sleep. Never had she wanted the bliss of oblivion more, and never had she more need of it; she knew her impending interview with Charles Maddox would tax all her reserves of watchfulness and caution, and yet she could not quiet her thoughts. Between the horror of Julia Bertram’s senseless and untimely death, and her own unconscious part in it, and the words she had heard from the girl’s own lips, only hours before she died, she could not tell if her heart were more oppressed by sorrow, guilt, fear, or foreboding.