When Maddox arrived shortly after three o’clock, she was sitting in the shrubbery. He saw at once the paleness of her face, and the slight tremor in her hands, and guessed some thing of what she had been suffering in the hours since dawn. He pitied her, but he could not afford to shew it; she, by contrast, could think of him only in the guise of a man prepared to resort to torture, to intimidate an innocent servant. He would have taken her hand, had she offered it, but she remained seated, and would not catch his eye. He said nothing immediately, but took a seat on the bench beside her.
‘I see we do not meet as friends, Miss Crawford. I am at a loss to know how I have so far forfeited your good opinion.’
‘You have only to search your own conscience, Mr Maddox.’
‘Even so, I would prefer to hear it from you.’
‘Really, sir,’ she said angrily, turning to face him, ‘do you have no recollection at all of the atrocious way you behaved towards Kitty Jeffries? Setting your brute of an assistant upon her like a dog?’
He sat silent for a moment, and it occurred to her that he had supposed her ignorant of the incident, and was even now debating how best to excuse it. She had never seen him frown before, and she was struck by how much it served to alter his face, as the scar above his eye deepened, and cast shadows along the strong lines of his chin and jaw, sharpening them to an edge. She had known him to be a formidable adversary; now, for the first time, she saw him without the mask of geniality or politeness. It may, perhaps, have been due to her extreme weariness, but she felt the power of his presence as she had never done before; she had been used to condemning him as arrogant and domineering, but now, sitting by him in such close proximity, and after such an experience endured together, she found herself affected in a way that was wholly new to her.
‘It was—necessary,’ he said at length. ‘Regrettable, but necessary. The girl will take no lasting harm, and I fancy her mistress is already remembering me in her nightly prayers.’
Mary gathered her wits, and called to mind why she had been so displeased with him. ‘Lest you have already forgotten, Mr Maddox, Miss Bertram has this very morning lost her beloved sister.’
‘My apologies, Miss Crawford, I am properly reprimanded. We are both of us, I suspect, somewhat fatigued. I meant merely to say that Miss Bertram is far from sharing your resentment. She does not approve of the method, any more than you do, but it has been the means of exonerating her from all suspicion, and relieving her mind from an intolerable burden. I see from your expression that you do not know the story. I will be brief.At a certain point during your pleasant little party to Compton, Maria Bertram told her cousin that she wished her dead. She did not know, then, that her sister had overheard these words, and when Mrs Crawford’s body was found, Maria was seized with panic, fearing she would be suspected if the story became known. Her fears were all the greater because she had suffered a nose-bleed while at Compton, and had blood on her dress.’
‘I remember,’ said Mary, slowly. ‘On the journey home she held her shawl close round her shoulders, even though the night was warm.’
Maddox nodded. ‘Thank you for your corroboration, Miss Crawford. This same incident also accounts for Miss Bertram’s inordinate reluctance to consent to a search of her chamber—she knew my men would find that gown, and—’
‘—she would not be able to prove the blood was her own.’
‘Quite so. She bribed her maid to keep her silence. Had she trusted me from the start, I would not have been forced to such disagreeable measures.’
‘Can you blame her, Mr Maddox? Your methods and demeanour hardly inspire confidence.’
He inclined his head. ‘You may be right; I do not court popularity. But whatever the rights and wrongs of my means, the end is always the same: the truth. I know now that Maria Bertram did not kill her cousin, just as I know she did not kill her sister. Julia Bertram did not die because she heard or saw some thing at Compton, but because she heard or saw some thing at Mansfield Park, on the day of Mrs Crawford’s death. Some thing or someone.’
Maddox saw his companion grow yet paler at these words, but he said nothing. Many things might have provoked such a reaction, particularly in her current nervous state; nonetheless, he still felt sure that this young woman had a part to play in elucidating this crime, even if she would neither help nor trust him in his own efforts to do so.
They sat for a while in silence, a silence that was merely accidental on her part, but had been calculated with some exactness on his. It interested him to try whether she, a mere woman, could bear the oppression of silence longer than her brother, and his respect for her only increased when it became clear that, although there must be questions she wished to ask him, she could hold her tongue longer than many a vice-bitten London felon he had known. He stored away the insight for future perusal, shrewd enough to know that such a degree of self-composure was not only rare, but, at least in one respect, a rather ambivalent quality in any person caught up in the investigation of such a crime. At length, he spoke again. ‘I do not need to ask you if you saw someone tamper with the cordial. If you had, I am sure you would have informed me already. And if you had tampered with it yourself, you are hardly likely to confess it to me now.’
She looked at him briefly, then resumed her contemplation of Dr Grant’s garden. ‘I will not dignify that remark by addressing it. Anyone in the house might have entered that room without arousing suspicion. Nor was it a crime that required undue premeditation. There was a vial of laudanum among the other medicines. It would have been the work of a moment to pour the contents into the cordial.’
‘I see that you have given the matter some thought, Miss Crawford.Your ratiocination is admirable.’
‘I deserve no compliments, Mr Maddox,’ she said, tears filling her eyes. ‘I will never forgive myself for not perceiving it sooner. The odour was palpable. You recognised it at once.’
‘I was looking for it; you, on the other hand, had no reason to suspect it. You were fatigued with watching, and anxious for your friend. Do not blame yourself.’
‘That is easily said, sir.’
‘Quite so.’ There was a pause, then he continued, ‘Given how closely you have examined the question, Miss Crawford, I am sure it has occurred to you to wonder when, exactly, the lethal dose could have been added to the cordial. Judging by the quantity remaining, it must have been but lately opened?’
‘I gave the first dose from it myself, yesterday afternoon.’
He saw the look on her face as she spoke, and when he resumed it was in a gentler tone. ‘I had presumed as much. In my experience, it would have been a matter of some hours only before the symptoms became unmistakable. And the bottle itself was not sealed?’
‘No. None of them are. I dare say Mr Gilbert does not consider it necessary. It was only a cordial, after all.’
‘Was, yes. Quite so.’
She looked at him for a moment, but said nothing. Maddox sat back in his seat. ‘We have made some progress, but not, as yet, advanced very far. As you yourself said, Miss Crawford, anyone in the house might have committed this crime; moreover, the same reasoning appertains to anyone who has entered the house since the bottle was left there.’
She turned to him quickly, then looked away. Maddox continued, ‘I have had word from Gilbert. He says he left that bottle by Miss Julia’s bed two afternoons ago. He left it there, indeed, only a few short hours before Mr Crawford returned from his long absence, and hastened to pay his visit to the Park.’
‘Oh, you need not concern yourself about my brother, Mr Maddox. He did not remain in the house long enough, and was certainly not alone.’ She smiled, but it seemed to Maddox that she was struggling to maintain a corresponding lightness of tone, an effort somewhat belied by the slight flush to her cheek.
‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘I recall that Mr Bertram kept him waiting upwards of half an hour. A petty gesture, I grant, but perhaps we might forgive him, when we consider the injuries
the family has suffered at your brother’s hands. And as you said, only a few minutes ago, it would have been the work of a moment to slip up to Miss Julia’s chamber.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, with enforced patience, ‘if he had known where he was going. Do you ask me to believe my brother to be acquainted with the whereabouts of the sleeping-rooms of the young ladies of the house? I doubt he has even been upstairs. It is a ridiculous theory.’
Maddox was undeterred. ‘He might have made a shrewd guess, based on all those other great houses in which he has been employed, or he might simply have followed Mrs Baddeley, without her being at all aware of it. It is not quite so ridiculous a theory as you maintain, Miss Crawford. Indeed, I wondered at the time why Mr Crawford was so determined to pay his call that evening, late and dark as it was. It might have waited until the morning, might it not? But for reasons of his own, your brother insisted on presenting himself at the Park without delay. Having gone thus far, let me postulate a little further. Let us say that your brother returned to the Park some days earlier than he would have us believe, and that he encountered his wife, fresh off the coach from London. Let us say that they argued—argued so bitterly that he was moved to strike her. Faced with the full enormity of his crime, he flees the estate, but not without first perceiving Miss Julia in the park. He does not know what she has seen—or if she has indeed seen any thing—but when he returns some days later, feigning to have arrived directly from Enfield, he discovers that this possible witness has been all this time unconscious. He has an unlooked-for opportunity to silence her for ever, and he seizes it. Without remorse.’
There was no doubt of the colour in her cheeks now, but the reason for it was not entirely clear to him. It might be anger at his impertinence, but it might equally be fear of discovery. Ever since he had learned that Crawford was Miss Price’s abductor, he had been convinced that he was by far her most likely killer. Logic, observation, and experience all argued for it, and if it was indeed so, he had no doubt that this young woman was in her brother’s confidence; Crawford would have confessed every thing to her on his return, even if she had not known of his plans for the elopement until after it had taken place. Indeed, Maddox could easily see Mary Crawford as far more than a mere confidante; he knew she had loved the girl, but she loved her brother more, and if Julia Bertram’s silence was the only means to save him from the gallows, then it was a price she would be prepared to pay. If there was a woman in existence, who would have the courage, the resolution, and the sang-froid to carry through such a crime, he could believe Miss Crawford to be that woman.
‘I do not believe him capable of such a thing,’ she said at last, in a tone of utter dejection, as if all her strength were gone.
‘You did not believe him capable of lying, and yet he did.’
She turned to look at him, as he continued, ‘He lied to you about being at Sir Robert Ferrars’s estate—indeed, I believe he even wrote you a letter that he claimed to have sent from there, which can only have been designed to deceive you. And if that were not enough, he lied to you about his marriage. I am sorry to be the bearer of such news—believe me, or not, as you will, but it gives me no pleasure to tell you this. I have just this hour received word from Fraser in London. He has spoken to Mrs Jellett, the gentlewoman who keeps the lodgings in Portman-square, and it is not a pretty story she had to tell. There were vehement arguments almost from the day they moved in— arguments loud enough to wake the rest of the house, and to make Mrs Jellett apprehensive for the reputation of her establishment. And that, I am sorry to say, was not all. The day before Mr Crawford departed—without settling their bills—there was a quarrel of such ferocity that Mrs Jellett was constrained to call the constable. She saw the marks of violence with her own eyes. And yet he told me—as he no doubt told you—that they were happy.’
He watched her for a moment, awaiting a response, but she kept her eyes fixed firmly ahead.
‘All things considered, Miss Crawford,’ he said at last, ‘I believe my enquiries are nearing their conclusion. Having spoken to you, I am more and more confident of that. An event is imminent. Yes indeed, an event is imminent.’
Henry did not return from his ride for some hours, and the shadows were lengthening across the parsonage lawn, when Mary at last heard the sound of a horse in the stable-yard. Her sister had tried in vain to induce her to come indoors and take some rest, and had only with the greatest reluctance been persuaded to return to the house. Mary walked to the archway that led from the drive to the yard, and stood watching Henry, as he dismounted. He had provided himself with a black coat and arm-band, and she saw at once, and with inexpressible pain, that the assumption of formal mourning appeared to have deprived him of his quick, light step, and the poised and confident air that had so distinguished him in the past; he seemed weary to his very soul, and when he looked up and saw her, she knew from his face that the same desperate weariness was also visible in her own.
‘Will you walk with me, Henry? Mr Maddox has been here.’
He looked at her, and then nodded gravely. ‘Of course. But take care how you talk to me. Do not tell me any thing now, which Mr Maddox would not want you to disclose. I would not wish you entangled in my own difficulties any more than is absolutely necessary. I would protect you from that, even if I can do nothing else.’
She sighed. ‘I do believe he spoke to me with the express intent that I should convey every word of it to you. The more I see of him, the more I think this to be the most insidious of all his schemes. He issues information, little by little, here and there, and then sits back to watch how it takes its effect—how we behave, what we do, what we say. It is as if we are all his puppets—mere clockwork toys, or pawns on a chessboard he can manoeuvre at his pleasure.’
‘In that case,’ said Henry, with a gloomy smile, ‘I cannot be afraid of hearing any thing you wish to say. Do not check yourself. Tell me whatever you like.’
It was not long in the telling. The death of Julia Bertram, the suspicions of Maddox, and the news from London, were all told in a very few words. Such was the sympathy between brother and sister, so deep their mutual love and understanding, that she needed only to relate the facts, for him to comprehend all that she had suffered, and all that she now feared.
When she had finished, he drew her arm through his, as they walked, and she could see that he was troubled.
‘I do not know what pains me more, Mary: the grief you are feeling on account of Julia Bertram, or my own shame at having lied to you.’ He flushed. ‘In that respect, if no other, Maddox told you the truth—which is more than I can say on my own account. I did lie about being at Ferrars’s place, but I did so because I did not want to put you in an invidious position, by asking you, in your turn, to conceal where I really was from our sister and the Bertrams. And I lied about the true state of relations between myself and Fanny because—well, because I was ashamed. Embarrassed and ashamed—that is the truth of it. I did not want to admit that a course of action I undertook from motives of sheer mercenary selfishness, and which has injured so many, did nothing but bring misery on her, and humiliation on myself. When all the excitement of the intrigue was over, a few—a very few—days were sufficient to teach me a bitter lesson. I learned to value sweetness of temper, purity of mind, and excellence of principles in a wife, because I knew by then I would never find them in the woman I had married. I had thought such qualities insignificant compared to the far greater misery of pecuniary distress; I had thought the comforts of rank, position, and money would far outweigh the little inconveniences of a bitter and spiteful wife, who would forever be reminding me that I had dragged her down from the exalted sphere of life to which she might have aspired. Barely two days in London proved to her that she might have bought herself a title with a fortune as large as hers, and she never thereafter allowed me to forget it.’
They walked a little further in silence, before he turned to her. ‘Are you cold, Mary? Your hands are shaking.’
‘Our sister will scold,’ she said, attempting a smile. ‘I have, as usual, forgotten to bring my shawl. Please, go on.’
‘There is not much else to tell. You know my character, Mary—you know my faults, as well as I know them myself. In short, I could not trust myself. Indeed, I should defy any man of warm spirits and natural ardour of mind to govern his temper in the face of such incessant and violent recriminations. She had raised her hand to me once; I did not stay to be tempted to pay her back in kind.’
Mary looked at him in horror, only now comprehending the full import of what he was saying, and how it related to what Maddox had told her. ‘She raised her hand to you?’
He nodded. ‘I do not cut a very manly figure, do I?’ he said, with grim irony. ‘A man beaten about the face by his own wife—how could I hold my head up in public ever again? I would be laughed out of every club in London, and pilloried for a henpecked husband and emasculated milksop.’ He laughed, but the sound was hollow, and his smile was forced.
‘And so, you left her?’ she said, gently.
‘To my everlasting shame. She did not leave me, I left her—left her alone in town, where she had no friend but me. My own wife. I only found out that she had gone when I had a letter from Mrs Jellett, asking me for the money owed on our lodgings. She had presumed—why should she not?—that Fanny had followed me to the address in Drury-lane I had confided to her. I knew better. I returned to Portman-square, and began to search for her. That part, at least, is true.’
Murder at Mansfield Park Page 23
