But the contents of the third letter, the thick letter addressed to Sir Thomas, were not revealed so readily. Rumors of what was written spread through the estate – that in it Mrs. Norris had admitted to accidentally killing the dog while attempting to murder Mr. Crawford, perhaps to poisoning Mr. Rushworth as well when giving him a small vial that she recommended taking against sore throats at bedtime (Mr. Rushworth’s sore throats were cured; he would never have another again). These two men had ruined her darling Maria and Mrs. Norris believed they deserved the severest of penalties. But Mrs. Norris declared that she had not killed Mr. George Yates. She had hit him with a shovel on the head, to prevent him from stealing from Mansfield Park, but she had not slit his throat and she had not dragged his dead body to the corner of the stables and hidden it under a pile of hay. After all, how could she, a weak old woman in poor health, have been capable of such deeds?
These passages caused Sir Thomas some difficulty because the one murder that he most needed solved was the murder of Mr. Yates, and because Mrs. Norris’s other words were also disturbing. For two hours the baronet consulted with no one but the coroner and Dr. Grant, then walked around the grounds, revisited the stables where he frowned but did not speak, and finally returned to his study. He sent for Susan, and she had just sat down when Lord Dexthorpe entered and demanded to be told exactly what was in Mrs. Norris’s letter to Sir Thomas.
The baron, who had already learnt some of the letter’s contents and was guessing at the rest, ignored Susan and began speaking at once. “I believe that Mrs. Norris could have poisoned Mr. Rushworth, although from what I understand, his death occurred several days after his visit here.” Lord Dexthorpe had made himself familiar with many details. “And that she could have poisoned your wife’s dog when she meant to murder Mr. Crawford. But I do not see how or why she would have murdered my son, either by hitting him on the head or by taking a knife to his throat.” The baron enumerated the reasons for his doubts. Firstly, Mrs. Norris had been a woman, and not even a young woman, while Mr. George Yates had been a strong, large, heavy young man and he had not died from poisoning. How on earth could she have overpowered him? Secondly, the baron could not understand why Mrs. Norris would be in the stables so late at night. Mr. George Yates had late habits, and he might have wanted to inspect his new horse, but Mrs. Norris’s going to the stables after dark seemed very unlikely. Sir Thomas had known her better than the baron had, but in their short acquaintance the vicar’s widow had shown herself to be a rational woman. Thirdly, although Mrs. Norris may have been bitter towards Mr. Crawford and Mr. Rushworth, for the roles they had played in Mrs. Rushworth’s disgrace, she had no grounds for wishing harm on his son George.
But Sir Thomas demurred, explaining that Mrs. Norris had written that she had been in the stables that night, but that he wished to investigate further before sharing the letter with others.
“I am tired of waiting for your investigations, Sir Thomas!” cried the baron, and snatched several sheets of paper from Sir Thomas’s desk. “If Mrs. Norris was in the stables she must have at least seen what happened to George!”
“My lord!” protested the baronet, but the baron refused to return the pages. The baron took them to the window, put on his spectacles and began to read.
“I am sorry,” Sir Thomas said to Susan. “But he would have to see everything eventually.”
Susan did not understand why her uncle was apologizing to her.
“Not what I expected,” concluded the baron, after perusing the pages twice. “But Mrs. Norris says she offers a knife and a letter as evidence. I want to see everything, Sir Thomas.”
Sir Thomas shook his head, but he could not gainsay the angry father. He took several sheets of paper out of his desk, carried them over to the baron, and said he would let him examine the knife momentarily. The baron again stood by the window, reading and frowning and exclaiming, “Good God!” more than once.
“And where is the knife that was used to murder my son?”
Sir Thomas opened the drawer again and took out a knife.
“That is the knife?” asked the baron.
Susan experienced bewilderment as she recognized it. “Impossible,” she said, but she had such difficulty speaking that her word came out in a whisper and neither man heard her.
“According to Mrs. Norris, yes, it is,” said the baronet, answering the question posed by the baron.
Lord Dexthorpe was grimly triumphant. “Then we know who the murderer is – Miss Susan Price.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“What?” cried Susan, now finding her voice. “I have not murdered anyone!”
Lord Dexthorpe asked if the knife was hers.
Susan conceded that the silver knife was hers, given her by one of her sisters back in Portsmouth. Then she protested: “But I never used it to harm anyone, let alone your son.”
“There is no proof that this was the knife used to murder Mr. Yates,” said Sir Thomas. “It is not even particularly sharp. Besides, many people have knives.”
Lord Dexthorpe agreed that many people did but that Mrs. Norris had found this knife hidden in Miss Price’s room and that she believed Miss Price had used it to murder Mr. Yates. “A young woman was seen near the stables that night, a woman too tall to have been Miss Crawford. Could that young woman have been Miss Price?”
Susan was grateful that she was sitting down, for what she was hearing made her knees tremble. Still, she attempted to defend herself. She explained that she had not gone to the stables the night Mr. Yates was murdered. She had not even left the house, but had spent the entire time in her room.
Her uncle supported her by reminding the baron that the coachman’s description of the woman could match several persons.
“Your niece, Miss Price. Your daughter, Mrs. Rushworth. Even your other daughter, John’s wife,” said Lord Dexthorpe. “They are all about the same height, all fair, and I doubt that they could be distinguished from each other at night. Which would you blame, Sir Thomas? One of your daughters, or your niece? My son John was with his wife that night; he assures me that she did not leave the house. Mrs. Rushworth and my elder son barely knew each other. Besides, Miss Price seems healthy and capable; I expect that she had the strength to murder him. She could have dragged his body to the corner of the stables and could have buried him beneath the hay. Or perhaps he was in the corner of the stables when Mrs. Norris hit him on the head in the first place! That means that any person, small or large, could have cut my son’s throat and killed him. What strength does it take to do violence to an unconscious man?”
Sir Thomas acknowledged the truth in at least some of what Lord Dexthorpe was saying, that many persons were capable, physically at least, of killing Mr. George Yates in those circumstances.
The baron said that the fact that Susan had hidden the silver knife in her room was more evidence that she was guilty; Mrs. Norris had found it hidden at the back of a shelf, behind several books.
Susan shook her head and attempted to explain. The silver knife had been a gift from a sister when that sister was dying, another sister, Betsy, had perpetually tried to take it from her in Portsmouth. Susan had grown accustomed to hiding it. If they needed confirmation in her story, they could ask Fanny. “Besides,” she concluded, “why would I wish to harm Mr. Yates?”
Then Lord Dexthorpe put a letter before her, a letter written in her own handwriting – the letter that she had written to Fanny, and then had not sent, because several of the paragraphs described sentiments too embarrassing to imagine being read by even her dear sister. Now Susan realized that those words, words describing her shame at being matched with Tom, had been read by the baronet and the baron. Why, oh why, had she not burnt it?
But Lord Dexthorpe pointed to other sentences, sentences which offended him.
I hope that Mr. Yates leaves Mansfield Park as soon as possible. He is such a rude, unpleasant
man, I cannot believe what he suggested to me.
Susan burned when she read this; the baron said that she had obviously hated his son and had taken advantage of a moment of opportunity to murder him.
Sir Thomas attempted to use the words in Susan’s letter to clear her. “Is this not evidence that Miss Price would try to avoid Mr. Yates? Why would she follow him to the stables in the middle of the night?”
“That is a question that only Miss Price can answer,” said Lord Dexthorpe, but when Susan attempted to repeat that she had not ventured to the stables that night, the baron simply talked louder. Lord Dexthorpe emphasized what Mrs. Norris had written: that Mrs. Norris said that she had followed Miss Price when she left the house, because she suspected Miss Price of impropriety, and that that was when she hit Mr. Yates on the head, to prevent anything dreadful from happening, which implied too that the baron’s deceased son had been attempting to force his attentions on Miss Price, but certainly Miss Price should not have been in the stables in the first place, and the greater crime lay with the baronet’s niece, not the baron’s son.
“I was not in the stables that night!” Susan protested.
“Do you think Mrs. Norris lied in this letter?” retorted Lord Dexthorpe.
Sir Thomas conceded that it would be a serious matter for Mrs. Norris to have lied, a serious matter indeed, especially in her situation, when she was expecting her life to end shortly – whether or not by her own hand, she had been ill – and to have to stand before the heavenly maker to be judged. “It would be bearing false witness,” said Sir Thomas.
“Yes. Exactly so,” said Lord Dexthorpe triumphantly. “Mrs. Norris, the widow of a vicar, would never have done that.”
Susan lost her temper with his lordship. “Your acquaintance with Mrs. Norris was of short duration. How can you possibly know what she would or would not do?”
The baron was not accustomed to being challenged this way, especially not by a young woman, and his fury was expressed with both volume and volubility. The fact that Miss Price, a woman of neither rank nor fortune, would dare to speak to him in this manner – would write about his dear departed son using the words that she had – was evidence of her guilt. The baron was certain that she had followed Mr. Yates and then had wielded that knife when Mr. Yates had refused to do whatever she demanded.
Sir Thomas intervened. “Susan, perhaps it would be wiser if you left my room for a while.”
“I should leave?” Susan was indignant.
Lord Dexthorpe counseled against this as well. If Miss Price left Sir Thomas’s room, perhaps she would run away. Criminals, especially murderers, should not be permitted to stroll around estates but should be placed in the deepest, darkest dungeons.
But in this Sir Thomas prevailed, first by extracting a promise from his niece that she would not leave the estate, and also, upon the baron’s insistence, ordering a footman to take a message to the stables that, until hearing otherwise from him, no one was allowed to take out a horse or the carriage without his express permission. Miss Price should leave them for the following hour, while they discussed the contents of Mrs. Norris’s last written words.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Susan escaped into the gardens. The day was fine, but the clement weather did not lift Susan’s spirits. She walked past the blossoms without perceiving them; she did not respond to the respectful greeting of a gardener; she barely noticed where she was. Deciding to avoid everyone, especially her relations, for as long as she possibly could, she chose an alcove nearer the kitchen gardens instead of her usual spot near the roses, and seated herself where she could not be seen.
The scene that she had just witnessed was incomprehensible. She had not murdered Mr. Yates! She had gone to her room that night and had pulled furniture before her door, in order to escape from Mr. Yates. Why on earth would she have followed him outside?
Mrs. Norris had to have been mistaken. Or had her aunt composed deliberate falsehoods about her? But why would she do something so terrible? Had her aunt hated her that much? Susan felt that Mrs. Norris had hated her, a conclusion that Susan had reached long before this moment, and she tried to comfort herself with the reminder that Mrs. Norris’s resentment had been based on the fact that Susan was the sister of Fanny, another young woman she had greatly disliked. Susan, a mere niece, had been making her home at Mansfield Park, while Mrs. Norris and Mrs. Rushworth, sister and daughter, closer relations, were banished to Ireland. Somehow the scorn and dislike were easier to endure when they were based on Susan’s position and not on Susan’s personality. But had Mrs. Norris’s hatred been such that she would write down lies?
Susan had not seen the actual letter itself; perhaps the words implied her guilt but did not directly accuse her. She had been compelled to leave Sir Thomas’s study without reading it.
Could she convince her uncle that she had not killed Mr. Yates? Could her uncle convince Lord Dexthorpe that she had not killed his son? Or would she be arrested and sent to prison, even executed? The fact that her uncle had sent her away, willing to listen to Dexthorpe and not to her, was a very bad sign indeed.
And that was not the only matter that distressed her; there was the rest of the letter that had been discovered by Mrs. Norris. Obviously at some point, Mrs. Norris had searched her room, another cause of vexation, to realize that her aunt had not respected her privacy, but had decided to inspect her possessions without permission. Susan did not know how often Mrs. Norris had been in her room, because housemaids entered to clean, and so occasionally her possessions were moved, but Mrs. Norris must have been in her room last night, while Susan had cared for Elissa. Unfortunately, the letter that Mrs. Norris found was undeniably written by Susan’s hand. Assuming that Susan managed to convince everyone that she had not killed Mr. Yates – and the notion that she had killed him seemed so absurd, so extraordinary that she could not believe that the accusations of Mrs. Norris and Lord Dexthorpe would be deemed credible by anyone else – that letter would still exist, would still require explanation, would still cause embarrassment. Such indiscreet, warm phrases! About Tom! About everyone, including Mrs. Norris!
Lord Dexthorpe had implied that she would run away, and for once Susan admired his penetration, for at the moment she longed to do just that. She could not, of course, for she had promised her uncle that she would not leave the estate, and besides, she did not have the means to do anything of the kind. Besides, where could she go, assuming that the bailiff did not arrive to lock her away for murder? The Parsonage was within view, and possibly she might find comfort in a conversation with Miss Crawford, if she could bring herself to confide in that gentlewoman. But Mr. Crawford was also at the Parsonage, and Susan had a strong desire not to see him. He was too intelligent, too cutting, and he reminded her too much of Mr. George Yates. What if she were compelled to depart from Mansfield Park altogether? Could she make her home at Fanny’s? Edmund would certainly not welcome her if the neighborhood believed her to be a murderer, but even if that were not the case, if she were merely exiled from Mansfield Park, she must consider Thornton Lacey closed to her as well. She could find refuge in Portsmouth, but recalling the cramped quarters and her father’s drunken oaths, that was unappealing. Where did she wish to be? Her heart told her, Mansfield Park. But a different Mansfield Park, where she was entertaining her aunt and assisting her uncle and singing duets with her cousin in the evening. Not this Mansfield Park, where people and dogs died and her nearest relations believed her a criminal. Susan remembered how, just a few short weeks ago, she had anticipated the visits of her cousins with pleasure, how she had thought that their company would bring animation and gaiety to Mansfield Park. Now she wished she could return to the earlier Mansfield Park; the former dullness now struck her as sweet and tranquil. Oh, for an evening spent reading to Lady Bertram, playing backgammon with her uncle, or even chatting with the servants!
Susan was certain it was the hour for
tea, and she longed for a cup, especially as clouds were gathering, but she lingered outside. She simply could not enter the house and face the disapproval, the anger, the suspicion, and especially not more ranting from the baron. She berated herself for being a coward, but she seemed affixed to the bench.
But Mansfield Park was home to many, and despite her choice of seat in a less attractive area of the estate, placed between the flower-gardens for the master’s family and the kitchen-gardens for the servants – an area which usually received less traffic than others – eventually Susan heard footsteps approaching along the walk. Susan attempted to compose her features as a small face peeked around the shrubbery.
Elissa announced triumphantly that she had found Cousin Susan; the child was soon followed by Mr. Bertram. Tom congratulated his daughter on her discovery, then sent her to the care of a gardener who promised to show the little girl the vegetable garden. Susan said that she hoped Tom would excuse her, for she preferred to be alone, but Tom said that he did not believe that solitude was a good idea at the moment, and instead of departing, seated himself next to her on the bench. He remarked that he did not think he had ever been so impatient to see cabbages and onions as Elissa seemed to be, but of course he did not recall what it was like to be so young. After this bit of levity – designed, as Susan perceived, to raise her spirits – Tom continued speaking, informing her that his father and his mother had missed her at tea. Furthermore, there was a funeral to plan. The coroner had determined that Mrs. Norris’s death could be considered accidental – Sir Thomas’s influence had prevailed – so Mrs. Norris would lie in rest next to Reverend Norris in the parish cemetery. “My mother, contemplating my aunt’s funeral, is rather low.”
The Mansfield Park Murders Page 20
