“What do you know of it?” I demanded indignantly.
“Half of Alton is talking about this article, my dear; besides, Mamma told me the whole the moment I walked in the door.”
“She is already awake?” I peered out at the sun. “I had no notion the morning was so advanced.”
“The cask is undoubtedly from the Subcontinent, and must have been carved a hundred years ago at a pasha’s orders,”
Henry murmured, ignoring me entirely. “Observe the figures cut into the teak!”
“They are most indecent,” I said primly, “and I beg you will not draw them to Mamma’s notice.”
“I suppose his lordship must once have visited Bengal.”
“I believe, Henry, that he lived there some years — and was in a position of some trust to your wife’s benefactor, Mr. Hastings.”
“Lord Harold knew old Warren?” Henry’s startled expression was comical, as tho’ Mr. Hastings was the preserve of the Austens alone, instead of a man who had encountered half the world and commanded the rest. “I shall have to tax him with the acquaintance when next we meet. He is getting on in years, Jane — must be five-and-seventy if he is a day — but he would remember such a figure as the Rogue. Should you like me to lock this in the Alton bank?”
“Certainly not! The chest shall ascend to my bedroom, if you please. You may carry it there immediately, like the good brother you are.”
“Be so good as to hold my coat.” He drew off the elegant article and bent to lift the chest.
“Heavy enough to be filled with gold,” he gasped. “Is that what he left you?”
“No questions, Henry.”
“Very well. But you might reward me for my labour.”
“Only when you explain your presence in Hampshire!”
“I left Eliza with young Fanny,” he managed as I led him, staggering with the chest’s weight, into the cottage, “and set out with Neddie and Cass from Kent two days ago. Neddie’s chaise broke an axle not far from Brompton, and he has put up at the Bell until the equipage is repaired. I rode on with the intention of making your minds easy. I reached the George late last night — and learned you were already established in Chawton.”
“My sister was not hurt, I hope, by the accident to the chaise?”
Cassandra had suffered greatly during an unfortunate overturning we experienced near Lyme, some years before, and I did not like to think of her cast down with the head-ache in a strange inn.
“Not a whit — so do not be exciting Mamma with your talk of injury,” Henry admonished me. “This seems a comfortable little place,” he added doubtfully, as he set down the chest on the kitchen floor and peered through the doorway to the sparsely furnished rooms. “Could do with a bit of paint. Something bright and cheerful, in the yellow line.”
“Thank you,” I returned with heavy sarcasm. “Perhaps you could find us a painter among your Alton acquaintance? And a manservant? Or possibly a cook?”
“I cannot spare above a few days in the neighbourhood, Jane,” he assured me hastily. “I suggest you consult Mr. Prowting. He dearly loves to dispose of other people’s lives. Have you any coffee?”
“You shall have to be content with tea.” I glanced at the kettle; my supply of water had entirely boiled away while I sat in the henhouse. “The well is in the yard. After you have seen Lord Harold’s legacy safely beneath my bed, you may employ your talents with bucket and pump while I repair upstairs to dress.”
“It is the oddest thing,” Henry observed an hour later as we walked out into the Street — as the London to Gosport road is termed where it winds through Chawton village. We were gone on the errand of discovering the local bread baker — my mother had sorely missed her customary toast. “You enter the cottage for the first time, only to discover a dead man; while I am greeted at my Alton branch with news of a mysterious burglary. I must consider my decision to descend into Hampshire this week as a matter of Providence.”
“Burglary,” I repeated in a lowered tone, and glanced about me at the sparse population of local folk: two children and their mother, a market basket over her arm, who drove a flock of geese before them in the direction of Alton; and a labourer engaged in shifting a quantity of grain from his dray into his cottage yard. None of these persons so much as offered us a good morning, or pulled a forelock; the children, at least, stared openly at the strange lady who had found a corpse in her cellar.
“I was met with the tale upon my arrival at the George,”
Henry continued. “The publican — Burbridge? Berlin?”
“Barlow,” I supplied.
“—thought that I had been summoned to the place. ‘Ah, Mr. Austen,’ he said, with obvious relief. ‘You’ve come, then, about the bank.’ ”
“What about the bank?” I demanded, frowning.
“Naturally I enquired. It seems that poor Gray”—by this he meant Mr. Edward-William Gray, his partner in Alton—“had been suffering every kind of anxiety that morning. The windows of Number Ten High Street were forced, if you will credit it — glass lying about the carpet, chairs overturned, and all our papers in a considerable disorder. Gray had spent much of yesterday attempting to determine what, if anything, had been stolen.”
“And?”
“He cannot make head or tail of the business. Neither our post bills nor our banknotes were touched.”[5]
My brother Henry has made a considerable fortune in recent years as a payroll agent for several valuable regiments around the country, including some in Hampshire, Kent, and Derbyshire. He serves, in essence, as go-between for the disbursement of salaries to officers and enlisted men, which sums are sent out by the Paymaster General in London to regimental representatives such as Henry. The role of agent is a coveted one, held in the gift of each regiment’s Colonel; and that Henry has secured so valuable a living, may be attributed to his polished manners, his knack for cultivating The Great, his former commission in the Oxfordshire Militia, and the connexions of his wife — who is everywhere received in Society, and does not hesitate to turn her acquaintance to advantage. Henry’s prosperity has induced my brother Frank to become another partner of the London concern, bringing naval patronage within Henry’s orbit; and if I suspected that Henry occasionally turned a profit on the negotiated sale of commissions in prized regiments, which we are taught to consider beyond the pale of the law, I have never taxed him with the subject.
“What, then, can have been the burglars’ object?” I enquired.
“I have not the smallest notion.” He hesitated. “And that is not the only oddity. Leaving that Bengal chest aside — Mamma tells me you have had an interview with Lord Harold Trowbridge’s solicitor.”
“Mr. Chizzlewit. Yes — he came to me yesterday before dinner. It was in the act of securing the chest belowstairs that we discovered the corpse.”
“Your solicitor paid a call on Gray in all his state not two days ago — lackeys and trunks behind — enquiring your direction in Chawton. Curious gentleman, by all accounts.”
“But perfectly respectable,” I returned.
“All the same — he did draw notice, Jane. The better part of Alton was positively agog at his errand. I heard talk of pirates’
treasure and a king’s ransom of jewels — not to mention the name of Austen — everywhere. Do you think it possible that this burglary of my branch was an attempt to secure whatever Chizzlewit carried in that heavy great chest of yours?”
For all his style and badinage, Henry is possessed of considerable understanding, and not above speaking plainly when necessity absolutely requires it.
“I think it very likely,” I replied. “No doubt your burglar believed a bank the properest place for safekeeping such a bequest. I am sorry for your trouble, Henry, but indeed I had no notion of causing it.”
My brother cast me a sidelong glance. He would not attempt to force my communication; but having been a little acquainted with the Trowbridge clan in London, he was naturally curious. “If you s
hould ever wish — if there is a matter of a legacy involved, and you require advice as to the terms of investment — in short, dear Jane, I should be happy to serve you in any way I can. As banker or brother.”
“Thank you. His lordship was far too discreet to ruin me with gold, however. Lord Harold offered me carte blanche neither in death nor in life. The solicitor delivered a quantity of papers only.”
“So Mamma said. But I made certain you were giving her a Banbury tale. Why should anyone attempt to steal old letters?”
“Perhaps with the object of turning them to good use. All of London and half the Continent appear in his lordship’s communications.”
Henry stopped short in the middle of Chawton, his gaze suddenly intent. “You never mean blackmail, Jane?”
“Why not?”
He whistled softly. “This places a different complexion entirely on that wretched fellow you found in the cellar, my dear girl. If the dead man was intent upon the same errand — and came to his end in an ugly fashion—”
“By my own reckoning, the man had been dead some time,”
I said gently. “Days before the existence of the chest was even known in the neighbourhood. I cannot believe the poor man’s demise had anything to do with Lord Harold’s papers. I will not believe it.”
Henry’s eyebrows rose. “Very well. Believe what you like. Have you another explanation?”
“Did you not know that our house is cursed?” I demanded lightly. “—Or perhaps it is more properly the entire Austen family that labours under ill-fortune. I was told as much by young Toby Baigent, of Symond’s Farm, upon my arrival.”
“Village nonsense!”
“All the same — I fear that Neddie has managed his tenants ill, or at the very least with a want of proper attention. He has excited considerable feeling among the yeoman class with his disposition of houses and farmland. Moreover, his ownership of the Great House — indeed, his right to all his Hampshire estates — is apparently contested by an upstart clergyman’s son, resident in the Lodge, and claiming to be the last true heir to the Hampshire Knights.”
“Not Jack Hinton?” Henry exclaimed.
I turned to stare at him. “You are acquainted with the gentleman’s name?”
“With his name and his entire history.”
“I suppose Mr. Hinton thought that as Edward was no more than a jumped-up clergyman’s son himself, he might as well make the attempt. We were treated to the entire history last evening.”
“The fellow is a complete flat, Jane! And a dead bore into the bargain! He is forever writing tedious letters under the advisement of his solicitors, and delivering them to Neddie at Accounting Day. Lord!”
“You might have told me, Henry,” I returned in exasperation. “Has a protracted residence in London completely deprived you of that knowledge of a country village in which you were reared? The Hintons appear to be related to half the families in the surrounding parts; Mrs. Prowting related the whole to us only last evening. The indignation of all Chawton is allied against the Austens. We are seen as yet another example of Neddie’s abuse of privilege: the indigent females of the family, thrust upon the bosom of the village to the detriment of the true heirs of the Great House.”
“Is it as bad as all that?”
“I should not be surprised if it were. When Edward does descend upon Chawton in a few days’ time, I intend to wring his neck!”
“He has been sadly distracted of late,” my brother admitted soberly. “Grief will work a wondrous change in the most frivolous of men. I was forced to read sermons after dinner in the drawing-room at Godmersham, Jane, instead of the plays we formerly chose to amuse ourselves. If you could have observed little Marianne yawning over her prayer book of an evening—!”
We had strolled nearly to the end of the Street, observed only by a number of children too young to be helping with the hay-making and three elderly persons who preserved a cautionary silence. The village was pretty and unspoilt enough, with hops growing verdantly on the left hand and a line of cottages on the right. There were no shops or tradesmen in Chawton — commerce being the purview of Alton, a mile distant — but at the approach to one thatched house, we observed an inviting basket with a dozen loaves of bread wrapped in white cloth.
“The baker,” Henry murmured.
We halted and my brother drew out his purse. The woman who lived in the place — Mrs. Cuttle, as she informed us — appeared in the doorway, wiping floured hands on her smudged apron. Henry bought two loaves — one for my mother and a second he intended to consume on our walk. “Do you supply much of the bread to households hereabouts?” he enquired easily of Mrs. Cuttle.
“That I do, sir. Are you staying at the Great House, with the rest of Mr. Middleton’s guests?”
“Sadly not. I am merely taking in Chawton on my road to London. But my sister, Miss Austen, is lately come to the late bailiff’s cottage.”
Mrs. Cuttle’s eyes widened and without a word, she dropped a swift curtsey.
“Would you be so good as to deliver a loaf of your excellent bread each day to my mother and sisters?” Henry suggested.
“We should be infinitely obliged.”
The woman’s gaze fell. “Take the loaves ye have, and welcome, sir,” she said, and without another word, she turned back inside her cottage and firmly latched the door.
“Well,” I said into the silence. “I must be glad that Martha Lloyd’s culinary accomplishments include baking.”
“There, Libby,” interjected a breathless accent, “I’ve misplaced my key again, and what Old Philmore will have to say to me if it is not found, I do not like to think!”
A lady of middle age and neat tho’ shabby appearance was exiting the cottage adjacent to Mrs. Cuttle’s. She patted her shawl and reticule with one gloved hand as she spoke, as if much distracted; in her other hand was clutched a posy of flowers; a pair of spectacles perched on her sharp nose, and what was visible of her hair was quite gray.
“Three shillings he demanded for the copy last time, and where such a sum is to be found I’m sure I cannot say. Is it possible, my dear, that one of your delightful children has made away with it as a prank?”
She surveyed us without recognition, somewhat surprised to find that Mrs. Cuttle — for so I assumed Libby to be — was nowhere in sight.
“May I be of assistance, ma’am?” Henry cried, approaching the distracted lady with a satiric light in his eye I knew too well.
“Perhaps you set down your key when you took up your flowers.”
“My flowers?” she enquired, blinking about her doubtfully.
“So very kind. but I do not think we are acquainted. or perhaps I am being foolish again. is it Mr. Thrace?”
“Mr. Henry Austen at your service.” He raised his hat obligingly.
“Austen?” she repeated, and peered from Henry to me.
“Did you say Austen?”
“I did, ma’am. And you are.?”
“Miss Benn.” Her faded blue eyes travelled the length of my brother’s form with that same expression of doubt.[6]
“May I beg leave to present my sister?” Henry’s glance was eloquent of mischief. “Miss Jane Austen, lately arrived at the former bailiff’s cottage.”
“Bailiff’s cottage?” Miss Benn echoed vaguely. “I do not think. ” Comprehension broke upon the lady’s countenance.
“The corpse! So very silly of me, and the whole village talking of nothing else. Then you will be the Squire’s family! The ones who have come into a quantity of jewels! I had heard something to the effect that you would be arriving this summer — I am not sure — from Mrs. Prowting, perhaps, or Mr. Baigent? — ”
“Shall I hold your flowers while you search for that key?”
Henry enquired.
“My flowers? I only intended to step across to the church — dear St. Nicholas’s, but of course you will know that is the church’s name, if you are indeed a member of the Austen family — I often do the flow
ers of a morning, I think it makes such a difference to the air of a church, do not you? — My brother, Mr. John Benn, Rector of Farringdon, has often wished he could summon my posies to his vestry — so of course I don’t really require the door to be locked, as I am sure Mrs. Cuttle will kindly keep an eye on the cottage for me; tho’ Old Philmore is terribly particular, quite the ogre, Mr. Austen, if you understand my meaning, and much given to threats if he believes his property is liable to come to harm — tho’ how such a disreputable and sad little place could possibly deteriorate further, is quite difficult to say. ”
She plucked at her shawl as she spoke, as though conscious of a draught despite the July heat, her nearsighted gaze roaming distractedly from myself to the half-open door to the basket of loaves before Mrs. Cuttle’s door; and of a sudden, I pitied her.
“We are walking that way ourselves,” I said, “and should be glad to accompany you into the church.”
“That is excessively kind of you, Miss Austen! Let me just leave the door off the latch — and if perhaps Libby would not mind casting her eye over the place now and again while I am away — and perhaps fibbing on my behalf if Old Philmore should materialise. ”
The steady clip-clop of a pair of horses put paid to this speech, and a beatific smile suffused Miss Benn’s withered features. “And there is Mr. Middleton! Such an excellent man,” she informed us, “and so exceptionally considerate, despite the nu- merous cares of the children. The Squire is indeed fortunate in the character of his tenant.”
Two gentlemen were approaching from the direction of the Great House, their horses — a young chestnut, and a strengthy grey — progressing at a walk. One I judged to be in his middle fifties: stout, ruddy of feature, and a model of deportment in the saddle. The other was a gentleman of perhaps half his companion’s age. Beautifully arrayed in the best Bond Street fashion, he possessed the easy seat and careless grace of a punishing rider to hounds. This must be Mr. Middleton and his son; I had understood from Neddie that there were several children, left motherless some years before.
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