A low growl escaped his quivering throat; I hushed him with a hand to his head.
The full moon of the previous week—which had allowed Julian Thrace to ride out at midnight, Shafto French to be murdered, and Jack Hinton to make his way from Surrey despite the befuddlement of his senses—was nearly gone. The night was dull as a blown candle, and heavy shadow lay about the fields surrounding the house. Chawton Pond was barely a gleam on the edge of my vision; no figures swayed in desperate combat beside it tonight. I strained to pierce the darkness of our yard, and could make out nothing; no furtive movement of man or beast could be detected near the henhouse or the privy. It might be any hour between the tolling of St. Nicholas’s curfew bell and dawn; I could not undertake to say.
“What is it, Jane?” Cassandra demanded in a hushed voice; there was anxiety in her accent.
I lifted my hand for silence, and Link growled again.
Perhaps he had seen what I had: a faint wisp of light bobbing down the sweep from Prowtings.
It was, I guessed, the pale glow of a candle encased in a lanthorn—the kind that might be shielded from prying eyes by the fall of a cloak or wrap. Someone was setting out through the darkness on an errand that did not admit of scrutiny; and as the fugitive achieved the Gosport road, I thought I understood why. In the form and height of the figure—the hesitant, half-furtive movement—I recognised a woman.
Catherine Prowting.
I have found it difficult to sleep of nights for some weeks past.
Where was she going, alone and at such an hour?
Her errand was not an open one. She did not intend her family to know of it.
With all the country alive against him, how can he hope to obtain so much as a cup of water?
I had been wrong. One friend at least in the neighbourhood Julian Thrace had no need to buy.
I might follow Catherine, I thought, as Link strained against me.
I might rouse the neighbourhood and her father, bring a man to justice, and ruin forever the reputation of a young woman rather like myself—restless for life, bounded by country lane and glebe, her prospects lowering with each passing year. A starling beating against the bars of its cage.
Lady Imogen. Shafto French.
Justice.
“Jane?” Cassandra repeated. “Is anything amiss?”
I shut the window.
“Nothing at all, Cass. Your dog must have scented a hare on the wind.”
I lay sleepless long into the night, listening for Catherine Prowting’s return.
Chapter 23
An Unexpected Visitor
Monday, 10 July 1809
~
“MAJOR SPENCE?” I CALLED, PEERING HESITANTLY FROM behind a marble column; and then I observed him, motionless and upright at the far end of the room.
It was Rangle who conducted me to the library, a handsome apartment in the very heart of the great pile that was Stonings. I had not glimpsed it during my previous visit, and once led through a series of passages by the chapfallen butler, could hardly have found my way out again. But the space in which I now stood was in better repair than any other part of the ramshackle estate; indeed, it was a delightful room, and perfectly suited to study. The chamber’s ceiling was painted indigo blue, and an array of stars and planets swam across its firmament; the walls were full two storeys in height, lined with bookshelves and myriad volumes; at the far end was a bank of tall windows, undraped at present, through which flowed the dull green light of a rainy summer’s morning.
Charles Spence was posed with his back to me, his gaze fixed on the landscape. The prospect here gave out onto high woody hills, rather than the lake that sat to the south; he could not have noticed the arrival of the gig, but I was certainly expected. Rangle had instructions to convey me to the steward the moment I arrived.
Of Lady Imogen’s remains there was no sign. I had half-expected a bier in the hall, surrounded by candles and bouquets of summer flowers; a few domestics bent in prayer by her ladyship’s side. Certainly I had thought to find Charles Spence in an attitude of suffering—on his knees, perhaps, on the stone floor, while the hours passed unnoticed around him. But one cannot cry without ceasing, I must suppose; and there were all the duties of the estate still to be attended to. Not to mention the inconvenient supplications of chance acquaintance.
I had received the gentleman’s reply to my letter at breakfast.
Miss Austen—
It seems we have much to discuss. Pray wait upon me at your convenience today, as I expect to quit Stonings on the morrow.
Your most obedient servant,
Spence
A brief note, imparting little of the man’s mood or intentions. I determined to go to him immediately, however, and walked into Alton in search of my brother.
It was no very great matter to prevail upon Edward to drive me to the Earl of Holbrook’s estate. Being as yet in black clothes for his wife, he had no desire to break in upon Charles Spence’s mourning; however, I impressed upon him the idea that a call of condolence was unexceptionable at such a time, and indeed a most necessary form of notice from the Chawton Squire.
“It will be those papers you are after,” Neddie retorted, “and no call of condolence, I’ll be bound, Jane. All the same—I should like to see a place of which I have heard so much; and who knows whether the Earl will ever come there in future? We might take in the Vyne on our way home; Chute is sure to be in residence during the summer months, and I have not seen the man this age.”
I told my brother nothing of Rosie Philmore’s tale, or the conjectures I had formed regarding the Major’s integrity. I had determined, in the magnanimity of last night’s sleepless reflections, that I should not press Spence for particulars. They should better be sealed in Lady Imogen’s tomb—provided Lord Harold’s chest was returned to me. And so I preserved a notable silence on our road to Sherborne St. John, and allowed Edward to talk of the improvements he intended for the Chawton estate.
The storm had broken at dawn, and thus a closed carriage was preferred; we hired one from Barlow at the George. The going was very heavy, and I blessed Heaven for the forbearance native to my brother, and his sportsman’s indifference to any kind of wet. It had been some days since Neddie had been privileged to drive alone; and simply having the ribbons in his hands, a light curricle and a tolerable pair of horses at his command, seemed to have raised his spirits remarkably. A bit more than two hours was required to cover the fifteen miles between Chawton and Sherborne St. John; but my brother remained cheerful despite the quagmire of the country lanes and the ruts to which the carriage was subjected. He was even now seeing to the horses’ stabling with Robley the groom.
At the sound of my voice, Major Spence turned away from the storm-swept prospect. His tall figure suited the proportions of the room, and I had an idea of the kind of comfort he must have found here during the long winter months after Vimeiro. There would have been his wounded leg to attend to—all the repairs to the various wings, and the architect’s designs; the plans for the grounds; the management of Lady Imogen’s affairs. Frequent meetings with the lady herself, perhaps, and a growing intimacy with her ways. And then Thrace had appeared to destroy his peace.
“Miss Austen.” Spence moved around the great desk that fronted the rain-swept windows and bowed.
I curtseyed in return.
I was struck by the alteration two days’ time had made in his appearance. The great dark eyes I had so frequently remarked were sunken in their sockets; his brow was careworn and lined. He must hardly have slept in the interval since Saturday morning, and his expression suggested the chronic invalid—a man’s whose war wound was likely never to entirely heal, and never to be forgot. I knew from bitter experience the ravages grief may do; and deeply pitied him.
“You are well, I hope?” he enquired.
“Very well, I thank you. I was grateful to receive your letter this morning, and came as soon as may be. I hope I do not intrude,” I added, a
s he preserved a distracted silence.
He motioned towards a chair that sat near the great desk, and I sank down into it. He remained standing, however, his gaze fixed upon me; the persistent staccato of storm upon windowpane was all the sound in the room.
“You are a curious woman, Miss Austen,” he observed. “You write to importune me for a meeting—you cast the grossest aspersions on the character of a most beloved lady, as that lady lies in death elsewhere in this house; and yet you apologise for intruding. Is this intended as a pleasantry? A sad kind of joke?”
“Major Spence—”
He turned from me abruptly and limped painfully towards the door through which I had lately passed, some thirty feet behind; and for an instant, I thought he intended to show me out—that he had summoned me all this distance for no other purpose than to deliver his crushing rebuke, and be done. But as I watched, he secured the lock with a key, and tried the knob to be certain the door was immovable.
An unaccustomed thrill of fear ran through me, and I rose from my seat. Two additional doors stood at either hand, on opposite sides of the great desk; these, too, were closed.
“You need not eye the passages so hungrily,” Spence told me. “I am not so ill-prepared. When I wish to be private with a woman, and have ample notice of the fact, I undertake certain precautions. No one will come except at my express summons, and no one will hear you, Miss Austen, should you cry out. Pray do me the honour, therefore, of answering my questions—and do not be wasting your time on a fit of hysterics.”
“You clearly do not know me, sir,” I informed him coldly.
Of Edward, even now walking up from the stables—of which Major Spence could have no view—I chose to say nothing. I merely preserved my position before the desk, and faced him.
“In your letter of yesterday you mentioned a certain article stolen from your cottage in Chawton, Miss Austen.”
“A Bengal chest of curious workmanship, filled with a quantity of papers. Yes, I did mention it—and still believe it to be in your possession.”
“My possession?” he repeated, in an incredulous accent. “From Lady Imogen you have passed to me as your thief? I shall take care in future to guard my acquaintance most carefully, if the result of every dinner among friends is to be a criminal accusation.”
“A man who had nothing to hide should have no need of locking doors.”
He laughed bitterly, and leaned against the massive desk. “Did you think to malign the Dead, Miss Austen—and be paid off for your silence? Was that your object in petitioning the lady’s steward in such frank terms? What is the price to be put upon scandal? How much, to preserve my poor darling’s frail name, in the hours remaining before her interment?”
“You misunderstand me, sir.”
“Do I?”
“I wish only for the return of my property.”
“And if it cannot be found?” He thrust himself away from the desk and approached me menacingly. Despite my best intentions, I shrank back before his advance. “Tell me about this chest. Describe it. For I have looked in her ladyship’s apartment—have set her maid to searching high and low—and nothing can I find but what accompanied the Earl’s daughter from London.”
“It was quite large and heavy,” I replied, “and should certainly be obvious. Perhaps two feet wide by three feet long—with a curved lid and massive hinges. There was a lock set into the front, which could only be opened by a key in my possession—unless force were used against it. The contents were a quantity of papers.”
“And why should Lady Imogen care for this thing?”
“Because she thought to find the truth in it.”
His brows came down in a heavy frown. “The truth? What truth?”
“The details of Julian Thrace’s parentage.”
“Why should the slightest clue to that renegade’s origins be held in a chest of your keeping, Miss Austen?” he demanded contemptuously.
“The papers it contains were penned by one who may have witnessed Mr. Thrace’s minority—a friend of the Earl’s, Lord Harold Trowbridge.” I offered my replies as the commonplaces they were. I did not doubt that Spence already knew the answers to his questions. Why, then, did he pose them? —To suggest, in my mind, an ignorance I could not believe he harboured?
“You have read these papers, then?” he demanded. “You interest me greatly. I have long wondered where Thrace sprang from. Tell me, Miss Austen, if you know.”
“But surely, sir, Lady Imogen shared the fruit of her researches? From her easy manner on Saturday, I had assumed that she learned from the documents that Thrace was a fraud—and had informed him of as much. That seemed the only possible compulsion under which the man should act to murder her ladyship: so as to suppress her proofs, before they should be communicated to the Earl.”
Spence threw up his hands in an attitude of bitterness. “I was not her ladyship’s confidant. And I will tell you, Miss Austen—there is no chest here—and there never was! The existence of such a chest, I put it to you, is entirely a fabrication of your own—devised for some mischievous purpose!”
“And yet,” I returned quietly, “the man who stole it from my cottage is sitting even now in Alton gaol—and names you, sir, as his employer.”
For an instant, gazing at Spence’s grim features, I quailed. But then his figure lost its air of tension, and he appeared once more in command of his usual calm.
“Impossible,” he said. “I know that for a lie.”
What certainty had he grasped? What knowledge could so reassure him in the midst of self-righteous rage?
Old Philmore, I thought. Spence believes me to refer to Old Philmore. And he knows the man is missing.
A deliberate knock resounded on the door at the far end of the room. Charles Spence called savagely, “I asked not to be disturbed!”
“I beg your pardon, sir.” Rangle’s reply was muffled by the heavy mahogany. “I thought the present circumstance an exception. The Earl of Holbrook is only now arrived from Brighton—and is most anxious to speak with you.”
I WAS SAVED A MOST UNCOMFORTABLE PERIOD BY THE descent of Freddy Vansittart on the scene.
Charles Spence, after standing frozen for several seconds, advanced hurriedly to the library door and threw it open.
“Major!” barked a massive figure looming in the doorway. “What the deuce do you mean by closeting yourself with a female when Imogen’s but two days dead? Where’s my poor girl to be found? Must see her, when all’s said and done. Dreadful business. Thrown from her horse—and Immy a neck-or-nothing gal from the time she could walk! Don’t make sense. Mark my words, I told that banking chap as brought the news—mark my words, they’ll find the Devil was in the business. And so it proved! Poor Julian! A wolf in sheep’s clothing—or a wolf in a coat cut by Stultz, come to that! Poor boy. I should not have thought him capable of such an offence. So where’ve you put her, Spence? Must be a rum thing, this time of year, what with the heat. We’d better see the rites observed, and no delay.”
The speaker was a bluff, florid-faced man in his early fifties, clearly a martyr to gout and the claims of a voracious appetite. The brim of his beaver glistened with the wet, and, as I watched, he handed it carelessly to Rangle along with his many-caped driving coat of kerseymere. The Earl’s frame must once have been powerful, but was now sadly gone to fat. The charm so marked by Lord Harold in his youth, could be only a memory preserved in the barking impetuosity of his speech. I thought I detected in Lord Holbrook’s lively eye, however, a ghost of the rake he had once been; and tho’ he betrayed no excessive sensibility at the loss of his only child, I noted a quality of strain in his countenance, as might suggest a sleepless night, and the hard travel born of necessity.
“My lord,” Charles Spence stammered. “This is most unexpected. I had understood you to be posting to London.”
“What—and have the remains sent up to Town, and August almost upon us? No, no, my dear chap; Imogen must be interred here in the
family tomb. I am persuaded it is what the girl would herself have wished. We can ask the Steventon clergyman to say the Holy Office—I believe he also serves at William Chute’s pleasure. What’s his name? You know, the thin, reedy, prosy fellow who fancies himself such a punishing rider to hounds.”
“Mr. James Austen.”
“That’s the ticket!” the Earl replied, brightening. “But no, dash it all, Spence—Austen was the name of the banker chap. One who came to Brighton.”
“We are a numerous family, my lord.” I curtseyed to the Earl.
“Miss Jane Austen, sir,” Spence supplied in a colourless tone. “She and her brother were present when Lady Imogen was thrown. Mr. Henry Austen then rode with despatch to Brighton. We are all in the Austens’ debt.”
“Holbrook,” the Earl said with a bow, “tho’ my friends call me Freddy.”
“I believe we have an acquaintance in common, my lord—the late Lord Harold Trowbridge.”
“Harry!” Holbrook cried. “Best friend in a tight spot a man ever had! Pity he had to be killed in that way, by his manservant. Foreign fella—snake in the bosom. Rather like young Julian—dashed odd, my opinion, that he should murder Immy like that. I’d only just carried him into Carlton House, you know. Put him up for the best clubs. Good ton. Whole world before him.”
“Pray accept my deepest sympathies, sir, on the untimely loss of your daughter,” I returned, deliberately avoiding Charles Spence’s eye. The steward, I thought, would have seen me out the door before I had exchanged two words with the Earl. “She was all that was charming and lovely—and her passing must be deeply felt.”
“By her creditors, above all,” Holbrook observed wisely. “Immy owed a fortune among the tradesmen in Town; they have been offering odds on her expectations, and the likely purchase of my life, a twelvemonth or more. Detestable creatures—I shall have to settle with them, I suppose. Or perhaps Spence may do it when I am gone.”
I did not immediately apprehend the meaning of his chance remark, but I observed the Major’s pallor to heighten.
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