Jane and the Genius of the Place

by Stephanie Barron

  “Will the young man engaged by Mr. Collingforth come forward now and tell his story?” Neddie cried.

  This time, there was no movement to the rear of the crowd. Neddie repeated his words, to no avail; and Collingforth looked blackly at his friend Everett. The lat-ter’s countenance was as contemptuous as before.

  Neddie mopped his reddening brow with a square of lawn and turned once more to the unfortunate gentleman. “Can you offer any explanation for Mrs. Grey’s visit to your carriage, Collingforth?”

  “I cannot. And as your good lady says, Mr. Justice, it makes no odds. The jade lived to win her race, and carry her plate from the field. How she came to end up here, and in such a state, I cannot say. But I suggest you enquire of the parson, Mr. Bridges, and his fine military friend. Ask them why they might have wanted the French trollop dead, and I’m sure you’ll hear an earful.”

  Beside me, Lizzy’s fingers clenched about the pearl handle of her parasol, and her green eyes drifted languidly over the assembled faces. Searching for her brother, perhaps, with the barest hint of anxiety.

  ‘You have a marked proclivity for abuse, Collingforth, that you would do well to suppress,” Neddie said warningly. “The lady is Mrs. Grey, whatever your opinion of her; and I would request that you show some respect of the dead.”

  Collingforth shot a look full of hatred at the corpse, and I shuddered to observe it. However Mrs. Grey had charmed the gentlemen of Kent, this one had not been among their number.

  “Did you invite her to the chaise, Collingforth, and fail to keep your appointment?”

  “I did nothing of the kind. I’m a respectable married man.”

  Someone in the crowd guffawed loudly, and Collingforth cast a bloodshot gaze over the assembled faces. “I’ll demand satisfaction of the next man who offers disrespect.”

  “What about Mrs. Grey?” someone called. “You call what you did to her Respect? Where’s her habit, Collingforth? You keep it to give to your wife?”

  “Silence!” Neddie shouted, in a tone I had never before heard him employ. “I require a fast horse and rider for Canterbury! There’s a gold sovereign for the lad who makes the journey in under an hour!”

  “I’m your man,” cried a fellow in a nankeen coat; one of the stable boys, no doubt.

  “Ride like the wind to the constabulary,” Neddie instructed him, “and send back a party of men. We will require any number. Where is Mrs. Grey’s groom or tyger?”

  “Mrs. Grey’s tyger!” The cry went up, and was repeated through the swelling ranks; and after an interval, the boy with the bent back was rousted from the stableyard, with the Greys’jockey in tow.

  The tyger stopped short at the sight of his mistress, and gave a strangled cry. Then he looked blindly about the ring of men, his fists clenched; saw Collingforth still pinioned; and rushed at him, flailing and pummelling. “Why’d you want to do it, you coward? Why’d you want to go and kill ‘er for? She wanted none o’ your kind! You couldn’t leave ‘er in peace!”

  Neddie grasped the boy’s shoulders and pulled him away. “What is your name, boy?”

  “Tom,” he said. “TomJenkins.”

  “Why did your mistress leave you behind?”

  “She asked me to walk La Fleche back home. Crandall, ‘ere, was to walk the filly.”

  Very white about the lips, the jockey touched his cap.

  “La Fleche?” Neddie enquired.

  “The black ‘un, what she rode in the heat.”

  “I see. And what road did she intend to take?”

  “Why, the road to Wingham, o’ course. The Larches liesjust this side o’ Wingham.”

  Neddie glanced around him. “Henry! Have you a fresh horse?”

  “Of course.” My brothers had gone mounted to the race grounds well before our party in the barouche, being eager to see the Commodore into his stall, and survey the course. We had joined them some hours later.

  “Then set out immediately along the Wingham road. Mrs. Grey’s phaeton must be found, and secured from injury. Ten to one it has been stolen—” He stopped, perplexed. The unspoken question hovered in the air: How had Mrs. Grey come to lie in Collingforth’s chaise, quite devoid of her scarlet habit, when we had all observed her to drive out of the grounds a half-hour before? And if she had met with mishap along the road, and her phaeton been stolen—why was her body not lying beneath a hedgerow?

  “I shall send a constable towards Wingham immediately I have one,” Neddie continued, “but until he arrives, Henry, I beg of you, do not stir from The Larches. If you happen upon the phaeton by some lucky chance, remain with it until the constable appears. Now, Tom!”

  “Yes, sir?” The tyger dashed away his tears and endeavoured to stand the straighten

  “Is the black horse in any state for ajog?”

  “As fresh as tho’ he never was out, sir.”

  “Very well. You and your colleague—Crandall, is it?— shall bear Mr. Austen company along the Wingham road. If the phaeton is discovered, leave Mr. Austen in custody and proceed to The Larches. Inform the household of what has befallen your mistress. Is that clear?”

  “As glass, sir.”

  “Your master is from home, I presume?”

  “He’s in London, like always.”

  “Then a messenger must be sent to him with the news. The housekeeper will look to it.”

  “Like as not she’ll send me,” the jockey volunteered. “I usually knows where the master can be found.”

  Tom glanced at his murdered mistress, who lay so still amidst the dust and the singing cicadas. “What about milady?”

  “We shall convey her to Canterbury,” Neddie answered gently, and clapped the boy’s shoulder. “She must lie for a while at the Hound and Tooth, for there will be an inquest.”

  “Inquest? But that rogue as did for ‘er is standing ‘ere, large as life!” the boy spat out, and his fists clenched again. “If I’d been with ‘er, as I shoulda been, you wouldn’t be looking so easy, Mr. Collingforth, sir!”

  “Hold your tongue, Tom,” Neddie said sharply. “This is not the time or place for harsh words. The coroner will determine Mr. Collingforth’s guilt. You must tell the housekeeper where Mrs. Grey lies—the Hound and Tooth, in Canterbury.”

  “I’ll tell ‘em everything,” he replied, his face crumpling once more. “They’ll want to come and see to ‘er.”

  “I’m afraid that will have to wait until after the coroner has examined the corpse. Now off with you both to the stables!” Neddie’s voice was stern—a palpable support, at such a time. “You have a duty that cannot wait.”

  “Aye, sir.” The tyger touched his cap, the jockey bowed, and away they dashed without another word.

  “Neddie,” Lizzy murmured in his ear, “I cannot like Fanny’s situation. Miss Sharpe, too, is most indisposed.”

  “I shall send you back to Godmersham with Pratt.”

  “Not until the constabulary arrives,” Lizzy replied firmly. “I will not quit the scene until I know how things stand with Mr. Collingforth. I am in part responsible for his discomfiture, but I thought it necessary to speak.”

  “Undoubtedly. You did well. Jane!”

  “Yes, Neddie?” I joined them in a moment.

  “I should dearly love another pair of eyes. If you and Lizzy would return to the coach, and from that vantage survey the crowd for anything untoward—the slightest detail that might seem amiss—it should be as gold.”

  “With alacrity,” I said, and slipped my hand through Lizzy’s arm.

  “And now, Mr. Collingforth,” Neddie said, as we turned away, “I must ask leave to search your chaise. Stand aside, Mr. Everett!”

  “WHAT A CURIOUS LIGHT THIS SHEDS UPON ONE’S NEIGHbours, to be sure.” Lizzy sighed, as her green eyes roved intendy over the equipages drawn up helter-skelter near our own. “There is Mr. Hayes, busding all his party into a closed carriage, and intent upon his return to Ashford. He will not stay a moment, even in respect of the dead— the c
hance at seizing a clear road before his fellows is too tempting to be missed. Lady Elizabeth Finch-Hatton is pretending to an indisposition. See her there, with her kerchief over her face? I suppose I brought on a fit, by descending from my barouche and approaching the corpse. What a comfort that we need not be so nice, when Lady Elizabeth is on display!”

  “I admired your activity, Mrs. Austen,” Miss Sharpe said suddenly. “I wished that I might imitate it. That dreadful man required an answer!”

  ‘You observed the lady to enter his chaise as well?”

  “Yes,” the governess replied, her eyes averted, “but I did not remark her leaving it. I cannot recollect the slightest instance of her passing, in fact, until the moment that litde Fanny espied her at the rail—mounted on the black horse, and at the very moment of joining the fray. I shall not soon forget thatF

  “Nor any of the day’s events, I am sure,” Lizzy replied. “It is quite an introduction, Miss Sharpe, to the elegant delights of Canterbury Race Week. I am sure your friends the Portermans will be appalled, when they hear of it, and shall request your immediate return to London.”

  Anne Sharpe glanced up at her mistress swiftly, then dropped her eyes once more to the little chapbook.

  “I cannot tell the answer to your riddle, Sharpie,” said Fanny fretfully, “and I am very hot and tired. When will Papa be done?”

  “In a litde while, my dear,” her mother said, “in but a very litde while. Lay your head upon my lap, if you choose, and endeavour to sleep.”

  While my sister smoothed her daughter’s curls, I surveyed the milling crowd.2 Several of the parties had no intention of awaiting the constabulary, as Lizzy had said. A clutch of horses and harness clogged the gates of the meeting-grounds, and it should be hours, perhaps, before the turf was cleared.

  “Tell me of Mr. Collingforth, Lizzy,” I said softly.

  “Collingforth? He is of no very great account, I assure you. Nothing to do with the Suffolk family, you know—a lateral heir, in the maternal line, who took the name upon his accession to the property.”

  “Yes, yes—but what sort of character does he possess? Is he the sort of man to conceal a fresh corpse in his carriage?”

  “I cannot fathom why any man should do so, Jane,” Lizzy retorted in exasperation, “much less contrive to discover it himself. Either he is very simple, or very devious, indeed—and my mind at present is divided between the two.”

  “He seems to hate Mrs. Grey.”

  She smiled mirthlessly. “Love often turns to hate, I believe—particularly when it is formed of obsessive passion. Six months ago, perhaps, Mr. Collingforth was very much in Mrs. Grey’s pocket. But she tired of him, as she does of so many, and sent him on his way.”

  “And the affair was countenanced by Society?” I enquired.

  “Society, as you would style it, took no notice of either Mrs. Grey or Collingforth. Whatever their form of intimacy, it was quite without the pale of Canterbury fashion. Only Lady Forbes—the wife of the commanding General of the Coldstream Guards—condescended to visit Mrs. Grey after her first weeks in Kent, once the measure of her style had been taken; and Lady Forbes is very young, and cannot be trusted to know any better.”

  “I see. You said she tired of any number of gentlemen. A motive, perhaps, for her brutal end?”

  “Perhaps.” Lizzy’s slanting green eyes rounded upon me. “My brother must be considered one of them, Jane— Mrs. Grey had him quite wrapped around her little finger—and Captain Woodford, of course. He has been intimate from boyhood with Mr. Valentine Grey, and has frequently called at The Larches.”

  I glanced at Miss Sharpe’s sleek, dark head; her eyes were closed, and she appeared to be dozing. I lowered my voice all the same. ‘You heard what Mr. Collingforth said of your brother?”

  “In company with most of Kent. I wonder where the blackguard has got to? I would dearly love to know what Collingforth meant by accosting him in that fashion, just before the body was discovered. There is something ugly between them, and Woodford, too, if I am any judge of appearances; and such things are so tiresome when they are thrown in the public eye. How I long to shake brother Edward until his teeth rattle in his head!”

  Our interesting discourse was broken at that moment by the arrival of the Canterbury constabulary, come at a gallop, it seemed, from town. They brought in their train a waggon draped in black; I knew it at once for a makeshift hearse.

  Neddie strode to meet them; consulted, for a moment, with the man who seemed to be their principal; and this last commenced to bark out orders, dispatching some of his fellows in one direction, and some in another. A few made immediately for the Collingforth chaise.

  Mr. Wood, the surgeon, placed his arm under Mrs. Grey’s neck, and raised her slightly from the ground. The constables gathered at waist and feet. Neddie looked on, his arms folded across his chest and a line of care etched between his brows. And then Mrs. Grey, her unbound black hair sweeping over the surgeon’s arm, was carried slowly to the black-draped waggon. The tide of the curious parted like a guard of honour, and not a whisper or a sigh was heard, as the men struggled forward with their unhappy burden.

  “I should like to go home, Pratt,” Lizzy said quiedy into the stillness. “Let us learn what Mr. Austen intends, and then seek the road without delay.”

  “Very good, ma’am,” the coachman replied. He jumped from the box at once—as he had been longing to do for some time, I am sure—and sought out his master.

  Neddie returned with Pratt in a moment.

  “There is nothing more for you to do here, Lizzy,” he said. “Return to Godmersham with our party, and order a cold supper for Henry and myself. We shall be upon the road some hours, I fear. I ride even now towards The Larches, in the hope that something has been discovered of the missing phaeton.”

  “Of course,” she said dismissively. “Jane and I shall both sit up against your return. But, Neddie—”

  “Yes?”

  “Can not you tell us something of how Mrs. Grey died?”

  “She was throttled with her own hair-ribbon.”

  “That much I had discerned. But the chaise! How did she come to be there?”

  He shook his head. “I could find nothing within that might reveal her history. It is an ugly business—Mrs. Grey being what she is.”

  “A Frenchwoman?” I concluded.

  He nodded. “The danger of her nationality alone should have counselled a greater propriety of behaviour at such a time—but she was never very restrained, as I am sure you observed, and that may have excited the hatred or jealousy of any number of men. I hope to know more once I have seen her husband; but that cannot be until tomorrow.”

  “You believe her killing an act of war, then?”

  “In such times as these, with all of Kent in an uproar over the Monster’s invasion, I cannot think it extraordinary. She must have been killed on the road, in a chance encounter, when she was quite alone and defenceless. But how she came to be in Collingforth’s chaise—”

  I gazed pensively at the constables’ waggon and its tragic burden. Mr. Wood, the surgeon, had elected to attend the body, and was mounted on the box. Beside me, Miss Sharpe had completed the repacking of the picnic hamper, and Fanny was settled on the seat next to Lizzy. All around us the festive air of a race-meeting was fled, and a line of carriages lengthened towards the Canterbury road. The sedate assemblage of Kentish folk seemed the very last to harbour a political assassin; but other passions might be nearer at hand.

  “Mrs. Grey possessed wealth, beauty, and spirit,” I mused, “and each might be an insult to a certain sort of man. Or woman, for that matter—for I believe that few among her own sex dared to call her friend.”

  “And her end is not likely to improve her reputation,” Neddie observed. “There is already too much scandal and talk. The disappearance of the lady’s habit bears an ugly aspect. I would that her husband were not in Town.”

  “Unhappy gendeman! To receive such news, in
so brutal a manner! No one can deserve such wretchedness.”

  “Nor such an end,” Neddie added. “Tho’ God knows Mrs. Grey made any number of enemies in the short time she was among us.” He surveyed the tide of his departing neighbours with unwonted shrewdness. “I can think of several spurs to violence, Jane, in the lady’s case. A man might wager his purse on the outcome of a meeting, and lose a fortune in the toss; or fancy himself crossed in love, and ready to avenge an injury.”

  Neddie slapped the barouche’s side and nodded to Pratt. The coachman unwillingly lifted the reins.

  “And must you charge Mr. Collingforth?” I asked hurriedly.

  My brother hesitated, his grey eyes suddenly wary. “As to that—I cannot say, Jane. But I should be happy to canvass the matter at greater leisure, when once we are all together at Godmersham. Henry believes your advice is worth seeking; and I am not fool enough, I hope, to soldier on alone when good counsel is on offer. My experience has never run to murder. The duty must be a serious one. It must weigh heavily.”

  He kissed his wife’s hand, smoothed Fanny’s touseled curls, and then moved off through the thinning crowd towards the glowering Mr. Collingforth. The latter’s dark-suited friend, Mr. Everett, had not deserted him; but litde of comfort could be derived from so dour a companion. Further observation was denied me, for at that moment the horses started forward under Pratt’s meticulous hands, and we were sent back to Godmersham— like all of Canterbury’s ladies, preserved from further intimacy with what was unpleasant.

  In death, it seemed, Mrs. Grey had won what she preferred in life—the companionship of sporting men.

  1 “Caky” was the nickname Edward Austen’s children bestowed on their nurse, Susannah Sackree, who was employed at Godmersham for over six decades. She often served as Jane Austen’s personal maid when Jane was resident at Godmersham; she is buried at St. Nicolas’s, the old Norman church just south of Godmersham Park, where Edward and Elizabeth Austen Knight are also entombed.—Editor’s note.

  2 It was common in Austen’s day to refer to relations by marriage as though they were relations of blood. Although the term in-law existed, it was frequently used to describe step relations. —Editor’s note.