Jane and the Genius of the Place

by Stephanie Barron

  Denys Collingforth, however, did not comport himself like a lover. Nothing of anguish was in his looks as he contemplated the ravaged corpse of Mrs. Grey. If anything, he appeared the reverse of all that a lover should be. So why deposit the body in his chaise?

  Or, in the final consideration, was the letter in the novel merely a subterfuge of Mrs. Grey’s cicisbeo, who intended her end rather than her escape?3

  The latter seems hardly likely. A disgruntled lover should rather have strangled the lady on the strand at Pegwell in the dark of night, than in the midst of a race-meeting. The letter, for the nonce, must be merely suggestive. It tells us only that one among her friends believed her unhappy enough with her marriage and Kent, to entertain the notion of flight.

  Neddie has determined, as you may comprehend, to examine the husband acutely. Mr. Valentine Grey was sent for by express, and is expected at The Larches every moment.

  HERE I PAUSED IN MY LETTER TO CASSANDRA, AND SAW again in memory my brother’s weary face. It was after ten o’clock when he and Henry returned from the race grounds, and we had the comfortable library entirely to ourselves. Henry threw himself onto a sofa and yawned hugely; Neddie stood in thought by his desk. I had determined not to plague them with questions, being content myself to rest a few moments in my favourite room.

  The library, with its five tables, two fireplaces, countless volumes, and eight-and-twenty chairs, is in the newest part of the great house. The first Mr. Thomas Knight added two wings, east and west, nearly thirty years previous; and tho’ the entire family is wont to live in the generous space, summer or winter, spurning the chilly grandeur of the more formal drawing-rooms, it sometimes happens that I command the library in splendid solitude. This is a richness not to be carelessly forsworn; for in a house that boasts the frequent presence of nine children—their number increasing with a stupefying regularity—solitude and peace are luxuries dearly bought. But my brother’s goodness admits of few limits; he comprehends my need for daily reflection, and the delight I take in the house’s privacies; and shoos his numerous progeny to the garden when “Aunt Jane requires her rest.”

  “And so you are not abed.” Neddie swung round and peered at me from his place by the unlit hearth. “I am glad of it, Jane. I should soon drive poor Henry mad with my mutterings; he has borne with them too long today.”

  “Not a bit of it.” Henry eased off his top boots with a sigh. It should not be remarkable if the feet were swollen, after hours of imprisonment in such fashionable footgear. “I shall be all attention to the despicable business, once I have heard from Jane how the Commodore does.”

  “He was sold to the knacker not three minutes before your return,” I told him with conscious cruelty, “and I doubt he shall make a better meat than he has a race-meeting.”

  “For shame! The lad was merely weighted too heavily. And he does not like the dust. Give the Commodore a splendid wet muck and he will tear the course to blazes. But truly, Jane—you saw he was looked after?”

  I sighed. “A bucket of oats and an hour’s rubbing-down. Your groom would hardly do less; I believe he led the nag at a walk the full seven miles between the meeting-grounds and Godmersham, Henry. You have no cause for fear.”

  “Not for fear, perhaps,” Neddie observed, as he flung himself into a chair, “but his concern nonetheless does our brother credit. Yours is a most forgiving nature, Henry; you lose your fortune and mine in backing the beast, and yet are anxious to know whether it ate its dinner well. Were I disposed to transgress and disappoint, I should wish to fall into your hands. I might then be assured of a gende reckoning.”

  “Unlike the unfortunate Mrs. Grey,” Henry observed. “She certainly met with more brutal treatment.”

  Neddie regarded him quizzically. ‘You incline, then, to the theory of a husband pushed past endurance?”

  “I incline to nothing,” he protested. “She might as readily have been strangled by a broken gamester, mad with backing the wrong horse!”

  “Better to have strangled the Commodore, then,” I murmured.

  Neddie bent his gaze upon me. “What say you, Jane, to Henry’s notion?”

  “I may say nothing, until I command a greater knowledge of the particulars. Why should you believe Mr. Grey the culprit? Was not he far from the scene, in London?”

  Neddie laughed abrupdy. “She is as sober as a judge, our sister! If it is particulars you fancy, Jane, then you shall have them. I could not suffer you to remain in ignorance, when all the world will soon be talking of the matter.”

  He rang for wine, and when it had been brought, consumed a litde in silence. It was Henry who related the history of the perch phaeton, its scandalous novel, and the letter it contained; and when he had done, I puzzled a moment over the matter.

  “Like you, Henry, I cannot incline towards one theory or another,” I declared at last. “We must attempt to ascertain whether Mr. Valentine Grey was indeed in London at the moment of his wife’s end—and whether he had reason to suspect a dangerous entanglement with The Unknown. It would not go amiss, either, could we put a name to the lady’s lover. But until such things are laid plain, it must all be conjecture. And injurious conjecture at that.”

  “So we thought as well,” Neddie said from his corner. “And having concluded our inspection of the phaeton, despatched the greys to their stable under the watchful eye of the tyger, and charged the Canterbury constabulary with the safekeeping of the carriage—Henry and I proceeded to pay a call upon The Larches.”

  “The Greys’ estate? No wonder, then, that you were so long detained!”

  “Indeed. We have tramped through half the neighbourhood in pursuit of justice, and found not a hint of it within fifteen miles of the coast. It has all fled to London, I suppose, out of a terror of French cavalry.”

  “And did you discover Mr. Grey in savage looks, with pistols at the ready and his housekeeper for hostage, intent upon the defiance of the Law?”

  “Hardly. Imagine our surprise, my dear sister, to find Grey as absent as foretold, and the house in possession of strangers.”

  “Strangers?” I echoed, intrigued.

  “Perhaps that is not the correct word,” Henry broke in hastily. “But they certainly could not be considered as forming a part of the household.”

  “Enough of riddles!” I set down my wineglass with decision. “I am not young Fanny, to be diverted at a word.”

  “Can not you guess whom we found in the saloon, rifling the dead woman’s desk for all they were worth?” Neddie’s eyes glinted with something too acute to be called amusement.

  “I cannot,” I retorted helplessly. “I never heard of Mrs. Grey until this morning, and cannot hope to name her intimates.”

  “Captain Woodford and Edward Bridges,” Henry said apologetically, “and both of them much the worse for wine.”

  “Good God!” I cried; and then, “How can you look so roguish, Neddie? Think what this must mean for Lizzy, if Mr. Bridges’s name should be linked in scandal to Mrs. Grey’s! And Captain Woodford, too—of whom Harriot has such hopes! It does not bear thinking of.”

  “I believe it is my Lizzy who has hopes of the gallant Captain,” he amended. “Harriot’s feelings, like those of any modest young lady, must be presendy in doubt. I cannot be expected to consider of Harriot, if she will not consider of herself.”

  “Pray, pray, be sensible, Neddie!”

  “You disappoint me, Jane,” my brother replied drily. “You do not show the proper relish for intrigue. I had expected more, from Henry’s account of your doings in Bath last winter. I thought you quite enslaved to a dangerous excitement.”

  If I threw Henry an evil look, and received an air of insouciance in return, I may perhaps be forgiven.

  “Captain Woodford we may explain,” I managed eventually. “I understand that he has been on terms of intimacy with Mr. Grey from boyhood, and might naturally wish to be present when the gendeman returned. Perhaps he hoped to shield his friend from the full w
eight of such terrible news. And Mr. Bridges might merely have accompanied him.”

  “Tho’ they travelled in separate equipages, and seemed distincdy out of charity with one another.”

  This must give me pause.

  “Captain Woodford would have it that they had come to condole with Mr. Grey,” Henry threw in, “tho’ he could tell us nothing about that gendeman’s movements, or when he was expected from London. And poor Mr. Bridges was decidedly red-faced and mumchance— either from the effects of wine or the ruin of his hopes, for I know him to have backed the Commodore to a shocking extent. At first he suggested he would condole with Grey as well, until Captain Woodford abused him to his face for a blackguard and a liar. It would have ended in Bridges calling the Captain out, had Neddie not intervened.”3

  “How very singular,” I said slowly. “Captain Woodford and Mr. Bridges, to have had a falling-out. They seemed the best of fellows, when last I had the pleasure of conversing with them.”

  “At the race-meeting itself, Jane?”

  “Tho’ well before the murder of Mrs. Grey. Our party met with the two gentlemen in the interval before the heats. They seemed most companionable, and joined in their good wishes for the Commodore’s running.”

  “As well they might,” Henry retorted gloomily. “Much good it may do them.”

  “Perhaps the betting aroused their enmity,” Neddie mused. “Or Denys Collingforth’s insults. He fairly accused them of Mrs. Grey’s murder—and before all of Kent.”

  “But would that cause either to drive posthaste to The Larches?” I protested. “You spoke of rifled desk drawers, Neddie. Certainly you were in error there? The two were surely not despoiling Mrs. Grey’s things?”

  My brothers exchanged a long look; then Neddie shrugged. “Their appearance at our entrance had all the suggestion of uneasy interruption, Jane. Woodford was bending over the desk, while Mr. Bridges was intent about the lock of one drawer. Whether either man had divined its secrets, I cannot say; but I am certain that was their purpose.”

  “And could the housekeeper tell you nothing of their coming?”

  “Only that they had burst upon her all unawares, when she was already prostrate with grief at her mistress’s passing; that they insisted upon admission to the house, and vowed that they would wait for Mr. Grey.”

  “And so she left them to peruse the contents of her mistress’s desk,” I muttered. “A considerable liberty.”

  “I must believe that Mrs. Bastable—the housekeeper— was quite accustomed to seeing my brother Bridges and the Captain at The Larches. To her there was nothing extraordinary in their being granted the freedom of the house.”

  We considered this unfortunate conclusion in silence a moment, while the willows sighed gendy along the banks of the Stour in the darkness. The sound, so generally soothing, drifted through the open French windows like a whisper from the grave.

  “Do you apprehend the nature of Mr. Bridges’s intimacy with the Greys, Neddie?” I enquired at length.

  He shrugged. “It was neither so very great, as to be called intimate, nor so trifling as to pass for the barest acquaintance. Edward would have it that Mrs. Grey was very fond of cards, and when her husband was absent on business in Town, she would often send round to various gendemen in the neighbourhood, that they might make up her whist table.”

  “Mr. Bridges played at cards at The Larches?”

  “Then no doubt he lost,” Henry added.

  “It is his chief talent.” Neddie rose and turned restlessly before the bare hearth. “But I confess to some anxiety at his presence in that house, and at such a time. I feel scarcely less on Woodford’s account. They are both of them honourable fellows—as the behaviour of gendemen is usually construed.”

  “Meaning, that they are amiable, good-humoured, feckless sportsmen who should not be trusted with their quarter’s pay,” I finished. “Either they intended to retrieve their vowels from Mrs. Grey’s desk, or some other piece of incriminating paper has given rise to anxiety.4 A love letter? An indiscretion, too desperate to be revealed to the lady’s husband?”

  “Perhaps,” Neddie admitted.

  “Perhaps the lady had a taste for blackmail,” Henry threw out.

  I started at the word. Blackmail will always possess an ugly sound—and I had learned to respect its vicious nature in Bath the previous winter. The rifling of a desk was a natural aftermath of a brutal killing, when the victim of the act had proved brutal herself. Mr. Bridges’s behaviour bore all the markings of a man in fear of betrayal. But of what?

  Of whatever Denys Collingforth had hinted, in the middle of the race grounds? His object then had been the curate alone, not Captain Woodford—but Woodford had been encompassed in the insult later, the price of coming to the aid of his friend. Perhaps the shadow cast on the Captain’s honour had caused the rift with the curate. But the Captain, too, had been discovered bent over the desk—

  “I see how it is. This is an ugly business, Neddie.”

  “And likely to grow worse.” He tossed off the last of his wine. “All of Kent may have despised Mrs. Grey; they may have cut her dead in certain circles, and laughed at her in others—but her influence was felt. Her charm was insidious. Her habits and style were bewitching to some. And no matter how the sad nature of her end is resolved, we can none of us hope to avoid the breath of scandal, Jane. We are touched by it too nearly.”

  He looked then as though he felt all the weight of his commission—hollow-eyed, burdened, and wearied in mind and body. I went to him, and kissed his cheek in silent testament of affection.

  “What do you intend to do next?” I asked him.

  “I shall endeavour to learn why Collingforth should have killed Francoise Grey,” he replied, “tho’ I cannot believe he did it.”

  ‘You might also enquire who bore a grudge against CoUingforth himself,” I suggested. “The introduction of the corpse into his chaise must bear a questionable aspect. It is one thing to murder a woman, and quite another to throw the blame.”

  “True.” My brother took up his candle and made for the stairs. “Pray inform me, Jane, as to the result of your own researches. I am not so callow as to believe you will sit home, quiet and confined, while so much of interest is toward. I will neither enjoin you to silence, nor urge you to the chase—but I will always be ready to listen.”

  And so our conferences ended, with a solemn procession by candlelight—my brothers to their beds, and I to the Yellow Room’s little writing table.

  I would not have you share this intelligence with Harriot for the world, I cautioned Cassandra now. Better that she should learn the worst—if worst there is—when it cannot be avoided. But if you should have occasion to observe the two gentlemen, my dear sister—one comprising her brother, and the other her suitor—pray be on your guard. For anything you discern might be as gold.

  I signed the letter, sealed it with some candlewax and my brother’s fob, and waited for the storm to break above my head.

  1 Edward Austen Knight’s male children attended Winchester College, some seventeen miles distant from his principal Hampshire estate, at Chawton.—Editor’s note.

  3 A cicisbeo was the acknowledged lover of a married woman. In some circles the term was used platonically, to signify a male escort—Editor’s note.

  3 To call a man out was to challenge him to a duel.—Editor’s note.

  4 A gentleman’s vowels were his IOUs—signed with his name, and binding as a debt of honor.—Editor’s note.

  Tuesday

  20 August 1805

  IN NEARLY THIRTY YEARS OF LIVING I HAVE OFTEN HAD occasion to observe, that one sensational event may only be supplanted by another of equal or greater import. And so it has been with all of us at Godmersham this morning: Mrs. Grey’s brutal murder is quite forgot, and the agent of her eclipse is none other than Captain Woodford.

  He appeared in the approach to our gates at noon, arrayed in his full dress uniform and mounted on a dappled grey.
I was privileged in having the first sight of him—for I had profited from the interlude after breakfast, when the litde ones were taking turns with patient Patch, the old pony, to escape to my Doric temple and my solitude. There in columned shadow I was established with paper and pen, secure in such privacy as I may rarely command. There I might gaze out over the chuckling Stour, and watch the growing heat of morning raise a fine mist above the meadows; feel birdsong throbbing in my veins, and attempt to wrestle Lady Susan to her Fate.1

  The nature of that Fate is much in question at present, for Lady Susan is not a woman to suffer the vagaries of fortune as willingly as her creator might intend. She is a vengeful and calculating Virago, in fact, and I am entirely delighted with her. Cassandra believes there is something shocking in a woman so very bad; she would have Lady Susan repentant and reformed at the tale’s end. But in this we may read the force of sentiment— and the failure of Art to mirror Truth. For I have known a thousand Lady Susans; have seen them sail unremarked through the Fashionable World, their consequence increasing with every fresh outrage. Unnatural mother, adulterous schemer, and treacherous friend—what can such a woman ever know of virtue?

  I love her too well, in short, to have her broken for a moral.

  My thoughts in this vein had only just borne fruit, in the composition of the novel’s final pages, when the sound of hoofbeats on the dusty lane below my hilltop perch alerted all my senses. I half-rose, and peered round a column; observed an officer mounting the stone bridge over the Stour; and set aside my paper and pen. A moment’s further study revealed the upright figure to possess an eye patch—and there could not be two such at large in the country. Captain Woodford, then, was come to Godmersham, and well before the usual hour for paying a morning call!

  If I entertained the notion of a soul burdened with guilt, and advancing upon my brother for the full confession of its sins, I may perhaps be forgiven. I watched with narrowed eyes as the Captain achieved the gates and made his measured progress up the sweep.2 He did not look a man overwhelmed by grief; yet neither was he galloping as befit an officer charged with the most urgent intelligence. The French were not upon our very doorstep, at least.