Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

by Stephanie Barron

  “So it is the Countess who is acquainted with Lord Harold. And as a business partner, too. That does give one pause.”

  “I believe the term partner to be inaccurately applied, Sir William,” I said sharply. “Lord Harold merely seeks the Countess’s interest, but he is very far from securing it.”

  Sir William peered at me narrowly, but deigned not to comment. He tapped the poisonous letter and pursed his lips. “If Lord Harold is the man, we must ask what the maid might know of her mistress’s business. A great deal, or a very little, depending upon the character of the maid. What think you, Jane?”

  “That Marguerite has formed a tissue of lies,” I replied, with more stoutness than I felt. A clergyman’s daughter may use wit at times, and candour whenever possible, but conscious deceit is more likely to fail her.

  “And to what purpose?”

  “With the intent of extorting payment for her silence.”

  “I see no request for sovereigns here,” Sir William said.

  “I should be very much surprised if that does not appear in the next letter.”

  “The one I am intended to receive?”

  “So we are told.”

  “Not a very intelligent course, surely? For / cannot be expected to pay her.”

  “She is a very foolish girl,” I finished lamely.

  “Aha. So you say,” the magistrate muttered dubiously, and folded the paper away in his waistcoat. “You were present at the Earl’s death, I believe?”

  “Not at the moment of his passing, but I observed some part of his illness.”

  “And what did you conclude?”

  I hesitated, and the pause revealed me as less certain of matters than I would wish.

  “Come, come, Jane!” Sir William chided. “You are not a blushing girl, given to airs and sighs; you have your wits about you, as I’ve always approved, and are readier than any I know to form a judgment when the facts stare you in the face. Was it a death you could ascribe to natural causes?” “In truth, sir, I must own it was not, though the physician would have it otherwise,” I told him. “The violence of the Earl’s illness was Such as I had never witnessed, except under the influence of a deadly purgative.”

  “Indeed,” Sir William said softly. “Indeed. And yet they called it dyspepsia. I had a few bad moments myself in hearing the news of Frederick’s death; I swore off claret for a twelvemonth, though my resolve lasted but two days. The suddenness of his passing shook me. It disturbed you as well?”

  “I cannot deny it, though I alone of the Scargrave household felt apprehension.”

  “That is hardly to be remarked, my dear,” Sir William said dryly. “You alone had nothing to inherit.”

  I STOPPED IN SIR WILLIAMS HOUSEHOLD LONG ENOUGH TO greet his dear lady, to hear her news of three daughters and four sons long claimed by marriage and profession, exclaim over the domestic arrangements of her new home, and offer what intelligence of my circle in Bath it was in my power to convey. Then Sir William very kindly ordered his carriage to the door once more, against the protests of his wife, who would have had me stop the night rather than venture out again in such weather.

  “It takes more than snow to hinder our Jane,” Sir William said fondly, as he handed me into the carriage. “I shall communicate with you directly I receive the letter.”

  The last sight of his bare white head, starred with falling flakes like a Saint Nicholas of old, was to be my comfort the length of that solitary return to Scargrave. It is much, indeed, to have a friend down the lane, when a murderer may be among the household.

  1. This letter, presumably the one in which Jane imparted the news of the Earl’s death to her sister, is no longer contained in the journal.—Editor’s note.

  2. Three London courts heard common-law cases—King’s Bench, the Exchequer, and Common Pleas. A King’s Bench barrister would try criminal cases; an Exchequer barrister, disputes over money (customs duties, taxes, fines) owed the Crown, and a Common Pleas barrister, small claims.—Editor’s note.

  3. Because solicitors brought cases to barristers for trial, and collected the fee as a “gratuity” in thanks for the barristers’ efforts, solicitors were considered tradesmen while barristers preserved their status as gentlemen. The same distinction prevailed between physicians—educated professionals who could be received at Court—and surgeons, village doctors who could not.—Editor’s note.

  16 December 1802

  ˜

  I WAS ENGAGED BY MY JOURNAL WELL INTO THE EVENING last night, tucked up in my sombre room with the fire burned low and all the house, as I thought, abed; but sleep remained elusive, though the great clock in the hall below would chime eleven, and then the quarter-and the half-hour. I determined at the last to snuff out my candle and attempt to find some rest, though the doubts and fears that have occupied my waking hours would fill my head with a riotous clamour.

  I had consigned the room to dark, and placed my head upon the pillow, when the clock struck midnight; and as the final toll died away, I heard a rhythmic creaking, as of a measured pacing, commence along the floorboards of the gallery beyond my door. The sound—unremarkable in daylight—caused me now to stiffen with apprehension and bate my breath. It was the very height of the witching hour, when dread comes easy to the mind. That the shade of the First Earl had come to mourn poor Frederick, his descendant, I might almost have believed; for rather than cease with entering a room or passing from the hall, as the footsteps of any mortal inmate of Scargrave should do, the footsteps continued their curious dragging movement.1

  An age it seemed I lay there, with all thought suspended, until I felt of a sudden that I should sooner die from fright of an apparition, than sweat in my bed from foolish fancies. I threw back the bedcovers, swung a cold foot to the floor, and crept to the door as soundlessly as I knew how. It but remained to turn the knob quietly and slowly, to crack the door an inch or two, and peer around the jamb.

  In the dimness of the hall I saw him: a tall, gaunt figure dressed in the outmoded fashion of nearly two centuries past. A gossamer veiling concealed his head, which bore a long wig of cascading dark curls; his shoes were heeled and pitched forward in the fashion of the long-dead Sun King, and from their precarious perch he seemed to plod down the gallery on the tips of his toes. Cobwebs hung from his fingers, and from the hem of his satin coat; he was as dusty as a tailor’s dummy fetched from a forgotten attic. The very shade of the First Earl, called from the dead to mourn the late Frederick; and to my thankfulness, the spectre had passed and was departing with turned back. I readied myself to observe him glide through the wall at the gallery’s nether end, when he stopped before a closed chamber door, listening in the stillness, never moving a spectral muscle. I felt my skin prickle with consciousness. Would that he did not turn his face and stare with terrible eyes upon my night-clad form! But perhaps he felt the weight of my gaze; there could be no other cause for such suspension of purpose. The door before which he halted led to Fitzroy Payne’s apartments; and I prayed for that gentleman to awake, and fright the ghost back into the ether, until I recollected that Lord Scargrave was even still bent over his uncle’s papers in the late Earl’s library. I drew breath, and disturbed the stillness; and with that, the shade’s head began to turn.

  I shot back around the doorjamb, my breathing and pulse quickening, waiting for the wrath of the undead to descend upon my room; but all remained silent—no creaking boards, no ghostly wind progressing down the hall. The spectre had not moved. Summoning my courage, I peeked back into the hall and saw with relief that the First Earl had vanished. Movement alone must be adequate to dispel a wraith; but I did not care to test the efficacy of my exorcism. I bolted the oak, fled to my bed, and pulled the covers over my head; and when the boards creaked once more, not long thereafter, I merely burrowed deeper.

  AND SO I AM COME TO MY TWENTY-SEVENTH YEAR, WITH the bleary eyes and pale complexion of one robbed of sleep. My birthday has dawned with little of cheer to mark it; the sky
is a lowering grey, and a chill wind rattles the leafless trees. I declare that I feel old this morning, despite the gallantries of Lieutenant Tom Hearst (more concerning that in time). There was less of the frightening in being five-and-twenty, or even six-and-twenty, than I feel today. There is something so inevitable about seven-and-twenty; it is decidedly on the wrong side of the decade for a lady, particularly an unmarried one. But none here at Scargrave is apprised of my birthday, and so I would keep it; too much of a serious nature demands our attention.

  Having slept rather heavily in the wake of the ghost’s visit, I was a full half-hour late for breakfast. Tho’ the custom at home is to take one’s chocolate and rolls at ten o’clock, the sideboard in Scargrave’s pretty little morning room is laid an hour earlier, as befits a country household. I thought to find the table deserted, and rejoiced at the prospect of solitude; the peace of bright yellow walls and fresh muslin curtains—a rare note of cheer amidst Scargrave’s ponderous decoration—should be my reward for dissipation.

  But to my surprise, I found Madame Delahoussaye still lingering over toast and tea.

  “My dear Miss Austen!” she exclaimed, studying my pale countenance. “I am sure you slept very unwell.”

  “I suffered from nightmares, I am afraid,” I said.

  “It is written on your face, ma pauvre. You might almost have seen a ghost.”

  I peered at her narrowly, fearing myself to be a laughing-stock, but Madame’s comfortable features and glittering dark eyes were innocent of intrigue.

  “I had understood there to be a ghost at Scargrave,” I said, as a footman pulled out my chair, “but I am a clergyman’s daughter, Madame, and the perils of the grave must be as nothing to me.”

  “I rejoice to hear it,” my breakfast companion said equably, replenishing her tea, “since your room lies along the First Earl’s accustomed walk. Do you endeavour to fall asleep before midnight, my dear, for once you slumber; a wraith cannot hope to disturb you.”

  My reply was forestalled by the entrance of one of the housemaids, Daisy by name. She is Mrs. Hodges’s granddaughter, and only sixteen, a youthfulness she appears to feel painfully in her current elevation—for in Marguerite’s absence, Daisy has been placed at Isobel’s disposal, and struggles daily to be worthy of her office. I surmised that her mistress had sent her in search of me, and threw down my serviette in haste.

  Daisy bobbed in Madame’s direction, and then in mine, the ribbons on her cap fluttering prettily. “Please, miss,” she told me in a breathless accent, “milady says as she has had a note from Sir William, begging to call at eleven o’clock. Will you join milady then, miss, in the little sitting-room?”

  “Of course, Daisy. You may inform your mistress I shall be delighted.” I endeavoured to look undismayed, though I confess my thoughts were racing. It must be that Sir William had received a letter from the maid Marguerite—nothing short of urgency would bring him to the Manor so soon upon the heels of his first visit.

  “I suppose the magistrate wishes to see as much of you as he may, while you remain at Scargrave, Miss Austen,” Madame Delahoussaye said. I turned to survey her face, but it was suffused with only the mildest curiosity. “The discovery of old acquaintance here has assuredly heightened his gallantry. He can have no other reason, I suppose, for forcing himself upon a house of mourning?”

  “Sir William is so respectable, and his intentions so amiable, Madame,” I replied, with something of coldness in my accent, “that his presence can afford Scargrave nothing but relief. That the Countess does not hesitate to meet him must be enough to recommend him.”

  At her inclining her head, and the footman serving me with fresh chocolate, I endeavoured to converse of other things, the better to speed the meal to its close. Nearly two hours must be endured before I should hear Sir William’s intelligence—time enough to lament Daisy’s unfettered tongue, and wish that girls of sixteen might have less of the ingenuous and more of discretion.

  BY THE TIME COBBLESTONE, THE BUTLER, THREW OPEN THE sitting-room door to announce Sir William, I was moved to greet the magistrate’s white-haired head with almost violent relief. For my morning was a trial in forbearance—one I have resolved to offer up to my Maker as expiation for a twelvemonth of sins.

  Fitzroy Payne was closeted in his library over some letters of business, the Hearst brothers remained in their companionable bachelor cottage down the lane, while Fanny Delahoussaye kept to the upstairs sitting room with her mother and her sketching book—in horrified anticipation, one may assume, of the visits of retired barristers. Isobel I did not expect to see until eleven o’clock should strike. And so, sitting composedly by the hearth, my hands occupied with needlework and my eyes upon the clock, I was suffered to endure an hour’s tête-à-tête with Lord Harold Trowbridge. From closer observation, I may declare that I have learned to despise the man’s cunning manner.

  Most in the Scargrave household suffer his presence with distant politeness that signals a profound dislike, and a wish that he should be gone; but it is an atmosphere to which Lord Harold appears utterly impervious. He might almost be enjoying a holiday among friends, unmarked by calamitous events, rather than hovering like a dark raven on the edge of so much that is disturbing and intimate to the family. I have managed to avoid his company, and rejoiced in my escape; but this morning he appeared to have too little to occupy his time, and seemed almost to profit from my discomfiture at being shut up with him in the sitting-room.

  I was already established a quarter-hour on the settee by the fire when he threw open the door and, after a quick glance to observe that I was alone, strode purposefully into the room. I acknowledged his presence with an indifferent nod, and hoped that studied application to my needle, and a dearth of conversation, should drive him away in but a few moments. I bent, accordingly, to my work, and knew not where he went in the room, or how he intended to employ his time. My industry was rather to be reviled than rewarded, however. Setting down his book upon the sitting-room table with a bang, Lord Harold threw himself onto the settee at my side, and affected to scrutinise my effort from under his hooded eyes—as a fond lover might his dearest darling’s. After some seconds, unable to bear so painful a burlesque, but wishing anything rather than to cede such a man the room, I cast aside my work and stared at him balefully. Any gentleman should have recognised his impropriety, and hastened to relieve my distress; but not Lord Harold.

  “It is as I thought,” he declared, sitting back coolly and throwing his long legs across the hearth rug. “You secretly despise the insipidity of women’s work, and abandon it when the first opportunity serves. Shall I shower you with contempt, Miss Austen, for failing in the accomplishment of your sisters, or admire you the more for exposing it as the tedium it truly is?”

  “You may do me neither the honour nor the injustice, Lord Harold, of offending my sex and its pursuits,” I replied. “Say rather I was incommoded by the proximity of so much silent regard, and the invasion of my privacy, and I will find some means to agree with you.”

  “You think it so unlikely we should see eye to eye, Miss Austen?”

  “I should imagine, Lord Harold, that we two must always be looking in opposite directions—so dissimilar and incongenial are our concerns.”

  “Your opinion of me is decidedly formed for so short an acquaintance!”

  “Then we need not prolong it for the improvement of my views.” I gathered up my silks and needle, and exchanged the settee for a chair at some remove from Lord Harold—and thus, unfortunately, from the fire. Scargrave is a draughty place, and the expanse of sitting-room but poorly heated.

  “Miss Austen! Did I not know you to be a woman of open and easy temper, I should imagine you wished me to be off.” To my dismay, he crossed the room in my wake, and hung over the back of my chair—of a purpose, I suppose, to disturb me further. There was nothing for it—I must either seek my chamber above, or use my purgatory to better purpose. Lord Harold remained at Scargrave for only one r
eason—to wrest Crosswinds from Isobel’s shaken hands—and the rogue deserved no courtesy. A frontal assault, therefore, was in order.

  “I do wonder at your being so good as to spend Christmas among the Scargrave family, Lord Harold,” I replied. “A man of your position must have so many obligations and competing claims among your acquaintance, that to devote so lengthy a period to one must be felt a singular honour.”

  “That it is regarded as singular, I do not doubt,” he said, with a thin-lipped smile. “But in this we are very much of a piece, Miss Austen, for I observe you feel no more compelled to depart for home and family than dol.”

  “I should have been gone already,” I replied, searching among my silks for a bit of red, the better to work a robin’s breast, “but for the Countess.”

  “How charming! And how amusing that I may justly say the same—but for the Countess, I should have been gone days ago. I would that our objectives were equally benign, Miss Austen; but alas, they cannot be. And so we are ranged the one against the other, you and I—you, her light angel, stand firm against all the fury of my dark one.” He moved to the fire and stood looking into its depths. The flickering light sharpened the planes of his face and threw his eyes into further shadow, so that his expression became if possible more remote and inscrutable. Gazing upon it, I felt for the first time truly afraid.

  “I do not pretend to understand you, my lord,” I said with effort, and applied myself to my needlework.

  “I imagine you understand me very well, Miss Austen,” he rejoined quietly, “and I confess to disappointment at your retreat into convention. It is unworthy of your intelligence and penetration.”

  “What can you know of either, my lord?”

  “A great deal, when opportunity to observe is afforded me. But too often you run away at my approach, and would deny me the felicity of your wit.”

  “Say rather that I choose better company, Lord Harold, and I shall deign it to be possible.”