Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

by Stephanie Barron

  “I should hardly call murder a trifle,” George Hearst remarked in his mordant voice, “though if one is so disposed, all that is serious in life may be ignored by a steady pursuit of frivolity.”

  “La, George, you are a stick,” Miss Fanny observed. “I wonder the murderer has not seen fit to send you off, out of sheer ennui. But never mind. We shall amuse ourselves the better without you.”

  “As is generally the case,” Mr. Hearst replied, “though I count it no dishonour. Since you find amusement in everything, Miss Delahoussaye—even what is serious or tragic—stimulating your ability to laugh must be considered a talent very much in the common way. I confess I pride myself on rarer qualities.”

  “There must be a store of old clothes about, in such an ancient seat as this,” Fanny said, paying him no heed; “I am sure Lieutenant Hearst would delight to see me arrayed as Marie Antoinette, and parade himself as the Sun King.”

  Madame appeared startled, and surveyed her daughter narrowly. “I should sooner wish you to have the ordering of your history, my dear,” she said, “for some several generations separate the two.”

  Fanny shrugged with elegant disregard. “Pooh, Mamma! When one is play-acting, it makes no odds. I shall call for Mrs. Hodges, and turn the attics topsyturvy.”

  “Pray do not, Fanny,” Madame said sharply. “We should sooner hear your lovely voice raised in song—and to deprive us of your presence would be a cruel piece of work. I am sure,” she said, “that Lieutenant Hearst agrees.”

  I was surprised to hear her appeal in such a case to a man she despised, and concluded that fancy dress was indeed abhorrent to her. But Miss Fanny was all smiles in an instant, and I must give up my place at the instrument. In truth, I cared little, and soon sought the privacy of my room; for she would persist in singing boisterous carols of the season, in an ill-considered display of liveliness.

  Yesterday, Sir William presided over the removal of the late Earl’s coffin from the great stone sarcophagus in Scargrave Close churchyard, and saw it entrusted to Dr. Pettigrew, the London physician. In this he was attended by Eliahu Bott, the Hertfordshire coroner a trim little fellow with a perennially dyspeptic look. The inquest is called for this afternoon, and all are to attend. I myself must offer testimony of the finding of Marguerite, and feel no little trepidation at the prospect. And so my life is as suspended as indrawn breath, awaiting that relief of tension that I pray the inquest will bring.

  Sir William himself has grown remote in speech and aspect; he has ceased to impart what ever he knows of the case to me, treating me rather with a gentle and solicitous concern that inspires only fear. That he knows some ill of Isobel and Fitzroy Payne—that he believes them, in fact, to be guilty of both murders—I have surmised. Lacking that affection for the Countess born of close acquaintance, or that respect for the character of the new Earl I persist in harbouring, Sir William is unfettered in his judgment; and so I anticipate his harshness with regard to the inquest and fear for its outcome. His duty as magistrate for the district compels him to prove my friends’ guilt;1 and in gathering what may tell against them, he is assiduous as ever in his days at the King’s Bench. That he was absent some few days in London, in search of witnesses for the coming panel, I learned from his dear lady upon calling at the house in the Scargrave carriage; and her own gravity of manner, and pitying look, did little to cheer my hopes of a happy outcome.

  Though the weather has held fair since Christmas Eve, I have scorned Lady Bess and the pleasures of riding horseback; scorned my journal, my volume of Boswell, even my letter-writing—for how to tell my dear Cassandra of the evil men may do? And, in truth, I hardly know what I should write; for I cannot find the logic in events for myself, much less for the understanding of another. The world is revealed as an uncertain place, where the face of a friend may hide the intent of a murderer; where the stoutest protestations may serve to beguile the trusting into a false complacency. Isobel’s handkerchief, found by the paddock gate, and Fitzroy Payne’s handwriting on the note found in the maid’s bodice—to say nothing of the Barbadoes nuts in his possession—are facts which cannot be denied. Even did no word of Isobel’s attachment to her nephew emerge at the inquest, the sagacious among the jury might surmise it, from the linkage of evidence and the respective ages and association of the parties. A stranger to either’s character might readily assume that the heir poisoned his uncle for the dual purpose of acquiring his fortune and his wife; and that Isobel, needy of money and younger by a generation than her spouse of three months, should happily accede to the plan of her amorous swain. The maid’s death is handily disposed of; she had accused the lovers to the magistrate, and won a brutal silence as her reward. And so the prospects for both are most black, indeed.

  I say nothing of my own credence in the plot outlined above. To be frank, I know not what to think. An unhappy choice is before me: to find the Countess’s and her lover’s earnest avowals of innocence to spring from the grossest duplicity, and my own faith in Isobel to be founded upon sand; or to accuse others, equally intimate to the household, of adding to the sin of murder that of entangling the innocent in a deadly web of suspicion. Neither is to be preferred, for both are based upon die worst in human nature; and though I have learned to laugh at such—to look for it among my acquaintance and mock it in my writing—when met with evil in its truest form, I find that even I cannot dismiss it with worldly detachment. The maid was too dead, and too anguished in her dying, to permit of it; any more than the ravaged face and painful final hours of the late Earl should counsel mercy to his assassin.

  Later that afternoon

  ˜

  “MY DEAR COUNTESS,” TOM HEARST SAID EARNESTLY TO Isobel, “may I suggest you ride with George and me, and Miss Austen if she will, and leave the Scargrave coach for another day.”

  “But Percy has brought the horses round, Tom,” Isobel protested, with a gesture for the Scargrave coachman.

  The Lieutenant appeared to hesitate, and cast a glance at Fitzroy Payne.

  “I believe my cousin fears for your safety, Countess,” that gentleman said quietly. “The townsfolk’s mood is grown ugly since the publication of the maid’s letter, and her brutal death.”

  Isobel’s beautiful eyes were shadowed as she studied the Earl’s countenance. With a tremor in her voice, she enquired, “You share Tom’s fears, Fitzroy?”

  “I am afraid, my dear Isobel, that many would relish the chance our public parade affords them. My late uncle was neither so lenient in his management of accounts, nor so indulgent in his stewardship of his tenants, as to win their gratitude and affection. As his heir, I have inherited the malice they bore him.”

  “There was even talk of stoning the coach,” Lieutenant Hearst said apologetically, “the maid having been a favourite among the bloods at the Cock and Bull. Indeed, Sir William advised that any equipage bearing the Scargrave crest should be left in the carriage house today. It is he who apprised me of the danger. Our chariot, as you know, is painted a simple black, and could not hope to draw the attention that Percy and his four matched greys should do.”

  “Very well,” Isobel said, her voice choked. “I shall submit to hiding and deceit, though both are alien to my nature. And I shall leave for London as soon as the inquest is closed, the better to escape this horrid place.”

  And so we were handed in to the Hearsts’ equipage, while the Delahoussayes and the new Earl sought Sir William’s chariot; and though a crowd was gathered at the publican’s door, we pulled up in the rear of the building, and entered it unscathed.

  THE CORONER, MR. BOTT, HAD ASSEMBLED HIS JURY IN THE largest space the Cock and Bull could boast. It was the main tavern-room, redolent of the smoked hams that hung from its rafters and the yeasty aftermath of spilt been The floor had been scrubbed for the occasion, and all but one of the tables rolled into an anteroom; behind the last, the twelve men were ranged in an awkward rank upon rank—small holders in their Sunday best, unable to meet Isobel’s eye
s when she entered on the arm of Lieutenant Hearst; the master of the pub himself, his large wattle tucked into a collar several sizes too small; the local apothecary, Mr. Smollet, red of face and stern of expression; and Squire Fulsome, from Long Farm, resplendent in a red silk waistcoat (a Christmas present from his little Judy), whom Bott had appointed foreman.

  Facing this hodge-podge assembly were rows of chairs, posed as for an Evangelical revival,2 the majority of them firmly held by the good folk of the village. At our appearance a few moments before the appointed hour of one o’clock, only the row designated for the Scargrave family remained at liberty; and I felt myself quail when the mass of heads turned as if with one force, and stared balefully upon our entrance. However, summoning my courage, I followed Isobel to the front of the room, the gentlemen falling in behind, but had not proceeded two paces before a very fat and gap-toothed woman, her large head burdened with an atrocious hat of turquoise and madder rose, thrust herself forward from the assembly with hand extended towards the Countess.

  “There she be!” she screeched, her knotty red fingers trembling, “the ‘arlot and Jezebel of Scargrave! The woman as has blood stained deep into ‘er skin! The murderess and whore the good Earl took in, to ‘is peril! Pore Margie suffered to the death for the telling of it, but ‘er life is not in vain! May God’s vengeance be swift and ‘ard for the cunning woman as has forgot ‘is ways!”

  Isobel stopped as though turned to stone. Her remarkable eyes were bewildered and one hand went to her throat—her first gesture in moments of anxiety. As the woman’s tirade waned, my friend began to sway, and I saw that she should faint. Fitzroy Payne sprang into the crowd with an unaccustomed energy, bent upon seizing the harridan and forcing her from the room; but he was restrained at the last by Tom Hearst.

  “Leave Lizzy Scratch to her gin, Fitzroy,” the Lieutenant cautioned; “she is a witness Sir William would call, and must remain.”

  For his part, Sir William spoke severely to the woman, who looked somewhat cowed by his words, and thereafter confined herself to muttering over the steaming drink she held between two fingerless mitts. Supported by the magistrate, Isobel moved on, myself in her wake, and gained the dubious safety of a hard wooden chair.

  There was a curious discomfort attached to a position so far forward from the remainder of the assembly; one felt as though the eyes of the entire town were boring into the back of one’s head with virulent animosity. But it could not be helped; we had arrived, and must suffer our two hours upon the block.

  1. Our notion of a defendant being innocent until proven guilty is relatively recent. Until 1848, a magistrate was not charged with a presumption of innocence on the part of the defendant, or with the objective consideration of evidence, but merely with constructing a case against the accused. Until 1837, a lawyer for the accused was not allowed to query witnesses or cross-examine them, and not until the turn of the century was the accused allowed to testify on his or her own behalf.—Editor’s note.

  2. Evangelicalism was a reformist movement within the Church of England that arose in the late eighteenth century. Somewhat Calvinistic in its bent, it opposed moral laxity and frivolity of most kinds, particularly among the clergy. Though Jane Austen approved of clergymen taking their duties seriously, she considered Evangelicals excessive in their ardor.—Editor’s note.

  27 December 1802, coat.

  ˜

  THE EVIDENCE REGARDING THE DEATH OF FREDERICK, LORD Scargrave, was to be first presented, and the London physician, Dr. Philip Pettigrew, took his seat by the coroner’s side. He looked even younger in the light of day than he had appeared by the late Earl’s bedside; a broad-shouldered man, of short stature, his eyes cool and grey behind gold spectacles. Placing his hand upon the Bible, he was duly sworn, and gazed out upon the assembled countryfolk with admirable equanimity. To my dismay, I observed Fanny Delahoussaye smile prettily at him, when his eyes chanced to fall her way. In a flagrant disregard for mourning, she had insisted upon donning a new bonnet of peacock blue, with matching feathers.

  Mr. Eliahu Bott gave a dry little cough and picked up his quill. “You are Dr. Philip Pettigrew, of Sloane Street, London?”

  “I am.”

  Thereafter followed a tedious recitation of the good man’s apprenticeships and learning, surprisingly lengthy in one who appeared little more than two-and-thirty; his intimate familiarity with gastric complaints, poisons, and ailments of the bowels; and the history of his relations with the late Earl.

  “I was called to attend Lord Scargrave some three years past, in a matter of dyspepsia brought on by the consumption of rich foods, while the Earl was resident for the Season in London. His lordship’s complaint being one of frequent recurrence, I became a familiar at his bedside in ensuing months, and was naturally called into Hertfordshire when the ailment took hold more than a fortnight ago.”

  “Your physick, it would seem, did little to cure your patient.” Mr. Bott peered severely at Dr. Pettigrew.

  “Even the wisest counsel is useless when it is unheeded,” Dr. Pettigrew said, in a tone of reproof. “The Earl was fond of fine food and drink, and little accustomed to having his habits of indulgence checked.”

  “And how would you describe Lord Scargrave’s condition prior to his death on the twelfth of December last?”

  “He was severely ill—so severely ill that all help was past by the time I arrived just before dawn. His lordship was bloated and possessed of difficulty in breathing; his vomiting had then occurred some hours without cease; and as is usual in such cases, a dizzyness had come on that prevented him from sitting or standing upright.”

  “And yet you believed his lordship to be suffering merely another attack of dyspepsia?”

  The doctor adjusted his spectacles with great dignity. “I thought that Lord Scargrave had achieved the final result of careless indulgence—acute gastritis brought on by steady abuse of the digestive tract. That he was brought to sickbed following a celebratory ball for his bride, and that following a three months’ holiday, made it likely that all dietary strictures had been cast off for some time; and so I bled him, and hoped for the best.”

  Mr. Bott’s quill paused in mid-air. “And what was the result?”

  “His lordship departed this life a mere half-hour after the bleeding.”

  There was a murmur at this from the assembled folk, rising behind us like the first hint of thunder on a warm summer’s eve.

  The coroner’s reproachful gaze shifted from his witness to the audience, and he snorted with disapproval. “You may stand down, Dr. Pettigrew.”

  Next to be called was the Countess herself, deathly pale and faint of voice. Arrayed in outmoded black sarcenet, with her red hair drawn severely behind her ears, Isobel looked the very picture of distressed widowhood; and a hope rose within me that even Mr. Bott might view her with pity, and go gently in his questions. She was sworn, stated her name and place of birth as the Barbadoes, and was questioned as to her familiarity with her husband’s dietary habits.

  “Had his lordship experienced such an indisposition at any time during your travels?”

  “On several occasions in Paris, and again in Vienna,” Isobel replied, her voice quavering.

  “Harlots and debauch!” someone cried from the gallery.

  Mr Bott glared at the crowd and struck the table with a small mallet provided for this purpose. “Silence!” His head, so like a sparrow’s, turned sharply towards the Countess. “And these would have been on what dates, my lady?”

  Isobel reflected, her gaze distracted. “In early September and again at mid-November, I should say, sir.”

  “But this was not an ailment the Earl combated daily.” Mr. Bott’s hand moved swiftly over his parchment.

  “It was not during the period of our marriage, assuredly.”

  “Did you consider your husband to be in good health when you married him, my lady?”

  “The Earl was a vigourous man of excellent aspect.” Isobel spoke in so
low an accent as to be almost inaudible. “I anticipated a long and fruitful life in his company.” Her eyes drifted to where Fitzroy Payne sat, splendidly elegant in dark coat and breeches; I saw him smile encouragement, and hoped that the jury did not observe the exchange.

  “Though he was a gentleman some”—at this, Mr. Bott peered narrowly at a paper before his nose—”six-and-twenty years your senior?”

  “Married him for his fortune, she did,” came another voice from behind me.

  Tom Hearst started to his feet and looked about the room, his indignation on his face. To my relief, I saw his brother George reach a restraining hand to his elbow, and with unconcealed reluctance the Lieutenant regained his seat.

  “Silence!” Sir William Reynolds bellowed, his aspect furious. The muttering died away, and the coroner returned to Isobel. “Pray reply to the question, my lady.”

  Isobel drew breath. She looked down at her clasped hands. “My husband’s energy was high and his appearance youthful, despite his years. I did not anticipate his passing so soon.”

  Mr. Bott sniffed, and peered at Isobel with sharp eyes. “Do you recall, my lady,” he said slowly, “what the late Earl of Scargrave consumed the evening of his death?”

  “He partook of the repast laid for the ball, as did all our guests. It included such victuals as roast beef, a variety of vegetables, roast goose and pudding, pasties and oysters; for drink we had a spiced mulled punch and claret.” At this, my friend sought my eyes, her own filled with doubt. “I cannot think what else.”

  “And how many guests did you entertain that evening, my lady?”

  “Some hundred from London and the surrounding country.”

  Mr. Bott paused before the next question, and looked significantly at the jury. “And you will swear, my lady, that all partook of the same food as the Earl?”

  “I must believe it to be probable,” Isobel replied. “I myself was handed a dish by my husband; and that he had fetched mine in the same span as fetching his own, I know to be true.”