Jane and the Wandering Eye: Being the Third Jane Austen Mystery

by Stephanie Barron

  “Hush now, Maria,” her brother said, and drew her to his bosom.

  Dr. Gibbs dismissed the pair with a glance and bent to the unfortunate Portal. He felt of his wrists and neck, then laid an ear to the blood-soaked breast. And at last, with surprising gentleness, the physician removed the black velvet mask.

  All evidence of the Harlequin’s former gaiety was fled. The expression of agonised horror that still gripped his countenance was distressing in the extreme. Richard Portal was revealed as a not unattractive gentleman, but well past his first youth; his brown hair was touched with grey, and his complexion reddened by exposure or drink. Dr. Gibbs closed the staring eyes, and arranged the lifeless limbs in an attitude of dignity; and then he turned to look at the Dowager.

  Eugenie was huddled on a blue and gold settee. Lady Desdemona stood at her side.

  “A constable should be summoned, Your Grace,” Dr. Gibbs said quietly. “Elliot, the magistrate, is to be preferred, of course—but at this hour—”

  As though conjured by his words, a bronze clock on the mantel began to chime. It had just gone two.

  “I did not kill him, Gibbs,” the Knight burst out, straining in his captors’ grip. “You must believe me! I did not do this thing!”

  “Be quiet, Simon.” The Dowager Duchess’s voice was weary. “You must save your words for the magistrate, my dear.” Gripping the knobbed head of her cane, she rose a trifle unsteadily, patted Lady Desdemona’s hand, and progressed towards the doorway. Her gaze she kept studiously averted from the dead man on the carpet. The hushed crowd of guests parted like a tide to permit her passage, then closed again around her.

  “Your Grace,” Dr. Gibbs called after Eugenie in a commanding voice. “Your Grace, I must beg your indulgence. Would you have the body removed?”

  The Duchess halted in her stride, but did not turn. “Leave him, Gibbs,” she replied. “Mr. Elliot will wish to view everything precisely as it was found. Later we may consider what is due to Mr. Portal—but for the nonce, I must summon the constables and despatch a letter to the magistrate’s residence. Are you acquainted with the direction?”

  “I am, Your Grace,” Dr. Gibbs replied. “Mr. Elliot resides in Rivers Street.”

  “Very well. I shall write to him directly. But I must beg that no one depart this house until the constable or Mr. Elliot arrive.”

  The doors closed behind the Duchess—and that part of the assembled masquerade, that had not fled at the first instance of blood, commenced a dispirited milling about the drawingroom. I surveyed the ranks hastily, and could find no trace of Madam Lefroy’s acquaintance, the Red Harlequin, or of the bearded Pierrot who had conversed at such length with Maria Conyngham. Some fifty guests arrayed in motley nonetheless remained. Most eyes were careful to avoid the pathetic figure felled upon the exquisite carpet, or the group of actors despondent at its feet; and Dr. Gibbs was so good as to summon a footman, and request some bed linen, for the composure of the body.

  “Jane.” Madam Lefroy raised a shaking hand to my arm. “I must leave this place at once. At once! I cannot bear the pall of death! I find in it a terrible presentiment!”

  “More brandy, Henry,” Eliza said tersely, “and perhaps some smelling salts. Enquire of Lady Desdemona.”

  My brother hastened away, and I knelt to Madam Lefroy.

  “Dear friend,” I said softly, “you must rally, I fear. Indeed you must. For we none of us may quit the household until the constables have come. At the first opportunity, I assure you, we shall summon a chaise and attend you home.”

  She closed her eyes and gripped my fingers painfully.

  FOR THE CONSTABLES’ ARRIVAL WAS REQUIRED PERHAPS A quarter-hour, the streets being all but deserted at that time of night. At the approach to Laura Place, however, the party encountered some difficulty—the way being blocked by an assemblage of chairmen in attendance upon the rout, and expectant of any amount of custom when it should be concluded. The news that a murder had occurred within, was incapable of deterring these hardy souls, who had braved a night of snow and considerable cold in pursuit of pence; and it was with a clamour of indignation, and the most vociferous protests, that they suffered the constables to clear them from the stoop.

  I observed all this from the vantage of a drawingroom window, having grown intolerably weary of turning about the overheated room in attendance upon the Law. If Simon, Marquis of Kinsfell, was to be credited—for such, I had learned, was the Knight’s full title—then the chairmen must have observed the murderer in the act of leaping from the anteroom window. The prospect of that apartment gave out onto Laura Place, in company with the window at which I now stood. It should be a simple matter to question the fellows assembled below—

  But I had only to entertain the thought, before it was superseded by another. Had the chairmen observed a figure to exit the Dowager’s window in considerable stealth, should not they have given chase? One had only to shout out “Thief!” in any street of the city, and a crowd of willing pursuers was sure to form, intent upon the rewards of capture. But no hue or cry had arisen from below—and thus a faint seed of doubt regarding Lord Kinsfell must form itself in my heart.

  A sudden hush brought my gaze around from the window—the constables were arrived, two grizzled elders more accustomed to calling out the watch than attending a murder among the Quality—and with them, Mr. Wilberforce Elliot.

  He was a large and shambling man, got up in a wine-coloured frock coat, much stained, and a soiled shirt. His neckcloth was barely equal to the corpulence of his neck, and in being forced into service, had so impeded the flow of air to his lungs, that his countenance was brilliantly red and overlaid with moisture. But Wilberforce Elliot was an imposing figure, nonetheless, in that room arrayed for frivolity—a figure that stunned the assemblage to a devout and listening stillness.

  “Your Grace,” the magistrate said, as he doffed his hat and bowed. A clubbed hank of black hair, thick and dirty as a bear’s, tumbled over one shoulder. “Your humble servant.”

  “Mr. Elliot,” the Dowager Duchess replied. “You are very good to venture out at such an hour.”

  “It is nothing, Your Grace—I had not yet sought my bed. May I be permitted to view the body?”

  Eugenie inclined her head, and gestured towards the anteroom. After an instant’s hesitation, and the briefest survey of the appalled onlookers, Mr. Elliot made his ponderous way to the dead man’s side.

  I let fall the window drape, and joined my party at a little remove from the anteroom itself, but affording an excellent prospect of the interior through the opened connecting doors.

  “What a devil of a man to intrude upon the Dowager’s misery,” my sister Eliza whispered. “He might be Pantagruel from the Comédie Fran~aise! But I suppose the Duchess is familiar with such characters of old.”

  “Eliza!” Henry muttered fiercely in his wife’s ear. “I have told you that oaths cannot become a lady!”

  With a sigh and a grunt, Mr. Elliot forced his bulk to a creaking posture by Mr. Portal’s head. A quick twitch of the covering linen; a shrewd appraisal; and a forefinger bluntly probed at the dead man’s chest.

  “And where is the knife?”

  Dr. Gibbs cleared his throat and glanced at Lord Kinsfell. The Marquis sat with bowed head and slumped shoulders, his attention entirely turned within. The physician reached for the bloody thing, which had been laid on a napkin by one of the footmen, and handed it to the magistrate.

  “Ah, indeed,” Mr. Elliot said through pursed lips. “A cunning blade, is it not?”

  No reply seemed adequate to this observation, but none was apparently deemed necessary.

  “And you, sir, would be—?”

  “Dr. Gibbs, of Milsom Street,” the Moor replied. “I have the honour to attend Her Grace.”

  “Then I venture to suppose that you will declare the gentleman dead, will you not, Dr. Gibbs? What a quantity of blood there is, to be sure!”

  Mr. Elliot sat back upon his massiv
e haunches, and surveyed the body with a rueful look. “To come to such a pass, and in such a suit of clothes! I fancy you should not like to end in a similar fashion, eh, Gibbs?—A similar fashion, d’you see?” The corpulent magistrate laughed heartily. “Aye, that’s very good.”

  A sudden whirl of skirts brought the black-haired Medusa furiously to his side.

  “Mr. Elliot—if that is how you are called—I would beg you to comport yourself with some decency and respect! A man has been foully murdered—and you would make witticisms upon his attire? It is intolerable, sir! I must demand that you apologise immediately!”

  “Apologise?” Mr. Elliot heaved himself painfully to his feet, and regarded Maria Conyngham with penetration. “And to whom must I apologise, pray? For the gentleman in question is beyond caring, my dear. And now tell me. Are you not Maria Conyngham, of the Theatre Royal?”

  “I am, sir.”

  “Enjoyed your Viola most thoroughly. Now be a good girl and stand aside. Your Grace!”

  “Yes, Mr. Elliot?”

  “I should like an account of this evening’s amusement.”

  The Dowager glanced about her helplessly.

  “I shall tell him, Grandmère,” interjected the Lady Desdemona. She had been seated near her brother, her hand on his, and now rose with an expression of fortitude, her countenance pale but composed. “Mr. Portal is the manager of the Theatre Royal, whose company we intended to celebrate this evening. The masquerade was some hours underway, when we were so fortunate as to enjoy a recital from Macbeth, performed by Mr. Hugh Conyngham—”

  “Mr. Conyngham is where?”

  “At your service, Mr. Elliot,” the actor replied, stepping forward.

  “And in the recital you were positioned where?”

  “In the drawingroom opposite, before the fire.”

  “The assembly regarding you?”

  “Of course.”

  “And Mr. Portal was—?”

  Lady Desdemona broke in with an exclamation of annoyance. “But that is what I am telling you!”

  Her brother stood up abruptly. “Mr. Portal was within the anteroom where his body now lies. I know this, because I thrust open the door in the midst of Mr. Conyngham’s speech, and found him expired upon the floor. His assailant must have escaped through the anteroom window.”

  Lord Kinsfell’s eyes were blazing as he conveyed this intelligence to the magistrate, but he swallowed painfully at its close; and I guessed him to labour under an excess of emotion all the more pitiable for its containment.

  Mr. Elliot’s gaze swept the length of the Knight’s figure. “Do I have the honour of addressing the Marquis of Kinsfell?”

  “You do, sir.”

  “Heir to the Duchy of Wilborough?”

  “I may claim that distinction.”

  “—and possessor of the knife that murdered Mr. Richard Portal?”

  A hesitation, and Lord Kinsfell bowed his head. “The knife has long been in our family’s possession, yes. It is a decorative blade from Bengal, bestowed upon my father by the directors of the East India Company.”

  The magistrate looked puzzled. “Might any person have come by it so readily as yourself, my lord?”

  “I must suppose so. The knife was generally displayed upon the mantel of this room.” Lord Kinsfell gestured to a small platform made of teak, ideal for the positioning of a decorative blade, now forlorn and bare above the fireplace.

  “Am I correct, my lord, in assuming that you pulled the blade from Mr. Portal’s breast?”

  A muffled cry broke from Maria Conyngham.

  “I did, sir,” Lord Kinsfell retorted, with a glance for the actress, “but I was not the agent of its descent into Mr. Portal’s heart.” He passed a trembling hand across his brow. “I was discovered in the attempt to aid or revive him only—and should better have pursued his murderer.”

  “Ah—his murderer.” Mr. Elliot turned his back upon the Marquis and paced towards the mantel, his eyes roving about the panelled walls to either side. “The fellow, you would have it, who dropped from the window. A man should require wings, my lord, to achieve such a distance from casement to paving-stone. But perhaps your murderer came disguised this e’en as a bird. Or an imp of Hell, intent upon the snatching of a soul. We may wonder to what region Mr. Portal has descended, may we not?”

  “Mr. Elliot!” Maria Conyngham cried. “Remember where you are, sir!”

  The magistrate bowed benignly and crossed to the anteroom window. A quick survey of the ground below, and he summoned a constable with a snap of the fingers.

  “You there, Shaw—to the chairmen, and be quick! You are to enquire whether any observed a flight from the sill of this window.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Mr. Elliot,” the Dowager broke in, “my footmen, Jenkins and Samuel, attempted to pursue the assailant some moments after his flight. But having little notion of the villain’s appearance or direction, alas, they could not find him.”

  “Naturally not. Their slippers,” Elliot rejoined with a critical air, “are hardly conducive to pursuit. Lord Kinsfell—”

  “Mr. Elliot?”

  “For what reason did you follow Mr. Portal into this room?”

  “I did not follow Portal anywhere,” the Marquis objected hotly. “I thought him already thrown out of the house.”

  “Indeed? And upon what pretext?”

  A brief silence; the exchange of looks. Lady Desdemona attempted an answer.

  “Mr. Portal had so far forgot himself, Mr. Elliot, as to behave with considerable impropriety before Her Grace’s guests. My brother thought it best that he be shown to the street before his actions became insupportable.”

  “That is a gross prevarication!” Hugh Conyngham burst out. “Had your brother not seen fit to challenge poor Portal to a duel, my lady, he might yet be alive!”

  “A duel?” Mr. Elliot enquired with interest. “And what could possibly have inspired a duel, pray?”

  Lord Kinsfell drew himself up to his full height—which was not inconsiderable. He was a very well-made young man. “I am not at liberty to say, Mr. Elliot. It was a matter of some delicacy.”

  “An affair of honour, in short.”

  “As all such matters must be.”

  “Of that, my lord, I am hardly convinced. Duelling is murder, as you must be aware.”

  “In cases where one of the opponents is killed, perhaps,” the Marquis replied dismissively.

  “Are you so certain of your aim, my lord, as to intend to miss? Or so contemptuous of Mr. Portal’s?”

  Lord Kinsfell did not reply, but the colour mounted to his cheeks. “It is of no account whatsoever what I intended, for Portal is dead, and by an unknown hand.”

  “Is he, indeed? And why, may I ask Your Grace,” the magistrate continued, with a glare from under his eyebrows at the Duchess, “was Mr. Portal not conveyed to the street?”

  “Whatever my grandson’s feelings, I deemed it necessary to comport myself as befits a hostess,” Eugenie replied with dignity. “It seemed to me more suitable to allow Mr. Portal an interval of rest and quiet, until some member of the company should be able to escort him home.”

  “Yes, I see.” The magistrate’s beady black eyes, so reminiscent of two currants sunk in a Christmas pudding, moved from the Marquis to the Dowager and back again. “And so you entered this room, Lord Kinsfell, in the very midst of Mr. Conyngham’s declamation?”

  “I did.”

  “And to what purpose?”

  “I meant to pass through it to the back hall, and proceed thence to my rooms. I was utterly fagged, if you must know, and desperate for quiet.”

  Mr. Elliot glanced around. “Pass to the hallway where, my lord? For I observe no other door than the one by which you entered.”

  Lord Kinsfell strode impatiently to the far side of the fireplace, and pressed against a panel of the wall. With a creak, it swung inwards—a barely discernible door. “It is intended for the ease of the se
rvants, but it makes a useful passage when the main door to the hall is blocked.”

  “As it would have been during Mr. Conyngham’s recital.”

  “Obviously. The door from the drawingroom to the back hall stands to the right of where Mr. Conyngham was positioned. I should have had to force my way through the greater part of the company to attain it. And that I did not wish to do.”

  “Commendable, I am sure. Mr. Conyngham must certainly regard it thus,” Mr. Elliot said slowly, and reached a well-fed hand to the silently swinging door. “Very cunning, indeed. May I request a taper, Your Grace?”

  The taper was duly brought from the fire, and held aloft in Mr. Elliot’s hand; the magistrate leaned into the passage, and snorted with regret. “How very disappointing, to be sure. Not a cask of gold, nor an abducted princess can I find—nothing but a cleanly-swept hall of perhaps a dozen yards, such as one might see in any well-regulated household. You are plainly no friend to intrigue and romance, Your Grace. For of what use is a passage, if it be not dank and cobwebbed, and descending precipitately to a subterranean cell?”

  Not even Maria Conyngham found strength to protest at this; but her looks were hardly easy. She followed Mr. Elliot’s every move, as he closed the passage and threw his taper into the fire. To Lord Kinsfell he turned at last, and enquired, “And who among Her Grace’s household is familiar with this passage, my lord?”

  “Everyone, I must suppose,” replied the Marquis.

  “Very good, my lord—you will please to sit down. Mr. Conyngham!”

  “Mr. Elliot?”

  “Were you long intending to declaim your passage from Macbeth—or spurred to the act by the whim of the moment?”

  “I was requested to perform by the Dowager Duchess, when first the invitation to Laura Place was extended.”

  “So it was a scheme of some weeks’ preparation, I apprehend?”

  “To recite a part of which I am so much the master, must require a very little preparation, sir,” the actor replied stiffly.