Pride and Prescience m&mdm-1

by Carrie Bebris

  “My pocketwatch — I need it. Is there any way you might prevail upon your husband to give it back to me?”

  “Mr. Darcy has his own mind. You shall have to ask him yourself.”

  “He does not respect me. A petition from me will not move him.”

  “Then you must wait until he is ready to surrender it.” She tried to walk past him, but he stayed her with a hand on her arm. His touch sent a chill racing up to her shoulder.

  “There isn’t time to wait!” His eyes burned with intensity. “If you will not give the watch to me, can you get it to Mrs. Parrish? Urge her to carry it on her person. For her own protection.”

  “Protection from what?”

  “From the forces at work upon her.”

  Another chill passed through Elizabeth. She had thought Professor Randolph deceitful and calculating. But now she wondered if he was actually mad. The fervor of his gaze frightened her. “What forces?”

  “The forces that prey upon her mind. The watch — it’s an amulet — it can help her. You are her friend, yes? You do want to help her?”

  Elizabeth wanted nothing more than to escape Randolph’s presence. “I’ll see what I can do.” Again she tried to move past him, and again he restrained her.

  “You must! You must make sure Mrs. Parrish receives it. But without her husband’s knowledge. He cannot know! He won’t allow her to keep it. He no longer trusts me.”

  Neither did she.

  “Mr. Parrish, how well did you know Mr. Kendall?” the constable asked as Parrish took a seat. Darcy relaxed in his own chair, expecting this interview to proceed uneventfully.

  “I met him in London last season, when I became acquainted with his daughter, Miss Juliet Kendall.”

  “Were you and he on good terms?”

  “I bore him no ill will.” Parrish spoke slowly, appearing to choose his words deliberately. “London society being what it is, assumptions were made about my intentions toward Miss Kendall — assumptions that were unfounded. When I offered my hand to the woman who is now my wife, the misunderstanding may have led to some injured feelings on the part of the Kendalls.”

  “And how did you get along here at Netherfield?”

  “Except for encountering him at meals, I left him to himself.” He shrugged. “I am a newly married man, sir. My attention has been elsewhere.”

  The constable nodded knowingly. “When did you last see Mr. Kendall alive?”

  “At breakfast yesterday. He was just finishing up when I came downstairs.”

  Darcy frowned. That wasn’t correct. “What about later? In the billiards room?”

  “Oh, yes! The billiards room. Thank you, Darcy — I was there so briefly, I’d forgotten about that.” He leaned back and crossed his legs. “I last saw Mr. Kendall yesterday afternoon, playing billiards. When Darcy and I left the room, he was alone.”

  Kendall had been so full of spite, Darcy didn’t know how Parrish could have forgotten his rudeness so quickly. Perhaps the power of Kendall’s verbal assaults diminished with repetition.

  “How did you spend the rest of the day?”

  “Mostly with Caroline. I spent part of the afternoon writing a letter.”

  “Do you have any idea who might have killed Mr. Kendall, or why?”

  Parrish shook his head. “Mr. Kendall was not a likable man. He was rude and insulting. I don’t think anyone here harbored the slightest fondness for him. But you don’t slay someone for uncivil behavior. The ton takes care of that well enough.”

  “I imagine so. Mr. Parrish, how did you come by those cuts on your face? Were you in some sort of fight?”

  Parrish shifted in his seat. Darcy couldn’t blame him. What man wanted to admit that his wife had physically assaulted him? Or that she was mad?

  “My—” He cleared his throat. “My wife accidentally scratched me with her wedding ring. She’s not yet used to wearing it.” He looked to Bingley and Darcy as if beseeching them not to betray the full truth.

  “Those are pretty big scratches.”

  “It’s a pretty big ring.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Yesterday evening, before dinner.”

  “And if I ask your wife, she’ll confirm this?”

  “Of course.”

  Mrs. Parrish was summoned. As they waited, Parrish asked whether the constable had many questions for Caroline. “She’s been unwell today. I hope your enquiry won’t tax her too greatly?”

  “Of course not, sir. I’ll be quick about it.”

  Bingley led Caroline into the drawing room. She appeared sleepy and slightly disoriented. Parrish immediately crossed to her and helped her to a seat beside him on the sofa. He took her left hand in both of his.

  “Darling, this man is concerned about the marks on my face. I told him about that silly little accident yesterday when you happened to scratch me. Remember?”

  Caroline nodded.

  “I assured him the injury wasn’t intentional.”

  “No,” she said groggily.

  “Mrs. Parrish, may I see your ring?”

  Caroline appeared not to have heard the constable. Parrish lifted her hand and held it toward him.

  “That’s indeed quite a ring.” The constable peered at it closely. “Hmm — looks like there are even a few bits of skin still caught in there. You need to be a little more careful, Mrs. Parrish, or your husband’ll have to buy you smaller jewels in self-defense.”

  Parrish laughed politely, then turned serious once more. “As you can see, my wife is still very tired. May I escort her back upstairs now?”

  “Certainly.”

  He rose and assisted Caroline in doing the same. As they headed toward the door, the constable stopped him with one last question. “Mr. Parrish, you don’t by chance know what a pentagram is, do you?”

  Parrish furrowed his brows. “That’s some sort of star symbol, right? Has something to do with witchcraft? Professor Randolph no doubt knows. I’d ask him more about it.”

  “Thank you. I will.”

  _______

  Hurst entered the drawing room and went straight for the sherry decanter. Darcy intercepted him. He wanted at least the start of the interview to be conducted while Hurst was still sober.

  “Allow me, Hurst.” He lifted the carafe and, with slowness visibly excruciating to the other gentleman, poured half a glass of wine. He did not immediately hand it over. “Please, have a seat.”

  Hurst regarded Darcy uncertainly, then glanced to the other men. Elizabeth he ignored entirely. “What’s this? What’s going on here?”

  “Nothing alarming, Hurst,” Bingley reassured him. “The constable just has a few questions for all of us about last night. He’s trying to figure out what happened to Mr. Kendall, and he’s hoping one of us saw something that can help him piece it all together.”

  Hurst remained standing. “I don’t know anything about it. Didn’t even know the man, except for meeting him during his visit here.”

  Darcy handed him the sherry. “Did you not play billiards with him?”

  “Once.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  Hurst drained the glass. “Fox hunting. Shooting. He did most of the talking. Kept rambling about flushing prey out of their dens, or something or another. You know I’m not much of a sportsman, Darcy. I just let him go on.”

  Darcy looked to the constable, preferring to let the official take over the questioning so as not to put himself in the role of Hurst’s antagonist.

  “When did you last see Mr. Kendall?” the constable asked.

  “In the billiards room. He was with Darcy when I left.”

  “And where did you go?”

  “To my chamber.”

  “How long did you stay there?”

  “All afternoon. I–I took a nap.” He swallowed hard, sending his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Might I have another glass of sherry?”

  “We’re almost finished. Can you think of anybody who might have wished M
r. Kendall dead?”

  Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. “No, not a one.”

  The constable’s gaze flickered to Hurst’s waistcoat. “I’m told you carry a pocketknife. Is that true?”

  Hurst’s eyes narrowed. “Yes — lots of gentlemen do. What of it?”

  “May I see it?”

  Grumbling, Hurst produced the pocketknife. The constable opened it. The blade was clean. It extended three inches, and was perhaps half an inch wide at its base.

  The constable folded the knife and returned it. “Mr. Hurst, do you know what a pentagram is?”

  “A what? No. I haven’t the foggiest.” He handed his glass back to Darcy with a shaking hand. “Are we done now?”

  “Yes, Mr. Hurst. Thank you.”

  The normally sluggish Hurst could not leave the room fast enough.

  That night, Darcy entered his chamber, and his wife’s embrace, like a man seeking sanctuary. Whatever trouble surrounded them, Elizabeth’s presence brought peace to his world. How he had lived without her in the days before they met, he could scarcely remember.

  She gently directed him to sit down while she rubbed the tension out of his shoulders. “Tuppence for your thoughts.”

  He groaned. With her hands on his back, he ought to be able to banish all unpleasantness from his mind, but he could not. Pieces of the day kept intruding, nagging him to ponder them until he knew what had happened to Lawrence Kendall. “I cannot figure out what Randolph’s watch was doing in Kendall’s hand, or why that symbol was used. Setting those details aside for the moment, Hurst emerges as the most likely suspect. He’s the only one with a clear motive, and his claim that he passed the whole afternoon napping is hard to believe — even for Hurst. Circumstantial evidence points to him.

  “Yet the watch puts Randolph in the room at the time of the murder, and who else knows about symbols like that?” he continued. “And he, too, owns a knife. The physical evidence implicates the professor. But why would he kill Kendall?”

  “Other than general principle?” She massaged the corded muscles of his neck.

  “There is no connection between the two of them. At least, none that I can see.”

  “That’s because you are looking with your eyes. I think the connection is in Randolph’s head.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I believe Randolph is a fanatic, bent on using his supernatural knowledge toward some ill purpose. He begged me today to obtain his watch from you and get Mrs. Parrish to wear it on her person, without her husband’s awareness. He claims it will help her, but I think that watch is the root of all her problems. It’s cursed somehow, or he has used it to curse her. It bears the same pentagram symbol that was on the floor and carved into the corpse — I shudder to contemplate what diabolical ceremony he conducted on Mr. Kendall at the time of the murder.”

  This again? As much as Darcy respected his wife’s mind, he could not understand her willingness to entertain such preposterous notions. She was a smart woman, gifted with wit perhaps greater than his own. Yet she allowed herself to indulge in ideas that held no more credibility than faerie stories. “I would like to curse him for putting these thoughts in your head.”

  “Mr. Kendall was killed on the same day that I interrupted whatever ritual Randolph was performing on Caroline. A day that seems to hold meaning for him — the winter solstice.”

  “I agree that he may have tried to invoke some mystical effect with that symbol, perhaps even related, in his own mind, to the date. But attempting and doing are two different things, and I do not believe him — or anyone — capable of magic.”

  Her hands stilled. “I am quite serious. There is something unnatural going on at Netherfield. I can feel it.” She came round to face him. “I–I sense things sometimes. Indistinct impressions. Randolph — when he spoke to me today, it was as if an alarm sounded within me. We should not dismiss his studies as nonsense. He possesses some power — some knowledge.”

  “He possesses a watch that was found in a place it should not have been.”

  “And why would Kendall clutch it in his dying moments if Randolph hadn’t been using it somehow at the time of the murder?”

  Darcy pondered a moment. Why indeed? “Kendall was struck from behind. To me, that indicates that he did not grab the watch to interrupt some ritual. Rather, it was already in his hand as he was leaving. But even if Randolph was futilely trying to conduct sorcery, what killed Kendall was a knife wound.”

  Elizabeth’s expression grew cold. “You will not believe me.” She crossed to the window and gazed into the darkness, her back to him. It was the first night of the new moon, and the blackness outside Netherfield’s walls matched the gloom within.

  “Elizabeth, if Randolph could command the kind of power you think him capable of, why would he resort to killing Kendall with a physical weapon? Would he not instead slay him with a lightning bolt or something?”

  “Do not mock me.”

  “Elizabeth—”

  “I am not some simpleminded country girl. I may not have had an education equal to your own, and as a woman, I cannot move about in the world like you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how it works.”

  He crossed to her, put his hand to her shoulder. “Elizabeth—”

  She shrugged him off. “Do you think I cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy?” She turned to face him. “Do you think I am that foolish?”

  He had hurt her. Without meaning to, he had hurt his wife, and he wasn’t sure what to do to make it right. He could not believe in the ridiculous, and he would not lie to her by pretending to. “I do not think you are foolish,” he said finally. “Only misled.”

  “And I do not think you are arrogant.” She blinked back angry tears and turned again toward the window. “Only blind.”

  The amulet called to her from across the room.

  All right — it didn’t call, exactly. It lay silent in the top drawer of the highboy where Darcy had placed it. And it was a watch, not an amulet. Just a watch.

  Yet it arrested Elizabeth’s attention like no object ever had.

  She sat upright on the bed, hugging her knees, staring at the drawer. Darcy had departed the room for the moment, summoned by Bingley on some late errand just as he’d been about to retire. He’d left Randolph’s timepiece behind.

  Deliver the watch to Mrs. Parrish without her husband’s knowledge, the professor had exhorted. For what purpose — fair or fell? What did the supernaturalist think or hope it could do?

  She crossed the room and slid open the drawer. The watch rested in the corner, its chain pooled around it. Despite Randolph’s claims, it appeared innocuous — a simple timepiece, albeit one with unusual markings. She grasped the fob and slowly pulled it out of the drawer.

  Firelight danced across the silver as the watch gently swung like a pendulum from her fingertips. She detected a faint humming noise — surely deriving from its movement, nothing more. The sound distracted her, and the sway made it further difficult for her to study the engraving. The five-pointed star and its surrounding circle remained fixed, but a shape within the star seemed to change in the uneven light. It looked to her like a man, standing with arms and legs spread to the sides. She tried to focus but the image would not hold still. It shifted — one moment visible, the next not.

  She grasped the watch itself to stop its swing and get a closer look. But as she touched it, intense heat seared her hand. She let go. It dropped back into the drawer, which she quickly shut. She then darted just as quickly away from the chest to stand, heart hammering, near the fireplace.

  The heat had lasted but a moment — gone so fast that she wondered if she’d only imagined the sensation. It left no burn or other mark. But she could still feel the weight of the watch in her palm.

  She shuddered, anxious for Darcy to return. She needed his presence to chase away the shadows that now seemed to dance on every surface in the room.

  What, oh, what had P
rofessor Randolph brought to Netherfield?

  Twenty-Seven

  “There was truth in his looks.”

  Elizabeth to Jane, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 17

  “I demand an explanation.”

  “I will do my best to oblige you.”

  Juliet Kendall ignored Bingley’s gestured invitation to take a seat. She instead remained standing in the middle of the drawing room where Darcy and Bingley had found her pacing upon their entrance. Cloudy late-morning light filtered through the windows, softening but not flattering her sharp features.

  Upon learning of her father’s death, Miss Kendall had taken advantage of the morning’s break in the weather to swoop down upon Netherfield, talons glinting as she hunted for information. The gloomy sky threatened more snow — and with it, the extended stay of yet another unwelcome Kendall. What was it about this family that procured them weather favorable for travel to Netherfield, but turned it to prevent their departure?

  Darcy did not envy his friend the ordeal of this meeting. What little they had to tell her — that her father’s business dealings and conduct had ultimately made him reprehensible enough that no one had realized his death for hours and the killer could be one of several people — would not be pleasant for her to hear, and would no doubt elicit a response equally unpleasant. Darcy would sooner debate with Elizabeth the likelihood of Randolph’s occult powers.

  “My father was murdered under your roof. I want to know by whom.”

  “As I wrote in my letter, the local authorities are still investigating the matter.”

  “Yes, I have already met with the constable. He believes Professor Randolph was involved. Where is he? I demand to speak with him.”

  Bingley sent for the professor. As they awaited him, Miss Kendall repeated her questions, as if asking them enough times would somehow yield an answer where moments before none existed. The constable, it seemed, had spared her the more gruesome details of the crime, and Darcy and Bingley endeavored to keep those facts secret. Other information they truly did not possess.