The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen

by Lindsay Ashford

  ‘Oh yes! Poor Henry! I had quite forgotten about him.’

  Louisa was laughing too, now, and Cassandra, who had been talking across the table to Ben Lefroy, wanted to know the cause of their merriment. I watched them all in fascination. Jane, for once, seemed lost for words and Fanny was sitting back, arms folded, with a rather supercilious look on her face. How can Edward laugh? I thought to myself. Is he blind? Did he not recognise his brother on the pages of Mansfield Park?

  If Henry overheard the conversation at the top of the table he affected not to notice. He had drawn Mary, Anna and Mrs Austen into his conversation with Charlotte, having hit upon possibly the only thing the four women had in common, which was that all either were or had been married to men of the cloth.

  The hubbub at Edward’s end soon died down and Jane, I thought, looked relieved when Louisa started talking about plays instead of books. After several unsuccessful attempts at engaging Ben in conversation, I finally found some common ground in the subject of the education of young people, whereupon he told me at great length of his plans for the instruction of the new baby, who, it seemed, was going to be read extracts from the Bible as soon as it drew breath. It was a relief to me when Edward got to his feet and drank a toast to the ladies, which was our cue to withdraw upstairs.

  Mrs Austen made a beeline for the fireplace, where she settled herself in an armchair and promptly fell asleep. The others gathered round the coffee tray – all except Fanny, who took herself off to a little alcove at the far end of the room. She stood at the window with her back to everyone, as if she was searching for something in the darkness.

  ‘Not much to see out there tonight,’ I said, setting a cup down for her on the window sill. There was no moon nor any stars in evidence, for the thick cloud had not dispersed. The drive was a ribbon of charcoal in a black landscape; even the tower of St Nicholas’ church, just a hundred yards distant, was hard to distinguish. I heard Fanny draw in a slow, deep breath, but she said nothing. I remembered this little routine. It meant that something was bothering her; something she wanted to talk about but wouldn’t unless she was pressed.

  ‘You don’t seem quite yourself this evening,’ I began. Another heavy sigh. ‘Has someone done something to upset you?’ Silence. I tried another tack. ‘It must be hard for you, being the eldest; having always to set an example to the little ones.’ I paused a moment, then said: ‘It must seem very unfair: Anna has had none of your responsibilities; if I was you I’m sure I would resent her.’

  ‘It is not Anna’s fault!’ Fanny’s voice was a hissed whisper. Ah, I thought, now we are getting somewhere. I fixed my eyes on the window pane, waiting for her to spill it out. ‘Didn’t you notice him? He was all over her! He can’t help himself, you know.’ There were only two men she could be talking about and I was pretty certain it wasn’t Ben Lefroy. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t see it,’ she went on, ‘His eyes were out on stalks! There’s something about women when they’re with child: he was always hanging around my mother, you know – and Anna tells me he was just the same with Aunt Mary when she was expecting Caroline.’

  ‘Yes, I did see it,’ I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. Her words had sent a chill through my heart. I turned my face towards her but avoided her eyes.

  ‘Why do you think he does it?’ I saw her jaw flex as she clenched her teeth. ‘I’ve tried to make allowances because he’s my uncle and I’m meant to love him. I say to myself: He has no children of his own – and that could be the reason, I suppose, but I just find it so… revolting.’

  I glanced over my shoulder before reaching out to squeeze her hand. The others were all looking at something Louisa was passing round. It looked like a miniature or a silhouette: from that distance I couldn’t tell. ‘I don’t think he realises he’s doing it,’ I whispered. ‘I’m sure you’re right about the reason: it’s a shame that he and your Aunt Eliza were never able to have children – he would have loved to be a father, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose he would,’ she sighed. ‘Why doesn’t he just marry someone else, though? Somebody younger than Aunt Eliza who could give him a child?’

  There she had me. I murmured some platitude about grief taking a long time to heal, which, in Henry’s case, I did not truly believe. She had presented me with an entirely new reading of her uncle that disturbed me greatly. If her observations were correct, Henry was either a vile pervert whose obsession extended to his own niece, or a man of deep feeling whose own sense of loss made him overly attentive. I had to question every assumption I had made about him. Could I have mistaken what I saw that night at Godmersham for brotherly affection? Elizabeth had not looked as if she was with child at the time, but she might have been; for all I knew she could have suffered a miscarriage before it was generally known that she was expecting. Could Jane have mistaken the look that had passed between them that same night? Had Elizabeth been telling him of her condition as he helped her into the carriage? If a man wanted a child so badly, might his face display that kind of intensity, that kind of longing, when told of such a thing?

  ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t proposed to Aunt Charlotte.’ Fanny shook me out of the web of speculation I was spinning. ‘She’s only two years older than me, you know,’ she muttered, glancing over her shoulder. ‘She has those ugly freckles, of course, but she has pretty hair, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh…er, yes,’ I stuttered, struggling to take in this new, unexpected twist. ‘Do…do you think they like each other?’

  Fanny shrugged. ‘She’s very shy and quiet and he always tries to make her laugh when he comes to stay, which is nice, I suppose. But he’s nice to everyone, isn’t he? Prince Charming. That’s what Caky calls him.’ There was more than a hint of resentment in her voice.

  ‘Do you like Charlotte?’ I asked.

  ‘She is all right, I suppose.’ Fanny stuck out her bottom lip in the way I remembered so well. For a moment she was a sulky twelve-year-old again, not a woman of two-and-twenty. ‘The children seem to like her, although Lizzy doesn’t. But Lizzy doesn’t like anybody very much at the moment: that is why Papa sent her away to school.’

  I was not surprised at this. Lizzy was the sixth of Edward’s children – the next eldest daughter after Fanny. I calculated that she must be almost sixteen now. She had been a little tomboy when I was at Godmersham; it wasn’t difficult to imagine her kicking against any new woman brought into the household after her mother’s death.

  ‘She’s at Mama’s old school in London,’ Fanny went on. ‘Uncle Henry takes her out sometimes, to an exhibition or a play.’ She gave me a sideways look and pursed her lips, as if to say: ‘Why can’t he find someone outside the family to go about with?’

  ‘Fanny, dear, you must come and have a look at this!’ Louisa was beside us. With a conspiratorial glance at me she took Fanny’s arm and tugged it. The girl followed her unwillingly across the room, where the others were waiting with smiles on their faces. I saw Cassandra hand the picture they had all been examining to Fanny. She frowned for a moment and passed it on to me. It was a miniature of a man with wide, rather vacant-looking eyes and a Roman nose. His brown hair was styled in the current fashion but it was tinged grey at the temples.

  ‘Who is he?’ Fanny asked.

  ‘Sir Edward Knatchbull,’ Louisa replied. ‘He is the eldest son of a baronet and he is looking for a wife.’

  ‘He looks very old.’ Fanny wrinkled her nose. ‘He must be even uglier than he is painted if he has not managed to find a wife by now.’

  ‘I would not call four-and-thirty old, would you, Jane?’ Louisa was trying not to smile too broadly as she said this: she and Jane were almost the same age, which was half a decade more than this gentleman. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘he did have a wife but she died last year.’

  ‘Oh?’ Fanny looked hardly more interested than before. ‘I suppose he has a gaggle of children, then?’

  Louisa folded her arms across her chest. ‘I believe there are chi
ldren, yes.’ Her face told me that his wife had probably died giving birth to the youngest. She would not say so, of course, for fear of upsetting her niece.

  Fanny let out a great sigh and turned to me and said: ‘You see what they are trying to do to me?’ She looked about her. ‘How many are we in this room? Ten women altogether. And how many of us have husbands?’ She glanced at Mrs Austen, who was snoring gently in her armchair, then at Mary, who was staring into space. Her head moved slowly from left to right, taking us all in before she fixed her eyes on Anna. ‘Just two out of ten live in the married state. What do you say, Anna? If you could turn the clock back by one year, would you marry Ben again? Or would you choose a single life?’

  Anna, who was already flushed from the food and the heat of the fire, turned a deeper shade of red. ‘How can you ask me such a thing?’ she said, spreading her hands over her stomach. She looked about her for some word of support but an uncomfortable silence had fallen over the room.

  ‘I’m sorry, Anna.’ Fanny swooped down and kissed her cousin rather roughly on the forehead. ‘I shouldn’t have. But I just can’t help feeling I’m being pushed out of this family by people who haven’t the courage to do the thing they are urging me to do!’ With a glare at her aunts she stomped out of the room, slamming the door as she went.

  ‘Was that a gun?’ Mrs Austen sat bolt upright, her eyes wide with fright and her toothless mouth gaping. The others fussed round her, glad, I suppose, of the distraction.

  ‘Should I go after Fanny, do you think?’ I whispered to Jane.

  ‘She’s better left alone,’ she replied. ‘The problem is that she wants to marry but she’s terrified of having children. She’ll go up to the nursery now and climb into bed with little Brook-John or Cassandra Jane and cry herself to sleep.’

  There was no chance to talk to Jane alone that evening, but the next night, when Cassandra had gone away, we sat before the fire in Jane’s bedroom, discussing the occupants of the Great House. We talked mostly about Fanny, whose outburst had greatly disturbed me. ‘She’s so grown-up in some ways, isn’t she,’ I said, ‘but I suppose it’s a terrible strain for her, having always to be an example to the others.’

  Jane leaned forward in her chair and poked the fire. A tongue of orange light shot up the chimney. ‘You know that she actually saw her mother drop down dead at the dinner table?’

  ‘No, I did not.’ Little wonder, then, I thought, that the girl has such a morbid fear of giving birth: how awful to see your own mother collapse and die while you, a helpless child, stood watching it happen. ‘It must have been very hard for her,’ I said, ‘stepping into her mother’s shoes at such a young age. I’m sure it would be a terrible wrench for her to have to leave the family before they are all grown. But Louisa seems very keen to marry her off.’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking.’ Jane stretched out her hands to the flickering coals. ‘But I don’t believe Louisa has designs on Edward. I think Fanny’s observation was quite astute, actually: Louisa has never struck me as the type who would marry. I think she has the perfect situation at Godmersham – all the trappings of married life with none of the encumbrances.’

  ‘It would not be very seemly, anyway, would it, for him to marry his dead wife’s sister?’

  ‘I’m sure James would not approve: I’ve heard him give at least one sermon about the immorality of such things, although I don’t see the harm in it myself: who better to take on the care of motherless children than their own aunt? And why should that aunt be forbidden from marrying her brother-in-law because of some arcane verse in the Old Testament? It’s not as if it was enshrined in something weighty, like the Ten Commandments.’

  I nodded agreement. ‘It leads to so much pretence, and there is enough of that in the world already,’ I said. ‘I suppose that if Louisa is happy with things as they are, she has a vested interest in keeping Edward from marrying anybody else.’ I leaned closer to the fire, my outstretched hands casting shadows that swallowed the ones she made. ‘Was Louisa playing a game with Fanny?’ I asked, ‘Championing Sir Edward Knatchbull because she knew her enthusiasm would have the opposite effect?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised:’ Jane replied. ‘Louisa is much deeper than she looks. Ten years ago she was a poor, shy little thing; a pale imitation of Elizabeth. But look at her now: she has everything that once belonged to her sister.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose she does,’ I frowned. ‘What about Charlotte, though? Is she interested in your brother, do you think?’

  ‘Not that one.’ She turned onto her side, propping her head on one hand. I couldn’t see her eyes, for they were cast in pools of shadow. ‘She has had a lucky escape, I think. Elizabeth’s brother died before he managed to get her with child. Otherwise she might have become another poor animal.’

  ‘Is that the way she sees it, do you think?

  ‘She has never said that, exactly, but when I watch her in company I see someone who shies away from men as if they carried some dangerous disease. Edward is the exception: with him she feels safe, because of his loyalty to Fanny. And in that respect, she and Louisa are exactly alike.’ She moved her hand to her chest and coughed a little. Then she bent over and rubbed her legs. ‘I don’t know why it feels so cold in here. It would be warmer, I think, if we got into bed.’

  I hung back as she eased herself out of the chair. I watched her untie the dimity ribbons that held back the drapes, uncertain what she wanted me to do. I saw her reach under the pillow for her nightgown. ‘Will you undo my buttons?’ she said, turning her back to me. ‘Cass usually does them for me, but…’ she trailed off, standing there, patiently waiting. Like a child. The thought intensified the guilt I felt in wanting her beside me. I fixed my eyes on the ceiling as the dress slid from her body; turned away as she stepped out of her underclothes. I heard her shiver as she pulled on her nightgown. I took a step towards Cassandra’s bed. Then I felt her hand on my arm. ‘Hurry up and get undressed,’ she whispered. ‘I need you to warm me up.’

  I could have refused, I suppose: made some excuse about being too tired to stay awake. But I didn’t want to exile myself to that other bed – even if the agony of her closeness kept me awake all night.

  ‘My legs are like icicles,’ she said, as I slid under the covers. ‘Will you rub them for me?’ She winced as I touched her. Her skin was very cold; unnaturally cold, I thought, for one who had spent the evening next to a fire. She lay on her back as I worked away. ‘What wonderful hands you have,’ she sighed, ‘so strong and warm!’ She could not see the wry expression her words provoked. Nor could she have guessed what torture it was to rub her limbs like a butcher salting meat when what I wanted was to caress them.

  After a few more minutes she said she felt better and I settled down onto the pillow, forcing myself to turn away from her. I felt her hand go round my waist as I tucked my back into the curve of her body. She was quite unaware of the powerful sensation this caused. As I lay there, stock still, the image of that other hand, encased in its white glove, swam before me in the darkness. It stayed with me as I drifted in and out of consciousness, twisting and stretching and melting into a face. It was a woman’s face, and she was trying to tell me something. I remember nothing more, for sleep took me to a place where there was no one but Jane and me; a place where we could lie like this for all eternity.

  Chapter Twenty-­Two

  The next day Jane and I were out in the garden after breakfast. The rain and low cloud had gone and the sun felt warmer than it had all summer. Mrs Austen was in her customary garb of labourer’s smock and stout boots, digging up potatoes and onions.

  ‘She’s marvellous for her age, isn’t she?’ Jane said with a wry smile.

  ‘How old is she, exactly?’ I whispered.

  ‘Seventy-six, I think, although she will only ever admit to being over sixty. She won’t let anybody else help with the garden, you know. I think she prefers vegetables to people nowadays – certainly she stays awake longer in th
eir company than she does in ours.’

  Martha came out to us then. She was carrying large bunches of dried flowers, which she had unhooked from a rack suspended over the range in the kitchen. She told us the names, but I can only remember one or two. There was feverfew and marigold, the one for headaches and the other for stopping infection in a cut, she said. And I think she mentioned pennyroyal, which is, I believe, principally used for what they call ‘procuring the menses’: in other words, you take it if you think you are with child and do not wish to be.

  ‘Will you come for a walk with us?’ Jane asked her. ‘We’re going up to the Great House to see the park.’

  ‘I will if I can,’ she replied. ‘I have to put these to steep, though; the weather has been so damp they’ve taken longer than usual to dry. Don’t wait for me – I’ll come and find you.’

  The meadow was full of sheep that morning. They scattered as we approached, their feet rumbling like thunder. Chickens were pecking about outside the barns and a sudden rustling in the hedgerow heralded a pheasant, which came scuttling across the path in front of us. The sound of a shot made us both start. The bird had had a lucky escape, for a few moments later Edward emerged from a thicket above the dovecote, his gun slung over his arm and a brown pointer bitch at his heels.

  ‘I’m not going to kiss you in case you kill me by accident,’ Jane gave him a little shove as we drew level with him. ‘Have you slaughtered very many yet? I suppose we should take cover: no doubt Henry will come charging out of the bushes any minute with both barrels blazing.’

  ‘He’s not here,’ Edward replied, rubbing a splash of mud off the barrel of his gun with the sleeve of his coat. ‘He went off with Mary to Steventon last night: said he had some business to sort out with James before he goes back to London.’