The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen

by Lindsay Ashford

  ‘Fanny! Oh, Lord!’ I cupped her forehead in my hand, trying to support her as her body heaved. When she had recovered a little I pulled out my handkerchief and wiped her chin, which was flecked with foaming spittle. She took one look at me and burst into tears, burying her head in my shawl. I managed to lead her to a nearby stile, where I sat her down and stroked her head until her sobs subsided. ‘Can you tell me about it?’ I said at length.

  ‘I…think I’m…w…’ she stammered, her teeth chattering.

  ‘Are you with child?’ I whispered.

  She clenched her jaw, a look of terror in her eyes. ‘I th…think so,’ she nodded.

  ‘Have your courses stopped?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘N…n…nine weeks.’

  I pulled her to me, hugging her tight. No wonder she had behaved so strangely, I thought; she must have been desperate to unburden herself; desperate to confide the fact that her worst nightmare was upon her. ‘It will be all right.’ My words were more like a prayer than a reassurance. ‘Lizzy has had four babies already, hasn’t she? And she is just fine.’

  ‘But Mama was fine after ten babies!’ Fanny mumbled into my shawl. ‘That didn’t stop her from…’ Her shoulders convulsed with more sobs. At a loss for anything helpful to say I stood there, just holding her, until she’d cried herself out. I have no idea how long we were there and it was a wonder no one came clambering over the stile in all the time she was upon it. Eventually her breathing slowed to something like normal and she looked up at me with swollen eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, blinking back the tears that were welling up again.

  ‘You have nothing to apologise for,’ I replied. ‘It’s no wonder you’re afraid. Anyone who went through what you did would feel the same, I’m certain.’

  ‘I was there when she died, you know. She was sitting at the table, just as she always did, laughing and talking. Then all of a sudden she fell sideways onto the floor. She was kicking out and clutching her stomach. Then her face went all…’ she tailed off, pressing her lips together so hard the flesh turned white. She drew in her breath and said: ‘Caky wouldn’t have it, you know: she said it must have been the food. She played merry hell with the kitchen girls and the cook – called them every name under the sun. But as Papa said, it couldn’t have been the food, could it? We’d all have been struck down if it was.’

  I found it difficult to utter anything in reply, so struck was I by this. No wonder Sackree had worn mourning black all those years after Elizabeth’s death; not only had she lost her darling, she blamed the death on the carelessness of others. Could she have been closer to the truth than she realised? But if Henry was not the culprit, who was? Had Elizabeth been murdered by some other member of the household for a reason I could never guess at? Or had the whole thing really been a tragic accident – the result of some random act of carelessness that had claimed her as its only victim?

  ‘You say she ate all the same things as you did? There was nothing extra that she took? Some meat or fish dish that no one else was partial to?’

  Fanny sniffed and shook her head. ‘I suppose it’s just one of those things that no one will ever be able to explain. Anna told me that almost exactly the same thing happened to her mother.’

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘Yes. She told me her mama collapsed after eating her dinner, just as mine did. The difference, of course, was that Anna’s mother had not just been in childbed: Anna was two-and-a-half when it happened; she says it’s her earliest memory – seeing her mama lying absolutely still on the floor of the dining room at Deane parsonage.’

  ‘Poor Anna,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise.’

  ‘It was very hard for her. She said Uncle James would never allow her to ask any questions about her mama. I think that was very mean of him, don’t you? My father would never do such a thing to his children.’

  ‘I suppose the difference is that Anna’s father married again,’ I replied. ‘Perhaps it was a rule made by your Aunt Mary.’ Highly likely, I thought, knowing what a jealous woman Mary Austen was.

  ‘Probably,’ Fanny nodded. ‘I think I feel a little better now. Shall we walk back?’ Leaning on me for support, she raised herself from the stile and took a few ginger steps along the lane.

  ‘Are you sure you can manage?’ I asked. ‘You could always stay here while I go back for the donkey cart.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, thank-you. I don’t feel nauseous any more; actually I feel quite hungry.’

  We walked along in silence for a while. I was thinking about Anna’s mother, wondering if her death was caused by eating food that had gone off. It seemed odd, though, that both she and Elizabeth had died while sharing a meal with others who were not similarly afflicted.

  As we reached the fork in the road Fanny said: ‘Aunt Mary was awful to Anna when she was a child, you know; when we were at Godmersham together we used to plot different ways of killing her.’

  ‘I know,’ I nodded. ‘I heard you once.’

  ‘Did you really? Goodness, how embarrassing!’

  I almost told her what I’d overheard but thought better of it, remembering that what they’d actually been talking about was the possibility of Mary dying in childbirth.

  ‘She came to Godmersham once,’ Fanny went on. ‘Aunt Mary, I mean. Anna and I were about fifteen at the time and the two of them had had the most almighty row in the carriage before they even arrived. Anna said she couldn’t live with her any more and she was going to run away with the first man who smiled at her.’

  I shook my head and said something about it being a miracle she’d ended up with a man as good as Ben Lefroy. But as I said it I was thinking about Mary: I had forgotten that she had been at Godmersham the summer before Elizabeth died.

  ‘Do you know who it was?’ Fanny was looking at me.

  ‘Who what was?’

  ‘The first man who smiled at her, of course! Weren’t you listening to me?’ She tilted her head at the sky.

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ I said. ‘I was listening – I just got confused. Who was it?’

  ‘It was Uncle Henry! I teased her unmercifully about it for the rest of the holiday.’

  So Henry was there too. To my mind, that put a very different slant on the visit. Mary was bound to have noticed his closeness to Elizabeth. Knowing the bitter resentment she had displayed towards Eliza, how much more violently might she have reacted in this situation? If I was right about the long-standing affair between Mary and Henry she would have an obvious motive for murder. Could she have poisoned Elizabeth? Slipped arsenic into her food?

  I quickly dismissed the idea as impossible, for Elizabeth had not died until almost eighteen months after that visit. But a new seed of suspicion began to grow as we walked back towards Chawton. As James Austen’s wife, Mary was an obvious candidate for his murder, especially if she had been hoping to lure Henry into marriage. But what about Jane? What possible motive could Mary have harboured for wanting her dead?

  That afternoon at Hans Place – the last time I had seen Jane alive – I had convinced myself that she knew about Henry and Mary. What if she had said something to one or both of them? Threatened to tell James, perhaps, if they didn’t stop seeing each other? She had kept quiet about Henry’s affair with Elizabeth, probably thinking, as I had done, that things had cooled off between them. But could she really have contained herself if she had discovered that Henry was cuckolding yet another brother?

  I recalled the way she had placed a very thinly disguised Henry on the pages of Mansfield Park. What if she had threatened Mary with the same treatment? Told her that the next novel would contain a character so like her in every way that no one who knew her would fail to recognise her – a character who would commit adultery with her own husband’s brother?

  The more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. Before she had finished writing Persuasion, Jane had told me she already had an idea for her next novel
. She said it was going to be called The Brothers. It had never struck me before, but now the choice of title seemed highly significant. It wasn’t difficult to imagine Mary’s mounting sense of dread each time she called at Chawton Cottage and saw Jane scribbling away in the parlour.

  Of all the visitors to that house Mary was the most familiar with Martha’s potions. She would certainly have watched her sister when she first began experimenting with herbs; she would probably know, too, whereabouts in Chawton Cottage the remedies were stored. She could easily have added arsenic to Jane’s tonic wine and done the same thing to the medicine James was prescribed.

  Such crimes would require ruthless determination and a complete lack of conscience. I recalled the image I had formed of the little girl, lying in bed with smallpox, overhearing the doctor say her prospects of marriage were ruined. Yes, I thought, determination she has in plenty. Her conscience or lack of it was something only she could answer for.

  And what about Anne Mathew? Was that Jane’s voice? The words drifted into my head and settled on top of the mounting pile of questions. James’ first wife had died suddenly and unexpectedly at Deane parsonage – a place where Mary had once lived and where she was a frequent visitor. I recalled Martha saying that these visits were more for the sake of seeing her old home than out of a liking for its new mistress. Could Mary have begun her career as a poisoner as long ago as that? Could Anna’s mother have been her first victim? I frowned at the rutted road. No, I thought, it doesn’t work: she may have had easy access to Anne, Jane and James but what about Elizabeth?

  ‘Oh, look! That’s Anna isn’t it?’ Fanny’s voice brought me back to reality with a jolt. We were nearly level with the cottage. I had been walking without any sense of where my body was going. She was pointing to a carriage that had drawn up outside the inn. Several people were getting out, although to my eyes they were nothing more than blurs of colour. She bounded across the road with a vigour that belied the sickness that had seized her not an hour since. Before I knew it they were coming towards me, arm in arm, caught up in a stream of chatter.

  Anna looked remarkably well, I thought, for someone who had produced a baby every eighteen months for the past twelve years. She was undoubtedly the very best person to quell Fanny’s fears on the subject. There was so much I wanted to ask Fanny; her mother’s death was a crucial link in the chain of motive and opportunity that I was constructing. But how could I do it? How could I risk upsetting the fragile balance of her mind?

  Chapter Thirty

  ‘Where are they, then, those little Lefroys?’ Fanny asked as we walked up the path to the cottage.

  ‘I left them all behind,’ Anna grinned. ‘Now that Ben is Rector of Ashe we can afford a nursemaid.’ Her eyes shone with excitement as she described the new gown she had bought for the wedding – and who could blame her? The days she had had to herself since her marriage must have been very few indeed.

  ‘You won’t mind having Jane’s old bed, will you?’ Cass asked as she took her valise.

  ‘Of course not,’ Anna replied. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts – and even if I did, I’m sure Aunt Jane would never harm me.’

  I couldn’t help wishing it was me who had been given Jane’s old bed: what a bittersweet thing it would have been to draw those dimity curtains around me and remember the evenings and nights we had spent in that treasured space.

  ‘I’ve had to put you and Miss Sharp in my old room,’ Cass went on, ‘because James-Edward is going in the spare room and Martha still needs hers – for tonight at least.’ She gave a self-conscious smile, which Anna returned with a giggle.

  ‘It’s a strange sort of wedding, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Who would have thought Martha Lloyd would become a blushing bride at her age!’

  ‘I suppose it is unusual,’ Cass replied, ‘but Martha is such a good woman: she deserves whatever happiness comes her way.’

  It was hard to imagine Martha as a bride. I supposed that the arrangement between her and Frank Austen was essentially a practical one: he would get someone to care for his children while he was away at sea and she would have a home of her own to run as she chose.

  I went back to helping Cass in the kitchen, leaving Fanny and Anna to themselves in the parlour. Later on, when Fanny had gone back to the Great House and Cass was putting the finishing touches to the pastries, Anna and I went upstairs to unpack.

  ‘Fanny thinks she is with child,’ she said, as she shook out the spotted satin gown she had carried with her all the way from Basingstoke.

  ‘She told me,’ I nodded. ‘She’s very afraid, I think.’

  ‘The poor girl’s spent the past eight years trying to prevent it. Goodness knows how she managed – I wish I knew her secret!’ Anna gave me a wry smile. ‘Anyway, I tried to put her mind at rest.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Well, Martha always gives me something for my confinements. It’s a truly vile mixture of liquorice, figs and aniseed. It works pretty well if you can get it down. There’s a posset she makes, too, which helps with the after-pains and increases the milk once the baby has come.’

  ‘I should think Martha has people queuing up for those,’ I said.

  ‘All the married women in the village ask for them. And Aunt Cass always takes them with her when she goes to help anyone at a lying-in.’

  I was arranging my nightdress on the pillow when she said this and I remember stopping dead, just staring at my own hands. This, I thought, could be the final link in the chain: Cass was with Elizabeth for the birth of that last child – and she would have taken Martha’s medicines with her. Was that how Mary Austen had murdered her rival? Had she tampered with the bottles before Cass packed them up?

  ‘Are you all right?’ Anna was beside me, peering into my face.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I gave her a bright smile. ‘I was just thinking about Fanny’s baby: wondering if it would be a boy or a girl.’

  ‘A boy, I should think, knowing her,’ Anna laughed. ‘She always comes up trumps, doesn’t she? Not like me, with six girls to find husbands for!’

  ‘I’m glad you were able to talk to Fanny,’ I said. ‘You’re just what she needs, you know.’

  ‘Well, I feel sorry for her, actually: my stepmother’s always holding her up as an example – telling me I could have married as well as she has if I’d only waited – but her husband’s not exactly Mr Darcy, is he? I don’t think she loves him; in fact, I don’t think she even likes him very much.’

  ‘I hope the baby will bring her some solace, in that case,’ I replied. After a pause I said: ‘I suppose your stepmother will be coming to the wedding?’

  ‘I think she will be there, yes,’ she said, ‘although it’s by no means certain. She lives in Newbury now, which is not vastly far from Winchester, but she uses the distance as an excuse not to visit Chawton very often these days. She hasn’t been down here nearly as much as she used to when my father was alive. It’s partly because of the business over Uncle Henry, I think.’

  ‘Oh?’ I bent over my valise and drew out my hairbrush and nightcap, trying to disguise my avid interest in what she might divulge.

  ‘You know how much money he lost?’

  ‘Your Aunt Jane did tell me,’ I nodded.

  ‘Well, shortly after my father died, the Crown sent my stepmother a demand for eight hundred pounds. He was one of the guarantors, you see, and as his widow, she was bound to pay.’

  ‘Eight hundred pounds?’ This was more than the value of both the houses Mrs Raike had left me.

  ‘It’s a lot of money, isn’t it? Of course, when my father agreed to it he thought he’d be coming into a fortune anyway, and it wouldn’t matter if the Crown ever came chasing him for it.’

  ‘You mean the inheritance from the Leigh-Perrots?’

  ‘Yes.’ Anna grunted. ‘Can you believe Aunt L. P. is still alive? She’s eighty-three! Who would have thought she’d outlive Papa?’

  Mary, probably, I thought grimly. What a shock it
must have been, after losing Henry to another woman, to discover that she was going to be bled dry for his debts. ‘What did your stepmother do?’ I asked. ‘Was she able to settle it?’

  ‘She had to, in the end, although goodness knows how she raised the money. She tried asking Uncle Edward but he said he was having a hard time finding his own share of what was owed. Then she asked for a meeting with Uncle Henry to talk it all over. They were supposed to meet at a tearoom in Basingstoke but he didn’t turn up. You can imagine how that went down.’

  Only too well, I wanted to reply – but of course, I said nothing of the sort.

  ‘I thought it served her right, actually. She was always needling Papa about how well Uncle Henry had done and what charming manners he had.’ She made a face. ‘Are all stepmothers as spiteful as her, do you think?’ Anna was unaware of the resonance her words had for me. I murmured something in reply, the substance of which I can’t recall, for my mind was racing ahead again. How, I wanted to know, could the widow of a country parson find eight hundred pounds? Mary was known within the family for being money-minded, but from what Jane had told me, Henry’s bankruptcy had hit them hard. James had lost several hundred pounds when the bank collapsed, so there couldn’t have been much left when the Crown came knocking on Mary’s door.

  ‘Where did your stepmother go when she gave up the rectory?’ I asked.

  ‘She went to Bath at first,’ Anna replied. ‘She took Caroline with her, of course. James-Edward was at Oxford by then so he didn’t go. After a few months she realised she couldn’t afford to stay there. So she moved to a place called Daylesford in Gloucestershire to stay with a friend. In the end she found a house to rent in Newbury.’

  Daylesford. The name sounded familiar, but it took me a while to remember why. For some reason it triggered an image of Mrs Raike’s cousin, Miss Gowerton, eating lavender cake in the pastry shop in Bath. I frowned at my hairbrush as I laid it on the dressing table. ‘What was the name of the friend in Gloucestershire?’