‘Lord, I can’t remember!’ Anna said. ‘Something beginning with an ‘H’, I think: Harris or Hargreaves or something. Why? Do you know her?’
‘I might,’ I said. ‘Was it Hastings?’
I lay awake for hours that night, staring up at the tenting of what had once been Cassandra’s bed, and listening to Anna’s slow, rhythmic breathing coming from the place where Jane should have been. I raged inside at the thought of that sweet, bright life ebbing away as the poison worked its evil on her body. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Mary Austen, red-lipped and feline, as I had seen her in my dreams all those years before at the White Hart Inn. If she had come to the cottage that night I swear I would have killed her.
But you have no proof.
I heard Jane’s voice as clearly as if she had been lying beside me. She was right, of course; I had not one shred of evidence to unmask Mary Austen as a poisoner. I turned onto my side, certain that sleep would never come to me in this fevered state. Through the wall I could hear Cass. Tucked up in her mother’s old bed, she was snoring in just the same way. From the parlour down below Martha’s voice drifted up to me. Like me, she was too worked up to think of sleep. She was chattering away about the wedding to James-Edward, who had arrived just as we were all going to bed. I could only catch parts of their conversation but I heard enough to learn that Mary had gone ahead to Winchester with Caroline, where she would be spending the night with a friend.
Another friend, I thought. Mary seemed very adept at finding people to help her out of tricky situations. I wondered what part Mrs Hastings had played in the resurrection of Mary’s finances after the blow from the Crown. It must have been her, not her husband, who came to Mary’s aid, for I had read the death notice for Warren Hastings in the obituary column of The Times the year after Jane’s passing.
I cast my mind back to the last time I had seen them. Mary had been sitting next to me, at the ball in Bath, when Mr Hastings had come to ask me to dance. Yet he had not acknowledged her presence in any way. Were they strangers at that point, then? Had she got to know the Hastings later on? Warren Hastings had died the year before James Austen, so perhaps Mrs Hastings was in Bath at the same time as Mary, for the same reason. I tried to imagine the old dame with the snake eyes and the outrageous hats walking arm-in-arm around the Circus with her new friend. Why, I thought, would Mrs Hastings act in such a generous manner to someone she had only just met? Why would she offer a temporary home to a woman like Mary? A parson’s widow who had neither warmth nor charm to recommend her?
I decided that they must have got together well before that, sometime after my visit to Bath. But then I thought of an obstacle to the friendship: Mary hated Eliza, whom Warren Hastings doted on. How could she possibly have borne his company? How could she have listened to him singing the praises of a woman she had banned from her own home?
Perhaps it was this very hatred, I thought, that had formed a bond between the two women. I recalled the look in those cold eyes when Mrs Hastings found out about my connection with Eliza. What was it Mrs Raike had said afterwards? I scoured my memory for the conversation we had had upon quitting the Pump Room. It was something about Warren Hastings’ Will: some fear of his wife’s that he would leave his estate to Eliza instead of her sons. I began to wonder if Mary Austen had played some part in preventing this, to the eternal gratitude of Mrs Hastings. But what could she possibly have done? How could she have come between Eliza and the Hastings fortune?
My thoughts returned to the ball in Bath; to the conversation I had had with Warren Hastings while we danced. He had been asking about Eliza. Gently probing me about what I had observed on my visit to London. And what was it he’d said later, when we were all searching for Mary? You Austen men really should take better care of your wives…
With a sudden, blinding clarity it dawned on me: Warren Hastings was one of the two main investors in Henry’s bank – the one most likely to have caused the crash of the Austen business empire. What had prompted his decision to cut and run? I had always suspected Jane’s portrayal of Henry in Mansfield Park had played a part. But such an act would require more evidence than a work of fiction. Could that evidence have been provided by Mary?
A ripple of laughter came up from the parlour, as if they had heard my thoughts and dismissed them as too foolish to contemplate. Why would Mary want to ruin Henry? Why would she do such a thing to the man she was in love with?
To bring him to his knees.
‘Yes,’ I whispered into the pillow, ‘I can believe that.’ I thought of Henry, riding back to Chawton with nothing but the clothes on his back, the Church the only option left to him. And Mary waiting in the wings; already slipping poison down her husband’s throat. What a tempting prospect the living of Steventon would have been to a man in Henry’s situation. And how easy for Mary to play the part of the poor widow-in-waiting as everyone watched James fading away.
What went wrong, I wondered? Had Henry always planned to marry Eleanor Jackson but kept it a secret until the living was secured? Had he simply humoured Mary to make sure she went quietly, knowing all along that he would never make her his wife? Or had he intended to marry her but discovered just in time her role in his downfall? Had someone warned him? And could that someone have been Jane?
Did Mary find out? Is that why she killed you? There was no answering whisper in my head from Jane. All I could hear was the gentle snoring of Cass through the wall.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sleep came somehow that night. My eyes were not closed for long, though, for the birds woke me a little before five in the morning. Anna was still asleep, lying on her back with her nightcap all askew, as if she had been pulling at it in her dreams. I didn’t want to disturb her or anyone else in the house by going downstairs at such an early hour. On the night table was the poem of Jane’s that I had copied out the previous afternoon. Comforted by the thought of having something of hers close to me, I reached for it and read it through:
When Winchester Races – a poem for St Swithin’s Day
When Winchester races first took their beginning
It is said the good people forgot their old Saint
Not applying at all for the leave of Saint Swithin
And that William of Wykeham’s approval was faint.
The races however were fixed and determined
The company came and the weather was charming
The Lords and the Ladies were satine’d and ermined
And nobody saw any future alarming.
But when the old Saint was informed of those doings
He made but one spring from his Shrine to the Roof
Of the Palace which now lies so sadly in ruins
And then he addressed them all standing aloof.
“Oh! Subjects rebellious! Oh Venta depraved
When once we are buried you think we are gone
But behold me immortal! By vice you’re enslaved
You have sinned and must suffer, then farther he said
These races and revels and dissolute measures
With which you’re debasing a neighbouring Plain
Let them stand – You shall meet with your curse in your pleasures
Set off for your course, I’ll pursue with my rain.
Ye cannot but know my command o’er July
Henceforward I’ll triumph in shewing my powers
Shift your race as you will it shall never be dry
The curse upon Venta is July in showers.
The strangeness of it struck me anew: not only the subject, but the fact that there was a rhyme that didn’t work in the fourth verse – surely the word should have been ‘dead’ not ‘gone’? And then there was the choice of words to be underlined: in some cases it was appropriate but in others not at all: why, for instance, had she chosen to emphasise the word ‘ruins’ in the third verse?
I sat staring at it for a while, then, on impulse, I reached for a pencil and paper. I jotted down all the underlined w
ords, which were:
ANY; RUINS; ARE; ME; MY; SHOWERS.
Well, they don’t make any sense, however you arrange them, I thought. I started playing about with the letters, dividing the vowels from the consonants as I would for a game of anagrams. The first word that popped out was ‘Mary’. Then I spotted ‘Henry’. My heart began to beat a little faster. With the remaining letters I was able to make three other words. Rearranged, they made a sentence:
HENRY OUR NEMESIS WAS MARY
I whispered what I had written, my mouth so dry my tongue caught on my teeth. Had Jane known what Mary was doing to her? Impossible, surely? She would have made some attempt to save herself by telling Cass, not by sending some coded message to her brother. What was it Cass had said? The poem was dictated two days before she died: could it be that Mary had made some sort of confession, thinking Jane was too far gone to do anything about it?
I could just imagine the twisted satisfaction she might take in telling Jane what she had done to Henry and what she was about to do to her. If Jane knew she was beyond help at that stage the only thing to be gained by telling Cass was to make sure Mary hanged for it. Was Jane afraid of not being believed? Did she think her accusation would be put down to the effects of the laudanum she was taking?
If that was the case, I thought, any warning she wanted to give Henry would be dismissed in the same vein. Was the poem her only hope of getting the message to him? I stared at the words again. Then I heard a noise downstairs. The door of Cass’s bedroom opened and closed. I waited a couple of minutes before slipping out of bed and pulling on my shawl.
Cass was in the kitchen. She was standing at the doorway with her back to me, waving at someone outside. I caught a brief glimpse of a man on horseback, the profile instantly recognisable.
‘Henry is abroad early,’ I said as she turned round.
‘That wasn’t Henry,’ she laughed, ‘it was James-Edward. He’s going to Winchester to hire a carriage for Mary and Caroline.’ She set the kettle on the range and took cups from the shelf above. ‘He is the very image of his uncle. I can understand why you mistook him.’
I wondered fleetingly if Cass’s mind had ever followed the pathways mine had. But no: Cass was the sort of creature who sought the light in people, not the darkness. If she sensed shadows, I thought, she would turn her back on them. ‘Will they be coming to the wedding breakfast?’ I asked.
‘It’s not possible,’ she replied. ‘They have the offer of a holiday in Lyme and must leave Winchester by noon.’
‘Martha must be disappointed.’
‘Yes, a little. But they’ll join her in Portsmouth at the end of the week. Frank will have gone back to his ship by then.’
I watched her unlock the cupboard where the tea was kept. She placed the caddy on the dresser, next to the teapot then glanced over her shoulder at the kettle. Taking a deep breath I said: ‘Anna told me that Mary and Henry have fallen out: I suppose that will make things quite difficult at the wedding.’
Cass clicked her tongue. ‘Anna does tend to over-dramatise things. Did you know she writes? She has a children’s story ready to be published.’
‘I didn’t know,’ I replied. ‘But I’m not surprised. I think that of all the nephews and nieces, Anna’s character is closest to Jane’s.’ I paused for a moment. ‘Jane didn’t like Mary very much, did she?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Oh, it’s just the impression Anna gives,’ I said, my colour rising as I twisted the truth. ‘She said Jane would have sided with Henry, as she did.’
‘Well, they weren’t the best of friends, that’s true,’ she nodded, ‘but Mary was very good to her at the end. I think Jane saw a very different side to her in those last few weeks.’
More than you know, I thought. ‘Was she there the whole time you and Jane were at Winchester?’
‘Bar a few days in June when we thought Jane was getting better.’ The kettle started to whistle and she went to fetch it. ‘She would sit up all night with her sometimes so I could get some rest; she really was an angel.’
‘I was reading the poem again this morning,’ I said, ‘the one Jane dictated to you. It’s amazing to think she constructed all those verses in her head when she was so ill.’
‘It is amazing, isn’t it? I think it helped to distract her from…’ Her voice died as she poured scalding water onto the tea leaves.
I nodded. ‘I was curious about the words that were underlined: did she instruct you on that, too?’
‘Oh, yes – she might have been ill but she was most particular. I just followed her instructions without paying much attention to the sense of it. Afterwards I did think it a little odd: I expect it was the laudanum – it must have fuddled her brain a little.’
‘She must have wanted people to see the poem,’ I said. ‘Was it a sort of parting gift, do you think?’
‘She did say she wanted the family to see it. They all did, of course, when they came for the funeral. But then I put it away. It hurt me to be reminded of those last days, I suppose. It was James-Edward who made me get it out – he’s talking about collecting our memories of Jane for a book.’
I didn’t tell her, of course, that I had already begun writing mine. I was thinking about Henry, wondering if he could have paid any real attention to the poem at a time when he was caught up with organising Jane’s funeral. The message had probably never reached its intended target. The warning had gone unheeded but Henry had spurned Mary anyway. And she had got away with murder.
Chapter Thirty-Two
‘Will you help me with my gown?’ Anna’s voice summoned me from upstairs, joined in quick succession by Martha who was begging for assistance from Cass.
I laced the back of Anna’s spotted silk gown and stood back as she admired herself in the mirror. ‘Could you pass me my brooch?’ she asked. ‘It’s on the night table.’
I went to fetch it, biting my lip when I saw what it contained. ‘Is that Jane’s hair?’ I passed her the silver disc with its mount of tiny plaits fashioned into the shape of a flower.
‘It’s my father’s,’ she replied. ‘I have a ring for Aunt Jane, though I don’t wear it very often.’ She gave me a wry glance as she pinned the brooch to her bodice. ‘I’m afraid of spoiling it with all the things I handle in a day.’
I nodded, stroking the ring on my own finger. Stay with me, Jane, I whispered to myself. Come with me to Winchester, won’t you?
Cass, Anna and I travelled to the wedding together. Our carriage was lined up in the procession of vehicles provided by the Great House, which consisted of a barouche for the bride, a curricle for the groom and best man, a chaise for the groom’s children and a coach and six for Edward and his family. Henry’s rather humble gig brought up the rear.
‘Doesn’t Martha look lovely?’ Cass, whose only concession to the occasion was to swap her customary bombazine for black satin, gave me a tight-lipped smile. I wasn’t sure if she was overcome with emotion at the sight of her friend in a bridal gown or just self-conscious about her teeth. ‘She says she doesn’t like dressing up, but that pearl grey silk really suits her.’
‘And here comes Uncle Frank,’ Anna grinned. ‘He looks rather splendid, doesn’t he?’
‘There’s nothing quite like a man in uniform.’ Cass’s face turned wistful. I wondered how many years it was since she had gone to Portsmouth with her trousseau, only to find that her fiancé was dead. I felt I should say something; try to lift her spirits with some light-hearted banter about the day ahead. But my stomach was tied in knots at the prospect of seeing Mary Austen. I wasn’t sure how I was going to control myself in the cathedral when I caught sight of her.
Thankfully, Anna filled in the silences with her chatter and after an hour or so we were on the outskirts of the city. We stepped out into dazzling sunshine. Cathedral Close was a hive of activity, a group of schoolboys marching in a crocodile across the green, and hawkers parading up and down, shouting their wares at every passer-by.
Shading my eyes I searched for Mary’s face in the throng. But there was no sign of her. Neither had she appeared by the time we all trooped into the porch.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the shadowy world within. Here and there pools of jewelled light fell on the stones. I breathed in the ancient, unchanging scent of incense and candle wax and aged wood. My heart shifted against my ribs. I’m here, Jane, I said silently.
‘We’ll sit at the back, shall we?’ Anna took my arm. ‘Aunt Cass is going in the second pew with Uncle Edward and Uncle Henry.’ As she spoke Henry walked past us, carrying the sweet-faced Eleanor, who was beautifully attired in a gown of fine apricot muslin trimmed with ivory rosebuds. He has so much to answer for, I thought, so much to reveal. But how could I interrogate him in these circumstances? And how would he react if, as I suspected, he was wholly ignorant of Mary’s crimes? I had lost my dearest friend but he had lost a sister, a brother and a lover. A man of the cloth he may be, but he would have to exert superhuman self-control on discovering such a thing. And whatever he did would impact on Eleanor. How could I contemplate threatening the well-being of a woman who so needed and deserved his support?
‘Come on.’ Anna steered me towards the side chapel where the service was to be performed. To reach it we had to pass the very spot where Jane lay. ‘Good morning, Aunt Jane – we’ve come to see Martha Lloyd marry Uncle Frank,’ she whispered. ‘But I suppose you know that already, don’t you?’ She kissed her gloved fingers and bobbed down to touch the stone. ‘I know I said I don’t believe in ghosts, but I bet she’s looking down on us; she wouldn’t have missed it for the world, would she?’
‘She wouldn’t.’ I swallowed hard. It was almost unbearable to think of Mary walking past her grave, as she surely would any moment now. I glanced over my shoulder. Edward was coming through the door with Charlotte on one arm and Louisa on the other. No change there, then, I thought. Fanny was behind him, accompanied by a gaggle of young people who ranged in age from late teens to late twenties. Anna told me that some of these were Frank’s children and some were Edward’s but the only one I recognised was Brook-John, because, like James-Edward, he was the spitting image of Henry.
The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen Page 29
