Jane and the Genius of the Place: Being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery (15 page)

Neddie threw down his napkin, pushed back his chair, and commenced to pace the length of the dining-parlour. Lizzy sat even more upright in her chair, and regarded him with the liquid green gaze of a cat.

“It is too bad of you, Henry,” she whispered in an aside. “You have quite put him off his turbot. I will not have the mutton spoilt.”

“Tell me what you know of Collingforth's black-coated friend,” Neddie commanded. “The inscrutable Mr. Everett.”

“Ah!” Henry cried, and his countenance lightened. “There you have hit upon a malignant fellow, indeed! Everett had not been in Canterbury a day before it was generally circulated, that he is an arranger of prizefights—which, tho' quite beyond the pale of the law, are much patronised by the Quality. Everett represents the interests of a champion, a bruising mulatto by the name of Delacroix, who hails from Martinique.”

“But what can such a man have to do with Denys Collingforth?” I enquired.

“Collingforth has a passion for boxing, as he does for every game of sport, and has lost a fortune in betting around the ring. Men like Everett may always be found in the neighbourhood of such an one; for a susceptibility to the sport enslaves the purse as well as the man.”

“But there was no prizefight at the Canterbury Races,” Neddie objected. He had ceased to pace, and now sank back into his chair. “Some other purpose must have drawn Everett hither.”

“I believe he was forced to quit his lodgings in Town for a while,” Henry replied. “A matter of some delicacy, only vaguely understood by the regulars at the Hound and Tooth. I surmised a brush with the law, and a desire to lie low; a sudden inspiration as to his friend Collingforth, and a hasty descent into Kent. I should not be surprised if an arranger of prizefights was hardly ignorant of the coarser pursuits of his company—the fixing of cards and games of chance, and the ruin of innocent young men in gaming hells. I have seen an hundred Everetts in my time, and may now discern the type.”

“Then we must conclude that the better part of Collingforth's trouble springs from debts of honour,” I ventured. “His intimacy with Mrs. Grey is in part explained.”

“Excellent, Jane!” Henry cried. “Depend upon it, you shall always provide the elegant turn of phrase that moves a tale along. I was coming to Mrs. Grey directly.”

“Then pray do so at once,” Neddie broke in. “This wandering among the byways of the Sporting Life grows tedious.”

“Mrs. Grey, as we know, had her own affection for the Sporting Life. A certain coterie of Kentish gentlemen enjoyed the privilege of high play at her tables. It seems that as lately as the spring, Collingforth counted himself among their number—and that he lost heavily. Mrs. Grey held a fistful of Collingforth's vowels—and showed no sign of forgiving his debt.”

“Then he should hardly mourn her early death,” I said slowly. “I wonder whom else she numbered among her debtors?”

Henry shrugged. “Any amount of local bloods. The lady liked to win, and she possessed the Devil's own luck. Fully half the men of Canterbury were laying bets on the Commodore yesterday, in the hope of improving their fortunes—but to my dismay, they merely bargained further into ruin.”

“And there was Mrs. Grey, exulting in her win, while their hopes turned to dust and ashes,” Lizzy observed. “Lamentable behaviour, I must say.”

“But incitement to murder?” I protested.

“Why not?” Henry's tone was rueful. “The notion has been no stranger to my own thoughts. At least ten times this morning I have considered whether a bullet to the head might not be the kindest service I could render the Commodore, if not myself.”

“Henry!”

“It has been a purgatory merely to move about the town, Jane, I assure you. One young buck, who was far too much in wine, went so far as to suppose a collusion between myself and Mrs. Grey—with the Commodore's jockey throwing his race, and all the losses redounding somehow to my benefit. Or to Mrs. Grey's, had she lived— I cannot be entirely certain.”

“But to return to Collingforth,” Neddie urged. “Surely the death of his chief creditor must relieve his circumstances?”

“I am very much afraid that the loss of merely one among the company, can do little to repair his fortunes.”

“A desperate man might kill for revenge, in the belief he had nothing to lose,” I said.

“—particularly if he may so construct the murder scene as to divert attention from himself,” Neddie added.

“The body in the chaise?”

“Of course. Only a fool would dispose of his victim so obviously—or a very cunning fellow, indeed. From the moment of Mrs. Grey's discovery, we have been struck by the implausibility of the body's lying as it did. We have endeavoured to clear Mr. Collingforth's name, and hardly credited the notion of his guilt—”

Neddie's words were cut short at the entrance of the manservant, Russell, from the kitchen passage.

“Forgive me, sir,” he said with a bow, “but there is a constable just arrived from Canterbury. He is most insistent that he be seen. I have informed him that the second course is not yet served, but he refused—”

“Yer honour!”

A spare, bandy-legged fellow pushed past the footman and sprang lightly into the dining-parlour. “I've come fer yer gold sovereign, and I won't take no paper fer it, neither!”

A length of soiled cloth unfurled from his hands, its gold frogging glinting in the candlelight. Lizzy gasped, and Neddie started to his feet.

Mrs. Grey's scarlet riding habit.

1
George Canning (1770-1827) served as Undersecretary of State in 1796, and as Treasurer of the Navy from 1804-1806. As such, he had virtually no authority over naval organization or policy, which was administered by the First Lord of the Admiralty, but he was responsible for matters of naval finance in Parliament. This included the salaries of naval captains, the naval budget, and the disposition of the Secret Funds—monies set aside for the purpose of espionage, and unaccountable to Parliament.—
Editor's note.

2
The House of Hope was the powerful and influential Scots banking concern based in Amsterdam. Hope financed, among other things, Napoleon Bonaparte's government and campaigns. —
Editor's note.

3
William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806) was in his last months of life in August 1805. As minister of the Treasury, he was also prime minister of England. A brilliant, lonely, and calculating political genius, he was the foremost Tory of his generation and a lifelong adversary of the Prince of Wales. He was also an alcoholic, and his liver failed when he was forty-seven. He was carried, dying, from the House of Commons in December 1805, and died early in 1806.—
Editor's note.

20 August 1805, cont'd.

N
EDDIE MOVED TO THE CONSTABLE'S SIDE AND TOOK THE
gown from his hands. He whistled softly under his breath. “What is your name, my good sir?”

“Jacob Pyke, yer honour, and a Kentish man from four generations.”

“Then I must assume you are familiar with the country, Mr. Pyke.”

“I knows it as well as me own wife's arse, sir.”

A choking sound from Lizzy, hastily covered by a cough.

“Mr. Pyke!” Neddie said sharply. “There are ladies present.”

The constable scraped a bow, and leered all around. “Beggin' yer pardon, and I meant no harm, I'm sure, it being a common enough saying.”

“And where did you discover
this
, Constable?”

The man's eyes shifted from my brother's face, and he began to worry the cap he now held in his hands. “In a hedgerow, yer honour, along the Wingham road a ways. 'Twas rolled in a piece of sacking, and thrust well back under the brush, so's not to be seen, like.”

“Then how did you happen to discover it, Mr. Pyke?”

An expression of astonished innocence, so false as to cry foul, suffused the man's countenance. “Why—I were told to look for it, yer honour, same's every man jack in Kent. Poking about the leaves and such-like I were, with a long stick, and I comes to a largish lump what don't push back. 'Ho, ho,' I says to myself, 'that there lump ain't a branch nor a bramble no more'n my hand. That be a lady's gown, that be.' And I had it out on the end of the stick.”

“I see.” Neddie sounded amused. “I commend your dedication to duty, Mr. Pyke. And the sacking?”

“Yer honour never said nothing 'bout wanting no sacking,” Pyke countered belligerendy. “It weren't in my orders, and I can't be held accountable. Besides—the lad wanted it fer a remembrance, like.”

“The lad?”

Mr. Pyke took a step backwards, and looked about him wildly. “Just a lad,” he said, “of no account howsomever. He happened to be passing when I unrolled the gown, and begged for the sacking to show his mates.” Betrayal was in every line of Constable Pyke's frame, and I surmised that the unfortunate lad—whatever his identity— had found the riding habit while larking in the hedgerow, and had turned it over to the first constable who came in his way. A finer sense of honour had animated the boy than should ever compel his elders; but presumably he had thought the sacking a sensational item enough— knowing nothing of Neddie's gold sovereign.

My brother sighed, and studied the man before him closely. “I should like to see this place,” he said, “where you found the riding habit.”

“Don't know as I could find it again, yer honour,” the constable protested. “It's nobbit a bit of hedgerow, same's any other.”

“I should like you to be waiting along the Wingham road tomorrow morning, all the same,” Neddie advised, “in expectation of my appearance. We shall go over the ground as closely as may be. And now, Mr. Pyke, pray be so good as to return to the kitchen. You shall have your gold sovereign, and some supper for your pains.”

The man looked all his relief at Neddie's words, and bobbed a salute as he disappeared into the passage. My brother hastened to his library, where he kept his strongbox; and the exchange concluded, we heard no more of Mr. Pyke.

“Henry and I shall forgo the Port this evening, I think,” Neddie said as he reappeared, “and beg you to join us immediately in the library. We must learn what the habit may tell us.”

T
HE HABIT'S SECRETS, AT FIRST RECKONING, WERE
Disappointingly few. Not so much as a drop of rusty brown stained the scarlet, that might suggest the spilling of blood—but as Mrs. Grey had been strangled with her own hair-ribbon, this was not to be expected.

We spread the gown on one of the library's long tables, and made a thorough examination of its folds. It was much creased, but hardly dirty, excepting the dust at the hem that must always accompany a foray out-of-doors; and perhaps some splashes of mud acquired in the lady's enthusiasm for the mounted chase. No tears or rents did we find, that might suggest a violence in the removal, other than a space at the back where one gold button was missing.

“Strange,” Neddie muttered. “The button is found in Collingforth's chaise, but the garment from whence it came is left lying in a hedgerow. Was Mrs. Grey stripped of her clothes in the chaise itself, and the gown thrown aside later on the Wingham road?”

“That does not seem very likely,” Lizzy replied. “I must believe we refine too much upon the gold button. It may have nothing whatsoever to do with Mrs. Grey's brutal end—she might have lost it in a trifling way, when Jane and I observed her to enter the chaise well before the final heat.”

“Very true,” Neddie said thoughtfully, “but it must rob my observation entirely of its honour, my dear!”

“One thing is certain,” I added. “Mrs. Grey cannot have removed the habit herself. Such a quantity of buttons running from neck to waist should require the offices of a maid—or an intimate friend.”

“We must assume, then, that she received assistance,” Neddie said briskly, “—and that she knew whoever killed her.”

“But why remove the gown at all?”

I stared at Henry wordlessly. “I am all astonishment that a man such as yourself—a Sporting Gendeman, and a man of the world—requires the explication of a spinster. Having heard a litde of Mrs. Grey's reputation, surely you may form an idea of the circumstances.”